The Useful Duck!

Contribute to my Vacation, please...

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Random thoughts and focusing on thing irrelevant to farming

You know you drive like an old farmer when...
You drive down the highway, down the hill to the field, and discover your coffee cup on the toolbox, and even though it doesn't have a lid, it still has coffee in it...

I saw something shiny on the harrow-

Cow magnet stuck to the bottom of the harrow? Did it come out of the poop or was it put there to catch wire and nails? Just bought the harrow from the estate of a retired farmer who didn't use cow manure.

I downloaded 23 hours of Joan Jett from Amazon Prime...
Community College was so long ago... If I close my eyes and listen to "Album" I can get thath feeling of being out of High School and looking forward to life but then I get lost in the field and plug up the harrow. Then i get depressed and thing about lost opportunities, not going to Willamette, not taking that internship, not... Yeah I'm deleting the playlist...
Last night my daughter had a talk with me...
Her: "You know Dad when I was little and I'd be into some type of toy and then suddenly I would have way more of that toy then I could even play with?"
Me: "Well, yes, but that lady on eBay gave me all her Polly Pocket collection when I wrote that nice note saying how much you loved PollyPocket and you were dying of cancer such a sweet little girl...
Her: "Yes, but, I have a hug box of PollyPocket that I only played with for a year,"
(And we got off subject for a while...)
Her: "BUT THATS NOT THE POINT!" exclaimed a frustrated 13 year old, to her father who doesn't always have the attention span to listen to the whole speech but tends to guess the ending...
"So you discovered I downloaded 23 hours of Joan Jett," said her father who had correctly guessed where this was going.
"Yes!" said Lulu
I had forgotten that we all share an AmazonPrime account and that Lulu now also has 23 hours of Joan Jett on her iPhone.
"Normal Parents are not like this," said my daughter.
Then she went on to point out that only a year ago it was weird old country western music and note that just because she enjoyed the Joan Jett concert did not mean that she wanted every song Ms Jett had ever written, multiple Blackheart T-shirts, or a father who was a groupie.
Fair enough...
23 hours of Joan Jett is kind of getting to me.
I must learn to pace myself...
Later I asked her what regular parents did for entertainment and she admitted that perhaps she did benefit from parents who obsessed about things she found interesting...
IF I COULD JUST FOCUS ON SOMETHING THAT MADE MONEY or produced better crops or was useful in anyway...

Example: Did you know that PT boats had three 12 cylinder Packard engines and could go 35 mph and produced 1500 hp per engine? 
Well of course you did, anyone who reads this blog knows that, common knowledge...
I gotta go to work...


12 comments:

  1. 1. I worked with a guy who owned the last of twelve Packards produced immediately before WWII when they shifted to war production.
    2. Obsessing over children's interests is appropriate. My house is full of my daughter's shark and dolphin obsessions and my son's fascination with Homer Simpson. They are long gone (30 & 27) but the obsessions remain.
    3. Twenty-three hours is about correct. Turn up the volume to drown out past decisions.
    4. Unless you live in symmetric hill country your aren't going in circles but more likely irregular polygons. I know going in circles...brake the left wheel and drill yourself a hole. I wish I could go endlessly straight.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like Packards.
      I'm mostly going back and forth in "lands" so no I'm not going in circles as such. Somewhat of a circular back and for patter, yes a polygon.
      Endlessly straight is not all it is cracked up to be. You do have to drive straight. You should not sight on a speck in the distance that turn out to be a bird or a cow

      Delete
  2. 5. My grandfather and father worked in a meat packing plant that had a beef, pig and sheep 'kill.' As a kid there was an endless supply of cow magnets about. Actually I worked there too, but have blocked it out. The Sinclair Lewis book (Jungle?) is pretty accurate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cow magnets are a lot of fun. Not to confuse anyone, cows are pretty much non magnetic. The magnet goes in the cow's stomach so bits of wire will attach to the magnet and not pierce the stomach or intestines.

      Delete
  3. You are not alone. I find myself spending more time fixing up a 75 year old car than I do getting the combine ready for harvest. Of course another 2 inches of rain overnight puts that elusive hope of harvest just a little farther down the road to winter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I understand, not wanting to even think about harvest because it could be grim. That is really depressing.

      Delete
  4. All work and no play makes Jack a dull (but rich) boy. I'm dull and STILL poor!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't spend a lot of money on my distractions. I do a lot of scrounging.

      Delete
  5. I saw a documentary once that showed PT boats being burned in the Philippines after the war. They just poured gasoline on them and torched them. Seemed a shame.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was a shame. Lots of aircraft were also destroyed.

      Delete
  6. I went through a period about a decade ago where I was buying 5 to 10 CDs a week, mostly going through the used CD bins at the Newbury Comics music store in Harvard Square.

    I caused quite a stir the day I exchanged a Toby Keith CD for Kate Bush. Toby Keith Unleashed had been very precisely scratched, probably by someone on the store staff, so that the two tracks I wanted most weren't playable.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Record stores/book stores are interesting places to buy music.
    In recent years I have been buying from GoodWill or eBay.
    I go through phases where I listen to a lot of music of a certain type and then get bored and switch to something else.
    For years I didn't buy music at all. But, Limewire and file sharing got me interested again. You could download artists/songs and if you liked the music then go to Amazon and buy a CD. Now that I have AmazonPrime I can do the same thing.
    I spend a lot of time listening to music on the go so CD's go directly to MP3. I listen to vinyl in the winter.
    I try to only buy new music directly from the Artist. I do everything I can to boycott major labels.
    I tried my local record store but I tend to interact with store employees and then the music buying process takes too long.
    Scratching out Toby Keith tracks is funny.

    ReplyDelete

Tell me what you think

Please leave comments! It is really easy!

You just type your comment in the text box below the post. You can be anyone you want.
And...Would the joker who keeps clicking "offensive" please leave an explanation ?!