This and That

I wrote most of this post several days ago in a word processing program since the internet connection was abysmally slow, and it was a bit stormy and the connection a bit iffy. Then my computer died abruptly, and Hiromi discovered that the fan had locked up. It's a good thing the whole machine shut down before it overheated and fried itself. Tonight, for the first time since then, it's up and running, so I decided to retrieve the post although it's a little outdated now.

*******************************

Joel is not buying the house next to the office where he works. After several weeks of negotiations, he made an offer. The owner accepted another offer. Joel mostly regrets all the time he spent on the negotiations. As for me, I don’t mind a bit having him home a little longer.

*******************************

I hear thunder and I’m praying that we don’t get hail. We’re under a severe thunderstorm warning. We’ve already had one hail storm this spring, no one got a wheat crop here last year because of a very hard late freeze, and we just installed a landscape planting at school–all perfectly good reasons not to have a hail storm, IMHO.

*******************************

Grant shot a turkey this morning. It is a very valuable turkey. I can tell because of how much the tag cost. It did have a beard over 9 inches long and spurs about 1 1/4 inch long, and a nice fan for a tail. The dressed carcass looks like a good-sized chicken.

Wild turkeys have proliferated here over the past five or six years. I never saw one in the wild in my growing-up years.

*******************************

Within the past week I have seen the following birds here for the first time since last summer: House Wren, Northern Oriole, Brown Thrasher, Barn Swallow, Western Kingbird, Eastern Kingbird, and (surprise!) Blue Jay. There are very few of the latter around since West Nile Virus has been on the rampage.

*******************************

We have only three more days of school for this year. Then a workday and graduation, followed the next day by the awards assembly and school picnic. I'm supposed to make a speech at the awards assembly. I have no idea what I'll say. By all means I want to stay away from anything emotional. I'm not up to that.

*******************************

Dwight and Karen (our cousins and neighbors) have renovated the old milk house on their farm and created a produce market. I’m delighted at the convenience of this market and even more pleased at the resourcefulness of this young family on a mission to make a living with the family working together. The youngest is less than a year old, and not much help in the garden yet, but I think they’re off to a good start. Last year they planted an orchard and bought a dairy herd. This year they planted a huge garden. It’s not a plan for getting rich fast, but a good plan for their family’s welfare. Their family moved here from Tennessee when Dwight took a job as a teacher at our church grade school.

Years ago, when I taught school in Ohio, Dwight was a very blond little boy from a family of good students in our school. I taught his three oldest siblings.

*********************************

The pancake breakfast fundraiser for the German class in our school netted about $2200.00. They plan to take a trip to a German-speaking area of Kansas City. They also plan to donate about 10% of the income to a charitable organization.

********************************