We spent four and a half days in the U.P. from Christmas on and I wanted us to do some good winter outdoor activities. We went tubing on Minneapolis hill and had a great time. You get to ride the tubes UP the hill due to a very cool tow rope. We also went cross country skiing until my boot broke and I had to walk back a quarter mile carrying my skis (which reminded me how out of shape I am) but it was fun. We also wanted to do some snowmobiling in my parents back 40 but my cousin could not come up with a sled for us to borrow and rentals were $189 a day (yikes). We also wanted to go ice skating but due to me not knowing schedules we ended up just going TO the ice rinks in town and getting to the only one open that day 15 minutes after they closed. (we did get to see the old ice arenas that I hung out at as a kid and the girls watched the Zamboni. We are going to go skating when we get back down south. Right now we are at Kathy’s sister’s house in Midland for a New Year’s eve party with 97,000 other family members. Good times.

Well I am in the UP visiting my parents and I found what I wanted to spend my Christmas money on. My Step-dad showed it to me in a catalog. It’s a gun part. Two actually. You see I bought this old WWII Mauser riffle several years back and I like it, but it is this gigantic heavy wooden thing. He showed me a conversion kit for it to put in a modern lightweight fiberglass like stock that can mount a scope and my bipod to making it a very efficient riffle for not much money. So yes, once again, I am spending my spare cash on guns and gun stuff. I can’t help it, I just love em!

Well working three more hours a day definitely takes its toll on the free time. Yes, I was working about 4 1/2 hours a week for my 3rd job that I am not now, but that isn’t much. I hardly ever do anything on FaceBook any longer, but I think that is a plus. I did find out today from my boss that the position I got promoted to is at a higher rate of pay, he just doesn’t know how much higher and is clarifying that with the regional manager. Today during my 2 hour break between morning shift and afternoon shift I went to the Hospital to visit the mother of a church member so I pretty much only had time to eat during that break, I like to get a nice 20 minute nap in to keep me going through the day. Tonight I have a meeting at the church which I anticipate will take about 1 1/2 hours or so and I am not really looking forward to it, it could be a bit… stressful. We are having the nominating committee for Elders and Deacons etc. for the next year. I hope people keep their emotions and personal issues in check or even leave them at the door… me included.

Yesterday morning the phone rang at 5:24 AM I answered it before the second ring. The conversation wen like this (from my end) “Hello? Yeah. OK. Thanks, bye.” There was then a cheer of “Yea!” from my two daughters who still live at home and go to school. They know what that phone call means. It means the busing company I work for called and said don’t come to work, it is a snow day. Kathy, my wife, however did have to go to work. I therefor sent her in the Durango with the 4WD on. While she was gone we cleaned house. Then later we clean house some more. And when we got that done we cleaned house even more. The Family Room was my main task and I cleaned up things that were not where they belonged, dusted everything ceiling to floor, swept, mopped and organized. We also cleaned much of the rest of the house. It was our day to sleep in a little and then help the mama catch up on some things around the house. It was only fair. I finished just in time for supper and then off to the church board meeting (shortest I ever remember) Not a bad way to spend the day. Now we have a clean house and a happy lady.

I was listening to the farm reports on the radio (yeah, I live in farm country) and they said that China has really upped it’s imports of soybeans from us, and South America is out of them. I have an idea, instead of paying farmers not to farm, why don’t we pay China back the $800B in food? I mean seriously we could simply say to them, “Hey, you can’t get it anywhere else (Europe is also importing more right now than before) and we have lots of it, you’re going to starve without our food so you need to take it in place of the money we owe you.” It’s a win all the way around for us. We are already paying farmers NOT to farm, how about we quit doing that and just use that money to buy the crop from them and then turn around and sell it to the Chinese at a profit? We end up not spending any extra money and we get rid of a lot of debt.

Yesterday was the first time I had opportunity to use our Dodge Durango we bought last spring, in 4WD for winter driving. We had about 2-3inches of slushy snow on the road (the plows took a while to wake up) and so on my way to pick up the vehicle for job #3 I put ‘er in 4WD and found that I liked it very much. Very, very much in fact. I was really enjoying the non-sliding around factor. Then I got in the wheelchair accessible mini-van and was taking my client home when we almost slid off the road at 40 mph into a ditch that was about 8 feet deep. I got a little excited (not for the least of which reasons was the 300 pound woman in the 300 pound power chair sitting behind me with two little straps and a seatbelt holding her in place) I found myself wishing ALL vehicles had 4WD. If you live North of the Mason/Dixon and you don’t have one, I recommend it.