2023, Family, Theatre, Uncategorized, work

December

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December. Wow. That was fast, wasn’t it?

Hasn’t been a lot happening on the farm this past week. Since I finished all the tillage last week and it was cold, too cold to work in the shop, I had to go back to work work, or at least, pretend I was while I did other things.

I had a straw delivery, more HVAC work at the Rochester Repertory Theatre, a lot of work on the final essay for my English class (turned in by the time you read this) and a couple hours spent trying to teach my mom how to use her new talking watch. She’s had a talking watch and would use that before she got the Alexa. But she’s out of practice now. I tried to encourage her that the watch would give her something to occupy her time. We’ll see.

A group of theatre students from the drama club at the college came and helped haul out the demolition detritus from the HVAC project at the Rep. Some years you get a really good group of kids, and this is one of them. A couple students are new and some I’ve known from previous years, including the ringleader, and I say that with the best of intentions. She’s the cheerleader, she’s the one that inspires them, and influences them to be so friendly and so willing and to make them all feel so included. And that extends not only to other student members, but to me as well. And I’ve told her, she’s the reason this bunch has coalesced as they have. When I asked if the drama club would help with some demolition, she sent a chat message to the group, simply saying, from what I heard, “Ben needs help”. And nine students showed up. Or maybe it was the fact I promised them food.  Some days we sure get lucky. To me, camaraderie has always been the best part. See the header photo of the group.

Still waiting to hear from Crop Insurance. The other day, on the back of an envelope, I spent some time on the computer finding the current balances due on various loans from this year. Machinery part loans through John Deere, crop loans for fertilizer and spraying, loans for seed, plus rent that I owe, estimate an amount for combining, an operating line of credit that I’ve made a lot of use of this year with the shop project, plus a credit card balance, all written on the back of the envelope. Then I would look at my checkbook balance. It was a larger gap than I would hope. Wild card being what to expect from Crop Insurance. I know it won’t be tens of thousands, it will probably be a few thousand dollars, and if we strictly focus on this year‘s crop loans , it will come out pretty even. Again, we are so lucky, and so fortunate: we own our home, we don’t have a mortgage on any of the land, Kelly continues to support me in the fashion to which I have become accustomed, and we have a warm home and warm clothes, and even with my shriveled-up eyeballs, we are healthy. I have nothing to complain about.

I saw a survey recently, asking if you would rather have a job you loved but that didn’t pay much, or a job you hated but it paid a lot. And most people said the job they hated because money gives you options. I have to agree, money does give you options, but I feel like I’d rather take the job I love. Maybe that’s because we are already in a comfortable spot, and we have a few options.

This weekend I think we really need to get snow fence up, it’s not gonna get much warmer. I have that old disc that needs to be cut up and loaded on the trailer for scrap iron, I would like to get that done this weekend. I bought some tarps that I intend to hang in the machine shed to create a bit of a fourth wall so I can try to contain some heat in the shop end and work in there a little more. There are a few things on my summer 2023 ‘to do’ list that I’m beginning to think I may have to move to my 2024 list.  Again, if I finish the list, I didn’t have high enough goals.

LOVE OR MONEY?

2023, Health, Medicine

Mindfulness

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​A mental state achieved by concentrating on the present moment, while calmly accepting the feelings and thoughts that come to you,

Mindfulness is a therapeutic strategy all the rage in mental health treatment. I personally find it annoying and tiresome to pay attention to what is going on in my thoughts and my body for extended periods of time, It has been very helpful lately, however, as I have struggled with some pain.

I have had crappy posture all my life. I slouch, even when I am sitting. I probably have a weak upper body and don’t do enough exercise. A few years ago I was having a great deal of back pain and found that I have lumbar scoliosis. I had Physical Therapy, and that helped a lot. I didn’t change my posture, though. Last year I struggled with sciatica down both legs, and PT also helped with that. For the past couple of months, though the sciatica came back with a vengeance, and there have been times I thought I needed a cane as my left leg would give out on me with intense pain while I walked, and I was afraid I was going to fall. I have a lumbar support chair at work that that didn’t help at all.

I decided I needed to do something about this, and I realized that when I sit, walk, or stand (especially in the kitchen when I cook) I slump my lower back outward in such a way that I was pinching a nerve in my left leg. I have started to direct my attention to my lower back and its position, keeping it straight, and for two weeks now my leg pain has disappeared. My lower back has protested somewhat as I am making it go into a position it hasn’t had to be in for some time, but I think I am on the right track. I am mindful of my back position when I drive, when I sit at my desk, when I stand, and when I walk. I hope that it will become automatic for me one of these days, but I may have to resign myself to have to practice mindfulness for a long time.

What do you need to be mindful of? What are you prone to ignore that you should pay attention to?

2023, Business, Food, Kids, Travel

Goo Goo’d

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One of the places that Henrietta and I visited in Nashville was the original Goo Goo Cluster store – it’s downtown just a block off of  Broadway. For those of you not from the south, a Goo Goo Cluster is a candy bar, similar to a Nut Goodie.  Instead of the maple center of a Nut Goodie, Goo Goo Clusters have a nougat/caramel center.  Goo Goo Clusters are VERY Nashville and you can find them everywhere, even at the register of a pizza place where we ate one night.  I knew about Goo Goos from programs that I’ve run in Nashville – it’s a fun welcome gift and I’ve purchased them for groups several times but had never actually tried one. 

The storefront isn’t a large space – most Goo Goo Clusters are made in a huge factory these days – but they make premium Clusters at the storefront and have some historical photos and old equipment on display.  And merchandise, of course.  Like usual, I sent several photos of t-shirts to YA to see if she liked any of them.  She thought about the long-sleeve cream version but eventually decided against it.  Just as well, because I got one of that design and she probably wouldn’t have been excited about us wearing matching shirts!

I also purchased a couple of boxes of Clusters to take home.  It wasn’t until I was home that I noticed that the Peanut box was mis-printed.  That’s a pretty big fail in my book.  Hopefully no one lost their job over it.  I thought about saving it – maybe someday it will be valuable – but decided against it.  I’ll have photos and a nice t-shirt to remember my visit.  (They tasted just fine despite the misspelling.)

Do you have a favorite candy bar?

2023, Business, Family, home

Home Project Lessons

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I learned a couple of things during the course of our bathroom project.

First… do everything in your power to get a good contractor.  Hugo was highly recommended (by my next-door neighbor, who is the head of construction, maintenance project and capital planning for the Minneapolis schools.  Hugo communicated well through-out, was easy going, delivered bad news gently and, of course, did a nice job at a good price.

Second… also do everything in your power to have a handy person living in your house with you – especially someone who is invested in the outcome of your project.  I have YA for this.  She is MUCH handier than I am, as she is more patient as she goes about whatever she is working on.  She installed the toilet paper holder and the towel racks.  She un-installed the new light sconces because she thought there was a “ridge” along the edge, spackled and sanded and then re-painted.  She also installed two slider baskets on the bottom shelves of the vanity so it would be easy to get at our stuff.  And she also took a teeny paintbrush from my studio to “straighten” a couple of the paint seams. 

And she gets credit for most of the decisions in the bathroom.  She picked the tile, the flooring, the wainscotting design, the medicine cabinet and the light sconces.  I had final approval but most of the time, her choice was OK with me.

So between Hugo and YA, I don’t really get any credit for the bathroom, unless you count having to arrange all the financing!

Any lessons you’ve learned this week?

2023, home, Uncategorized

Great Expectations

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Yesterday marked exactly eight weeks since our bathroom project started. It started as what I thought would be a quick (and inexpensive) fix of my weird shower system and very quickly went straight downhill. The hot water assembly was so old that when an interior piece of the handle broke, those words “not up to code” were uttered (for two different parts of the bathroom) and started that proverbial domino effect.

When the contractor was finalizing his proposal, I asked him for a guesstimate on how long it would take.  He said four weeks.  I assumed he was padding that and then padded it again myself so I wouldn’t be upset if the bathroom wasn’t up and running again in a month.  Good thing.

The first issue was that the plumber put in the wrong tub for the project.  It took several days to get this resolved;  I ended up having the contractor replace the tub and I stopped payment on the plumbers until they refunded a chunk of change.

Second issue was the tile.  We chose a tile that showed in stock at our local Home Depot.  The day we went in to order it, the person who helped us said “Oh yeah, we took a pallet of this down yesterday – there’s plenty.”  When contractor went to pick it up the next day, Home Depot said they didn’t have enough. This is when having a good contractor comes in handy – he beat them up enough that they ended up getting it at another store and delivering it right to the house.

Third issue was the vanity.  Home Depot SAID that it would be delivered in 2-4 days.  They must have meant hours on Mercury, because it certainly didn’t arrive within 4 days.  Then when it did arrive, they informed me that they couldn’t deliver it up the steps onto the front porch because I hadn’t paid the additional “in house” delivery fee.  Grrr….  Luckily my next-door neighbor was our in his yard and between him and me and YA, we got it onto the porch fairly easily.  Of course, when the contractor arrived the next morning and opened it up, it was broken:

Since the return process didn’t go smoothly, I ordered the second one sent to the store.  After another set of Mercury-long days, I got multiple messages via text and email saying different things about where the vanity actually was.  Called Home Depot and got told the vanity was at the store.  I called the store and talked somebody into checking that it was actually there.  Called contractor (I spent a lot of time on the phone for this project) and told him he could pick up vanity in the morning.  Then lo and behold, overnight I got an email saying vanity had arrived at the store broken.  Apparently when the guy at the store told me it was there, it hadn’t been taken off the pallet yet so they didn’t realize it was broken.  Sigh.  I made kind of a large stink at that point.  Not sure if it helped or not but the third vanity arrived undamaged.  And even though the store said they had checked it, my contractor made them open it up so HE could check. 

Did I mention that during the tear-down process, the toilet got cracked?  The brand new toilet that we had put in just seven months ago?  Contractor took full responsibility and ordered a new tank.  In the meantime, I’m here to tell you that FlexSeal really works.  Not sure you can really seal  up a boat and drive around the Everglades like in their commercial, but it held the toilet together really well until the next tank arrived yesterday.

Now I realize that this isn’t too bad compared to a lot of the horror stories out there, including some we’ve heard here, but it was enough that the contractor’s 4 weeks and my 6 weeks weren’t padded enough.  But overall I’m feeling relatively lucky; this is the second major project that hasn’t been nearly as bad as I expected.   Before and after pictures tomorrow!

How do you keep your expectations in check?

Automotive, holidays, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Driving Me Crazy

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When YA was first driving, I asked a good friend of mine, who had two daughters older than YA, “when will I be able to get in a car with her while she’s driving, and not fear for my life.”   Without even a blink, Lori said “when you stop getting a car with her.”  I laughed at the time but 13 years later, I realize she was absolutely right.

YA wanted to drive on Thanksgiving.  She said it was to see if she could get better mileage on her new car (she bought it in July) but I think it was really to show it off to the Thanksgiving crowd.  She drives closer to other cars than I do and it makes me nervous.  I put my foot out a couple of times as if I could brake.  YA thought this was pretty funny.

She did NOT think it was funny on the way home.  It was dark and a couple of times she pulled into a lane with very little space between us and the car in front.  I tell myself that she actually drives more these days than I do and she hasn’t had an accident yet.  But I’ll admit that at one point I gasped and threw my hands out in front of me.  It was involuntary.  She gave me a stern warning and I sat on my hands the rest of the way home.

I don’t have these kind of issues when I’m riding with other folks.  I went all over Nashville two weeks ago with my friend Pat driving and never flinched once!

Do prefer to be the driver or the passenger?

2023, Automotive, Family, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Brevity? None Here!

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I hope everyone was able to have the kind of Thanksgiving they wanted.

My friend Jia, teaching English over in South Korea, didn’t get a Thanksgiving this year and she missed it a lot.

Someday I need to learn brevity. But not today!

I figured out how to get 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag (from last week), you just get rid of 5 pounds. That happen when my truck had a dead battery. Or two. (because it’s a diesel, it uses two batteries to start) so the whole trip to Northfield and then John Deere got postponed and instead, I went out and finished chisel plowing.

This picture is the last bit of ground to be worked up. And that was a ‘mic drop’ moment. Whew. If you notice the line on the hood of the tractor, I scrubbed the left side to remove the grime, but not the right side. It DOES look nicer, and make a difference and I’d like to get the rest scrubbed off. Depends on the weather. I used the hose and washed off the chisel plow and some of the tractor, since the pressure washer is already tucked away for winter and too much trouble to get back out. (Boy, next year, with my new heated shop, it won’t be such an issue! Maybe!)

A highlight for this last day of fieldwork was adding a steering wheel spinner. Dad had them on all the tractors. Back in the 1990’s, my hand would cramp up (already had carpel tunnel, evidently) and I took them all off. Now, making all the turns on the ends of the fields, with my fingers tucked around a steering wheel spoke, makes my fingers sore. And since I had carpel tunnel surgery several years ago, I put spinners back on. It worked well.

When you look at this photo, you’ll see two fields planted to rye:

on the left and right of the tractor. It’s hard to tell how much of that is oats regrowing or the rye I planted late. The oats will not over-winter; it will die off. The rye will survive and grow again. Meaning come spring, and these fields will be planted to corn, I’ll need to have the rye “terminated”. Plowing it up won’t stop it. And if it’s a warm wet spring and it’s late spraying, it will be really tall, meaning there ends up being a lot of trash (plant material) to move through the equipment and it makes a tough seed bed. So, we’ll see. I look at this photo and I see a potentially difficult spring, and a leaking hydraulic hose on the chisel plow, and how I should replace all the hydraulic hoses on it, and the chisel shovels I need to replace. But the sky is pretty.

Doing the fieldwork really is meditative. I had my tractor buddy with me and I saw bald eagles. Boy, there was a lot of ears of corn on the ground this year, in some fields more than others. Damn deer, they tear off a lot of ears and nibble on it a bit. And it was a mixed bag this year because of the drought. The stalks were shorter than normal, and more brittle than normal, and then because the stalks and corn dried out sooner, it was easy for the deer to reach them, easier to pull off, easier for all the kernels to pop off the ear.

Driving around, I would see ‘combine loss’ in the fields, kernels that didn’t get into the combine. Kernels on the ground is not helpful and it means money lost. There are a lot of extra attachments to help corn or soybeans get into the combine. Air systems to blow kernels in, brushes to help feed the kernels in, extra brushes so they don’t pop out. But I don’t own the combine, so… not much I can do about that. Kernels might pop off because the soybean pods are so dry, they split open just from being ‘jostled’ before the combine header gets to them. Or the corn ear might break off the stalk, hit the header, and fall on the ground, or hit hard enough the kernels fly off. Harvesting is kind of a cataclysmic process, yet it needs to be somewhat gentle not to damage the kernel. There’s a lot happening in the moment in the combine, and it’s not surprising to see kernels on the ground. But there was a lot this year, and it means money lost and it’s kinda frustrating because there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll try calling it the angels share.

We got some mail order pork delivered In a box with dry ice. I got some hot water and we had some fun.

You wouldn’t think the most dangerous part of farming would be trying to adjust the right-hand mirror on the tractor. It’s 8 feet up, out in the middle of nothing. When at home, I use a step ladder to adjust it. Then out in the field, I hit a tree branch and it gets knocked out of place. And there I am climbing up over the three-point hitch and onto the tire trying to get this back out in place and focused right. And trying to get back down, I think about all the hard, sharp edges, and pointy things I can snag myself on, or fall on to, and sometimes I leave the mirror where it is. Newer tractors have steps to reach allow cleaning the windows and reaching the mirror. And the ‘delux’ cab, has remote mirrors. Someday.

Next week, did we make any money?

ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY OF THIS?  YOUR LAST ‘MIC DROP’ MOMENT?

2023, Family, Fantasy, Music, Uncategorized

Would You Like To Be A Pip?

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For some odd reason, Husband was musing recently about what it was like being a backup singer in one of the various musical groups from the 1960’s and 1970’s. He thought it would be fun to be a Miracle, a Blue Note, or a Pip.

This brought up memories for me of the Ronettes, the Marvelettes, and the Vandellas, although I don’t think it would be much fun to be an Ikette. I would have to put up with Ike.

What backup group would you like to sing with? Got any good ideas for names of new backup groups?

Baboon Achievers, Media, Music, Stories

The Sound of Our Lives – Steve Grooms

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It’s been two years since we lost Steve.  Below is one of his most iconic posts (in my view).

I’m passionate about music and life, so it is not surprising that the two often meld for me. Certain moments become inextricably associated with the music I was listening to at that time. The most familiar example of this is how couples can have a song or performance that becomes “our” song. But that sort of things happens over and over for people like me. We end up associating music with certain times places we have known. I keep hearing the phrase: “the soundtrack for my life.” And that, for many people, colors how they think of moments from their past.

The worst place I ever lived was a shabby little house on the West Bank near Seven Corners, but that place is also associated with the moment I discovered the music of Leo Kottke at the nearby Scholar Coffeehouse. As awful as that house was, Leo’s music was one of the happiest discoveries of my life. Some of the associations we make are complicated.

Sometimes the soundtrack we can’t help associating with something is wildly inappropriate to anyone else. I discovered the Lord of the Rings trilogy early in grad school. At the same time, I was listening to a lot of Ravi Shankar sitar music. Clearly, the epic trilogy is as thoroughly European and Nordic as Shankar’s music is Indian, but when I read Tolkien I keep hearing sitar music. It is, after all, exotic, and I found the novels exotic.

I think of these matters a lot now because I keep encountering two types of music that are linked in my mind to the pandemic. I discovered the music of the traditional jazz band Tuba Skinny just as the virus reached the US and changed our lives. When I listen to YouTube videos of the band, as I do for maybe an hour each day, I keep reading comments from others who say they could not bear the pandemic without the uplift of Tuba Skinny music.

Similarly, early in the virus shutdown period, Mary Chapin Carpenter began recording Songs from Home. She films herself with her animals (White Kitty and Angus, the golden retriever) at her farm home in Virginia. She delivers her performances (filmed on her phone, I think) with a breathy intimacy that is incredibly calming. Unless you somehow hate her music, I urge you to sample some Songs From Home to read the comments of all the people who say their sole salvation in this difficult time is the music she makes for them.

What about you? What music do you associate with particular moments from your past? Do you have “our song” with anyone?

2023, Business, home, Technology

Photo Finish

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In the last seven weeks I haven’t gone more than a day or so without having to stop by either Home Depot or my local hardware store.  There are only a couple of bits left until the bathroom is completely finished, but we are now slowly putting it back together.  This has driven me to the hardware store several times in the last week.  Screws, anchors, springs, plugs, paintbrushes….  I feel like I’m practically living there.

Last Saturday morning, they were slammed; I wasn’t the only one with a home project.  Rather than wait around for help, I ventured to the back where the entire wall is filled with drawers and boxes of nails, screws, bolts and the like.  I needed some kind of rubber plug for the end of a spring I had bought the day before to hopefully allow us to keep using our current shower caddy.  (Anything to staunch the flow of cash into this bathroom!)  I did actually find something that would work perfectly.

None of the store employees was at the back of the store and I didn’t trust myself to remember the part number or even the price until I got to the register, as I had a few other things to pick up.  Although I had a pen, I didn’t have anything to write on.  I was just about to write on my hand when I suddenly realized I could use my phone to take a photo of the price and sku.  Not an earth-shattering thought but I’d never thought of it before.  Snapped the above picture and headed back to pick up my other items.  The young cashier did actually thank me profusely.  Apparently most people expect the employees to know all the prices which means a quick trip to the back of the store to check; I got good-customer brownie points!

When was the last time technology pleasantly surprised you?