It was so busy last week because of the inclement weather to report and I also couldn’t get out of the house to run errands, so I was catching up Friday morning. That’s not why I left the house at 6 a.m. though. That was because of a thing on my agenda called the Legislative Breakfast (video), where our local legislators give us an update on what bills are in process and what’s passing. I like to go and get video so that you lazy hooligans concerned citizens can have access to what was covered in this public meeting. Why does breakfast have to be so early in the morning? And especially after I had been up late with the glamorous duties of running MySaline.
Anyhoo, I had to rush there and rush back because I remembered about drawing a winner for the Riverside Grocery catfish dinner. They do catfish on Fridays, so it makes sense to do the drawing before Friday, but I wasn’t that organized. For this next drawing, I’ll pick a name on Wednesday. Yes, there will be another catfish dinner drawing, so keep those comments and blog posts and event posts coming! Click for how to enter that contest and others.
Before I could get from the breakfast thing in Benton, back to party central MySaline headquarters in beautiful Sardis, Arkansas, I had to stop at the post office and sneer at the negligent parkers on the lot see if I had any mail. I like my P.O. box because no bills come there. Well, except for the one for paying for the P.O. box.
And then I was off again on the majestic I-30 frontage road, when *DING* what the heck was that? *DING* I heard it again. *DING* Ohhhh! The Lord is telling me to get some coffee! ha
Now I’m certain I’ve spelled it correctly in my thought bubble, but the coffee hut/shack/tiny house in the nearest proximity the my Corolla, Henry Rollins (formerly known as Brad Paisley), spells it with a “K.” Let me simplify that last sentence for you: I stopped for coffee at Koffee with a Kause in Bryant. I hadn’t been there yet, but I had seen their star doohickey of a logo and actually drove through one day when they were setting up the – can you call it a food truck? It’s not a truck. Well whatever it is, I had been meaning to stop by and this was my first crack at it. If you look on their Facebook (link is up there ^^), you’ll see they have daily specials and they alternate different charities that they give to. I love me some charity and so I pretended briefly I wasn’t in a hurry and stopped to get the best creme brulee latte I’ve ever had. This was my first, actually, but it was still flippin awesome. As is my custom, I chatted up the dude in the window and discovered it was the owner, Jared Voth, who was making my goodies. He gave me his card, which also serves as a punch card (how very green!) and I told him I’d give him a mention here on MySaline. I just did that. But I also want to mention that in addition to being a local new business owner (found out they live right near me), the “Kause” in their name is because they pick a charity each month and give a portion of their sales to them. March is Multiple Sclerosis month. See their Facebook page (linked above) for more info.
After I got home, finished my coffee and picked a winner for the catfish dinner, it occurred to me that I would have to get the gift certificate to that winner, or else they ain’t havin’ no winner-winner-catfish-dinner that night. This is where the power of community and social media comes in. See, I live in the Sardis area and now that I had just driven through Benton & Bryant, I didn’t want to drive back into “the big city” and further disrupt my schedule, as I told you in paragraph one, I was trying to catch up. So here’s what I did. Where Batman says, “To the batcave!” I said, “To the Facebook!” I’m sure you know I’m on there all the time anyway, networking, posting news and generally screwing around, but on Friday, I posted on two different groups that are hyper-local to me. One is for Shannon Hills and one is for the Sardis Community. I just posted that I needed somebody to run into Bryant for me to drop something at a business and then I waited. Bam. Folks came out of the woodwork, offering up their delivery services. Mostly nice ladies who live right nearby (or else why would they be in the group) and they are either domestic engineers or retired. I made arrangements and a sweet lady named Catherine made the delivery within about an hour. How cool is that? Thanks, Catherine and thanks to all the other local folks who offered to help!
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I can’t finish talking about Friday yet until I mention that around 2 p.m., I found out that Leonard Nimoy, a.k.a., Mr. Spock from Star Trek, died at the age of 83. I stopped my work and cried like a big dumb kid. That’s all.
Let’s flash forward to Saturday, when my kids and I went to the most anticipated movie of the year The Sponge Bob Movie. Sighhhh… Well wait, though – it was for half price. Yep! Tickets were $10 but we paid $5. We did it through a website called Dealflicks.com that sells the tickets at a discount so theaters can fill up the seats. You just go to their website, pick a movie and showtime, and then buy vouchers for tickets or concessions). Sweet! Even sweeter than the 50% off, is now that I have used them, I got this code that you can use to get 20% more off, and incidentally, I get credits too. When you check out, use this code: RFU5DP23XT and it will give you the extra discount. If you’d rather I email you a code, I can do that. Just ask me in the comments. Yaay!! Then you can either print the voucher or show it on your phone (there’s an app) at the theater (and/or concession stand). The only catch there is the only central Arkansas theaters who participate are Malvern and Chenal. When you get signed into the Dealflicks site though, you can pick your favorite theater as Tinseltown in Benton (or Rave on Col Glenn) and I guess it helps Dealflicks to convince the theater they should participate in this program. Believe you me, I’ve seen plenty of empty seats at Tinseltown!
And now let’s talk about Saturday night. You may know the City of Bryant’s Parks Director, Derek Phillips. If you do, then you probably know that he has accepted a position in Arkadelphia and is leaving Bryant. He’s such a great guy that his friends and co-workers decided he needed a roast and toast as a going away party! I was invited to this, but I punked out in favor of spending more time with my kids. However… lots of photos and videos were taken of the event. Click to see my dad’s slideshow and more photos and video on the Facebook event.
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Sunday, I managed to get all the monkeys out of bed and off church at the crack of 9-ish so we could get to Midtowne Church barely on time to squeeze into one of the rows in the back. I’m really proud of how the church has grown and always happy to have my daughter, son and grandson there with me. And to extend the happy, there was a text waiting for me when church ended, with my parents saying come eat Chinese buffet with us! Yessss…
And finally, Sunday night, I got another big treat, in that a nationally-acclaimed bluegrass band was coming, of all places, to Mabelvale. Not even playing. This band, the Farm Hands Quartet played for free at Mabelvale United Methodist Church in the Sanctuary Sunday night. Read that again if you like, but I did say for free. They travel all around doing these gigs and they do ask for donations at the end and they also have CDs, t-shirts and um… fried pies for sale at a table. That’s how they make their money. But you know what, after I heard these guys (and my dad got video of the show, so you’ll hear them too), I knew that everybody in the audience must have shelled out for the performance we just saw. Not only were there some world-class, talented musicians (a Grammy win & several nominations + many other accolades among the players), but there was great storytelling too that had the crowd laughing and I was in tears over one story about “how to sing southern gospel.” My dad got video of the whole show, and he got permission to share, so hopefully we’ll have that available on MySaline.com before long. Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and visit their Facebook or website.
The fellas from left to right are Tim Graves, Bennie Boling, Daryl Moseley & the newest member, Keith Tew. All of the fried pies in that red basket were sold out after the show, most of the CDs were gone and some t-shirts too.
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Wait! Wait! I nearly forgot! Rewind back to Friday night or Saturday night, I forget which, doesn’t matter. At some point this weekend, I got a Facebook message from a lady who said, “Hey! I know you run MySaline.com but do you by any chance paint as well? If so I believe I have one of your originals. If so, that’s pretty neat!”
I knew I had donated a piece of art for a Habitat for Humanity benefit, but that was several years ago. I replied, “Is… is it a big pink mouth doorway?”
It was. I was unable to attend the benefit, so I didn’t know who ended up with my painting. And I still don’t, because this lady, Jessica, found it at a flea market. Hey, I’m not going to pretend I’m some famous artist whose paintings are above being sold at the flea market… But it was pretty cool to me that somebody liked it enough to buy it. Jessica said it’s hanging in her kitchen now. 🙂