Horse Manure Park

It was nice and sunny and warm yesterday. Today it is cold and really windy. The wind started last night and you could hear it howling through the trees... very Halloweenish. We plan on doing a little trick-or-treating tonight, but only to homes we know. John and Becky's, Jon and Char's, Korey and Shelli's. That's about it. Halloween isn't what it used to be; I guess I've already talked about that before. Turner Movie Classics (one of my favorite channels) is playing old horror films all day. Right now Cry of the Werewolf (1944) is playing. Cheesy, but still kind of cool in its own way. Beth called State Farm today and the insurance adjustor is on vacation this week (of course he is), so everything has been pushed back a week. I suppose deer hunting or pheasant hunting is going on and everything comes to a standstill when that happens. Hunting is something I've never gotten into. I understand the necessity of it and for many people, deer hunting is

Up early this morning. The dogs woke me up around 6:20 a.m. with their rooting and snorting in bed, their canine way of telling me "Okay, we gotta pee now." Chilly outside, 23 degrees, clear skies. It won't be long and 23 degrees will feel pretty good. So I got up, let the dogs out into the backyard and now I'm brewing a pot of Startbuck's House Blend coffee. Smells good. The house is quiet, it is still dark outside, the wife and kid are sound asleep. I like this "me" time, even though it doesn't last long. As my coffee brewed, I grabbed a bowl out of the cupboard and poured myself a bowl of one of my favorite childhood cereals, Sugar Smacks. But to my horror, when I read the front of the box, it was no longer called Sugar Smacks! What the hell is going on here? "Dig 'em," who has long been the cutesy frog mascot of Sugar Smacks, was still prominently displayed on the cereal box. The cereal looked and tasted exactly the same (oh, the

Sitting here watching Monday Night Football. Green Bay Packers vs. Denver Broncos... but ESPN seems not to have noticed that any other players are on the field except for Brett Favre. They were celebrating his career on the preshow, then at one point during a Packers drive, the camera never came off Favre while his wife (I think her name is Mrs. Favre) was being interviewed in the booth by the three stooges that host Monday Night Football. Then they went to a commercial break and guess what? Yep, Favre was on a Wrangler jeans commercial. Heck, even when Denver has the ball and Favre is on the sidelines, they keep showing close-ups of him picking his nose, popping a Vicodin or two, or itching his crotch. Good God, enough of frickin' Brett Favre already. About every 10 minutes or so, the camera cuts to Favre's wife in the stands, where she sits prim and proper cheering on her hubby. I can honestly say that I have had to fight off waves of nausea. It's no secret that I hate B

Sunday night at the Branstners. Beth is at work so Ava and I are hanging out. She's piling her stuffed animals up in a giant dog pile, saying something like "Zebras!" although she doesn't have a zebra in her stuffed animal collection. She could be saying something else; I am still trying to decipher real words (and she says many, even two or three word sentences) from babble. I would have to say she's pretty darn smart. Catches on quick, she does. We'll go trick or treating on Wednesday. Beth got the night off, so we can make knock on a couple of doors. Trick or treating just isn't like what it used to be. When I was a kid, the parents would drop the kids off at one end of town and say, "Okay, have fun. When your done, come up to the bar, that's where we'll be." Of course, that's growing up a Hewitt, Minnesota. I sometimes get teased for growing up in a such a small town, but I experienced something that not many kids can

I mentioned that our camper has a hole in it on my last blog. Yes, a branch seems to have hit the top of our camper and did a swell job of impaling the top. I had the camper set up to winterize it, then it rained for a week (last week we got over three inches of rain). The branch must have hit it last week or the week before, because it was fine when I set it up. I finally got out to the camper last Tuesday and discovered a spot in the ceiling where water had leaked in. I couldn't find a source for the leak, so I took the top down and BINGO, I found the culprit. A small piece of wood was imbedded in the top of the camper, obviously the remnants of a branch, about the size of a quarter. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but we reported it to the insurance company immediately and tarped the camper to prevent anymore damage in case it decides to rain again. State Farm is sending out an adjuster on Monday or Tuesday, then I have to get an estimate at a repair place.

I'm not sure what to expect here. I cancelled the subcription to my Geocities website today, after trying to keep the web site afloat for a couple years. I had problems with site functions working correctly and I just haven't had enough time to keep things updated. I am a firm believer in that if you like to do something, you make time for it; but as it turns out, each time I tried to update things on the old web site, something wouldn't work right and I found myself thinking more and more... "why am I paying for this?" Plus, the thing I used the most was my blog... because I like writing... but I had a tendency to not post many blogs because I felt guilty everytime I logged onto my web site because I had been neglecting it -- blah, blah, blah. Maybe I am making excuses for closing down my web site, but it was $60 a year and I basically used one function over the past four months: the blog. This site is free . Not a tough decision, to tell the truth. So I will wr