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Locks

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The Farming Update comes to us from Ben.

It’s still January in Minnesota and temps are back to normal. I got the car washed a second time just as the cold temps hit and then I went to the gas station and the fuel door is a little bit frozen and I wished I had arms long enough to push the button on the dash and jiggle the fuel door at the same time. Almost wished for the days of regular screw in gas caps.

Last Friday afternoon I discovered a pinhole leak in a water valve in the well house on the pipe going to the barn. I thought there was a little more water on the floor than there should have been and this explains why. It’s always a little damp in there. I just turned off the valve, thanked goodness there wasn’t a barn full of cattle or anything so this isn’t an emergency and called a plumber for Tuesday. $200 later I have a new valve. I regret a little bit that I didn’t just fix this myself…but I hate plumbing and this looked corroded and I really didn’t want to get involved. Work smarter, not harder.

I learned about locks this week. One of the theaters got a new door last Summer, complete with new lock and key. It was decided now was a good time to change out the locks on the other doors to match. I did one lock last week and one lock this week. “Lukus” at the lock shop was very helpful! The first lock was pretty easy. The second one took me three trips to Lukus and I learned to ask more questions. Almost had to make a fourth trip but I found the tiny little set screw I dropped out on the cement. Locks are really interesting to the un-initiated.

We bought some bagels the other day. After the first day, I preferred my bagels toasted. We cut them in half horizontally so there’s a top and bottom. I asked Kelly which side she ate first? We both generally eat the bottom first, then the top. It’s like, do you want the good news first or the bad.

The poofy head ducks are having bad hair days in this cold weather.

Cold water and crazy hair doesn’t work too well.

“LUKUS”- What interesting spelling. Got a favorite or unusual name?

81 thoughts on “Locks”

  1. My geriatric physician retired. His last name is Smith.
    My new doctor’s (first visit is in February) last name is Slaughenhaupt. In first seeing it, I automatically thought of Slaughterhouse-Five. I’m hoping he has a good sense of humor.

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    1. My husband is from a small town in Iowa settled by Germans and Norwegians. The German last names used to confound and amuse us: Uehlenhake and Dotsenrahd especially. In my home town there were Bietelspachers. The German language can just go on and on.

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        1. When Jimmy Carter was president, at least a million people said to me “y’all related to Jimmy” (voice recognition in my best southern accent).

          Liked by 2 people

  2. I remember some TV show from quite a few years ago, it might’ve been ‘Northern Exposure’, and there was a bear in the story. They called the bear Arthur and when we looked it up, Arthur means brave and strong like a bear. Which I found completely fascinating and it also delighted me on the power of writing and how you can put so much meaning behind a simple gesture like the name of the bear.

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    1. YA and I have a couple of Lauries in our life. And when I talk about them I often distinguish them by saying Lori with an “i” or Laurie with an “e”.

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      1. Well, they actually both have “i” in them. I would have thought it more helpful to distinguish between the one with an “a” or an “o”.

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        2. I have run into this with Katherine/Katie (my DIL’s name, and she spells it the “right”way). Katharine, Catharine, Catherine, Kathryn, Cathryn. It drives me nuts. Then you are on to Cati, Catie, Katy, Caty. I will just weep now.

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        4. in reply to Jacque

          a) look who’s talking
          b) tell me about the Katharine thing-

          I also have a common German last name that was originally spelt with an umlaut, so when I go to ask to have my name looked up, I just rattle off the spelling of the whole thing to save time (because there are a number of ways people have chosen to both write and pronounce that umlaut)

          And even then, I sometimes also have to give an address

          But same last name in New Mexico? I had a store clerk give me a look and ask, “how do you even pronounce that?”

          Liked by 6 people

      1. How is Lukus pronounced? Like Lucas? Do you know how the Lukus came about, Ben?

        I find names fascinating. Considering that most people live their entire lives without changing their moniker, it’s puzzling to me that so many names are trendy, often inspired by some celebrity or character in film or fiction popular at the time. Therefore we have periods where certain names were popular. I wonder if this reflects a change in societal values? Do we no longer look to our own family members or ancestors for inspiration? Some people alter the spelling, or completely change, their names upon immigration, and others endure decades of misspelled and mispronounced names. Here are some of the first names of some my Danish friends in the US: Jytte, Bente, Gitte, Lone, Dorte, and Ingelise; they all had the good sense to give their offspring names that work both in Danish and English.

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        2. It’s interesting, too, to consider the male names, like Shirley and Joyce and Marion that have become almost exclusively female.

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        4. It was Lucas. As we stood at the counter talking about locks, I noticed several business cards there. Lukus has an unusual last name, that is also the name of a friend of ours. I asked if he was one of the guys on the cards and he said Lukus, so I asked about our friend and his last name. He thought they were distant relatives; “The grandfathers had a falling out”. Closer inspection revealed one letter different. Did one person change the name to disassociate themselves? We’ll probably never know.

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      2. Remember Jennifer? It was inspired by the movie, “Love Story” and Ali Somebody who played her character against Ryan O’Neal. From 1970-1980 there were so many Jennifers.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    When I was a sophomore in college I worked for a small insurance company. It was 1972-73, the beginning of the computerization of this industry. I was in the keypunch department. Every new application for property or car insurance came through this department first and the application would be entered into the system. Yes, via the old data cards laid out in trays, securely rubber-banded together so that if the tray was bumped or dropped the cards did not scatter all over the floor. Therefore, we saw hundreds of names everyday. I concluded that there were very cruel parents giving their children stigmatizing names:

    Maude Marie Mountain
    Ima Haug
    Spring Day
    Beautiful Day
    Autumn Day

    Yes, really. After awhile I would wince. Then there was the ever popular Dusty Rhodes, Rocky Rhodes, Sandy Rhodes and Holly Wood. There was more than one of each of those. It took me a while to get Barbara Dahl.

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  6. Quite a few years ago my company went to a new protocol for emails. First name dot last name @our company. I have been allowed to keep my old protocol as well because my last name is so much easier to spell than my first name And so many people misspell my first name.So I actually have two emails at work.

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  8. Some spellings strike me as contrived. I have a friend who named her daughter Keirra. She pronounces it “Kee-air-ah.” It seems like the “i” should come before the “e” to me, but I’m not an expert on spelling names. I worked in a memory care place years ago and had a young coworker who was named “Chasity.” I had never heard this name before and I thought it was a misspelling. I’ve heard of others with that name since then.

    I have a cousin Sarah and a niece Sara.

    “Krista” with a “K” is supposed to be German. Christa with the “Ch” combination must be some other kind of Northern European spelling but I’m not sure of the origin. My family always called me “Kris”. I actually prefer it but got in the habit of providing my full first name due to work and to other situations where there were people with similar names. Now that I’ve lost both parents, my brothers and a handful of old friends and cousins are the only people who call me Kris, and I don’t see them often. You know how the sound of your own name is comforting? I live alone and, yes, I agree with that old sentiment. It’s nice when my brother Kurt calls me and says, “Hi Kris!” I love that.

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    2. Introducing a song he wrote and dedicated to Joseph Bayer Goodman, his late father, Steve Goodman told the audience at Austin City Limits that he had asked his grandmother why she had named him Bayer since no one else in the family was named that. According to Steve she had shrugged and said she had her reasons.

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  9. I assume Robin was named after her father, Robert. As a feminization of a masculine name, Robin is one of the least objectionable, but many of them are, to my mind, deplorable.

    Robin’s name is spelled plainly but you’d be surprised how man people automatically assume some trickier spelling, like Robyn.

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  10. In my latest job I see a lot of names of employees on the Slack channel. One name that caught my eye was Adorable Smith. There is also someone named Kyle Squirrel. If they get married she can be Adorable Squirrel.

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      2. I had better tell husband so he can leave an extra treat for them today. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know about yesterday being Squirrel Appreciation Day.

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  11. I have been surrounded by Barbaras all my life – always had to use a surname initial with it in grade school to differentiate from the other Barbara(s)… Winona folk dance group (about 15 on a good day) has three of us. Finally, when starting my new job in 1994 where I was replacing another office mgr. named Barbara, I decided ENOUGH. I switched to being Abby (an acronym of the childhood Barby if you remove the R). It worked like a charm, and now if someone refers to me as Abby, I know from what era I met them.

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    1. I’ve know one other Clyde, a man who was about ten to fifteen older than you. A decent and kind man I enjoyed working with back in the mid seventies, so I have only positive associations with that name.

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  14. Our plumber was at our home for 8 hours the end of December replacing about 30 feet of degraded pipes. It cost $1100, which I consider reasonable.

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  15. Ostfriesland names are odd, like Feike, Heike, Okke. I have those names in my father’s family. I think I mentioned before that my dad, named Jake, had about 6 cousins also named Jake, since his grandfather was named Jake, and his grandfather died rich and his kids wanted to impress their mother by naming their sons Jake and possibly get something in her will when she died.

    My church organist in Luverne, Lorraine, was Norwegian and married to a Norwegian guy whose nickname was Ippy. Ippy Olson. I asked my mom why he had that name, and she just said, “Well, he’s an Ippy.”. No further explanation.

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  16. I think I’ve mentioned before that when my mothers family came over from Germany they changed their name Rumpf to Von Rump. So sad – it’s too bad they didn’t have a life coach or someone to steer them away from that decision. My mother still says to this day that one of the reason she was attracted to my father was his simple, plain, easy-to -spell last name.

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    1. One of my colleagues has the last name of Barfknecht. A search tells me it means something like “trustworthy servant”. My colleague is married, and I sometimes wonder, but have never asked, whether this is her original last name or her husband’s. But having a choice of which name to adopt or keep, I kinda wonder why she went with it.

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  20. There is a German Hungarian family here with the last name of Lefor. It is pronounced lefur. The more hoighty toighty ones, all from the same family, pronounce the name Le For, as though it is French.

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  22. Pharmaceutical companies outdo themselves naming psychiatric medications. Who wouldn’t want to take something called Abilify, ot Intuniv, or Elavil?

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    2. Or car names. I always wondered at the choice of Saturn for a car brand, since saturnine means slow and gloomy. And the car model name Enclave, which denotes an enclosed territory or ghetto, though in that instance the car’s size approaches that definition. There is a car model (I don’t know what make),Terrain, that I always misread as terrapin. I actually like terrapin better but it probably doesn’t convey the dynamic character the car maker intended.

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  23. Pingback: Locks – Nelsapy

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