Ben, Becky, Slankets, etc.

Today for the first time I worked with Jamie and Ben Eaton out in service. Ben got laid off from his electric company job a couple of weeks ago, so he's making the best of his time at home until he gets more work. (Incidentally, we passed one of his company's trucks in service today. It's called Amaya Electric. Is it just me, or could that totally be the name of a novel? Think about it, Abby, if you ever want to write a book about yourself).

Anyway, I don't know Ben very well and I've always thought of him as kind of a dork, starting from that day last summer when he wore the black nylons to the softball game. But today in service I realized that I need to give him more credit. I had a pretty good time today and he was pretty funny. Somehow, as we were driving around in the van, the subject of anniversaries came up. Becky Abuan (Aurel's wife), got a Slanket this year. The Slanket is like the Snuggie, namely a very large blanket with sleeves. (Apparently there are tons of commercials on TV for the Snuggie, but since I don't have TV, I've never seen them).

So Becky was describing this thing to Jason McOmber, how it's like, 7 feet long, and drags behind her when she walks. "Yesterday I totally cleaned all my bamboo floor with it. It's like the new tool for lazy Americans. You can sweep while you're on your way to the kitchen for a snack." I thought that was pretty funny, but maybe you had to be there. You have to be able to picture skinny little Becky wrapped in a 7-foot Slanket. "For our ten year anniversary, he got me a diamond and sapphire ring," she said, and then Jason kind of jokingly commiserated with her about how much the economy has gone down.

Then Jason asked Ben what he's getting for Jamie for their one-year anniversary. (Ben and Jamie got married a week after Zack and me). Ben got this clueless look on his face, and then Jason was like, "I think Jamie should just be glad she's got a guy like you, Ben." So they did the little knuckle bump and Ben goes, "You're beating a dead horse, man. I tell her that at least once a day. 'Just enjoy the fact that you get to be with me, honey. You don't understand how lucky you are. Marriage is a crapshoot, and you hit the jackpot." It was funny to me to hear him say that, because he was so obviously kind of making fun of himself. To me, that earned him some points.

Now I'm home, cleaning house and waiting for Zack to get home. We're doing Babylon The Great Has Fallen for our Family Worship Night, and last Friday I was able to borrow The Two Babylons, a source book they cite a lot, so we'll be reading out of that tonight as well. It should be pretty intriguing, I think.

There's dinner in the crock pot, Pongo's cage is all cleany clean, and I'm listening to Pandora while I work. My main stations on Pandora are Irish music and country. I never used to listen to country music before I lived in Eatonville. I'm still not a huge country fan, but there's a certain variety I really like, and so I have a few stations built around specific songs. It's cool to listen to those songs interspersed with ones from the Gaelic Storm station, and hear the ancestry of the country music in the Irish folk songs. I was thinking today about how you could take a lot of the Irish music, throw in some banjos, a steel guitar, and a Southern accent, and basically have something sounding a lot like Sammy Kershaw or Tim McGraw. That stuff is interesting to me.