Sunday Wrap Up 3/4/2012

I woke up from my nap this afternoon to find that Hiromi had been entertaining Tristan for several hours while Shane and Dorcas acted like farmers on a lazy Sunday afternoon--walking around outside and doing I-don't-know-what-else. Hiromi must have done a good job because I didn't wake up for a very long time.

After I did wake up, Shane wanted me to walk out to help him try to figure out how close one of his cows is to calving. Pretty close, we decided, although she was still walking around quite normally, despite being uncommonly wide. Shane hopes that means she's having twins, and he hopes the cow lives up to the Dexter reputation for easy calving. She's an experienced mother.

Perfect calm and 61 degrees made it a lovely evening. It promises to be a good night for birthing a calf.

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People here are wondering whether this will be remembered as the year we almost skipped winter. We continue to have a lot of warm weather, and our precipitation has been more rain than snow. This kind of weather is apparently typical of the La Nina weather pattern. We're all hoping that the warm dry pattern doesn't extend indefinitely into the summer.

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If you live within five miles of Partridge, you can get help hauling, planting, and paying for a $50.00 Pairiefire Crabapple tree (2-inch caliper, 8-10 feet tall), courtesy of the Partridge Community Association. Our neighbors, Chris Terrill and Jamie Funke are the contact people for those interested. Call or email before March 14.

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Plans are moving forward for Lowell M. and Paul Y.'s ordination--Paul for local outreach ministries and Lowell for international ministries. There was some discussion about whether "commissioning" might be a better term for what is happening here, rather than "ordination." The ministers decided that "ordination" would more accurately convey (perhaps especially to those most directly affected by the men's ministry) what is meant in terms of empowerment to carry out common ministerial duties. Because they will not preach regularly locally or be involved in local church administration, the term "ordination" probably sounds a little strange in the ears of some home folks who have come to expect ordination to accompany a different set of expectations.

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Unlike the ordinations plans, plans are not moving forward for Home Environment students to undertake a project in one of the high school classrooms. They have come to a permanent halt.

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On Tuesday of this past week, we had some wild weather romping through our county. During the worst of it I sat ignorantly in my parents' living room waiting out the drama till it was safe to head on over to Joel and Hilda's for a birthday supper for Joel. When I arrived at Joel and Hilda's a few blocks away, I was very happy to be able to drive right up to the garage door to park. The door was open just enough so I could see that both of their cars were home. I knew Hilda had been out and about so I didn't want to obstruct her passage into the garage if she wasn't home yet.

As soon as I got inside, they called me to the basement because of a tornado warning for Partridge. They had tried to call me and were worried when I didn't answer. People on the edge of town had indeed spotted funnel clouds, and several farms about five or six miles southeast of Partridge had significant tornado damage. The storm moved very fast--about 60 miles per hour--so things were soon relatively calm here. In the northeastern quadrant of the state, a small town named Harveyville was almost half destroyed the same night. My parents got over an inch of rain. Three miles north, at our house, we apparently got less than half that much.

Now that Hiromi got a new rain gauge to replace our cracked one, we're all set to get an accurate measurement of the next precipitation.

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For Joel's 29th birthday, Hilda planned and I helped cook a variety of Japanese food. Hiromi joined us after he got off work.

For the first time ever, I helped make okonomiyaki, which people sometimes refer to as Japanese pizza, although I think its only resemblance is its flat, round shape. I think it's more accurately described as a flat crustless quiche--or a giant fritter--made in a frying pan. I think I'll make it often, once I develop a simplified way of making it. I think I'll start with chopped vegetables (We used mostly cabbage.), into which I'll mix eggs, stirring to combine. Then I'll add something similar to pancake batter and pour it into a hot pan to fry. Strips of bacon can be laid over the top and the "pancake" is flipped after the first side is done. After both sides are done, it's served with a sauce a little like barbecue sauce. The sauce is available commercially, but not in Partridge, so we also made the sauce from an online recipe. Hilda had bought a pack of the "pancake" mix earlier, but needed Hiromi to translate the instructions into English so she could prepare it.

Hiromi has made a very simple version of this before on a Sunday evening, using only vegetables, eggs, and flour. We ate it with soy sauce.

On Joel's birthday we also had a great salad with a lime-ginger-sesame dressing, and wakame (or bracken--not yet unfurled fern fronds), which we ate like asparagus, and edamame (vegetable soybeans served in the pod, and squirted into the mouth at the table). Several kinds of sorbet finished off the meal in fine style.

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Across the road we're seeing quite a few small calves among the herd of longhorned cattle. The calves are mostly solid-colored, in contrast to the mottled coloring of many of the adults. The calves are minus the horns too, of course, so they look fairly unremarkable, but adorable, nonetheless. Hedrick's Exotic Animal Farm owns the herd.

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"Big" Josh, who moved into his self-built bachelor pad at the old Keith Anderson place nearby has had some weird things going on with his water. His brother Jonny told me at school that when he first turns on his hot water it looks foamy and smells bad. As as experiment, he touched a lighter to the stream and it burst into flames. He posted on Facebook a video of this happening.

He also called the Emergency Preparedness Office in our country to see what he could learn. The director told him it's likely hydrogen sulfide, a byproduct of processing natural gas. He also told him it's toxic.

Later the same day our daughter-in-law Clarissa posted a Facebook message saying the water from the sink faucet in the bathroom smells like rotten eggs. The rotten-egg smell is one of the evidences of hydrogen sulfide, detectable even when it's present at very safe levels, like one part per million.

A little research online reveals that what has been happening locally is probably a natural phenomenon exacerbated by the use of hot water heaters with an anti-corrosion feature. Sulfur is found naturally in decaying plants, rocks, or soil, and will dissolve when it comes into contact with water. After it gets into the water supply, the sulfur can react with a magnesium rod inside most water heaters, thereby producing hydrogen sulfide, which volatilizes fairly quickly in air, lending its telltale rotten egg smell to the atmosphere. The solution might be as simple as to replace the magnesium rod with an aluminum one or remove the rod completely, although doing so will no doubt void any warranties, since the rods are inserted to help prevent corrosion. Read all about it here.

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"Fracking," the shortened term for hydraulic fracturing, is often associated with a concern about contamination of fresh water supplies. People in the industry intensely dislike the "fracking" term because it has a slightly crude and obscene sound to it--thereby casting the practice in a negative light. Whatever-you-call-it is not going on in our county so far--only as close as neighboring Rice County. This method of extracting oil and gas from rock formations creates fissures in rocks deep underground by forcing fluids into the rock at high pressure. Doing this releases the stored energy in the form of oil and gas and allows it to be harvested. The problems occur when these products mix with underground water reservoirs.

Increased earthquake activity in some areas where fracking has gone on has made some people wonder whether the two are connected. I'm not aware of any conclusive evidence that it is.

Judging by the frenzy of activity at the county "deeds" office during the past year, a tremendous amount of interest exists in buying up mineral rights from landowners in the area. While the fracking industry has not developed any of these properties yet, it's likely that extracting minerals by means not previously utilized here is being considered.

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We had a teacher's workday on Friday. This is a wonderful feature built into the calendar at the end of the first and third quarter. We've not had to take any school days off so far this year because of funerals or bad weather, so this "cushion day" could be utilized for this purpose. Very welcome.

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I saw a Facebook picture today of the fiance of Jae (Jaeyoung Hwang). He was part of our family for ten months as an exchange student in 2001-2002--an ethnic Korean from Japan. Marriage in April will mean a relocation for him, to Hiroshima. For anyone who decides to check out his Facebook page, his is the one with the crazy profile picture of a Brooklyn, NY policeman. I have lots of warm, fuzzy feelings when I think of Jae. He was a lot of fun.

Hiromi peered carefully at the picture to see if he could tell if Jae's fiance is Korean or Japanese. Korean, he thinks--not that it matters, of course. I can't believe it's really possible to tell the difference. As is the case for most young Asians, she looks younger than she apparently is. At least I don't think he's getting married to someone still in junior high.

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Today is my brother Anthony's birthday.

Yesterday was Girls' Day in Japan. Twenty-nine years ago it was the day we were expecting our first child. Hiromi had said that it would be neat if the baby was a girl born on Girls' Day.

We, of course, didn't have a girl, and the baby came on the 28th of February instead, and that was all so satisfactory that I'm not sure if I've ever thought of the missed coincidence any time since.

Yesterday was also LaVerne M.'s birthday. He turned 60--a little shocking. He's only a few months older than I, and we were among the younger members of our class at school. Somehow crossing the decade threshold is more jarring than the birthdays in between.