All posts by reneeinnd

2025, Art, Farming Update, Health, home, Uncategorized

ABCDEFG

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

I never used to drink coffee. Notice the past-tense there. This week I’ve had it two different mornings. It started about a month ago with a morning meeting and all they had was coffee, so I had some in a Styrofoam cup that was more cream and sugar than coffee. I learned coffee in a foam cup gets cold really fast. Like, REALLY fast.
And then this past Tuesday at the college was AED day. Nope, not the defibrillator thing even though that’s what we all thought of. All Employee Development day. And again, coffee. In a foam cup. I do tend to drink it fast in this case. When I make tea at home and put it in my 20-ounce travel mug, I might not finish that until 2 o’clock in the afternoon and it’s still warm-ish. But the coffee I drank fast because I didn’t want it to get any colder. And then on Thursday morning, I stopped at Kwik Trip, and there I was looking at all the coffee flavors. I tried a machine that was supposed to mix French vanilla and caramel and something else, but when I hit the ‘dispense’ button, I got about 2 drips and that was it. Even their cardboard cups with a lid on it didn’t keep it warm for long. I don’t know that I need to get addicted to coffee right now. I’m not sure that’s what I need in my life at this moment.

I heard an ad on the radio say something about remember when the hardest thing in your life was whether to file your Marshall Tucker album under M or T?

I had the crate full of records. I may have even had two crates. And while I never had Marshall Tucker, I remember a few bands and not being sure how to alphabetize them. Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. I never alphabetize my CDs, but the records I did. I kept the plastic on them, the vinyl went inside the sleeve, placed back in the jacket with the opening to the top. Yep, I had to take the sleeve out of the jacket to get the record out. But that was OK, because I always liked the liner notes.
Certain record album covers were pretty racy. Was it Queen’s, ‘Jazz’, that opened up to all the naked girls on bicycles? Pretty hot stuff for a teenage boy. The Car, Candy-O was another good one.

It seems like our bathroom and laundry room construction is pretty well done. Waiting on the countertops, and of course the plumber and the electrician to do their final connections. They did the countertop measurements on Wednesday and I think they said a week to 10 days for that. And there will be some tile to finish once the countertop is installed.
We’re just hoping to get the washing machine back soon. We’re down to rationing our socks and underwear. We’re all kind of tired of this disruption. It sure does look nice though. It doesn’t even look like it belongs in this house. I think Kelly’s plan is to paint this weekend. I’ll post a picture once it’s finished.

Out in the shop, I installed Snirt Stoppers on Monday evening. See the header photo. A Snirt Stopper to keep out snow and dirt is just an extra piece of weather stripping that can go all around the garage door. At this point I only needed it on the bottom. The concrete that I had poured in the shop is not exactly level or flat. When I met the guy that did the concrete, Matthew, he had a real good business going and I used them at the theater for a couple jobs. When they got to doing my shop, he was starting a new branch of the business down in Florida and had left his brother, Max, in charge. It’s unfortunate that Max was not up to the task. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m still thrilled to have concrete in here, but they didn’t do a perfect job by any means. Sounds like Matthew is now divorced, the company went out of business, and Matthew went to Florida and started over. So, a bit of a gap in a spot of the floor and the need for a Snirt Stopper.

I have been getting things cleaned up in the shop. I even revealed part of the workbench the other day! I moved out some stuff I’m not using, vacuumed a big part of the floor, and my fancy dancy lights were delivered on Wednesday, so I just need to get the electrician back to get the garage door opener and the lights all connected. It’s all coming together.

https://youtu.be/crMeSKCCkjo?si=NeCKlkijkaQtNoKq

TIPS FOR DRINKING COFFEE?

FRAMED ALBUM COVERS?

2025, Family, Health, History, Kids, Uncategorized

Running In the Family

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When our daughter was in college, it never failed that every time she came home at the end of a semester she would spend at least a day lying on the sofa with a low grade fever. I attributed it to her body’s reaction to the stress of finals and assignments.

Last Saturday after my last full time day of work, I was felled both by a flare up of sciatica and a low grade fever that has lasted all this week. Hmm? Could daughter and I have similar reactions to stress? I think so. She probably inherited it from me.

Both our children teasingly blame me for their propensity to Generalized Anxiety Disorder. From their father they inherited flat feet. I have lumbar scoliosis like my maternal grandmother. So does one of my cousins. I did not inherit my father’s athleticism, but I did his musicality. Goodness only knows where I got A- blood type. I did not inherit my maternal grandmother’s ability to do complex math in her head. Our grandson seems to have that ability, and is proud to tell me that in Grade 1 he can do algebra in his head and is in an enrichment Math program. It is hard at times to know what is nurture and what is nature, but however our forebears hand things down to us, it can make our lives interesting.

What did you inherit or wish you had or hadn’t had inherited from your forebears? Ever read Running In The Family by Michael Ondaatje?

2025, animals, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Close Encounters

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Husband has been keeping the bird feeder in the back yard full this winter. Once he fills it, the sentinel chickadee who sits in the lilac hedge and watches him sounds the news, and pretty soon the feeder and the ground below are full of birds. They swoop into the feeder area in groups, and others wait their turn in the lilac hedge and the grapevines on our deck.

We have two very tall spruce trees in the front yard, and many birds hang out there, especially the Eurasian Collared Doves. They also visit the feeder and eat the seed that falls onto the ground. They nest in the spruces and we hear hungry baby doves all summer.

One day last week I was backing out of the driveway when I spotted an American Kestrel sitting on the ground in one of our flower beds right by the sidewalk. It was devouring a dove. The kestrel didn’t seem to mind me at all. It was intent on the fat dove. It always amazes me how small kestrels are. I love the bluish grey on the head and the checkerboard pattern on its underside and legs. It finally flew off with the dove in its claws.

This is not the first kestrel we have had. I have seen them swoop into the spruce trees on one side and emerge seconds later on the other side carrying off a squawking dove. It gets pretty exciting here sometimes!

Any close encounters for you this past couple of weeks? What is your favorite raptor?

2025, education, Gatherings, Music, Songs, Uncategorized

School Dance

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Our community of 28,000 people has four Catholic churches and a very large parochial school system. The churches were originally started for and attended by the various immigrant groups who settled here. The Germans from Russia and the German Hungarians attended St. Joseph’s Church on the south side (less affluent section) of town by the railroad tracks and stockyards. The more affluent Czech immigrants attended St. Wenceslaus, north of the tracks, and the most affluent attended St. Patrick’s Church in the downtown area. The 1970’s oil boom led to a need for another church, Queen of Peace, built in the area of new houses near the interstate.

The Catholic School system has a big Mardi Gras celebration/fundraiser every your during the first weekend of February, ostensibly close to when Mardi Gras happens, although this year it was way earlier than Mardi Gras since Easter is so late this year. The festivities take place at the Catholic High School, just a block from our house. We have never attended, but I understand that every year it is the same with games of chance, big dinners, cakewalks, and fun activities for children. This year, however, they added something quite surprising-dance lessons.

Local dance teachers came to teach Line dancing and Swing dancing, and most surprising, Salsa dancing. We have a fair number of immigrants from Central and South America, and a group of them started a Salsa dance company that is apparently very popular and booked way out for for engagements. They also perform every December 12 at Queen of Peace in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I found a video of Salsa dancing, and it just doesn’t fit the conservative stereotype of our Catholic community.

Can you imagine this happening at a Mass? It sounds like everyone at Mardi Gras had fun learning the moves. What next?

What are your memories of school dances? What is your favorite way to dance?

2025, animals, education, pets, Theatre, Travel, Uncategorized

Home Away From Home

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Last year our local college terminated the Theatre, Music, and English departments. There is a rather fine auditorium at the college that has remained pretty silent and unused for the last while. It is in the main building on campus and is surrounded by the library and classrooms. There are multiple ways of accessing the other rooms and hallways from the auditorium.

The Badlands Opera Company is putting on Into The Woods in a couple of months. They often use our church sanctuary for their productions, but this time they are using the college auditorium. Last week the Opera Company folks paid a visit to the auditorium to scope out the place and see what they would need to do to get it up and running. There is a loft above the stage that was used for costumes and props. It was left in incredible disarray by the theatre faculty as a sort of “screw you” to the college administration. Much to the Opera Company folks surprise, they noticed a cat sticking its head from out of the loft ceiling. They also noticed a litter box and the personal effects of someone who had been squatting in the loft.

They phoned the police and campus security, who secured the auditorium and found another cat. Both cats were taken to the city animal shelter. They also figured out who had been living in the loft and had him get his stuff out. I don’t know how long the guy had been living there. The college is upping its security. The Opera Company folks decided that they would only go to the auditorium in groups of three from now on. It was interesting that public comment indicated more concern about the welfare of the cats than the fact that someone had been living in the theatre loft. I hope they are comfortable in their new digs at the animal shelter.

What is the most memorable hotel you ever stayed at? What hotel would you like to stay in if you got the chance.?

2025, animals, Family, pets, Theatre

Broken, But Still Good

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Luna managed to rip a chunk out of her frisbee on Thursday. And that put me in mind of the quote “broken, but still good.”

Last Sunday we saw the musical ‘Parade’ at the Orpheum. Oh. My. Goodness. It’s a musical about the 1913 trial – and subsequent imprisonment and lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish American from New York, living in Georgia. A musical? Yes. One of those stories that needs to be told. That you probably never heard of. The entire production was fantastic. Look him up.

It was a beautiful week on the farm. I took Tuesday and Thursday off to prune fruit trees and do some outside stuff. My day went off the rails about 10AM, but it was still so nice to be home and outside. The chickens are loving it, I guess. We got 13 eggs on Thursday! Evidently, this batch is not so ‘winter hardy’.

Our bathroom is getting there. Floor tile installed and they’re working on the wall tiles. Monday they’ll set cabinets.

Our dog Luna. Boy she loves life. She’s an early bird, and really does not want to be touched after about 11 PM. That’s her sleep time.

But any time after 5 AM, she is excited to go. Wherever we’re going, whatever we’re doing, she’s going with. I call her my white shadow.
This week we’re back to the frisbee. As winter began, I had taken all the frisbees into the machine shed so they wouldn’t get lost in the snow, and that’s why we had moved onto sticks outside. For the time being, we’re back to frisbees. She gets a better workout because she must chase the frisbee further than I can throw a stick.


She doesn’t seem to have vertical observation. I’m not sure if she can’t, or she just doesn’t, and she’s lost the frisbee more than once because she’s looking the other direction when it comes back down. I’m guessing she’s only watching about 10 feet in elevation.
It was a pretty big deal on Thursday this week when she actually caught the frisbee at her head height. Twice! She’s come close a few times before and it may have been the combination of a lucky throw and timing on her part, but you could tell she was pretty excited about it.

These are heavy duty frisbees; they are very thick and the knobs around the outer edges give her a good place to grip, and they will hurt my fingers trying to get it back. We’re still working on the release part. Also Thursday morning she finally managed to tear out an entire chunk. And that’s how I got to the phrase from the movie ‘Lilo and stitch’, referring to family, “It’s little, and broken, but still good”.

It seems to fly just as well, even with a chunk missing.


If you haven’t seen the movie ‘Lilo and stitch’, I would highly recommend it. It originally came out in 2002, our son was ten, our daughter seven, and it is the story of an older sister trying to raise her younger sister. It provided us with many wonderful quotes and fits of laughter. We recognize the stubbornness on both their parts, and the older daughter screaming into a pillow in frustration, while the little girl also screamed into a pillow just about put Kelly and I on the floor in laughter.
The social worker, Mr. Cobra Bubbles (Once worked for the CIA. Convinced an alien race that mosquitoes were an endangered species. He had hair then.) He tells the older sister “Thus far, you have been adrift in the sheltered harbor of my patience. “
I love that line.

Reading the quotes on the IMDb website filled in so many lines that you don’t always hear in the movie. There are many very funny background lines that are almost throwaway lines. Sometimes it’s the tone of voice that’s used.
David Ogden Stiers plays an alien named Jumba. Partnered with a nerdy scientist alien Pleakley, the two of them are the comic relief.

JUMBA: “WHAT? After all you put me through, you expect me to help you just like that? JUST LIKE THAT?”

STITCH: [Alien language] “ih”

JUMBA: “Fine!”

PLEAKLEY: “Fine? You’re doing what he says??”

JUMBA: “He’s very persuasive”

PLEAKLEY: “Oh good! I was hoping to add theft, endangerment, and INSANITY to my list of things I did today!“

JUMBA: ”Haha You too?”

Lilo: “Oh good, my dog found the chainsaw.”

Of course the quote, ‘damaged but not broken’ can be a metaphor for so many things. There’s several books with the title of ‘damaged but not broken’ and it could be a battle of cancer, or it could be your relationship with God. One can make it even simpler and just apply it to everyday life.

SHARE EXAMPLES OF BROKEN BUT STILL GOOD. OR “CAN’T vs. WON’T”?

2024, Government, Uncategorized, Words

The New Normal

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Well, today is my last day of full time work. I will be off for a month, and then start part time work at my agency doing evaluations after March 1. I am quite happy about this. I have no unfinished  paperwork, and my therapy clients have been transferred to other therapists. Husband will keep on with his part time work. He is housed at my agency but is employed by the Human Service Center in Bismarck.

The past several months have been stressful because of getting all the necessary paperwork in to the the State Retirement office, applying for Medicare B and Social Security, and tying up loose ends. I had to formally apply for the part time position that was only advertised at my agency. I was the only applicant, as expected, and I had to dredge up my old resume, something that I haven’t had to use for a couple of decades. My colleagues are upset, and I find myself comforting them and reassuring them that I will only be gone for a month and then I will be back. That is getting tiresome. I feel  like a parent having to reassure anxious children. They also kept asking if I wanted a retirement party, but I said that since I was returning in a month that would be sort of silly. 

Everyone keeps asking me what I am going to do when I retire. My stock answer is “Clean the house”.  I have discovered that at my age I can either have a clean house or work full time. I can’t do both. People seem to expect that I will do exotic travel. My new normal will be to have more time to sort through our things preparatory to moving and feel less stressed.

How do you handle life transitions? What do you miss the most from your longest held job? What don’t you miss at all?

 

2025, Business, Travel, Uncategorized

House Sitting

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A high school classmate of mine has found a really interesting gig lately. She has become an international house and pet sitter. I had never heard of this before, but there are companies you can sign up with who certify you as a good and responsible person, and then allow you to travel to house sit for people. You have to pay for travel expenses, but you stay for free in the home you are caring for.

My friend is currently in the south of France in a lovely old farm house caring for a couple of dogs, two cats, and some chickens. She is working remotely at her job in the States while she is there. The most difficult part of her current stay is firing up the stoves that warm the house. This place has no central heating. When she isn’t working or hauling wood and coal, she is traveling to quaint villages and markets nearby. The only down side to her current trip is that her luggage first went to the Canary Islands before it came to her.

Her previous stay took her to Montreal for two weeks. There, and now in France she stated that the neighbors take a keen interest in her and take her all around to show her sights, feed her, and socialize. I don’t think she speaks French, but that hasn’t been a problem. I am curious where she will go next.

Where in the world would you like to house sit?

2025, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

New Toy

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Husband loves to grill and smoke meats. He has an enormous wood and charcoal smoker/grill in the back yard. It works pretty well, but it is often not possible for him to take a whole day to smoke something, and it isn’t possible to do it in the winter. In December he found on-line an electric indoor smoker that uses wood pellets as fuel. It is made by GE. We got it, and he used it for the first time last week.

I was somewhat skeptical that we could use a smoker indoors without smoking up the house, but it worked well, and there was only the smell of smoked meat, not smoke, in the house. It took 7 hours to completely cook a 4 pound chuck roast. The smoker is really quite small, and fits nicely on the kitchen counter. The smoke is filtered through water reservoirs and comes out of the smoker as warm air. It is a brilliant machine.

Have you acquired any new toys lately? What do you like to grill?

2024, Art, Travel, Uncategorized

Train Art

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Most days on my drive to work I travel on Villard Street, which is the main east-west route through our downtown area. It is also known as Old Highway 10, the route that ran from Detroit to Seattle before the interstate highways were built.

Villard runs parallel to the BNSF railroad tracks through town, and the street and the tracks are no more than 20 yards apart. There are always trains, either chugging through town or parked, waiting for who knows what.

I get a good glimpse of the train cars on my way to work, and I am always amazed at the intricate graffiti on them. Last week there were very nice Boris and Natasha portraits on one. I never observe people painting on the cars in our town. They would be seen, given that the cars are parked in the middle of town. It makes me wonder where on the train route the cars can be parked long enough for people to paint them without getting caught.

It seems that the graffiti is inevitable. I think it would be terribly fun for the railroad to have train car decorating contests, and legitimize what is going to happen anyway. Think of the fun!

What would you like to paint, or see painted, on train cars? Any memories on Old Highway 10?