Plans Gone Wrong Sometimes the best laid plans often of mice and men gang aft agley. This was written by Robbie Burns the famous Scottish poet. He like to make up some of his own words, but I think we all know what he meant. No matter how well planned out things are, sometimes other things happen that upset those plans. That is what seemed to happen to Elon Musk when he found out his Raptor engines were not being manufactured fast enough and warned this could bankrupt the company because he needs to be able to launch rockets about every two weeks to make a profit. Musk thought everything was going well. In our own lives how many times have we had something figured out which would make our lives better only to have fate throw a monkey wrench into our life? It might be sickness, unexpected bills or something else like an in-law coming to live with us or even a relative. I had to renew a service called Blue Link on my car and I thought it would be a certain price but then found out it was broken into three services and each one charged separately and two of the three needed the first service to operate. At the time I felt I was being ripped off because the total is well over $330 per year and I didn’t need the first part of the service, but as I said if I wanted the other two, I was forced to get it. It was a much larger bill than I had expected. One restaurant was doing very well. It was doing so well it opened up several more operations. Everything was going fine and the owners felt they were on easy street, then Covid hit. The business declined and workers were quitting. This forced the restaurant to close several of their establishments and limit the hours of operation on the ones left. Now they are wondering if they can survive. A toy store had been very popular in a certain neighborhood. It was a family operation so even when Covid struck they still had enough help to keep the place running. The business suddenly took a dive. It seems the store couldn’t get enough stock. The supply chain had doomed them. Without a lot of the popular toys to sell, the business they had dropped off and the store finally had to close. The owners had believed the toy store was a staple of the area and would be around for many more years. One good example of things going wrong has to do with the government. Big oil companies in this country thought they would be supplying oil for many years and indeed we had become the biggest oil producer in the world. Then the government stepped in and started to shut down pipelines and limit exploration. Oil prices soared and now some oil companies are wondering if they can survive and will more pipelines be shut down. They never expected this to happen. How many people were driving somewhere and everything was peaceful and they stopped at a red light, then in a few seconds a car hit them in the rear because a driver was not paying attention. One of the causes sometimes is cell phone use. There are plenty of other causes however, but anything which takes your mind off driving is dangerous. A car was driving down a street, it was not speeding and the driver was careful, but another car came speeding in reverse from a driveway and hit that car causing the driver of the first car to be injured and need an operation. He will never be the same. He never thought just driving down a street could change his life for the worst. We all make plans, well many of us anyway, and things can go wrong. I remember when I was given a gift by my children of airline tickets and a hotel stay for myself and my wife. It was a trip to go to Los Vegas. We were really looking forward to the trip because we had never been there before. About two days before we were to depart, my mother got sick and we had to cancel the trip. You just never know what is going to happen if you have future plans. By the way we had insurance so we were able to rebook months later and had a great time. Sometimes people do things like taking photos and posting them online only to find out there was something embarrassing in the photo and they panic and try and remove it but they are too late because others have copied it and even reposted it. One woman posted her photo on a social network and in the photo was something her husband noticed. She had been on a trip and was staying in a hotel. In the photo under a table was a pair of men’s boots. The husband didn’t take kindly to them. There is actually a photo which was posted where a woman was walking on the street and didn’t notice she had her halter top on backwards. Another showed a man with a long label on the side of his pants. Apparently, he had planned to look good but instead made people laugh. One of the things many people spend time planning is their wedding. Sometimes even years are spend doing this. Time was spent showing the little flower girl how to sprinkle the flowers as she walked next to the little boy ring bearer. When the wedding started at the two young children about 3 years old each started to walk down the aisle, the little girl looked at the boy and then hit him over the head with the flower basket, sending him running and crying down the aisle. Many weddings have the traditional placing of the garter on the brides leg by the groom. This wedding was a little different. As the bride who was sitting down lifted her dress one of the little kids at the wedding ran up and under her dress and she had a hard time getting him out, to the laughs of the crowd. There is no doubt about it, you just can’t be sure things will go as planned, especially with long range plans. We are just subject to too many uncertainties. We can’t even be sure we will be alive on any future date, let alone things will go smoothly. I guess that is one of the mysteries of life.
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