Lunch and Errands With Lou

I spent most of the afternoon with Louie today. He needed to get to both of the local Wal-Marts (Crestview and Ft Walton). They’re about 30 miles apart. He needed to pick up a prescription at one and replacement gift cards at the other. The gift cards were those he sent to his wife. They turned up missing so Lou cancelled them and had replacements done. Since canceling them he found out what happened. His eler grandchild stole them from his wife. The kid’s too young to drive so he asked a neighbor for a ride to Wal-Mart to use “his” gift cards. The neighbor checked with his mother about giving him the ride and he got busted.
While in Crestview we ate lunch at Ryan’s Steak House. Lou’s pastor said they had an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet for $5.99. They did and it was good. We both ate too much. Lou is normally a big eater and this gave him an opportunity to shine without costing too much.

We then went to the Ft Walton store. Lou got in and out of both stores rather quickly. I expected to have long waits at both stores but my expectations were wrong.

The afternoon got exciting when we got back to the car. I backed out of my parking space and seeing 3 cars backed up in my isle decided to take the long way around to get out. I finally rolled up to the end of the isle at the front of the store. Two cars were ahead of me. One went and the other rolled up and waited for a car to pass. I didn’t see another car coming and wondered why the car ahead of me was waiting to go. I looked to the left at the same time that there was a huge crashing sound directly ahead. I looked back in time to see a speeding car hitting the SUV in front of us hard enough to push it into the parked cars beside it and tip it to a 45 degree angle leaning on those cars.

Lou and I couldn’t believe our eyes. Lou’s reaction was to jump out immediately and see how the drivers were. While he did that I backed my car up the isle and parked out of the way. There were many witnesses and fortunately no pedestrians were hit. Both drivers said they were OK but that SUV got hit hard enough on the drivers door to tip the larger vehicle.

The parking lot security guy was there quickly and reported the accident directly to the authorities within minutes of the accident. Three police cars were there within 5 minutes and we saw fire and ambulance vehicles on the way when we left.

We don’t know why or how that car got moving so fast in the parking lot or why it turned up the aisle to clobber the SUV in front of me. I do know that but for a couple of decisions I made delaying me slightly from being in that particular spot that car could have hit me. You don’t expect to see such a serious accident in a parking lot. It is sobering, indeed.  Maybe it will make the papers tomorrow.

Lou likes it a lot here. The church people seem to like him and he is enjoying working with them. I usually bring Lou to the grocery store and bank as part of our lunch ritual. I’ve told him not to depend on me to do that because I may not always be available. Today Lou didn’t need groceries or the bank. He is really settling in and becoming more “independent”.

For the past week or so I’ve had a problem with my windows media center not seeing the TV tuner in my computer. The computer has a DVR function and is very easy to use and useful for recording TV shows I want to watch. I can watch them in the corner of the monitor while doing other things on the computer. For some reason the media center software was only looking for a digital signal. I finally fixed it after days of searching the internet looking for answers. It seems I had a conflict with another program which was supposedly using the tuner.

Nineteen degrees expected tonight. I see in the weather report that even Tampa is having below freezing temperatures. I hope Kathy keeps her caterpillar farm warm. I put out boxes for the cats to keep warm in but I doubt they will use them. They have a nice fur coat and seem to manage OK. I just wonder where they hang out most of the time.