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Pancake Restaurant Was Nasty

This morning I went to a pancake restaurant in a town that I don’t usually go to.  I met a friend there for brunch.  I ordered what I usually order at “my” local pancake house – fried potatoes, and poached eggs.  I asked that the potatoes be fried without any onions, because I don’t like onions!  Well, this place just could not seem to get it right!  It was awful.  Poached eggs are supposed to be soft and runny in the middle, and these were like hard boiled eggs.  The potatoes came out with more onions in them than potatoes, and the coffee and toast were stone cold!

When I complained to the waitress, she sent the breakfast back but still nothing was right.  She brought it back a piece at a time, and the potatoes still tasted strongly of onion, the coffee was still cold, and so were the eggs.  I was totally disgusted and left without eating any breakfast at all.  I won’t be going back to THAT place again!

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Looked for It

Guest post from: Kent Lara

I knew I needed to find a local internet provider GA to get online from home – work was riding me hard and I needed to work even after I left the office just to keep up. I work at a really young, fun company but your results are what get you promoted and some people had less of a life than I did so they were able to work late and make more results. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but for me it’s all about getting ahead before I’m married and have kids so I kicked it into high gear and set myself up a home office in the second bedroom. I love being able to kick back and watch my nightly shows WHILE I’m working and I’m lucky because my girlfriend waits tables so she’s out a lot at night. I don’t really mind putting in the extra hours as long as it’s going to get me somewhere at some point. Let’s just hope the big bosses notice my effort!

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Flat Tire

On my way home from work I had a flat tire. I was glad it was on the way home from work, and not on the way TO work, as it would have made me late for work and the office has a pretty tough “tardy” policy. (Note to self – look for a new job, these people are not very nice!)

I was very glad that I have AAA insurance for just this kind of thing, I used my cell phone to call them and they sent a truck out with a guy to change my tire. I’m really glad my spare was good! So tomorrow I have to take my old tire to the tire shop and see if it can be repaired, or if I will need a new one. The guy who changed my tire seemed to think I was going to need a new one, and I suspect he’s right. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another! Money doesn’t seem to sit in my bank account very long!

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Pause and Reflect

Well, even though I have a little tree, I haven’t finished decorating it yet.  I ran into a little bit of a snag when I opened the boxes of ornaments.  These are the same ornaments that have decorated the family tree for many decades; perhaps even generations.  I found that every ornament that I saw brought back powerful memories of my family, and the sense of loss from having both of my parents taken from me so early in my life, such a short time ago, made it difficult to actually decorate the tree.

I know I’ll get through it, and the tree WILL get decorated, but it is going to take a long time to do it!  I think now I have a better understanding of how emotional my mother would get at Christmas time, when she would decorate the tree.  Her mother had made many of the ornaments, and so has she.  It truly IS a family tree, and right now there isn’t much family around to enjoy it.  Maybe it’s time I started thinking about taking on a family of my own and stop rattling around by myself in this big old farmhouse.

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Where Does The Time Go?

I cannot believe that it is December already!  Life on the farm has kept me so busy that the days seem to stretch on forever but they fly by.  I know that doesn’t make any sense at all.  Its just that I am so busy every day, doing really hard work that it just seems to never end, and I go to bed exhausted almost every day.  The alarm goes off in the morning way too early and before you know it another month has gone by!  I cannot believe that I turned the calendar page to December this morning!  I have mixed feelings about winter, some of the work of farming slows down, but tending the livestock in cold weather isn’t much fun!  At least I know how to dress for the cold weather, and I can spend a little bit more time relaxing a little bit here and there!

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Herd animals detecting magnetic field

I was reading that there was a study done about animals detecting the earth’s magnetic field.  The study showed that cows and deer tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction.  The scientists say they are surprised that hunters and herdsmen and farmers didn’t notice it.  Who says farmers didn’t notice it?  Did they ask any farmers?  Maybe farmers noticed it but were too busy farming to care about something like that and get all excited about it and report it to a scientific community.  I mean really, why would a farmer even think that anyone would care about something like that?  Big whoop!

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Mending fences

Well yesterday was a little more work than I had planned on.  Some drunk lost control of his truck and ran off the road and through one of my fences.  Some of the cattle escaped the pasture.  So I had to spend several hours rounding up the escapees and moving them to a different pasture while I mended the broken fence.  This happens from time to time, so I always have the materials on hand to mend the fences, but it is always an aggravation when it happens.  I wish all cars and trucks had a meter in them that tested the breath of the driver and if they register as having too much alcohol in them the vehicle wouldn’t start.  It was a drunk driver that caused the accident that killed my parents, so I don’t have a lot of patience or empathy for any of them.

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My Parents Grandfather Clock on the Farm

My sister has been after me to go ahead and give her the grandfather clock that has been sitting in the same spot in this old house for as long as the house has been here, our parents treasured this wonderful piece that was made by the famous Howard Miller Company so long ago. I have mixed feelings about moving it and allowing it to leave the place that my father so lovingly placed it for my mother, way before any of us kids were even born, but I know that it would be in good hands with her at her place. She has a place all ready picked out and ready, just waiting for me to give her the go ahead.

Too bad I can’t talk her into buying one of her own to pass down, I know of a great company that has a great selection of grandfather clocks that I found one day while surfing the net, looking at the different styles and varieties that can be found online. Looking to see if I could find one that looks just like the one here at the farm, at 1-800-4clocks.com they have more wonderful old and new time pieces that I spent a good amount of timing gazing at that really peaked my interest, but none that looked exactly like our family’s antique grandfather clock, close but no cigar.

They even offer an interesting blog here that I took the time to check out and found some good information and was entertaining as well. One in particular that I found useful spoke about maintenance for grandfather clocks that I was glad to read and pick up some tips from, it’s all good.

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What’s Up With That

Spent most of the day looking for the cans of degreasers that I swore were kept in the grey out building behind the garage. I always seem to be looking for something around here. If I didn’t know any better I would swear that some one is playing jokes on me, but considering that I am the only one that lives here and that I rarely have any visitors I really don’t think that that is the case. My sister tells me that she thinks that it is our late father messing with my head like he used to like to do to me while he was still on this earth. Or that I am just getting old and burned out, which is the explanation that I believe to be true.

I really could use a vacation, but I can’t leave this house and the farm to run it’s self for even two days in a row for heaven’s sake. A week away from here, some where nice and warm by the water sounds wonderful, but I don’t see that happening any time soon unless I can find some one to take over all the things that need to be done around the old homestead and I don’t know even one person that I could rely on to due that for me.

In the mean time I guess I’ll need to take a trip into town tomorrow and buy a new can of degreaser. As much as I am burned out from being here all alone all the time I really hate going into town.

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A Court Reporter In The Family

With so many jobs being taken away due to so many of today’s technologies that have taken the place of jobs that have previously been handled by “real people” I am so glad to know that Court Reporting is still being done by humans. For some reason I really thought that Court Reporters were a thing of the past, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that one of my nieces was going to work as one come the first of the year. It’s not the career that I envisioned her getting into but it certainly isn’t a bad choice for her at this point in her life.

I have always been one to refuse using those self check out options at all of the grocery stores for various reasons. The main one is that I would not like to see our cashiers jobs taken away. Too many jobs have been lost over these past several years and it doesn’t look like many jobs are going to be opening up any time soon. I have to admit that I also enjoy having someone to talk with and do the work for me!