And January's not over yet

Another tough month here on the farm. The dryer died. The washer might as well have died since it's been leaking for years and stained clothes with greater efficacy than it cleaned. Finally, the bunny died last night. He live a long (for an outdoor rabbit), and seemingly happy life.

On the up side, with the economy in the tank, we found a good deal on a new dryer, plus Lowes had a new-yet-once-returned-and-repaired washer for less than 1/2 price. My socks are now white.

Madeline's back in school, where she just experienced the coldest day in Chicago since 1996. Good thing she got outfitted for Hanukkah and Christmas. Our weather's been no picnic either. We woke up to -11 this week, and have 7 or 8 inches of snow on the ground. The horses' faces are frosty, and their urine freezes into these slabs of ice and bedding. Cool thing about the new 4x4 truck — Robin was able to give us a hillbilly plow job, where she drove up and down the drive, smashing down all the snow.

Working the polls

A lot has happened in the past month - we visited Madeline at DePaul, Pony came home - but I'll get back to that sometime sooner or later.

Yesterday, I was the clerk at one of our local election poll.  As clerk, I had to write the name and address of everyone who voted in the poll book.  I forgot my Ibuprofin.  My hands hurt.  Some interesting (to me) observations.

1. Someone in charge of creating the voting process at the Ohio Board of Elections (or maybe it's the Licking County Board of Elections) has a background in computer science.  We vote primarily using the Diebold touch-screen machines.  As part of the polling place set-up, we hang a sign in each machine, numbering them - 0, 1, 2, ... The only people I know who count from 0 are programmers.  And not just any programmers, but those that work in languages rooted in 'C', the languages that have curley braces, semi-colons, and base arrays at 0.
2. Big turnout.  Including our absentee voters, 85% of our registered voters voted.
3. My neighborhood has more Democrats in it than I thought - but still not very many.
4. My attempt at very subtle and subliminal pursuasion was futile.  A poll is a partisan-free zone.  No political buttons, shirts, hats, signs.  I wore my Blue Man Group t-shirt.  We still voted McCain over Obama 2-1.
5. If you want to avoid the lines, come in the afternoon. We had a line at the door before we opened, were packed until noon, and had a steady line until about 1pm.  Then it was quiet until about 3:30.  I thought we'd get hammered after work, but though we were busy, it wasn't hearly as bad as the morning.  (Could be there weren't too many voters left - over half our registered voters had voted by noon).
6. Give yourself plenty of time to vote absentee.  We had a number of voters who sent in absentee ballot request forms, but never received their ballots.  Some were mailed to the wrong address (in Cincinnati!), some never showed (like Madeline's). Those who lived in town could come in and vote a provisional ballot.  Folks out of town were screwed.

It was a long day.  Showed up at 5:30am, got home around 10:00pm.  I'll do it again.

Great weekend

Went to cousin-in-law Catherine's wedding this weekend. Beautiful bride, great weather, good food, lots of family face-time.  What could be better?

Best comment of the weekend came from father of the bride.  "You know you're getting old when your moustache is whiter than your teeth."

Rough week

This was a rough week.

Early last week I helped Perrin move the final load of stuff to her new apartment. She's still in and out, coming home a couple times a week to ride the horses, but I think we are officially empty nesters. Robin got a part-time job as a cashier at Meijers 4 nights a week, so for the most part I'm home alone. If I start to blabber, you'll know why.

Then, last Tuesday, Rocky, who was 16 or 17 and diagnosed with diabetes this summer, died. (The girls, when they were like 3 and 6 picked Rocky out from a litter of barn kittens where we found Lilly. Named him Rocky because he "dropped like a rock.") It was pretty abrupt too. He was old and skinny, but seemed to be enjoying life. Then Tuesday morning when I went out to take care of the horses, he was in the front yard having, what I thought were the death rattles. He hung on until that evening, when I finally took him to the vet to have him put down.

Then Chloe, our 3 year old Siamese cross disappeared for a couple days, and when she returned she looked bad. Severely dehydrated, she spent the night at the vet getting IV fluids. Blood tests showed her liver wasn't functioning right. Two days later, she still wasn't eating on her own and had to be put down. Her loss has been particularly hard on Robin, who loved Chloe dearly.

Then this Tuesday, 3 batters into Red Rock's softball game, I went to field an infield pop-up along the third base line. Not sure what happened, but the ball missed my glove and caught me square in the face (I lost the ball in the lights - at least that's the story I'm going with). At least the infield fly rule was in effect, so the batter was out anyway, and even though the ball was still live, the base runners had the common courtesy not to advance. Broke my nose pretty good. Blood everywhere (good thing our shirts are red). Our catcher is a nurse, so I was patched up pretty well, and carted off to the e.r. - where I waited for 3 hours only to have a nurse practitioner wash the blood from my face, tape some clean gauze under my nose, and send me on my way. On the up-side, I'd rather break my nose than loose teeth. I hope this doesn't make me shy from the ball next week. The swollen face and black eyes will give me bouncer cred when I work the door at the Village Inn Saturday night.

One down, one to go

We dropped Madeline off at DePaul on Sunday.  Thinking back on all the good times, and learning, of my college years, I'm a bit envious.  Her dorm is sweet.  We moved her in without incident, got the fridge fired up, made a trip to the local grocery to stock it up, then headed back home.  Per Madeline's request, there were no tears on the sidewalk.

Get Rocked

In the first game of our summer co-ed league single-elimination playoffs, Red Rock Pub pulled out one of the great all-time come-backs last night. Defense started out rocky, giving up 5 in the first and another 5 in the second. Offensively, our bats weren't weak, but the balls seemed to have a homing device for the opposing players, the runs were scarce. Just just barely sneaking in under the 12-run mercy rule, we entered the seventh down 16-5.

Then the sun came out (really, it did), angels sang (or was that Mary Jo cheering us on from the bench?), and a miracle occurred. Red Rock put up a 13 run seventh, 7 of those runs with 2 out, to put us up by 2. An outstanding defensive bottom of the seventh secured the win.

Man, it doesn't get much more fun than that!

Lash Chevrolet is rude

Our local Chevy dealer, Lash Chevrolet, is staffed with rude and unhelpful employees. I wouldn't buy a vehicle there, or have a vehicle serviced there, no matter what.

This started when I called the service department to ask if there were any known trouble spots I should be on the lookout for on the '03 Silvarado I was going to look at. The guy on the phone made it pretty clear that if I wasn't buying the truck there, he had no interesting in helping me out

A couple weeks ago, I was looking at used trucks on Lash's lot. They had nothing for me at the time, but said they'd look around and let me know if they found anything. They also asked that I call if I found a truck, so they could stop looking for me. (1) I never heard from them. (2) Today when I called the sales department back to let them know I found a truck, I took the opportunity to share politely my experience with the service department. The salesman hung up on me.

Moral of the story:

Never deal with Lash Chevrolet

By the way Coughlin Ford has always been helpful and polite, and has gone out of their way to help me out. Maybe that's why I've bought a truck and a car from them, and why all my Fords are serviced there.