Welcome Home
After arriving home Saturday night I was greeted with a special welcome home gift. Jury Duty. Yep, kind of like those old Cracker Jacks commercials. The surprise is what was inside the mail box when I went to get the mail. Now, it's been a few years since I have been on jury duty, so I suppose it has changed a little. I was lucky the last time. I was only called in once, showed up in the morning, got picked as a juror, told to go to lunch and come back in the afternoon to start the trial, and when we all got back from lunch we found out that they settled out of court while we were at lunch. OK with me! Not sure I will get that lucky this time but only time will tell.
Posted by: Parade Watcher on 9/04/2008 at 5:47 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
In the dark
The long Labor Day weekend has come and gone and it is back to work and school for everyone in this house. The Labor Day weekend included a volleyball tournament in Bismarck followed by chores around the house. I guess we did get a few things done so that was good. We finished the weekend here with close to 3 inches of rain in the rain gauge. It's a lot of rain in a short time but we needed it. Now I am listening to the sump pump run every couple of minutes.
I got a couple of phone calls over the weekend from a fellow employee who lives in Louisiana. Ricky moved down there back in July and has never been thru a hurricane before, at least not until this weekend. He called me Monday afternoon and said they had lost power and was wondering what was going on with Gustav. Here I am, on the other side of the United States, watching the Weather Channel and scanning the internet, and feeding the information to Ricky in Louisiana over the phone. As much of a news junky that I am, I can't imagine not being able to get the information or having it at my finger tips as we all have grown accustomed to. Ricky was in the dark, no power, and no information. He called me again Monday night looking for more info. So far, he's had about 6 inches of rain in about 12 hours and wind gust to over 50 mph. He's hanging in there but I think the first time thru a hurricane has been an eye opener for him. Even for me, it's the first time I have paid much attention to one as much as I have Gustav. I told Ricky it's kind of like going thru one of those two day North Dakota blizzards, except a lot warmer, and everything comes down as rain instead of snow.
UPDATE: It's day three without power for Ricky and no relief in sight. He is now closing in on 9 inches of rain in three days and it will continue to rain all day today. His cell phone died with no way to recharge it in the house, he has to take it out to the car and let it recharge from the car charger. It gives him enough to get a few minutes out of it before it dies out again.
Posted by: Parade Watcher on 9/03/2008 at 5:39 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
It's volleyball season
With the beginning of the school year comes another sports season. Volleyball is off and running and so are we. We traveled to Bismarck on Friday night to watch the Spartans take on several teams from the western part of the state. The girls played well and ended up with a 4-3 record against the west teams. It was a hot time in Bismarck as it hit 100 on Saturday and with the wind blowing it felt like a blast furnace as you walked outside after being in the air conditioned school. After a couple of games on Friday night, then four more on Saturday, the wife and I were suffering from a severe case of Bleacher Butt. It sure felt good to stand up for a while but that is short-lived since we had to get back into the van and drive the 2 1/2 hours back home. The in-laws came up from Linton and watched their granddaughter play a little bit so that was nice to see them. They loaded us up with some of their fresh vegetables from their garden. They filled up the cooler with cukes, cabbage, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. Looks like a fresh batch of Veggie soup will be in order. Cousin Dougy was asking me if we saw any deer along the way. We did see a couple but they were not next to the road, more out in the field, thankfully. We sure hit plenty of bugs however. The front of the van looks like a disaster zone of splattered bugs. It is going to take me a while to power wash and scrub all of the dead bugs off my bumper. Just one of those Labor Day projects that I can add to my list.
Posted by: Parade Watcher on 8/31/2008 at 9:24 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
The fall season begins
It's Labor Day weekend and a sure sign that summer is wrapping up and the fall season is on the horizon. With that comes the beginning of another school year as well. All of the schools in North Dakota got started before Labor Day, Minnesota schools will all crank up on Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend. I wonder if Minnesota does that so people can be out and about at the lakes, etc., for as long as they can? Of course, the big Minnesota State Fair is going on thru Labor Day, too. As a kid we went every year. Dad would take a day off of work, pile the family in the car and head up Snelling Ave. to the fairgrounds. I think we parked in the same spot every year. I can't tell you the name of the street but I'll bet I could still drive to that same spot today. Once into the fairgrounds we would hit the usual spots, over to the Hippodrome to see all of the animals, then over to the 4H exhibits, then up to Machinery Hill. We climbed all over the farm equipment on display, didn't know what half of it was for but sure thought it was pretty cool to sit up in that tractor cab and wonder what all those knobs and buttons were for. Trips down the midway included a few rides, games, etc.. One year we all bought kazoos. They were a round, silver style and I think we drove my parents crazy with them. I'll bet mom and dad were ready to "accidentally" step on them just to get some silence in the house. Hey mom, whatever happened to my kazoo? Bet it was put in a drawer someplace for safe keeping. (cough-cough) As a kid, the Minnesota State Fair always seemed bigger than life but as you got older you realized it wasn't as big as you remembered it but still a lot of fun. I went to the Iowa State Fair once, thinking it was similar to the Minnesota State Fair. Boy, was I wrong. A friend of mine probably said it best. "What do you call two dead chickens and a tractor that doesn't start? The Iowa State Fair". Yep, gotta love that Minnesota-Iowa humor.
Posted by: Parade Watcher on 8/31/2008 at 8:08 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
It's been a little rough on them
When I was planning on what I was going to put into my flower garden this year I decided that I wanted to try growing Zinnias. I have always loved them for their big blooms and colors. I started some seedlings in the house. In fact, I was putting them in the little planter boxes as I was watching it snow. When I did finally take them outside in May I ended up loosing about half of the ones I had pre-planted in the house. In order to fill in the gaps I planted some more just by seed. As they started to grow and bloom, the ones that grew from seed outside soon caught up to the ones that I had started in the house. After much nurturing I soon had a large bounty of colors and blooms, until IT came along. IT, is the wind. It started with the three day breeze festival that we had last week. Three days of south winds really took its toll on my flowers. I figured they were in a pretty protected location next to the garage but I was wrong. The wind must have swirled in behind them and the result was ending up with most of the flowers leaning at a 45 degree angle. I did lose some blooms and stems that got broke off but most of them survived, just leaning over. Over the weekend it looked like some might "right" themselves and start to grow straight again. All of those chances pretty much were taken care of yesterday when we had a steady diet of 40 mph wind gusts. Looks like I am going to have Leaning Zinnias the rest of this growing season. The blooms are still great, it's just that they are all leaning out instead of up.
Posted by: Parade Watcher on 8/27/2008 at 6:31 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink