Mar 1 - 7

I am a very lucky guy.

Yes we had 4 employees test positive for Covid ( all are fine) at Taylors.

Yes we closed for 10 days while we jackhammered up the entire place to repair 50 year old plumbing (we opened Saturday).

Yes the inspector failed us twice on the slope of our plumbing.

Yes our main freezer went down during this time so we had to throw out $1500 worth of food.

Yes the tile I drove all the way to Fairfield to get to match the tile in the entry way didn’t match after all. If you walk in Taylors, please don’t look down.

An hour before we were scheduled to reopen this morning, my manager who was putting together theTaylor Ice Cream machine told me we were out of Taylor lube. This is a proprietary sanitary lubricant that you can only get from Taylor Freezers. (By the way Taylors is not named after the Ice Cream machine nor after Taylor Road that it resides on.) Ok, so Taylor Freezers is closed on Saturdays, and no one else carries it. So, for some reason I had a plastic tube of Taylor Lube at home which I had purchased countless years ago for some unknown reason. So I ran home and got back in time to save the day.

See, I am a lucky guy.

Feb 22 - 28

Ok, what do I write about?

Do I write about some employees at Taylors tested positive and so we had to close for a while?

Or do I write about the fact that since we were closed I might as well fix the 50 year old pipes underneath the floor at Taylors and so 40 linear feet of flooring are jack hammered up?

Do I write about the fact that I found 2 empty cans of pineapple in the pantry at home, or 4 pieces of popcorn left in the bag? I think it was nice that they didn’t eat all the popcorn but I really wanted some pineapple.

No, I am going to write about the fact that my wife went to get some bowls from the cupboard and they were all gone. What do my children do with bowls when they apparently eat the pineapple right out of the can and popcorn right out of the bag?

Feb 15 - 21

Teenagers are such wonderful creatures. My daughter will be so kind and loving. I mean it literally will melt your heart. She will say, “I love you dad”, and then she will ask how my day went. Then she will say, “Dad, can we go to Taylors and get an ice cream?" in the sweetest and kindness voice. All the way there she will just be so sweet.

As soon as she is served her ice cream cone or shake she becomes a TEENAGER. She now says, “Don’t talk to me, can’t you see I am on the phone." "Are you looking at me, because if you are, stop."

Teenagers are such wonderful creatures. The word creature fits better now, doesn’t it?

My wife and I got our second vaccine shot on Monday. She had no effects at all and I had a mild fever the day after. Overall, it was well worth it.

Feb 8 - 14

For more than 20 years, my best friend Tom McGill has suffered excruciating back pain. He was a very funny smart guy who could insult you so profoundly that you usually didn’t catch on that he was insulting you. I should know because he started insulting me back at Mira Loma in the 60’s. He and I would go back and forth, him being the benevolent Democrat and me being the sleazy Republican. He used to always come over for dinner and hang out with our family where he would continue to insult me. Anyway this pain in his back limited him so much that he was not able to make it over to our house anymore. I would talk to him when I could reach him and he would explain dealing with the pain meant he had to get prescription painkillers. Well in the last few years it became more and more difficult to get these so Tom started having an extremely difficult time. When he would go in the doctors would only address the same thing and nothing else. Well yesterday he finally thought he needed some help and he decided to go to a care facility. I called someone he knew and she came and got him last night and brought him to her house. Soon after she had to call 911, and she called me at 4:00 AM telling me he was in critical condition. His sister then called me at 7:00 to tell me they had found what appeared to be advanced cancer. He died by 4:00 PM today. To me it is so sad that he lived with this pain that he had to plead doctors for care and if they had really listened they just might have found the real problem and my friend would still be coming over for dinner.