Recent police blotter. Again, in a small town you can probably ask for gardening tips from the cops… and get an answer.
Yes, but was the skunk breaking the law?
Archive for October, 2010
Observations of Small Town Living (OOSTL)
Monday, October 18th, 2010Observations of Small Town Living (OOSTL)
Monday, October 18th, 2010You know you’re in a small town when the school lunch menus are published in the local paper. Nice too see that the kids are eating healthy meals.
Warnings taken to a whole new level
Monday, October 18th, 2010While riding ATVs with a friend we came upon the most fear inducing no trespassing sign yet. It’s not that we believed the sign, we feared anyone who would take the time to create it. Needless to say, we didn’t trespass.
Health Scare
Friday, October 15th, 2010Myself and 10 millions of my closest friends learned about a new wrinkle in our really-smart government’s newest health care law. Just a few months ago, my small company started providing Health Care Savings Accounts (HSAS). Because we can only afford catastrophic health coverage, the HSAS allows us to squirrel a little money away to pay for services should something happen to us. Let’s just say that our deductible is so high that it’s not likely that we’ll use our insurance unless we’re admitted into a hospital. Everything else, which is just about everything else, comes out of our pocket or our HSAS account.
Enter, The Government. Now, to use money in our HSAS to get a simple Tylenol (and 15,000 other regular over the counter items) we need to make an appointment with a doctor, and get a prescription. I’m sure this will be cheaper than that that regressive old way of picking up over the counter medicines while grocery shopping. Does the extra fees go to the poor, the less fortunate, spreading the wealth around — NOPE, it goes to the doctor who gets paid to prescribe regular Tylenol.
A big thanks goes out to all those leaders in our government. I can’t wait for government-run health scare. It’s going to be the solution to all of our problems because our government tells us so and we must trust and obey those who control our life and our death.
In spite of having a deductible that is higher than several mortgage payments, I’ll take the old-way over the new-way any day. This is just the tip of the idiotic ice burg, I’m sure.
Patio and my big mouth
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010“Sure, I’d be happy to do that.” Like a signature on a contract I’d given my word to make my neighbor a patio. Thanks to my friends Tim and Pete (really good friends now that they’ve saved me from a heart attack) we completed the patio in record time (since this was the first patio that we put in and hopefully the last). I speak of this with all kinds of dread because I knew I’d break a nail or even sweat during the process.
Here’s Pete (left) and Tim working hard laying down pavers.
This is not to say that I wasn’t working hard as well. I had to do all the planning and supervising!
Needless to say that by the end of the day, I was bushed.
Many thanks go to Pete and Tim for their help with this project.Â
Observations of Small Town Living (OOSTL)
Monday, October 11th, 2010I gotta guy fer dat… Big towns, everything needed is within a 30 minute drive at some store. I used to buy candy bars that once were only available in Australia from a nearby market. Small town, not so much. In fact, many things you need aren’t at a store. But if you ask around, there’s always “a guy” who has or does that. If you don’t take the time to get to know as many people as possible, you may miss out on your six degrees of separation between you and the thing you need. The price you pay for this anti-social behavior is that you can probably buy it somewhere at a premium.
What you need in this rural area is often unheard of in the city.
Examples I’ve observed:
Len: Everything Horses
A few miles up the mountain live a great guy named Len. If you need to scramble to find a horse for your niece to ride – Len. Need horse manure for your garden, or in our cause lawn? Answer: Len. Here’s picture of a fresh trailer full of manure that I’m spreading out on the lawn in hopes that it will add some magic ingredient to grow grass. Now our yard smells like Len. Don’t tell him I said that or he’ll cut off my supply of poo.
Dale: What a lawn mower is to a suburban home, a chainsaw is around here. And rather than weeds, land owners often have to get rid of some of those pesky trees that have popped up over the last 25 years when nobody was looking. Jobs like this are often a bit more than the average home owner would want to tackle. And that’s where Dale comes in. Burning several million calories a day, he acts about 30 but is as “old as the hills” (his words, not mine). For the price of the donated trees, he’ll cut, split and haul away your troubles after burning the slash pile he created in the process. If you’re a person the burns wood to heat your home and can’t harvest your own due to injury or age, Dale will do everything he can to have you stocked up for the winter.
Got vermin too cute to kill? Yep, there’s a guy for that. Well, not just a guy. You can call just about any man, woman and child in the area who will gladly come over for some target practice before hunting season. That is, unless you have a no kill policy as we do (blame Jenny). So, the ground squirrels that are infesting our yard with bigger and bigger holes are trapped alive and taken away to a local nature preserve where they can happily live out the rest of their lives – til the coyotes get them (don’t tell Jenny). The coyotes give me $1 a head. I’m their guy for that.
Hairy-Eggs? My neighbor, Hairy (yes, that’s how you spell it), started growing chickens in his back yard. It wasn’t long before his new pets started producing more eggs that he and his wife could woof down. So, now Jenny and I get to enjoy cackle-berries that aren’t pasteurized, have thick tan shells, and are fertilized. Hairy says that fertilized eggs have less cholesterol and while that’s not true, we’re not going to correct him unless he reads this post. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you!
Idaho’s (not so famous) Ocean Seaport – no really!
Monday, October 11th, 2010Having discovered Idaho on the map only a few years before moving here (yeah, I too flunked that geometry class), I enjoy new discoveries about this wonderful state. For example, we have a ocean seaport – as in navigable by ocean going vessels. Here’s a picture and yes, this is Idaho.
Sure, you have to traverse your ocean going vessel 465 miles inland over eight dams and navigation locks on the Columbia-Snake River System to get to it, but the seaport of Lewiston Idaho is ready to ship your goodies anywhere in the world. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out why Chicago isn’t a seaport?