I Get "a Bone" for My Birthday

From the events of today, one wouldn’t necessarily agree that I was having an awesome month. We had planned a family get-together with three family members coming over from Tulsa; our oldest son’ family consisting of Kevin and Amy and their four kids, Nate, Liam, Moira, and Jenni; and our youngest son, Eric.

Since we have recently been joking about “inside” jobs and “outside” jobs, it was decided that grilling food on an outdoor grill was definitely an “outside” job. Keep in mind that the normal person for the “outside” work is me and I can’t cook!

However, I think word got around that I was actually going to attempt to do some outside cooking. One of the Tulsa family members became ill and then Liam ran a low-grade fever and Kevin began to feel bad as well. So, our only remaining family member arrived, that being Eric, and we had a great lunch.

However, Jo refused to allow me to cook the shish-ka-bobs. For some reason, she claims that she wants to be able to eat the food that was prepared.

I am SO crushed!!

No, wait. How could I be? Let me explain.

Sitting around the other evening, Jo asked a question that has been asked before with absolutely nothing coming of it, so when it came that evening, I thought nothing of it. After all, it had been asked before.

The evening went on with me at the computer, and as we started towards bed for the night, she made a confession.

She had ordered a camera lens that I have been wanting for a long time, but because she was unable to have it shipped to another address, she had to tell me that she had ordered my birthday present, since it would arrive at our residence instead of somewhere else.

Obviously, my first words were, “The lens?” because that had been the question that I had paid little attention to when she asked it.

However, I have since found out that Jo just “threw me a bone.” It turns out that she wanted another computer laptop. After having bought a small one a while back and a Toshiba netbook (or whatever), she evidently found it was time to buy me something so I wouldn’t get jealous.

I found out about the laptop after she got a call from Hewlett Packard to verify the order. For a couple of days, she tracked the shipment of her laptop and sometime during the day last Friday, she found out it was in Oklahoma City. Checking again after we got off (and not finding a package or attempted delivery notice on the door), she found out that it had already been delivered and a “N. Hall” had signed it.

Well, we had no idea who “N. Hall” might be, so she called FedEx. They informed her that the laptop had been delivered to a business, not our residence. Needless to say, she was really upset that her expensive laptop was missing. (Being that Jo is in the Information Technology field, she needs to get up-to-date equipment with some of the latest technology so she can learn it.)

I asked whether she thought that the “business” that it was delivered to might happen to be the Twin Fountains RV Park, which is right across the fence from the mobile home park within which we are parked. She said that first thing in the morning, she would walk over to their office and see.

The next morning, while I was drinking my coffee, she walked over and came back with her hot little hands holding her laptop. Evidently, FedEx has a tendency to change drivers a lot and the driver for Friday may have thought the mobile home park was actually a part of the RV park. After all, we aren’t the only RV’s in the park.

So, Jo is now happy with her laptop, and to be truthful, I am happy with the “bone” that she threw me. The only question I will now have is will I have to wait until my birthday on the 23^rd, or will she let me use it sooner?

Hopefully, sooner will be the case.

Oh, perhaps you should know more about “the bone.” It is a Nikon 70-200mm, f/2.8 zoom lens. The “f/2.8” is important in that it gives very clear photos over the entire range of the 70 to 200 millimeters. It is what is called a “fast” lens in that the aperture is open enough to allow more light, thus clearer photos and faster automatic focusing. That can be important with taking pictures of wildlife.

Anyway, a picture of “the bone.”

Happy birthday to me. May is going to be an awesome month.