KJS - Blog This

Last thing you expect to hear when you are dispatching at the office, ” I just hit a deer”.  I though he was kidding but than I hear the other officer radio in, “Yea I see you only have on headlight”.  This occurred right on the edge of town.  He had safely made it through the entire county and upon returning back to town he wipes out a young buck.  I was just reading in the paper the other day at how the rate of vehicle accidents with animals has just sky rocketed.  Yet our Game and Fish Department doesn’t see this as a problem.  How do they not see the deer in groups of like a 100 or deer that aren’t even mature enough having deer.  We got so many cotton pickin tiny deer it’s unbelieveable.  The deer population is out of hand, but nothing logically is being done about it.  1000s of tags left over for the deer gun season.  Here is thought, sell em for 5 bucks and get people shooting more.  Land owners need to let hunters hunt instead of posting their land up.  Just try and drive around the country and find a spot that isn’t posted.  If you find a spot not posted, it’s usually full of people and no deer.  It’s going to take a joint effort between Land owners, Game and Fish, and Hunters to do something about this situation.  Mother Nature will take care of it for us and it will be way more suffering for the animals.  I don’t even have a desire to hunt this fall as it’s such a hassel.  It’s wet out there and more rain/snow is coming this week and it’s just going to make getting around miserable.  We don’t have enough snow to be able to even spot the deer, so once again the deer will have all the advantages.

I’ve been thinking about changing the skin for my blog.  It sounds like it will make a good winter project.  Yea sure I could throw a different skin on it like 5 minutes, but I like to customize and what not.  It seems like I had this skin forever.

I watched another foreign horror Japanese film tonight.  I think this is the best one I have seen yet, but the real storyline was just horrible.  I can’t believe they did that with such a controversial subject.  Abortion is something that is a private matter that should be dealt with by the individual person or persons involved.  I’m not for it and I’m not against it, another words I am open to it, besides, it’s something that isn’t ever going to be stopped.  It’s like trying to stop drugs and alcohol, it just isn’t going to happen.  Why make it so they have to go underground and risk their life instead of letting a professional health care provider deal with it?  Common sense people, you don’t have to like it, let people live their lives and don’t start with this representing the fetus stuff either.  Spend more time on your own life instead of prying into others’.  Anyway, if I had know what this movie was really about, I would of skipped it.  The movie was called Re-cycle by the way.  It drives it’s point tho that is for sure.  It’s just an immoral thing to create a movie like this if you ask me.  Good Grief.

Don’t get me wrong as I believe in life and I have high morals.  I also have the abilities to see what life is really about in all ways possible.  Just cause people are able to reproduce doesn’t mean they are parents.  I’ve seen some awful conditions that kids have and still do live in.  I’ve seen situations that you can’t even say that is living.  Kids are removed from one situation and place into another time after time.  Foster kids constantly running and have no positive environment to go to.  It’s not a perfect world and I will be the first to admit that some kids don’t deserve the life they got dealt.  If we can’t save the children of todays world now, why bring more situations in?  I’m not saying abortion is the answer either.  We can improve our system, but where is the funding going to come for that?  There is no simple answer to this and that is why I feel that the parent(s) have the right to make a decision.  If we had a system that work that didn’t cause a child to suffer, than yes, but we don’t live in a perfect world.  Just take a look at 3rd world countries.  You see those info commercials pleading for help and you see the suffering.  I don’t know about you, but that is something I don’t want to see at all.  The mortality rate is just awful.  I applaud those that are trying to help, I really do.  You really got to look at this with logic and leave out the religion.  I hate seeing suffering by anything living.

My lovely daughter being my fall model so I thought I would try and create a collage.  I really thought it was gonna be easier than it looked.  I discovered it wasn’t an easy task as soon as I got about 4 photos on the canvas.  One really has to plan for the space, but I like how it turned out.  Once I get the individual photos back from snapfish I might order this in a collage.  I’m glad Ally likes to have her picture taken.  The challenge is always coming up with ideas for a scenario.

So it’s the middle of October already and it’s getting cold.  Last weekend there was some snow flakes floating around and parts of the state in a winter Storm Warning.  I don’t think any thing developed of that, but than I really didn’t pay attention either.  I’m kinda ignoring any thing that sounds or looks like snow.  I would like to see that hold off for at least another month.

I’ve been steadily learning photography and new techniques in photoshop.  Learning actions in photoshop has been a life safer.  This digital photography stuff is vast, but it’s fun and I’m getting more comfortable with manual mode.  It would be nice to be able to afford the better lenses and lighting equipment, but yikes, that stuff gets expensive fast.  I see some really great photos posted on various forums.

I got my lab work back today and every thing is good but my LDL level.  This getting older thing and finding away to balance the body is getting to be more and more of a manual thing.  When your younger it seems like you can eat any thing and every thing and your body bounces along.  The body stops bouncing after a while and now one needs to pay more attention to what food is.  It’s amazing at how much this food thing reacts with the body.  It’s just something I never really thought about.

If you haven’t heard that there is gonna be an election for a new U.S. President than I’d like to know where you have been.  The most recent events is the announcement of their vice president.  The most interesting  one out of this is McCains’s pick.  Several months ago after listening to some of his ideas, I could only think that this guy is really out of touch.  I have respect for the guy and everything, but I really have to question his judgement after picking his vice president Sarah Palin.  She is in the middle of an investigation and having family issues.  This sure doesn’t sound like a candidate of a conservative party.  For an entire day I had to listen on cnn about her teenage daughter being pregnant.  All I can say is big deal, she isn’t the first teenager to get pregnant nor the last.  I respect Obama for saying that family and especially kids are not targets of a political campaign.  That is so true, leave the daughter alone as her plate is already full.  As far as her troopergate situation, we will have to see how that turns out.  I’m betting she will come out of that clean as a whistle.  I can’t help but keep wondering the same thing Larry King was wondering.  Of all the republicans to choose from, she is the most qualified?  I’m not saying she isn’t qualified to be a vice president, but is she really the most qualified right now?

I seen a recent poll and I am suprised at how close it is.  Obama at 49%, McCain 44% and undecided at 7%.  I guess most people I talk aren’t voting for either one.  It’s going to be an interesting election, but I am willing to bet everything I have that Obama is gonna be our next President.   I’m hearing other countries around the world don’t want McCain either.

Well, at least we are down to a couple of months now and it will be done and over with.

Where does one keep them all?  I’m on a 14 free trial of smugmug right now and I’m really liking it.  It has a lot more options than flickr, but does cost more, but I think well worth it.  Flickr is 25.00 a year and smugmug is 40.00 a year.  You get to test out smugmug free to see what you can all do, which is really nice.  From what I see with a pro flickr account, all you really get is unlimited sets and storage.  You still can’t change the look and feel from my understanding.  Smugmug offers 3 different plans so you can always change plans later.  Flickr is still a great service and I will probably continue to use it as a backup place.  Now I face the local storage issue of raw, psd, original, final, and branded.  These files do indeed take a lot of space and need some sort of naming convention/organization.  I’m still trying to figure out how to do this and I guess burning to dvd will be my local backup system.  Oh, another nice feature of smugmug is that adobe bridge can connect to smugmug.

I’m debating about istock and after reading on their site it’s not an easy thing.  The first bump in the road is 1600×1200 is the minimal size.  Well that is fine and dandy for some things but not all things.  I ran into that dilema right away with a picture I was working with.  I just can’t get it to look right at 1600×1200 because I’m not using/wanting the entire picture.  I just want the view of inside the window only.  Oh well,  I’ll keep kicking the idea around and see what I can do.

On 8/20/08 the Nekoma elevator caught on fire from a wheel bearing.  Search and Rescue was paged out to assist with generators and lights.  It gave me a chance to walk around and take photos.  The elevator was empty and with high winds it was a total loss.  It basically turned into a controlled burn as there just wasn’t anything a person could do.  I am hearing that 80,000 gallons of water had been used.  The  wind caused showers of embers and small start up fires from those embers.  With an entire county responding to help, it went great.  I heard nothing but great comments on how great things went.  I think everyone involved should give themselves a pat on the back.  I don’t know what Nekoma will do with the loss of the building, but they are still able to take grain.

I hope this is the last of our structual fires for a while.  We’ve had too many of them this year, enough is enough.  Luckily nobody has been seriously injured in these fires.

Well I had to break down and go in and get shot for the allergies.  It took about a day for it to kick in and I was able to wake up without being congested.  With harvest coming on I figured I better do something quickly or I would be really hurting.  Nothing like being allergic to outside.

Vacation has come and gone and the weather was hot.  I broke down and finally went and helped my uncle shingle his house.  I’m crossing shingling off my list of things I can do.  My body just isn’t able to be doing that stuff anymore.  It had been like 10 years since I shingled, guess it doesn’t change much.

Darwin leaves Thursday for his 2nd year of college.  I don’t expect him home next summer, so we will have to wait and see I guess.  I know he will still come back and visit when he can.  He is still in the hunt for a vehicle.

CJ is in training for Supervisor Shift, I just don’t ever see that girl any more.  Ally was out for a few nights and has been babysitting for various people.  She came down with a bug, but sounds like she is doing much better now.  A flu had been gowing around so maybe she got a touch of that.  I’m just glad I didn’t get it.

I made it down to the cabin and worked on the trail some.  The blueberries were ready for pickin so I picked enough for mom to do some baking with.  Luka and I enjoyed BBQ burgers on the grill and we got to see a coyote down by the river.  It was peaceful and relaxing to be down there.  I definately wasn’t in a hurry to return back to work.

I don’t know what is in the air right now, but whatever it is, yikes.  My eyes are just unbelieveably itchy.  I go outside and it just takes my breath away.  I don’t know what it is, but something strong is in the air.  It’s going to make for an interesting weekend if it doesn’t let up.  We got musicfest weekend going on here and of course everything is outside.  The Dredan museum sounds like the place to be for events on Sunday.  They are gonna have contests and demonstrations from the pioneer days.  I believe this will draw a large crowd.  I’ll have to see how my allergies are doing.

It’s been a quiet week for everything except for Luka getting sprayed by a skunk.  Skunks seem to be thick and this one was right in the yard.  That was fun to deal with, but in the end the dog is smelling fine again.  1 quart of hydrogen peroxide, 1 cup of baking soda and some Dawn dishsoap for the first bath and than a second bath with regular dog shampoo.

Let’s hope we don’t have to go through that again.

Luka and I celebrated yet another birthday and Luka is 3 now.  I guess we are out of the terrible twos stage now.  In human years she is now legal to drink, yikes.   She got her gifts and had her b-day cake as always.  The years are going by faster and faster it seems like.  I still remember bringing Luka home and how tiny she was.  She is a good dog tho and tries very hard to obey.  She is spoiled and hates to be left out of anything.  She loves swimming, part beaver or something.  She just gets so excited over things it’s funny to watch her.  She keeps a person hoppin that is for sure.

I myself got a lovely SpongeBob fishing rod.  I added it to my SpongeBob shrine thing I got going in my room.  It all started a few years ago when I bought a SpongeBob cookie and kept it.  I still have that cookie and over the years people have just boughten me SpongeBob stuff to add to the collection.  I also got fishing shirt.  Luka got a chewing bone and rag along with some treats.  It was funny watching her stick her head into the bag and dig her bone out.  Got to love dogs.

I really should blog more, but I seem to forget to.  I’m back to work after having the last 10 days off.  I got the boat 100% legal now to put in the water and it’s running great.  My back has been acting up the last 3 days so I never got a chance to put it in the lake.  The weather has been so up and down and even severe weather.  I snapped the above photo out in the back yard.  That is getting close enough to home for me.  Rolla, ND lost like 20+ houses, but nobody was seriously injured in the weather.

The 4th of July came and gone and we had a local family loose their home due to a firework that landed in a woodpile stacked next to the house.  No pets or people were harmed thank goodness.  The house is a total loose.  I can’t imagine going through something like that.  They have a benefit for them next weekend and I hope they can get things worked out quickly and try to get back to normal living as soon as they can.

Fishing has been slow.  I blame this weather for that.  The last few times we have been out we’ve caught some pretty small ones and sent them back or no bites at all.  The forecast for this week looks like the weather is gonna be up and down so I really doubt fishing will be good.

A month from now the college kids will be heading back to college already.  Time is whizzing by so fast.  I saw I got my buck tag for the gun season, time to send in for my doe tag now.  I saw they have like a ton of tags left.  They really need to make the tags 1/2 price if they want to get rid of em and help thin down the population.

Well back to upgrading wordpress blogs here - 2.6 just came out so upgrade time.

What is the deal with engineers?  Do they really think of the most impossible ways to make things so you can’t fix or work on a product?  Today I was working on changing the various oils on the inboard engine that is in the boat and after doing all that, I really have to scratch my head and wonder what they were thinking.  To change the oil on the engine it is impossible to put any sort of tray under it to catch the oil.  One must go out and purchase an attachment to drain plug or buy a device that can suck the oil out the dipstick tube.  I do like the one guy’s suggestion on a forum tho.  He says to use doubled up garbage bags and to drain the oil in the bag, but be very careful not to get a tear in the bag.

Changing the gear lube oil isn’t any better.  You have a top plug and a buttom plug and you have to fill the oil from the bottom plug till it run out the top plug.  Does that make any sense?  Why not fill through the top plug till oil runs out of top plug?

So by time I was done changing everything I had more oil on me than anything else.  I just think that engineers need to think a bit more about how things need to be worked on and implement the ability of repair without having to go out and buy special devices to simply change oil on something.  Do they really think it’s not going to need maintenance or need repairs?  It’s like as they design something they are thinking of if I do this I can design a tool to do that and than charge them again.  Nawwww they wouldn’t do something like that to us.

The days of do it yourself are getting tougher and tough

It finally gets nice and the temps rise and the mosquitoes come out in full force.  I’ve heard of two west nile cases in North Dakota so far.  It’s been kinda calm here the last few days so when you step outside in the evenings, look out.  I’m hearing people talking about listerine repels mosquitoes, but according to snoopes it’s false.  Apparently mosquitoes are attracked to carbon dioxide, which is what we humans give off, so Deet has proven to be the best repeller.

We had an apparent suicide attempt in the community yesterday.  Sounds like the person is doing fine, but I am truely amazed at the suicide rate here.  I’ve lost count now of how many we’ve had in this area in the last year and half.  Some you can understand why, such as terminally ill, but for others using it to escape their problems is wrong.  Suicide is just wrong period and there is resources around that can be accessed to help people if they would just try.  I know depression sucks, but it can be over-comed.  I’ve dealt with it in my past on all levels so I know what it is like to experience it.  I know everyone is different, but you and only you is the only one that can cure your own depression totally.  I just got tired of always being down and going no where, so I decided to do something about it and got my life back slowly but surely.  It’s important to also learn your signs of depression so you can catch yourself before you fall back into the hole of misery.  There is a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline available if you are unable to find anyone in your area to talk to.

I shouldn’t complain too much about the weather as we haven’t been hit by a tornado and haven’t been washed away by raging floods yet, but mother nature really needs to lighten up some.  I’ve been seeing videos and pictures of areas hit the hardest and it’s truly a mess.  It’s bad enough our economy is in the toilet and now people are loosing everything they once had.  It’s not even summer yet so this is just the beginning of it.  Here we are waiting for the temps and rain to go away.  The last couple days the temps are like 45 degrees F with the windchill.  The wind blows constantly and it just rains and rains and rains.  I do hope things turn around soon and we can get back on to summer mode.

I missed/forgot about the primary elections the other day.  What was I thinking?  I am surprised a bit by some of the results.  The city approved the 1% sales tax increase.  I’m not going to go into detail of my feelings on that, but do hope that we do see positive results with that money.  A lot of mixed feeling on that one.  I just hate to see the money put into something that doesn’t offer any new services to the community.  The mill levy passed to help with road improvements.  I believe that was needed, but I would like to see better decision made with the roads tho.  I didn’t know what to expect for county commissioners so now big surprises there.  By the results, it looks like we will be getting a new commissioner in the end.  I guess we will wait and see this fall.

Gas is currently at $4.01 and of course it is expected to go up.  Every morning when I am watching CNN it’s another record day for the barrel of oil.  I just don’t know why the USA doesn’t start drilling and building right here at home.  This will help boost our economy in every way possible.  Can someone explain why we don’t do this as we have huge amounts of oil in our own ground?   I don’t know, with no relief in site, the world is slowly coming to a stop.  People are changing their habits and the roads are getting quieter.

Don’t ya wish you could do that?  I’ve been busy learning photography and along with that, one must learn photoshop more to be able to do fun things like the above or to get the most out of a picture.  It’s amazing at how you can clean up a photograph and bring out the true colors to bring in a brilliant picture.  It’s time consuming, especially if you’re shooting 100s of photos at a time.  I’ve been sticking with landscape shots and gonna slowly move into taking portrait shots, but I need to get a lens with a better aperture first.  The indoor shooting is a lot different than outdoor shooting.  I’m still learning lighting and need to get a real flash system.  Nothing is cheap in photography and when they say you get what you pay for, they really do mean that.  I’m just saving and getting what I need when I can.  I’ve been looking to online prints, where I can send in my digitals and they mail me the prints.  It’s only 8 to 10 cents a picture so it’s really reasonable and you can do assorted sizes at various prices too.

If I can just get this weather to cooperate, life would be better.  A guy gets a day off and the wind is blowing 40mph and bringing in crappy weather.  They have freeze warnings out once again.  I really hope it don’t freeze as things are just starting to come alive here.  I’m afraid it’s going to go from these cool temps to hot temps and that transition is going to be a rough one as we are not use to any sort of heat.

Gas prices are at $3.95 a gallon now.  I heard a guy talking the other day and he said $6.00 a gallon is possible.  I just can’t imagine paying that much as it is already reaching unaffordable price.  The standard gas cards with the credit limit all have to be raised as one can’t get one tank a gas filled without hitting the limit.  It’s just insane, all you can do is sit at home with no relief in sight.  I just don’t understand why we are not drilling more here in our own land.  ND has a huge oil field that was discovered and I forget how many 100s of years of oil could be pumped from it, but that makes more sense to me than trying to buy it some place else.  It would provide economical growth as it would be producing jobs for our own people.

Well I hope everyone had a safe Memorial Day weekend.  Get out and take some pictures!

Well my allergies kicked in, so spring must officially be here.  I was hoping I wasn’t going to be effected like I was last year, but I went in right away and got my singular to keep myself on my feet.  We finally got a nice 1 day rain so I’m expecting the world around me to burst open with even more pollen.  It seems like it’s been a slow and long spring.  The last of the snow in the yard finally left as the temps have been cool.

So what’s been going on beside suicides around here?  Well lets see, training and more training.  The corrections officer medication training and the prehospital trauma life support classes came and gone.  We had the grain bin extrication class, which was great.  Darwin is back home for the summer from college and is busy with his wii.  Spending way too much time at the dentist, but was definitely needed.  We’ve had 2 suicides in like a 2 week period,  which is not a good thing.  Let’s think happy thought people, it’s spring, live it up outside.  I can’t even remember what all else been going on, it’s been just busy and trying to keep up is the name of the game.

I’m thinking of doing a new look to the blog here.  It’s been like this forever, but finding time to change it will be the fun part.  I’ll keep my eyes out for a cool theme.  Wordpress 2.5 really brought some new looks to the administration part of it.  I’m still trying to get use to it and not liking a few things.  I think the new post button should be before the new page button.  Most people are gonna be making new posts more than a new page so I would think the most used button should be first.

I’m really getting tired of turning on CNN and seeing election BS.  This country has turned this Presidential race into one of the biggest fluxered things I have ever seen.  I thought the Gore/Bush election was a mess, but this is taking the cake all the way.  The democrats have now managed to divide themselves and the republicans are having a hay day crossing the line to vote democrat to keep the mess going.  That doesn’t even bother me, but what bothers me is that the amount of money all these people are wasting just so they can get on the ballot.  That money could of really been to a much better use, like our economy.  We have oil and food shortages going on in the world and we have people spending millions on an election that doesn’t contain a person worth voting for in the first place.  This country is how old and still has it’s priorities in a mess??  I guess when the economy does a complete crash someone will wake up.  They just finally decided to stop sticking oil into reserves.  Shouldn’t that of been done like $2.00 a gallon ago??  I better change subjects before I write a novel of frustrations.

Yay for photography!  I’m slowly learning it and loving it.  To bad with the price of gas one can’t drive to exciting new places and take pictures.  I will have to build fake things in the backyard to make it look like I went some place exotic.  I decided to go with at Canon Rebet XT.  That should do me for a lifetime.  I’m not looking to make a career out of it, just a hobby.  Some thing that gets me away from a monitor and out enjoying nature.  CJ wants to take her senior pics in the snow of all things.  So I will be needing all the pointers I can get on that ordeal.  I’m thinking a barn in the snow type thing.

Finally made it out to the great outdoors.  The snow is still there in the deep shadowed areas.  There isn’t a lot of color out there yet, but at least no woodticks.  Flies are starting to show up more and more.  I got out Friday and Sunday and took 120 pictures with the new camera and I am really happy with this camera.  I am hoping to get out more now that the weather is finally getting nice.  I just need to find some way to protect Luca from getting invested with woodticks as they will be kicking in big time now.  The rivers aren’t very high for this time of the year.  We are definately going to need rain soon to settle and clean things up.  It felt so great to get out and the hiking with fresh air kicked ma butt.  I was expecting to be sorer, but I wasn’t doing too bad.  I can’t wait to get out and do it again.

Monday we started our Correctional Medical Training.  One class down and two more to go.  I found it truely amazing that they go on and on about medical stuff, but not once deal with inmates and withdrawl.  We are going to deal more with that than an inmate having diabetes.  In most cases, small time jails are not wanting to house inmates with long term health problems as it is just too expensive for the counties to pay for their medical costs.  I know it’s not fair, but once again, it all boils down to money.  Someone would have to have it out for you big time to go through the costs.  So I left a comment on the feedback form about no withdrawl issues.  I’m sure someone out there has a witty answer.

I got the last parts for the car today and got them on.  I was disgusted once again with the grill.  First they send you the grill, which one thinks is a complete grill, but nope.  So I ordered the top grill molding and I got that, but apparently the grill emblem is yet another part.  I guess they need to put warnings on things like that or something.  When your grill gets smashed in, more than likely you are gonna reneed all the pieces to the grill so ordering “a grill” should include everything.  I can live without the emblem.  All I have left now is the hood to get painted.  I got the oil changed yesterday morning before the crappy weekend weather is to roll in.  Parts of the state just south of us are in a Winter Storm Watch.  Sounds like we are to get like 1/2 and inch of snow/rain.  I wish it wouldn’t as the yard is so so wet, muddy and buried in snow yet.

I been watching Ghost Whisperer and came to disk 6 the last 2 episodes of season one and all I can say is Wow.  I never seen that coming.  I know I am behind in this series, but I just found out about it not long ago, thanks to netflix.  I think this is the best way to watch tv, wait for DVD release.  You can watch all the episodes at your own time, speed and no commercials for the win.  I can’t wait to see what season 2 is going to bring.  Jennifer Love Hewitt plays the role so well.  I still think she needs to do something different with her hair tho.  Great series for anyone interested in Ghosts.

Keep your wits about ya as I am sure someone out there is just itchin to play a prank.  Lets hope the weather has a sense of humor and starts to kick into spring mode.  I’m getting impatient and each day I wake up and go outside it is a big let down.  The past weekend after working the past two weekends brought in snow/rain and crappy roads.  There is still snow banks higher than me in the yard.

I went over to Cavalier on Saturday to help Jill with some remodeling.  Nothing like remodeling and trying to get it all back together.  I couldn’t help out with the sheetrock mudding as it was just too much for me.  I’m not a mudder to begin with and that requires a lot of mudding.  Sounds like she got one of her friends to git r done.  It will look so much better when the mudding is done, nothing like looking at bare sheetrock.

I went in and seen the new baby of Jay and Kim’s on Sunday.  One forgets how small those new borns are.  She slept the entire time pretty much, such a quiet baby.  I just don’t know if I could do that again.  They are so dependent, hard to get use to when your own have be independent many years now.

So wordpress 2.5 came out and holy man did they ever change the GUI a lot.  It’s going to take some time to relearn it.  I actually dread a new release coming out as I have several of them to update.  I only have one left to update for the Emergency Manager.

I ordered the last two pieces of trim molding I needed for the car.  All I will have left is to get the hood painted.  The car is working great and it was a good choice to go with, even tho it required some manual labor to get it rolling again.  I just hope it will last many years now.  Jason is thinking about parting out cars at the farm and listing them on ebay.  Apparently car parts are sought after and worth some good money.  I noticed that when I was looking for parts on my car.  A single piece of chrome molding is $35.00 brand new and that doesn’t come with nuts either.  I’m still trying to figure out how I got so many screws left over, hmmmmmmmmm.

Darwin is still looking for a car.  He sent me photos of a car he looked at earlier.  A 1999 Cavalier, sounds like he is gonna test drive it and see how he likes it.  He’s actually saving money up, very impressive for him, eheheh.

The temps have been colder and places are getting 8 inches of snow.  I guess that is March for ya, totally unpredictable.   I did manage to get the car back together so it’s drivable.   Jason came out and painted the parts I needed and that was a learning experience.  Those automotive paint fumes are pretty wicked.  I just need a couple more parts and it will be completed.  It’s amazing at what they get for prices on car body trim pieces.  If the temps would of been warmer, I would of worked on my pickup some, but I already had a chill from working on the car.  We found oil on top of the intake manifold, so need to track down why oil is on the intake manifold.  I know with the price of gas I won’t worry to much about it as it’s too expensive to drive around.

I was looking at pictures in the news of the flooding that is going on in Missouri and I fell so bad for them.  I know what it’s like to be in a flood and it’s no fun.  I didn’t loose much like others did, but still a memory you don’t forget.  I do hope the flooding stops soon and they can start the slow rebuilding process.

Congrats to Jason and his wife for having their second baby girl born on Good Friday.  I called him today to see how things were going and he said all was good.   They going to have their hands full now, ehehehhe.

With temperatures in the 30s it is a great sign that spring is coming that is for sure.  It also reminds us of the mess that must come first.  All the slush, water and mud as the process of spring comes alive.  When the temps are like this, it’s tough not to get spring fever.

I purchased the car and got the front end torn off of it and it’ ready to go back together once I get the parts painted.  I just can’t believe at how much things cost in the autobody world.  I guess I don’t know what it all entails so I can’t really comment much on it.  I know one can almost paint a house for the price of painting just a hood on a car.  It just doesn’t seem right.  It’s hard to be cheap in today’s world, everything is just so dang expensive.   I’m still working on it, I’ll come up with something.

Speaking of expensive, seen the price for a barrel of oil?  I’m just waiting for that to catch up to the gas pumps.  California reporting over $5.00 a gallon for gas.  The economy is just getting worse and worse and I love seeing how the news is reporting that we maybe headed for a recession.  All I can say it to look out your window and you will see your recession is here already.  I do not see anything being done about it till after the election.  If Bush had half a brain he would be doing all he can do to help restablish the republican image instead of hurting it more.   It’s going to be an interesting summer again as the tourism industry goes into bankruptcy.  What we spent on this stupid war we could of invested it into our economy, that is what burns me up.

Almost the middle of March and can’t wait for April to get here.