Decoration day and we make lego movies

We decorated the graves today. Wife and S. and I went to the cemetery today and put flowers on the ancestors. Both sets of my Grandparents are there, Mom, and my great Uncle and Aunt. Since the roses we used were most likely planted by the Great Aunt we made sure we took care of them as well.
The great uncle cured me of smoking when I was but a wee lad of less than three feet in height. I was in the store running my hands over the top of the old nail counter. I liked the feel of the old wood. I also happened to find one of Uncle Milton's old cigars. He did not smoke them so much as he chewed them. There is nothing more disgusting than a half chewed stogie. I think I am traumatized to this very day. He always pretty much scared me anyway. He would set in his old swivel chair in the store and I would never know if I would be in trouble or if he would give me a candy bar. Mostly I remember he used to wet his pants and he wore striped overalls and what I think is called a panama hat. He drove a 1952 Pontiac and he was a character. I like Grandpa a lot better. He was always pretty grumpy and he wore blue overalls. Grandma would send me down in the dark basement to raid Grandpa's supply of crackerjack prizes.
The Grandparents on Mom's side lived longer and I knew them better. I used to ride the schoolbus to Grandma's house after school. I would sit on her lap and help her cut out quilt squares and she would help me with my spelling words. Grandpa was quiet and stern, but he would play jokes on me. After school I would go into Grandma's bedroom and listen to the radio. It was an old tube radio and you had to wait for the tubes to warm up. I still have it. I listened to Stories of Great Christians at 4 p.m. and then spin the dial down to 55 a.m. to listen to Children's Theatre on KOAC AM Corvallis. Walt LaBonte and Bob Roberts would read children's stories till 5 p.m.
Sadie left Roses on Mom's grave as well. Then we walked around and looked at dead baby graves. S. likes to do that.
Back at the farm... S. decided she wanted to make a movie. Her cousin made one and a kid as school made one. I guess there is a Lego program to make movies. We used my Fuji camera and iMovie. We set the camera on a tripod and moved lego people one photo at a time. We made two movies. The plot line is pretty simple, lego person gets hit by a bus...

Movie night at the great white barn which is right across the road from our house...

If you are wondering what this black mass on your screen is... We are watching farmer Alfalfa on the side of a giant hay shed.

We watched several block-busters tonight, Winter on the Farm, Woodie Woodpecker, "The Piano Tuner," Mr. Mago, "Three-ring Magoo," we saw the UniRoyal thrill drivers drive on two wheels and A farm implement by International Harvestor Co. The IH one was pretty cool with the early 1970's farm equipment. Mr. Magoo was pretty dumb, Farmer Alfalfa and Woody Woodpecker are very worthwhile.
A good time was had by all! And the kids helped me set up and carry out the movies and hook up the speaker and clean the chairs, so that worked very nicely!

We are supposed to chop this?

This is what grass looks like that will yield 18 ton to the acre of silage! It is chest high on me and I'm 6ft tall. Yikes! We have a 30 year old New Holland 890 silage chopper! I felt better when we had four 890's and two 892's setting in the weeds. Sure they didn't run, but I felt like I had a back-up. Now that I've scrapped them all I feel less secure... Sometimes I wonder if buying a 12ft disk mower was such a good idea?
We are probably a good week away from chopping it. It is very very wet. The sort of boggy field that feels like jello when you jump down from the tractor...

Claustrophobia

I overhauled a baler this week. I had to crawl into the bale chamber and adjust the face places on the plunger and adjust the knife. It was a tighter fit than it was a decade ago. I don't like it. Makes me tense. We are going to bale some two tie 16x18" bales this year. I don't know if it is a good idea but we have to sell some hay-somehow.
I've got some 140 acres of what used to be my own farm to do and the main farm has another 75 acres and it is all going to be ready at once. When it stops raining here it will not rain again until September, except perhaps around the 4th of July.
Instead of doing something useful and rebuilding the hydraulic cylinders on the tension control, I fixed the bale stroke counter. I did a very nice job of making a mounting bracket. Note the nice pattern of holes.

I chop silage and listen to NPR

We chopped 17 loads of clover silage today. It was a tad on the damp side so we used a dump box behind the 2-135 until it blew a seal and sprayed a fine mist of hydraulic oil all over the International truck. It also filled the hydraulic system with milky watery oil so that will be 30 gallons for the neighbor's shop furnace. Bill swore it was just ice cream but I knew the truth. (Punchline to a really bad joke thrown in just for my personal sense of humor-Joke involves a penguin and a car repair at the Walrus auto repair shop)
I called up a neighbor and we went with two trucks and just the box on the back of the chopper. The fields were narrow and triangular and it was a pain in the butt. They cut them with a swather and then raked the clover. It left a lot of piles that tended to jam up the chopper header. We cut the one field next to a rich fellow's house. His house is huge and kind of ugly. He has a nice driveway. I accidently blew silage all over the road. I saw that the young fellow whose field it was, spent a half hour cleaning off the driveway. He is a nice guy.
I got a laugh out of NPR. The morons who run the government are talking tough with BP over the oil spill. The one dumb arse who is the head of the EPA or whatever, said something about having his boot on BP's neck. A nice fascist reference there... The spokesman for BP said that if the government thought they could do a better job then BP would certainly step aside. Then the head of the Coast Guard said how much they depend on BP and called it all a partnership.
Pretty funny. Our government truly is impotent. BP knows it. Obama can't even get Louisiana oil booms or make a decision on putting up sand berms to stop the oil. Like Obama could call on an American oil company like ARCO to help-oops BP bought them a while back. Perhaps he could launch a strike force on some brown skinned people, then get the wrong house, then prosecute some soldiers for doing their job, then torture some people and try to cover it up. Morons, morons, and more morons. They should have more women running things. That would make it a kinder and gentler world. A lot more rational and less paranoid as well...
EDIT: The above paragraph contained sarcasm...
I did see a DC-3 fly over. They are beautiful planes. Reminds one of a time when America was a better place. Built things, invented things, did things...won a war or two...

My wife and I try semi-fine dining!

My lovely and gracious wife and I went out to dinner Saturday night. Sadie is at her Aunt's house. So it was just the two of us. We started out to help one my wife's friends from work who was hosting a progressive dinner but who didn't think she would be back from a baseball playoff in time. We were going to get things started for her.
But, we got a call that she had returned, just about when we were walking to the car. My wife did feel that she should go to the musical which some of her students were involved in.
Because I am somewhat of an insincere person I suggested that we go out to dinner and then comeback for the end of the musical. That way we would not have to set through the usual somewhat painful high school drama production but could still congratulate the kids, who would have no idea we were not there for the whole thing.
Once in town we realized that we no longer know any restaurants other than a couple Chinese places that have been in Salem for 40 years.
Now I will admit that I am cheap. I see it as being frugal and often completely broke.
Our dinner out when Sadie is away is a sneaky trip to the bar (The Deluxe or the Blue Moon, can't remember the name!) on 3rd Street in McMinnville that advertises 2 steaks for $20. I always look both ways before entering this den of iniquity as I hate to be a stumbling block for anyone who has set their expectations too high in regards to my character, but the siren song of a cheap steak and a cough-syrup-like bourbon and coke is my weakness.
So our understanding of fine dining in the area is a bit lacking.
We decided to try the Copper Kettle, which I think used to be the Night Deposit which is across from what used to be the Ladd and Bush bank but is now the Key bank. The Tikki Resturant and Lounge is also long gone. The steaks at that place were wonderful and the decor was amazing fake polynesian. I think there was even leather padding on the bar.
The Copper Kettle was ok but was obviously a bar and at 6 p.m. on a Saturday night was just waiting for all the trend hipsters of Salem to slouch by. We had a couple appetizers and dropped a $20 pretty fast.
We decided to walk around and see the sites. I see the old adult bookstore next door is now an "alternative" store. I really don't know what that would be. There was a girl with bad posture and uncomfortable looking piercings leaning against the door post. I'm sure she thought she was quite the individual, quite possibly she invented angst. She certainly had the uniform down to a "t." Perhaps the "alternative" store sells those black uniforms that the "angst" ridden youth like to wear. In the old days you had to scour Value Village and Goodwill, but once stop shopping for the uniform would be good. You could buy a dog-collar and black fingernail polish all in the same store. I bet they even have mirrors so you can practice looking bored.
We noticed a lot of wallet chains.
I certainly would not want to try and make a living as a pick-pocket in Salem. Although the wallet chains are so long that you could probably steal the wallet, pilfer the cards and cash, and be long gone by the time the hipster hit the end of the chain.
We wondered down by the Elsinore Theatre. The one remaining old time theater in Salem. The Oak BBQ pit cafeteria across from the theater is long gone. But, we discovered Jonathon's (since 1973), which I think used to be Jonathon's Oyster bar on State Street and it was next to Shoegrens Stereo and the Metropolitan and a big bookstore but I'm a bit fuzzy on it all. Now it is on High Street I think.
I looked it up through Google this morning and I got all sorts of bad reviews. I had none of that in my head when we decided to give it a try. All I remembered is that it seemed out of place, but it had been in Salem for years so I must be wrong. Perhaps they just redecorated. I had good solid traditional American restaurant food in my head. You know, a baked potatoe or rice pilaf with every entree, and a pitcher of water at every table.
So we went in.
Interesting ambience I guess I would say. Very high ceilings with new paint and a very old industrial tiled floor, white and institutional green tiles, and walls of a color which I can't identify. Perhaps a dark blue or purple or something modern. There were a couple harpoons on the wall and some long oars and photos of sailing ships on the walls. I bet they had some meaning. Now I understand they came from the Old restaurant location, but since I was confused I just thought they gave it a paint job.
They were very busy as there was a large group in a meeting room upstairs. The waitress was very nice and kept checking on us to make sure we were happy and to let us know they were running slow.
I ordered the 8 oz sirloin steak as it was under $20 and I am cheap. I really hate to pay over $10 for fish and chips as the old Skipper's restaurants always made it better for $7.50 and kind of ruined me on the gourmet angle.
The lovely wife ordered the seafood stew. We debated several cajun dishes and the merits of clam chowder but in waitress said the stew was good so she went with it.
My dinner came with soup and I opted for the seafood soup of the moment. It was a chowder base with a bit of a dijon flavoring. It was thick and had chunks of potatoe and chewy seafood in it and was quite good. The bread basket was pretty small but the bread was tasty.
My steak and her huge bowl of soup came at the same time. Her seafood stew (I can't remember what they called it on the menu) smelled delicious. It had scallops, shrimp, clams, and a chunk of fish, with some fancy bread (she knew what it was called) to soak it all up. The soup base contained a lot of tomatoes which seemed to kind of not go with the rest of the contents but that was not the case. It was delicious. It had somewhat of a cajun spicy flavor.
Here my culinary vocabulary fails me as I am in no way a restaurant critic and I guess it doesn't really matter as how many of you are planning on a trip from the midwest to Salem, Oregon to sample the city's dubious culinary delights? Shall we say it was delicious?
My steak was quite a treat. I knew I was in for a good meal when the waitress brought me a bowl of sour cream, butter, and real chunks of bacon for my baked potatoe.
Now, I was a bit hesitant as I ordered a medium steak and I thought I heard just a bit of a startled moo as I cut into the inch and a half think blackened hunk of beef flesh. I was grateful no blood spurted into my eye as that really ruins my meal.
The steak was a masterpiece. It was blackened and salty on the outside and pink and juicy on the inside. It sliced up nicely with my knife, and was hot all the way through. That is a huge plus for me. The bonus was that I could even chew it! In fact it came as close to melting in my mouth as a chunk of animal flesh could do.
The baked potatoe could have been baked a bit longer and it came with the obligatorily  side of almost cooked skinny beans and carrots but no one eats those anyway so I ignored them.
I have been laughed at for my insistence on a well cooked steak but looking at potatoe bits turning red from blood just makes me want to hurl. So, perhaps the dim lighting enhanced my dining experience. I did not take advantage of the nifty little LED flashlight provided at each booth and perhaps that was a good thing.
The bill came in a $51 which was not so bad considering a couple extras which we had to go along with the meal. We passed on the carrot cake dessert as it just reminded me of too many farm co-op sponsored dinners Holiday Inns.
We are thinking of returning with Sadie so she can experience a dress up type dinner. Plus, they have steamer clams and she loves steamers.
We discussed our dinner this morning and concluded that it was a success. We spent $70 but it was good food. We had a nice walk about town and we think we caught one of her students attempting to buy beer at a 7-11. Sooo, a good time was had by all. I even had time to work on my devotion for Sunday School.
I think I am getting old...

The beans don't look so good...

It poured down rain today. I went and looked at our 4.5 acres of soybeans. Most are sprouted and all are in mud. Some are under water. It rained so hard it washed the loose soil off the top of the no-tilled beans. I'm not sure this will be a successful venture... Perhaps this is why people don't grow soybeans in Oregon... The corn I planted is coming up and it is turning yellow. Too we and too cold...

I

In other important news, I shot three starlings off the roof with the trusty 10-22. The barrel moves around as the gun warms up. It is that cheap machine-gun looking plastic stock. I have to figure out how to stabilize the barrel in the stock. There is no barrel clamp and there is a 16th of an inch gap between the bottom of the barrel and the stock. There is a barrel guard and piticanny (sp?) mount over the top of the barrel which sort of holds it in place. I'm sure I could hang all sorts of SWAT team looking crap off the side of this gun. All I really want to do is kill tin cans and starlings and rats. I like to shoot rats.

But, I digress,

When the gun is cold it shoots low and when it warms up it shoots right on. I know this because it took me six shots (or so) to hit 3 starlings. 

My motto is, "if you can't shoot straight-shot often!"

The worst starling shooting experience I have had was a couple years ago when I shot one off the electric wire and somehow I hit it in the head. It gripped the wire with it's feet and hung upside down and bled out all over Aunt Elsie's car. The retired neighbor fellow got the blame for that one and I let him take it. It was pretty funny... Right down the wind shield. I guess you would have had to have been there for that coffee break!