Home again, home again

Many Chinese restaurants in the U.S. have a painting of eight horses, running together in a rolling pastureland. The symbolism was explained to me once and included the fact that eight, in Chinese thinking, is the luckiest of numbers, and something about horses being symbolic of wealth.

Recently I realized that this painting is much like my daily life, which seems to be riding many horses at one time. One day, about Tuesday of last week, I was in Roanoke, Virginia, for an engineering course in connection with my contracting work. After class, I came back to my hotel and made a sales call to a potential customer for our family import business. When that was done, I had supper, then finished writing a review of Facing The Giants for my usual publisher, Carolina Journal.

Thursday I drove back from Roanoke as far as Cary, where I spent the night in preparation for a 6:40 a.m. flight from Raleigh-Durham International to Green Bay, Wisconsin. This was a joint sales call to another customer involved with my contracting work. While we changed planes in Minneapolis, I dictated a revision of my Carolina Journal story over the phone to my wife, Melanie. After we got to Wisconsin, I had to deal with a question from my work with North Carolinians for Home Education.

Friday we flew back from Wisconsin and my family and I drove to our grandmother's house in Union, S.C. Saturday we spent in Easley, S.C., at a board meeting for South Carolina Home Educators; Sunday we returned to Smithfield to pick up a bundle of sample material to show to the customer in Charlotte on Monday. Last night we were back at home.

At one point, I was sleeping in my fourth state in as many days (Roanoke-Cary-Green Bay-Union). I'm looking forward to a few days at home, now, being properly thankful.