I PITY THE FOOL!!!!!

Ashtyn doin her Mr. T impression at bath time.

A Random Post

Never a dull moment, which means few moments to stop and blog.

As I told you before, Ashtyn got some tubes put in her ears about a week ago. We haven't seen a huge change in her personality as of yet. She babbles, walks and crawls around as much as she ever did before. Her sleep patterns took a turn for the worse the week following the appt., but it's gotten better the last few nights so at least we can get some sleep as well now. Yeah, we still go to bed early because she gets up early, but we'll take it!

Here are a couple of pics from the hospital, pre-op.


She had fun in the play area and Katie wanted to keep her surgery wear. She did look pretty cute in it.

Hopefully this is the first and last time that we need to have tubes put in for her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now, since there's so much that happens, but none of it good enough for a post in it's own. Random things that happen with us:

While watching the Olympics
Katie: When does Ooko Uno skate again?
Skeet: *Insert questioning look by me*
Katie: I know, I know, it's Apollo Uno........
Skeet: Ummmmmm..... Actually it's not, it's Apollo Ono.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my opinion, Katie got the best Valentines Day gift ever. Or at least the best besides a picture of me to hang at work. She got a pair of Oakley Sunglasses.

Pretty sure she's the only one in Bismarck with them since none of the dealer locations carried them in town and I had to order them off their website. Here's the ones she got.

For those of you that know me, you know I have an addiction to Oakley sunglasses. Not sure why, but I do. From the first pair I bought in about 1996 to the most recent ones, I still have them all. Except one pair that I took a bad hop grounder off the face with a few years ago.

She wanted to know one time how many of them I had. I told her, "don't worry about it."

She also isn't sure how many guns I have down in my gun cabinet and only I know where the keys are for it. Should be pretty easy to sneak a new one in down the road if need be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Katie was mad last night because her phone wouldn't charge. Turns out her charger was broke. I thought "Hmmm. Charger should at least last as long as the phone." Turns out she's had the same charger for the last THREE phones! I thought that every phone had a slightly different plug in so they could jab you $30 for a $2 cord on all new phones. Guess Alltel hasn't caught onto Verizon's game yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night Katie also made meatballs and gravy. As she was getting everything done she mentions in passing "startin to come together" and then asks me what movie thats from.......... There's two movies that I can recite front to back and show you all the mess ups on - Major League and Hoosiers. That quote is from Major League and Lou says it to his 3rd base coach Tim Leech as he's running out of the dugout.

I wore out 1 VHS tape of Major League watching that movie (for those of you old enough to remember VHS). I also wore out an 8-Track tape of 'Survivor' once as well..... for those of you old enough 8-Track. "IT'S THE, EYE OF THE TIGER, IT'S THE THRILL OF THE FIGHT!!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now, 10 random things I think I thought.

1.) A baby's interest level in something is double in proportion to your interest in it. You like your cell phone, remote control and iPod, they REALLY like your cell phone, remote control and iPod.

2.) Most everything gets easier with raising a child as they get older, except changing diapers.

3.) 9:30 is a bit late to be getting to bed.

4.) Coming home from daycare, the on ramp changes from 2 lanes to one. There's always 1 person who thinks they can leap frog the entire line in the driving lane. The other day, all of us in the driving lane teamed up to prevent her from getting over and she had to drop to the back of the pack. WOOO HOOO!!! Stay strong brothers.

5.) We can dress Ashtyn in a pink dress, with a pink coat and pink shoes and someone will inevitably still refer to her as 'him'.

6.) Apple with Cherries baby food is delicious. "Honest Katie, she was that hungry tonight! She wanted 2 packs instead of 1!"

7.) Getting a baby ready to go on a winter morning for daycare is like preparing for a Space Shuttle mission. The car seat even has the same 3 point latching system I think.

8.) The Twins need to sign Joe Mauer to a long term deal NOW!

9.) Ashtyn will probably see on TV at least parts of 162 Twins baseball games this year.

10.) I was watching the Price Is Right the other day. Drew Carey referred to the one prize as "a brand new color TV". Aren't we to the point yet that the color part is implied??

Bigfoot, Nessy and Fish Face

Ever notice that when theres something that your kid does that you'd like to get a photo or video of, they'll never do it on command? You have to be in the right place at the right time, like someone was for these two pics of Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster.


We've been trying to get Ashtyn to do her fish face for a picture for the better part of a month and either the camera is too slow in taking it, or when we try to imitate it to try to get her to do it, she looks at us like we got into a batch of the hippie lettuce.

And then by chance the other day she did it out of the blue while Katie was taking a random pic of her.

The other thing I've noticed is that things that used to excite the bejesus out of them one week turns into mundane the next, with no explanation. It was always easy to take her to a mirror and she would bust out laughing and then two days ago it was "yeah, I've seen myself in the mirror 437,000 times dad. That was so January."

Her new thing is to put random pieces of cloth in her mouth and crawl/walk around with them. She likes bibs the best, but socks or dishtowels work just as well.

As most of you know as well, Ashtyn went in for ear tubes yesterday. Everything went well - more on that later this week!

The Adventures of Little One

6 ear infections
5 COLDS AND SNIFFLES!!!
4 months not sleeping
3 something , something
2 teeth a cutting
And a case of RRRRRRRRR-SSSSSSSSS-VVVVVVVVVVV!!!!!!!

Say it to the tune of the ’12 Days of Christmas’ and you might get a mild giggle. I couldn’t think of anything for 3.

Little one is quite the trooper though! Even with all the ear infections, colds, etc., she’s a happy baby 90% of the time, which makes us wonder what she’ll be like after next week!

We’re not sure if Ashtyn has had 6 ear infections or just 1 since she was born that never really went away. I think there was one time we went to the Dr. though that they gave her ears the all clear so there was maybe a couple weeks that she was infection free. The big news though, is that she’ll be having tubes put in her ears next Tuesday! Kind of scary for mom and dad, but if it lets her get free of the infections we’re all for it!

She’s found a new gear these days and has discovered the joys of the pots and pans in the cabinets, how easily dish towels come out of drawers and that real cell phones are much better to chew on than fake ones. I even got out an old cell phone that powers up still, and she’d still rather play with ones that she can text or call random people with. FYI - if you get a text from me or Katie that says “XY^*XJDDLSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP&&&&&&” or a call that you hear jibberish on, it’s probably not from us – Ashtyn is just checkin in with her peeps.

Her taste buds are getting a workout these days as well as she’s moved into the next level of baby food. Gone are the single serving bananas or carrots. Now it’s squash and corn or apples and cherries. Katie is under the assumption that if she doesn’t like something, Ashtyn won’t either. “Yeah, I gave her peas tonight, she didn’t like them.” So the next night I feed her peas and she eats the whole package. Hmmmmmmmm, interesting!! I can’t wait for the day that she asks for seconds on pickled eggs, baked beans and onions. I bet she’ll like her steak medium-rare and her chili with more than just a hint of Tabasco in it as well.

Her other new favorites in no particular order are:
1) Standing - although she doesn't see a lot of point in it since she can't do more than take a step or two.
2) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the Hot Dog song.
3) Crawling as fast as she can away from mom and dad.
4) Reading 'Babys First Farm Book' and 'By The Light of the Silvery Moon'.
5) Mirrors
6) The sounds of M, D and G. MA-MA-MA!! DA-DA-DA!! GA-GA-GA-GAH!!!!
7) The DVD player, Playstation or any games or discs that go with them.
8) Shoes
9) Purses and their contents.

And finally......
10) Shopping

She's going to cost daddy some money someday with those last 3.

Now for your updated photo gallery!

Your Bob Ross Memorial: Whiteboard Pic of the Month

Rusty, this ones for you.

They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot

Everyone else got a Christmas vacation so I thought I should too. I’m not going to make excuses for my lack of posts and especially the Whiteboard Pics, I was just tired of doing it for awhile. But after seeing that people are still logging on daily to see if there’s a new post I thought I should remedy the situation.

It’s not like me to spew venom, but since we’ve been training the little one to sleep through the night, neither of the adults in the house have gotten much sleep either and unlike lil Ashtyn, we don’t get to take a nap in the car on the way to daycare or sleep for 2 hours when we get there. So we’re both a little crankier than normal. Don’t get me wrong, Ashtyn gets funner every day with the things she does and she gets out of every situation by smiling. Her new game is to go to the steps and look back at us, then the second you get up to go grab her she starts laughing and going up the steps as quick as she can.

Last night when I was watching her as well, we were up in her room and she kept wanting to play with the night light. Babies and electricity don’t mix well so I unplugged it and slid it to the middle of the room. Ashtyn is fascinated by lights so she crawled over and grabbed it, crawled back and started trying to plug it in. That was the end of that game, but it goes to show that she’s putting two and two together now. “This thing here needs to go here for the light to come on.”

Now, what I’m upset about today isn’t the lack of sleep. That assumed when we had her – babies cry at night. What I want to talk about today is a growing epidemic and one that has infested NISC to the point where I need to write on it. It’s parking or peoples’ lack of ability to do such. This isn’t New York where most people never learn to drive and the ones that do, don’t learn until they are in their 20’s. This is North Dakota where either:

A.) You grew up on a farm.
B.) You grew up in a small town and worked on a farm.
C.) Had relatives that had a farm and visited or worked on it.
Or
D.) You’re from North Dakota and it’s assumed that one of the first 3 are correct.

One inalienable right that we have is that we drove at a young age and take great pride in being able to back and/or park a vehicle into the tightest spot possible. If you worked on a farm it’s a given that you can back a grain truck to an auger or maneuver a trailer for unloading. But as the number of farms have dwindled, so has the number of people that grew up or worked on one and hence, our ability to park. Like anything you use it or lose it.

When I started at NISC 9 years ago, the ratio of parking spots to people was fairly high, maybe 2 or 3 to 1, but as the company has grown that ratio has probably dwindled to 1.5 to 1 and the prime spots by entrances is less than that. To some though, that hasn’t stopped them from thinking their car is in need of at least two of them. Here is a pic of the bang up job some people did this morning. A classic case of “Monkey see, Monkey Do Parking”. One person on the line gets slightly off and then several more poor parkers just continue the mayhem until you have someone come from the other side and park correctly. Essentially creating the hated “half spot”.


Yes, I know, its winter, lines are tough to see, but still, don’t you say to yourself, “Hmmmm. I know the lines are straight but I’m not” and realize that something is amiss? Evidently not, because I see it every day!

Here is another case of the “Overconfident Parker”. The one who says “Look at me, I can’t park, but let me back in to prove that I can’t.” Sometimes we need to say to ourselves, “I admit I have limitations, I need to pull in head first.”


This one is just blatant disregard.


Finally, my favorite situation. “Fruit Basket Upset”.
This is where people park from all sides and at all angles, with multiple spacing problems. They could have just as well blindfolded a 10 year old and had him Valet park the lot for the day. Pitiful.

You’re probably saying “You work with these people, aren’t you afraid of retribution from them?” Not really. Only about 3 people read this and those with parking deficiencies have been admonished in the past. It’s kind of a running joke now to take phone pics and e-mail them to the offending parties.

Awareness is the key and the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Do we got the clearance, Clarence?

"Roger, Roger."

Well, maybe not. "Blizzard 2009" is taking shape somewhere over the US and may delay or cancel our scheduled trip to Sherwood for the Christmas. Two questions here:

1.) Why, when the dates align and you get an automatic 4 day weekend for a holiday, does the weather always have to try to ruin it for you?
2.) Why does the Weather Channel insist upon naming the blizzards with the year now?

We know it's a blizzard, we know its the year 2009, 15 years from now we're not going to say "Do you remember Blizzard 2009?". No, we're gonna say, "You remember that blizzard we had 15 years ago? Back in about 2009." I seriously think they are so bored at the Weather Channel, that they are going to start giving them actual names like hurricanes. Blizzard Bob, Blizzard Bill, you get the idea.

Maybe they could even hire former legendary Minnesota Vikings coach Denny Green to come on and explain about the 'Calcutta Clipper' as well.



So yeah, I'm hoping that things turn out well and we're able to get out of town Thursday afternoon, but we'll see. It's not like 5 years ago when I drove 450 miles to Minneapolis on icy roads to watch the Dolphins play a football game. It still amazes me to this day that Steve Thompson carried on a cell phone call as we were driving down the interstate sideways without missing a beat in the conversation.

The cargo of a 7 month old baby and the weather aren't something to be toying with.

Anyways, Merry Christmas to everyone! Hopefully the Silverado is pointed north and locked into 4WD about this time tomorrow!

Your (belated) "Bob Ross Memorial": Whiteboard pic of the month

Here at the blog, we've always tried to stay with the times, especially when it comes to the whiteboard pic. But alas, the world moves much faster than my snail pace. So even though this is a few days or weeks late, here it is! Obviously not my best work, but it'll have to do for pacifying the masses.

For those of you not from the Bismarck area, there was a mountain lion shot in the Bismarck city limits on November 27th, up by the former Home Depot location. (No, I wasn't the triggerman).

That's probably why it closed up. People are just going to quit coming around when you have mountain lions. They're just bad for business.

Flat and No Trees Has It’s Privileges

I’ve been spending the week working in northern Wisconsin and although it’s nice country, flat with no trees has it’s privileges. I’ve stood in the middle of a grass slough somewhere west of nowhere in Renville County, North Dakota and made a cell phone call with perfect clarity. I’ve driven countless miles in the same area deer hunting and had a dozen radio stations or more to listen to and I’ve always taken for granted that that’s the way it is everywhere.

Not here, not in northern Wisconsin. My daily drive takes me from Hayward to Cable, about a 17 mile drive through the forest and while Hayward does have some cell reception, it rapidly decreases the further you get from town. On my drive back the other night I spun through the channels on the radio and found one FM station that came in with regularity and the song playing was a Wilson-Phillips song. So there was my dilemma – Wilson Phillips or flip to AM and choose between a station from Iowa talking about Big 10 volleyball or a station doing 1924 replays of the Clicqout Club Eskimoes.

For those of you not down with the Clicqout Club Eskimoes, click here to find out more about them than you want to know.

I’ve reached another milestone in my life this week as well. To this point I’ve seen the worlds largest Holstien cow, largest Sandhill Crain, Walleye, concrete whale and fishing lure. Add to that list, The Worlds Largest Muskellunge!!! Located near the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, it’s a 143 foot fiberglass tribute to the Musky. Rumor has it that around Christmas time here, Santa makes an appearance out of the mouth of the fish, which can either be very exciting or very disturbing to a young child I suppose.

Also, if there was any doubt that I was in Wisconsin (normally the Old Style Beer signs and cheese factories are a clue) I was helping out a lady in the plant dept. with some software issues and heard more than one CSR on trouble calls end their conversations with customers with “You watchin the Packer game tonight?”

Yep, I am definitely back in Wisconsin.

Look who's talking

“Hey, how’s it goin?”

“Just hangin out over here by the stairs, nothing too much going on with me. Don’t worry, I have no intentions of climbing these stairs today if that’s what you’re thinking. Yep, just haaaaaaaaaaaaangin out!”


“What!?!? I’m just stretching my legs here. Gotta keep the calves loose and stuff ya know??”


“Ok now, just a quick check over my shoulder to see if they are look…….. darn. Staring right at me.”



“FINE! I’ll come over here then! Plenty of stuff to get into here as well.”

The Watermelon Crawl

There is some truth to the saying "they grow up so fast". 2 weeks ago, Ashtyn was flirting with the idea of getting up on her hands and knees. Everyday a little more bold, working the arms, then the legs, then face planting into the carpet. By Monday of this week she finally put A and B together and came up with this.

Not too bad I thought. Then Auntie Kaylan stopped over and left her Coach purse on the floor one day and Ashtyn was all into that. Kaylan likes to think that Ashtyn is now into Coach. No Kaylan, her main focus at 6 months is eating, sleepin and messing up diapers in that order, but if you want to believe its the purse then so be it. Daddy won't be shelling out a truck payment on a purse anytime soon. Today, she'd really gotten into moving about. Evidenced by this video.
Crawling wasn't enough for her today. She decided to see how far she could pull her self up the stairs. She did make it up one stair before I grabbed her off.

Here is a pic of her pulling herself up on me.
We also had Thanksgiving at the condo. Here I am carving the turkey.

And a nice little family photo.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

The Snake Dance

Back in the day we used to do something at the football homecoming bonfire called the snake dance, where the high schoolers all joined hands and then ran down the streets of Sherwood and thru the businesses that were open. I think it was some kind of spirt/pep rally thing to get us ‘psyched’ for the football game on Friday and also gave us a chance to run thru the only 2 businesses that were open at that time of night. The Roughrider Saloon and the P&R Bar. I tried to explain the concept of the Snake Dance once to Katie, but she didn’t get it. I’m not sure I ever understood it either, but since I’m about 50 years older than her she doesn’t understand the concept of typewriters, rotary dial telephones or the US mail system either. Friends used to hate if your phone number was something like 990-0990 cuz it took forever for the dial to come back around and if you messed up you had to start the whole process again. Whatever. If it’s something that important you need to tell me, mail me a letter and I’ll get it in 2-3 working days……

Anyways, one of the things with buying a new, used house is that the previous owners often overlook things and live with it. Sometimes for decades. One of those ‘overlooked’ things at the condo was the drain system. Overlooked might be a kind term, forgotten or ignored might be better used in this sense. Someone needed to tell them that if Drano doesn’t work the first 7 times that more drastic measures were probably in order. Off to Lowes I go again to buy a drain snake!

Snaking drains is a bit of an art form and similar to the Fish Ponds at carnivals, throw the line in and hope you pull a good prize when it comes back – not the stupid Strawberry Shortcake temporary tattoo (it took me many years before I realized that the ‘bait’ for that game was a card that said boy or girl and that they were messing with me real bad).

I grossly underestimated the level of stink I would encounter the first go around although the fact that the plastic PVC pipe threads had literally fused together should have clued me in that it hadn’t been taken off in awhile or ever. Down the snake went though, hitting the bends in the pipes but still moving until a depth of about 12 feet, at which point I gave it a couple of twirls and started to drag whatever was on the end, up…….

Let me list a few of the things I would have rather smelled than what came out of that pipe.
1.) A rotting skunk carcass
2.) Raw sewage on a 110 degree day
3.) A rotting skunk carcass in raw sewage on a 110 degree day.

Needless to say the lid of the toilet went up just in case lunch needed to make a reappearance. It didn’t, but I did run down to stick my nose over Ashtyn’s week old diaper bin for some fresh air. I didn’t eat supper that night, or for the 12 hours for that matter and a new battle plan was in order. Gas masks, rubber gloves and if I could find it, that cream that homicide detectives rub under their noses before the go into a murder scene. Lowes didn’t carry that though. Too bad Engh’s Hardware in Sherwood isn’t closer cuz I bet Timmy could have found in row three between the Tupperware and the cattle prods.

Your "Bob Ross Memorial": Whiteboard pic of the month

Here is your November themed whiteboard pic o’ the month. Yes, maybe a turkey would have been a little more appropriate, but we’ve already done that. My apologies to faithful reader Rusty as he had suggested a Caribou, that may come next month instead. So in honor of deer season and the buck that I won’t be shooting this year here is a “Whiteboard Whitetail”.

Now the question – how old do you think this buck is? I actually took this from the ND Game and Fish calendar (with some rack embellishment). Here is the actual pic from the calendar.

Most people looking at him would assume, big rack, must be 6 or 7 years old. A few key features lead me to believe he’s not quite that old. He doesn’t have that ‘racehorse’ body of a 3 ½ year old, he’s lost a little muscle tone in the front shoulders. He does have the gentle slope to his back, indicative of a 5 ½ year old, but the eyes are still fairly well rounded and the chest line is even with the belly line, not sagging. The final clue is the legs, they don’t have the ‘too long’ look of a young buck or the ‘too short’ look of an old buck. This is a 4 ½ year old buck.

The hunting shows would tell you that he’s maybe a year away from his prime. Skeet will tell you to empty your gun and possibly wreck a truck over him.

The really long blog post

My original plans were to keep a running diary of the move out of the apt to the condo, but with the amount of work involved it was impossible, so you’re going to get blasted with one big blog post, a Novella of sorts. Feel free to get up now, go to the bathroom, get a beverage and maybe a 3 course meal before you start reading……….. Done? Good, now settle in for the journey from 4540 McKenzie Dr SE, Apt 9 to 1022 Pleasant St.

I’m going to break this up into ‘chapters’ so you can follow the flow.

Closing it down

2 months ago we set the closing date to be Oct. 27th and as that day got closet I started to wish we had moved it to be earlier. Getting packed at the old place with a 5 month old baby is tough, but at noon we were signing papers. The title company was nice enough to give a NDG&T pen to sign with and let us keep, so in essence it’s the most expensive pen you’ll ever buy. A ½ hour and 75 signatures later we were walking out the bank door with keys to the new place in tow. Harsh realities time had started in that we had now 4 days to get the new place ready and the old one cleaned out.

Different shades of Gray

After looking at the condo a couple months ago, we decided that we liked their painting for the most part and only needed to paint 2 rooms. Ashtyn’s room and the downstairs living room, 4 days later I think we had painted all BUT 2 rooms. We stuck to the plan for the first day and were just painting on the two we had decided on, but then Katie started noticing things that she didn’t like with the previous owners paint jobs, like the fact that most of the places only had one coat of paint on and you could see thru to the primer in spots, so every time I’d leave to go move stuff or pick something up from Lowes and come back, the drop cloths would magically appear in another room and the ladies were hammering away at another wall! The best was when Katie told me to go read the note in the kitchen. It was a 2 foot by 4 foot note painted on the wall in tan roller paint that said ‘heart U!’ (nice little painted heart). This was her way of saying “Love you and I’m painting the kitchen now too.” “Heart U too honey!! Have fun painting the kitchen on your own!!!”

I’m glad she got the stuff painted that she wanted tho, because it’s much easier to do it before you move in as opposed to after.

Our one ‘mishap’ occurred on Thursday. As some of you know and others may not, I’m partially colorblind. Mostly with greens, browns, reds and sometimes yellows. It’s not like I see the world like an “I Love Lucy” rerun and everything is black and white, it’s just that some colors run into others. The color that we picked out for the man cave was called Dark Sage and initially we were just going to paint a couple walls, but the previous owner was also fond of colors and at times it was like you were walking thru a game of Candy Land.

“I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.”

Anyways, we were moving right along with the Sage Green paint, but we could tell that we were going to need another gallon of it in order to finish up so Katie made (another) run to Lowes to pick that up. She gave the lady the card with the name and number of the paint, they mixed it up and we were off again. I was doing touch up paint with the last of the first can while they put a second coat on and they kept remarking how it was going on streaky and darker. Of course, I was thinking it would all dry the same – same color, same results right? When I got to an outlet to go around that they had just painted up to and I was doing the touch ups, even I could tell something was wrong……. The same types of wet paint should look the same, but mine was lighter. Yep, Lowes had given up a shade darker green paint and we’d spent the last 2 ½ hours painting with different color paints.

So back to Lowes I went and this time I was determined to get a refund on the wrong can of paint as well as a new can of paint in the new color on the house. At first the lady was a little apprehensive at the new free can. I can be persuasive. Especially when I explained that Lowes just wasted 3 hours of my day painting the wall the wrong color. We got the refund and the new free can as well. Sometimes good customer service needs prodding.

The Longest Day

Friday started early for us. We were about 75% packed at the old place and 80% done at the new place. It would have been nice to have someone come in and clean the carpets at both places, but there was only a room available for cleaning here and there so I ended up borrowing a carpet cleaner to do the rooms I could. Cleaning carpets can’t be that hard right? Wrong. It’s like trying to cultivate an entire section of land with a 12 foot cultivator in one day and your pulling it by hand. It’s not fun and you don’t get to listen to Paul Harvey tell the Rest Of the Story 4 times in the same day.

I did get the upstairs bedrooms, the hall and the guest room done, which is what I wanted to get done and then headed back over to the apt to finish some packing. This is where snag 2 comes in. When Katie had called in to have the utilities transferred to the new place they explained that MDU workers don’t work on weekend so we had to have power turned off on Friday. I found this out after I walked in to check my e-mail and the computer was powered down. Any idea how many times you flip a light switch thinking it will supply light, even though in the back of your mind you know it won’t. 112 times.

Scramble time!! Food in the fridge and daylight wasn’t going to last much longer. We did get the food moved over and as much as we could, got things packed. Determined to do more that night I had the brilliant idea of bringing over the trouble lights and the carpet cleaner to work as long as I could, couple extension cord and some power from the hallway would do the trick. Did I mention that the best landlord in Mandan and maybe the world had called us at 6:45 that morning to remind us to get the carpets cleaned? Chucky wasn’t going to get one more red cent out of me than he was worth tho, so I was doing this on my own- no hire outs for carpet cleaning!!!

I’m not sure why, but it was exactly 30 seconds before the breaker flipped that I thought that the trouble lights and carpet cleaner running out of the same outlet might do that…….. Darkness. Complete darkness. Don’t think I didn’t contemplate getting a propane lantern, but the carpet cleaner wasn’t going to run off propane so I grabbed a flashlight and stubbing my toes 10 times I packed and moved as much as I could into the living room. I promised everyone that volunteered to help move that everything would be boxed and ready to go at 8:00 a.m…… I texted once to change it to 8:30, then on the way home again to change it again to 9:00.

Out from the old, into the new

5:45 comes early and without much celebration unless you’re heading to a goose blind. At the very least when everyone showed up and I wasn’t ready I could say “Yeah, been up since 5:45 and had to work without lights.” Then they would know that I put in some kind of effort anyways. A half hour of working in the dark was enough for me and I started looking at outside outlets. The nearest one was the neighbors to the west on their patio, so at the risk of scaring the bejesus out of them early in the morning and having them call the cops on me I plugged into their outside outlet. All of the things that didn’t belong in certain boxes before, all got thrown into community boxes now and by 9:00 I was as ready as I was going to get.

Of course when you’re hoping people will be late, they show up 5 minutes early. Olney was the only one that did me proud. He had went out the night before and was hit by a beer truck so it’s good that we had a lot of pillows and seat cushions for him to handle.

Folks, it went like clockwork. Everything was in the living room, trucks were backed up to the patio, loaded and left. By 11:30 we were out of the old place and sitting in the kitchen of the new place eating sausage, laughing and drinking pop. Now we get to spend the next two years trying to figure out what got put in what box.

A Parting Shot

The afternoon was spent cleaning up what was left in the apt. Katie, Kaylan and their mom had done a good job of cleaning everything in there, so I figured I better do my best to clean the carpets. After the carpet cleaner flipped the test switch on that outlet for the 3rd time, I gave up and sat there and thought to myself “I’ve already shoveled enough snow, fixed enough faucets and cleaned enough cobwebs out of the common area hallway that he gets no more of my time. I’ll be writing a letter to Chucky with a bill attached for all the shoveling which I’m sure he won’t pay, but I’ve already warned enough potential renters to the place about the dude so maybe him losing a few months rent from people not taking the place will be satisfaction enough for me.

So that sums it up. It took me 36 years, but I finally have a mortgage payment to make. Thanks to everyone that helped with the move!! I’ll try to keep the posts shorter from here on out. Stay tuned for the white board picture with a November theme. Sorry Rusty, we didn’t do the Caribou this month.

I like to move it, move it

T-Minus 7 days until we close on the Condo and I’m not sure if we’re closer or further away from our goal of being packed and ready. Things did start with a flurry and we managed to clean out most of the junk in the garage. The only things that didn’t get packed in garage was the hunting gear, because this is hunting season and we still need to hunt. We also got some stuff packed in the apartment as well, but as you know, the reason you have stuff is that you use it. So I imagine that it’ll be a Chinese Fire Drill the last week before we move in to get things packed and cleaned.

Speaking of hunting season, the opportunities have abounded like never before this year. It’s always the year that you move. In my mind I rationalize things by saying “we have 3 weeks to pack” or “we’ve gotten everything packed that we can, so I can go hunting.”

A copuple weekends ago we headed to the Sanborn ND area for some duck and goose hunting. Mornings were in the goose blinds and the afternoon was ducks in a slew. There’s two types of duck hunters.

A.) The type that sets out decoys, calls and gets the ducks to come in.
B.) The type that sits in a spot that so many ducks come by that they eventually get ducks to come in. Duck hunting by attrition.

I fall into the second category. Yes, I have decoys, yes I have a duck call that I can make sounds from, but rarely does that combination result in me shooting many ducks. That’s why the slew that I picked out was perfect. The constant barrage of ducks had me twisting my head every direction for 3 straight hours, but since they were more or less buzzing my decoys at Mach 3, I spent most of that time shooting at the ducks, missing and then shooting again and hitting them in the same place.

The other problem with this is that I’m colorblind so I don’t pick out the colors on the ducks as they pass really well and since there is a limit on the numbers and types of ducks you can shoot I just break down the duck varieties into 2 categories as well.

A.) Drake Mallards
B.) Everything else, or “Teal”.

When people duck hunt with me and ducks speed past they ask, “what was that?”, I just reply, “Musta been a Teal”.

Using this theory, you shoot every duck you see until you shoot a hen Mallard (cuz you can only shoot one hen Mallard), then you have to be picky. This, to those that were nearby listening is why my first hour sounded like WWIII and the last two sounded like I’d fallen asleep in the weeds, which I actually did for a bit, but the stench of rotting slew grass keeps you from a real deep sleep.

Speaking of hunting, it’ll soon be time for a new whiteboard picture!! Faithful blog reader, Rusty, texted me a couple of ideas so since he actually showed interest in the blog I'll be doing one of his ideas.

Of course we need an update on the happenings with little one here as well! She had a bit of a cough so we took her into the walk in clinic. Thats a bit like not taking her in at all....... the doctor on duty that day took a couple minutes to do a poor job of checking her over and then told us it was viral and she had to just wait it out. Luckily Katie called the next day to our Pediatrician and she got us in the following day to do a chest x-ray and stuff. Everything was clear, but she did think there was maybe some acid reflux and possibly some infection so we got her on antibiotics and Prevacid for the acid. Within a few days we had our little one back to normal! Or close to normal. She likes to wake up every night about 4:30 now to eat and get a diaper change but if we get to bed early it's not quite as bad.

Last Sunday was a perfect fall day so we got a chance to meet up with most of the family out at Papa's Pumpkin Patch. You would think a little baby like that would get mad of getting passed around, but she likes everyone and also sat still for some photo opps. Here's some pics from the day.





Last story for this post now. So last night I put her down in her crib and 15 minutes later she was fussing, so I went back in and got her to rock in the chair for awhile. Of course I was watching baseball so I proped her up so she could watch with me. After about 20 minutes she leaned back, looked over at me and sighed like she was saying "Ok, I'm done watching", then she buried her nose in my shoulder and was out like a light. Funniest, cutest thing she's done around me so far!!

Ok, I also have more stories about our trip last weekend to Herreid for the Pheasant opener, but thats an entirely different blog, so staty tuned for that in a day or two.