Business, Media, Technology, Uncategorized, work

Annoying Coworkers

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I have been fortunate in my work career to have mostly affable and supportive coworkers. True, there have been a couple of real negative doozeys, but I outlasted them. I am currently contending with an annoying coworker who really means well, and that is much of my problem with her.

The person in question doesn’t even work in my building, and works 100 miles away, only sometimes coming to my workplace every other month or so. Her job is to make my job easier, but that isn’t how it always turns out. She is to help make sure my testing computers are working appropriately, that the psychological test scoring programs are up to date, and that my testing forms and supplies are ordered as needed. She usually does a great job. She works really fast. She is friendly, competent, and energetic. We communicate most frequently via email and instant messaging.

I guess my main issue with this coworker is the manner she goes about doing things. Every time I encounter her, I have to bite my tongue and not ask her if she took her Ritalin (an ADHD medication) that day. I don’t even know if she has ADHD, but she is very impulsive, doesn’t listen, and can’t read the room, so to speak, on how she is coming across.

Last week she was very involved replacing our three aging testing computers with new computers, and transferring our scoring programs to the new computers. In the process, she managed to erase forever the testing results of hundreds of people we had tested over the years. There are hard copies of the results in client files, but at least we had them stored in the computer in case something happened to our paper files. She didn’t get the new computers hooked up to the correct printers appropriately , and I couldn’t print any interpretive reports, only dozens of pages of gobbledygook. She had already left to go back to Bismarck, so our tech guy had to fix it the next day. He told me he had warned her that what she did with the printer drivers wouldn’t work, but, as usual, she didn’t listen.

One day, after a particularly frustrating back and forth messaging fest over her insistence that a scoring program was installed on one of the computers when it wasn’t, she asked if I would go in to the testing room and take photos of the serial numbers of the computers so that she cold access them remotely to see the situation for herself. I was somewhat appalled that she would even ask me to do that, given how our messaging conversation was going. I guess she couldn’t tell that I was becoming increasingly agitated in my texting, spelling out words in all capitals and ending sentences with multiple exclamation points. I had enough by that time, and curtly refused. She came out the next day and got it all fixed. She apologized for not believing me and offered to buy me some flowers or chocolates. I told her it wasn’t necessary, and that it was enough that she had come out and fixed everything.

Tell about some of your more interesting coworkers. Have you ever felt like murdering someone at work?

gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized, Words

Confusing directions

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We like to grow dahlias in our garden, even though our winters are too cold for them to winter over. We don’t have a cold room in our house to store dug up dahlia tubers over the winter to replant in the spring, so we order new tubers every year from wonderful place in Washington State-Swan Island Dahlias. Their instructions for successful dahlia growing are sort of confusing.

We are to plant the dahlia tubers in rich, moist, soil, but are instructed to not water the tubers until the shoots emerge from the soil. They will rot if we do. It may be ok to water if it is dry or if they are in pots, but that is dicey. It is hard to know what we are to do. What is too dry, and what is too wet? I am happy to report that five out of seven dahlia tubers are emerging from the soil with some watering here and there, given our dry spring, but I still have anxiety about the watering issues. I still don’t know what I am to do!

What are some confusing directions you recall? When were you at a loss about what to do?

animals, Family, home, Kids, Nature, pets, Stories, Uncategorized

Timmy, The Brawler

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Today’s post comes from Steve.

Timothy Gruncheon Grooms, born in a barn in Iowa, was adopted into my family in 1946. He was officially my sister’s cat and always seemed to understand that. Although she did things to him that were beneath the dignity of any cat, he slept each night in the crook of her arm.

Timmy was a fighter. My parents had never heard of a cat being confined, and they would have been appalled at the suggestion pets should be neutered. So Timmy was a free-range tomcat who roamed the neighborhood fighting with other cats and filling the world with orange and white tabby kittens. All the fighting he did caused Timmy to have a fat face because so much scar tissue built up on his cheeks. His ears were riddled with cuts and holes. I did witness one epic encounter in our backyard, Timmy relentlessly chasing another cat, and I was shocked by the violence of it all.

Timmy obviously lost some fights. Once he came home with a chunk of tissue the diameter of a nickel missing from his left cheek. Our vet gave us a spray to keep the wound clean, but our dog had a better idea. Danny, a sweet golden retriever, began following Timmy, licking that wound. Danny and Timmy never had physical contact before or after that incident, but Danny licked Timmy’s wounded cheek until fresh skin formed over the hole.

My sister bonded with Timmy as if he were her child. As I recently wrote, she dressed him in doll clothes, including a bonnet. She plopped him on his back in a baby stroller and went about the neighborhood with him that way. The set of Timmy’s ears were a clue to how he felt about this, but he accepted it all. When Nancy’s fascination with medical issues led her to subject Timmy to some treatments, including an enema administered by eyedropper, he put up with that, too.

Timmy was the most remarkable athlete I’ve ever known. Two stories established his legendary status.

Once our family was in the dining room watching television (eating Swanson’s TV dinners on our TV trays). A bat entered our home and began flying from room to room. Timmy was sitting on a braided rug in the middle of the dining room. As the bat wobbled through the dining room a second time, Timmy shot off the floor like a jack-in-the-box, snatching the bat midair. To my eye, Timmy’s leap took him five feet into the air, and it could have been higher. With the bat in his mouth, Timmy went to the back door and asked to be let out.

In our last home in Ames my mother kept her precious chinaware in a cabinet by the front door. Timmy’s way of letting us know he wanted to be let out was jumping to the top of that cabinet. One afternoon he did that, just as he had countless times before. Timmy, from the floor, could not see that my mother had filled the cabinet’s top with stacks of china. My mother screamed in terror when Timmy walked to the cabinet and launched his leap. Once he was in the air, Timmy saw the china and performed a desperate midair gymnastic maneuver. He managed to land with his four paws in the tiny openings between the stacks of teacups and plates. Standing there, Timmy was unable to move, and he let out a dismayed yowl so we could rush to his rescue.

By 1964 our family, Timmy included, was living in Wayzata, Minnesota. He acquired one annoying habit late in life, crawling around inside the family Christmas tree in the middle of the night, eating tinsel and knocking glass ornaments to the floor. Timmy still lived much of his life out of our sight, and he still got in fights. His health declined. My sister, who was then a student at the University of Minnesota, fell in love with a young man, and they soon got married.

In 1965 Timmy disappeared for four days. We feared we would never see our 19-year-old cat again, but at long last he dragged himself home in terrible shape. He clearly had lost a big fight. Stroking his scarred old head, my mother had a heart-to-heart talk with him. “Timmy, old guy, you have been Nancy’s baby all these years. She is now married and will soon have a baby of her own. You look like you’re at the end of the line, but I’m asking one last thing of you. Can you keep it together a few more months? Can you keep alive until Nancy’s new baby arrives?”

Nancy’s baby arrived in August. A few days later, Timmy died.

Timmy was a vivid character in our family life for nearly two decades. Have you ever had a pet with a distinctive personality?

2021, Family, gardening, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Silly Garden

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We started out the garden year hopeful, but restrained, planning to reduce the number of tomato plants to eight, shorten the kohlrabi row, and stick to twelve pepper plants and the same number of peas, beans, cabbages, beets, and herbs from last year. We agreed on two hills of cantaloupes.

We neglected to factor in Husband’s anxiety. He is in charge of our church vegetable garden, and we have had to replant some things there due to extreme wind and unfavorable conditions. Husband is always planning for the worst, and that means that he scouts out bedding plants and seeds “just in case” we have to replant. Of course, he always purchases many times the number of replacement plants that he needed. I have taken excess bedding plants the work three times to pawn them off on my coworkers

At the present time, in our home garden we have fourteen tomato plants, fourteen pepper plants, and a bush cucumber plant (“Renee, those cucumber plants needed good homes”). There are six eggplants stuck in odd places in a flower bed on the south side of the house, five hills of cantaloupes, and three butternut squash plants. It looks very silly, with the odd vegetable stuck here and there quite haphazardly. I was lucky to find eight dozen Ball canning jar lids on Amazon, preparatory to what could be a real avalanche of produce needing to be canned.

When have you had too much of a good thing? How does anxiety make you do silly things? When have your plans not worked out like you wished?

2021, Farming Update, gardening, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Crop Report

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Today’s post comes from Ben.

As I write this we’ve had an inch of rain and the temps are cooling. Sometimes we call them “Million Dollar Rains”, this one was a $100,000 rain.

The first few weeks after planting, I spend a lot of time driving around checking on fields. Crop Scouting is really important the first month, and then throughout the summer, but the first few weeks is when we learn the most.

Just like your gardens, we’re watching to see how things are growing and what weeds are coming.

I’m generalizing here; every farm is different and different parts of the country plant different. I mentioned before, the corn was planted at a population of 33-34,000 plants / acre. So, there should be a plant about every 6”. Two together is a ‘double’, and a blank space is a ‘skip’ and that tells me how the planter is working and what I may need to fix for next year. And where there are skips, I might dig it up and see, is there a seed down there that didn’t germinate? Maybe it germinated but didn’t emerge; it’s all very telling. And then the first few inches it grows, it’s so interesting to see how the root develops.

Corn just fascinates me; the seed actually stays in the ground and the root goes down, the stalk comes up and the ‘growing point’ stays underground for a long time. That’s why a freeze or hail won’t necessarily kill a corn plant. Whereas soybeans; it’s the seed that comes up out of the ground. So, if it freezes, it’s done.

This website has taught me a lot about corn development:

http://www.soilcropandmore.info/crops/Corn/How-Corn-Grows/

This year, with the hard rain, soil crusting, and then cool weather and wet weather, I lost a lot of corn that didn’t emerge. And yet when I compare fields planted after the rain to those planted before, it all looks just as rough. It was kind of a mystery to me and I kept thinking it’s was  rather unfortunate this was the year I got so much planted on the first day (because of the hard rain). And then NATE,  one of my seed salesman came and looked at the corn. IT’S NOT MY FAULT! YAY! Turns out this particular variety had trouble this year. There are dozens of varieties of seed and most are tested pretty well to judge how it will do with drough tolerance or pest resistance, ect. Guess this one hadn’t been tested for this year’s weather. When I measure out 17’6” (1/1000ths of an acre) and count the plants, that gives us an estimate of the final stand population. I’m counting between 23 and 26 plants. 23,000 plants is a lot less than 34,000. Do the math: missing 11,000 ears, 200 ears = one bushel = 55 bushels less / acre. In a good year I get 160 bushels / acre. I’m thinking the ears will be bigger this year since they’ll have less competition and more sunlight…. ?? J

If I had decided to replant the corn, they would have given me seed to replant free of charge. But I decided there was enough plants there that it didn’t make sense to replant. So, they will refund the cost of my seed. I still paid for fertilizer and spraying so those expenses are already in the ground. And it’s not like there won’t be any crop (Knock on wood; we’re not there yet) but it just won’t be the bushels it should have been.

I’ve been taking lots of photos, but the camera doesn’t capture it very well.

Just notice the leaves curled up from the heat and lack of rain. Notice the uneven stands, the varieties of green color. The deer eating the tops. This corn is thigh high. Now with the rain it will be doubling in height quickly.

Oats has just headed out; looks like a lot of grain out there. Again, noticethe shades of green… it should all be dark green and I’m not quite sure why it’s so uneven this year. It’s a new variety for me, and maybe that’s what this one looks like. See the strips of dark green that’s taller than the rest? That’s where the PTO shaft on the fertilizer spreader broke and it was making a ‘streak’ of fertilizer.

Things to watch now: as the oats starts to turn color and get ripe, the stalks get brittle. Storms can knock it down, break it in half or even lay it flat. When trying to cut it, broken or flat makes it hard to pick up to cut. There is a fungus called ‘rust’ that can hit oats hard. Makes it brown and dusty and more brittle than usual. I have the corn sprayed to prevent that. Just as the kernels emerge, that’s called the ‘boot stage’.

Soybeans are looking OK. See this one field that looks like a lawn? Just all green? That’s a field I plant for a neighbor; he just uses it as a food plot. I didn’t have that one sprayed with ‘pre-emerge’ grass control like I did on my fields. It was my control field. See the rows on the others? With out the pre-emerge spray, they’d all be solid grass. Definitely a benefit to that. Then later I have it sprayed for ‘broadleaves’ and volunteer corn. I used the drill to plant the beans and I said they were sort of ‘clumpy’; you can see that in these photos. Again, it’s doing OK, seed spacing isn’t as critical for beans.

I mowed the roadsides last week. Got 50 bales of grass hay off that. Some neighbors will take that.

Mowed down in the woods for another neighbor. He’s been clearing buckthorn and it looks really nice down there now.

Also mowed an area I call ‘The Swamp’ since it was so dry. Turns out it wasn’t as dry as I thought…

Do you play the lottery? What’s the biggest prize you’ve won?

Business, Family, Food, gardening, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Lemonade Stand

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Our city council declared June 19th to be Lemonade Day, and encouraged local children to get out there and sell lemonade. Our next door neighbors, ages 5 and 7, rose to the occasion and set up a stand in their front yard with the help of their mom. She baked cookies and brownies. They had pitchers of plain and pink lemonade. A glass of lemonade and a baked good cost 25 cents.

It was a hot and sunny day, and we were out in the front yard working hard in the garden. We were, of course, invited over to sample the lemonade and goodies. Husband paid them $1.00 for each of us, and the children assured us that we could come over for free refills. They came over to help us pull weeds in between customers. When they got really bored they played kickball in the driveway. By 4:00 they were done, and the stand was dismantled.

It was really nice to see all the people stop. The children were so excited when they had customers. There was a near disaster when their two year old brother tried to carry a lemonade pitcher over to our yard, presumably to fill our glasses. He likes watching us in the garden, too.

Did you ever have a lemonade stand? Describe a memorable summer day.

Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

The Perfect Meal

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Husband came home the other night and declared that he was going make a cold German supper for himself. He knew that we had everything he needed for it, down to St. Pauli Girl beer. You can see all the things that went into his supper in the header photo. He proceeded to make potato salad, and had it with the liverwurst, butterkase, corned beef, pickled asparagus, and caraway bread. The Baby Bel cheese isn’t German, but that somehow didn’t matter for him. He had been planning this meal for several days, and spent the weekend acquiring the things he wanted.

Husband is extremely fussy when he prepares and plans our meals, and when he gets an idea about a menu, he is very particular that he has just the right (in his opinion) things that should be included and that should go together. I don’t know where he gets some of his ideas of what should go together. Grocery shopping is a challenge sometimes, as he gets visibly distressed when he can’t find just the right things he has envisioned. Mental flexibility isn’t one of his strengths in these circumstances. At least he is able to laugh at himself and suggested that I write this post about him.

I just want my food to taste good, and if we don’t have exactly the right kind of olive, pickle, beer, or cheese, it really doesn’t matter that much to me. Whenever Husband gets broody and quiet, I know that he is thinking about food and planning some meal or other. Sometimes Grape Nuts is just the perfect supper for me. Heck, I don’t even care what wine I pair with it!

Describe a perfect meal that you have had. What would you include in the menu for a perfect meal you would like to prepare? How fussy are you about these things?

Family, gardening, Health, home, Medicine, Uncategorized

Paved Intentions

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I’m not a math whiz but there is one formula that I know really well:

Yardwork + Verily Sherrilee = A Filthy Mess

When I had the new driveway put in, I also asked them to put in a sidewalk from the house to the garage.  For many years, I’ve just had paving stones, which look really good for about an hour after the grass is cut and that’s their only saving grace.  Well, that and they were cheap. Otherwise, they’ve been a pain for years.  Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to just throw them away when the new sidewalk was installed.

YA and I have wanted a little patio under our backyard table for years, so this past Saturday, I decided to re-purpose the paving stones into said patio.  And it was pretty clear early on that I would be invoking the Yardwork/Filthy Mess paradigm.  You wouldn’t think that a 4’ x 4’ square, 2 inches deep would create so much extraneous dirt; I certainly didn’t and I was quite wrong.  It was easier to excavate the space by hand to start with and pretty soon, I had dirt all over myself, including knees, ankles and feet.  I had abandoned my gardening shoes early on – too hot.  Of course sweat and dirt together meant that I was dirty everywhere else as well.

I was very careful with the paving stones as they weigh quite a bit.  As I picked up each one I said to myself “go slow, be careful”.  Every single stone (9 of them).  I even said this to myself as I wiggled the last one into place.  Right before I lost my hold on it and it crashed down on my big toe.  I got a pretty good gash and the blood looked really dark as it bled onto all the dirt on my foot.

I was so close to the end of the project – I didn’t want to lose my momentum but I also didn’t want to bleed all over and get who knows what kinds of germs into the wound.  Looking down at myself I realized that I was too dirty to go in the house and certainly too dirty to go upstairs to the bathroom where there bandaids are kept.

I had YA go inside and get a couple of paper towels while I hosed off my foot and toe.  She came out with a paper towel and DUCT TAPE!  That’s my girl.  I wrapped the paper towel around the toe first and then liberally applied the tape.  Voila – good enough to let me finish up the project!  It’s made me realize that while YA can do yardwork without attracting every dirt particle within a square mile, she HAS inherited my feeling that the wrong tool at hand is always better than the right tool that is not at hand.

What’s your favorite cleaning supply? When have you had a filthy mess? When have you gotten spectacularly dirty?

2021, Farming Update, gardening, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Early May

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Today’s post comes from Ben.

Mid June. It’s dry, we need some rain. Corn is curling up from the heat. My crops look terrible this year. Corn was planted a little light in the first place, then it didn’t emerge well, and now it’s dry and the deer are eating it… GDU’s: 946 to date, +291 above normal.

Oat’s is just about to head out, in fact it will be by the time you read this, – seems later than some varieties, and this is a new variety for me so… I guess it’s OK; better not to be headed out when it was so hot, the heat just boils the milk out of the heads anyway.

I told Kelly the crops are all in that adolescent stage and they all look terrible. Corn is knee high already, well, some of it.

Soybeans are getting there, look OK when you look down the row, then I look across the field and see all the skips and misses and it looks terrible again.

Back in blogworld, I finished planting soybeans on May 10th. That’s ahead of most years. Some years I’m still working on corn at that point.

When planting any crops, the trick is to have just enough seed to finish, without having too much left over to clean out of the planter. Soybeans are easy because the rows don’t really matter for harvesting, so I can just drive any which way in the field to run out the seed. Remember I had plugged up every two rows? I pulled the tape off and planted at 7” rows just to use up the seed. Once around the outside of one field did it. Oats is the same. I mean I try to figure it so there’s not a lot left in the first place, then just run it empty.

Corn is a little harder as the rows have to line up. I save the left over seed to use next year and the unopened bags can be returned to the dealer.

After planting soybeans, some guys run over them with a large roller, to smooth the field. Soybeans make a pod clear down at the ground, so at harvest, you want to cut as low as possible without picking up rocks or running too much dirt into the combine. Rolling the field pushes down rock and levels out any lumps to make combining easier.

I don’t have a roller. But I have a drag and decided to try that. Haven’t used it in 20 years. And I half expected when I pulled it out of the weeds it would just disintegrate. But no, it held together, and I ran it over all my bean acres. It did help smooth things out.  

Time to clean up machinery.

I feel like I’m making dumb mistakes again. Got the pressure washer out and had a tip plugged up. I’m supposed to remember to check them before I start. But I didn’t. So now it’s all pressurized and I can’t get anything apart. I should have let it sit for a few minutes and the pressure would bleed off and I could get it apart. But I got in a hurry. Using pliers and a hammer I got the ‘quick connector’ apart and the tip shot into the air and it never came down. I put on a different tip (I have three different tips that are different spray widths), I didn’t get this one snapped in right and when I pulled the trigger, it shot it off somewhere over by the feed room and I haven’t found it yet. Sigh.

The third tip was plugged up and I WAS smart enough to let the pressure drain before I took it off and got it to the shop and cleaned out. I’m trying foam wash this year. Also tried ‘Simply Green’ cleaner. Not sure how much they help but it all smells better.

Cleaned out fertilizer wagon, washed the grain drill, and the corn planter. There are lots of nooks and crannies to get into. Made notes of things worn out that will need to be replaced before planting next year. I had a minor leak on a hydraulic hose that was spraying a little oil on the back of the tractor. By the time I finished planting, the back of the tractor was covered with oily dirt.

The next day I had some township stuff in the morning. Paul, one of the other township supervisors, and I picked up garbage someone had dumped in a ditch, and we looked at some culverts. Paul works for crop insurance and we talked about how some guys were using a rotary hoe on their corn. A ‘rotary Hoe’ is one of those tools you only need to use about once every 10 years. This would have been the year to have one. I have a really old one; it doesn’t actually help much. And I was afraid the corn was already too tall.  

Saw Orioles one day; Put the oriole feeder and hummingbird feeder out. Haven’t seen the Orioles again. But we have two Hummingbirds that are often at the feeder. Maybe there’s more than two, but I have seen two at the same time.

At the front door we have a pair of barn swallows. We really enjoy them and their chirps and their flight patterns. They have a nest to the left of the front door. Now they have a nest to the right of the door, too. And both nests are occupied. I wonder if it’s parents and kids??

They do make a poopy mess, but we put cardboard down and they’re pretty tolerant of us coming and going.

Finally got .22 inches of rain on the 19th. And from then until May 29th we had 2.5”. And since then, hot and dry. No wonder the corn looks so rough. It sure looked bad after that frost. And the uneven emergence didn’t help anything.

Finally cleaned out the tractor cab too. By this time, there’s quite a collection of ‘Nutty Bar’ wrappers, and dirty paper towels. And some tools, and golf balls, and whatever else I’ve picked up in the fields.

I carry a little whisk broom (a trick I learned from a youtube farmer) Millennial Farmer, Zach Johnson,

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp0rRUsMDlJ1meYAQ6_37Dw

Next week I’ll do an up to date crop report.

Do you have any cleaning tricks? How bad do you let things go before you clean?

animals, Family, home, Kids, pets, Travel, Uncategorized

Adventures in Pet sitting

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We took care of our son’s West Highland Terrier while he and his family took a trip to Alabama to see his wife’s new niece. There was too much kennel cough in the doggy motels in Brookings, so little Baxter had to stay with us in ND.

Baxter is 5 years old, and just getting out of his puppy stage. Terriers are puppies for a long time. He is a very well trained (for a terrier) and on a very regular schedule for eating and eliminating. He loves to play fetch and tug. He is accustomed to being in a crate at night. He is a good traveler.

The visit went well. He didn’t bite the neighbor children. He didn’t get into fights with other dogs. He didn’t get loose or lost. He didn’t chew anything up. We spoiled him by leaving him out of his crate when we weren’t at home, and let him sleep under our bed sometimes.

With a terrier there are untold calamities that can occur. None occurred. We find ourselves missing his tearing around the house and demanding walks and to play with his chew toys.

Tell about your experiences with pet sitting or baby sitting. Any calamities?