8549176320

What is the significance of this order of numbers?

--They are in alphabetic order.

Kicking it old school

I often think that I will reprogram my blog to show the OLDEST posts first, and as they were read through, a person would catch up with my life. A cookie could keep track of where you were last, and the latest post could always be accessed via a link at the top or something. But I digress. . .

My point is that I have written a lot of posts that people will probably never see. I rarely browse the archives of my favorite blogs, and I don't expect others to do the same. With that in mind, and over a year of blog posts under my belt, I submit to you:

Kurt's Top 13 Blog Entries of the 2005-2006 Blog Season

These are all popup links. When you click them, a new window will open with the blog posting. Read it and then close it and click on another. I hate popups but I thought here they would be useful.

1. Adventures in Video Editing -- Making a Movie
   
2. Our New Garden -- The start of something wonderful
3. Father's Day Weekend 2005 -- When I flew an airplane over Rochester
4. I lied to Annika -- Thoughts on princesses and dinosaurs
5. I Support Single Moms -- A classic Photoshop job on Sandy's brother
6. Reverand Schroeder -- Done on a whim
7. An idle Wednesday Evening -- Making fun of dead people
8. It's 02005 -- A post regarding the longevity of mankind
9. A Thanksgiving to Forget -- Never again
10. The Star Wars Happy Chicken -- No comment.
11. An open letter to my Veterinarian Tobin Emrich
12. World Trade Center Conspiracy Post -- Obligatory
13. A list of my dead pets -- A letter to my daughter
    

Personally, I'll go with the Star Wars Happy Chicken. Feel free to vote/comment on your favorite.

kurtandsandy.com

We're open for business. Still working on adding content, but this will be where everything moves to in the near future.

Roof Repair Project

Today I repaired the roof from the tree damage. I would have taken more detailed pictures, but my hands were sticky with roofing tar so I got the project done and cleaned up. Next time I will use rubber gloves on a project I want to document properly.



Removed the damaged shingles and cleaned out the hole as best I could.


Cut a sheet of aluminum to use as a patch over the broken roof sheathing, and coated the back of it with roofing tar. Laid it over the hole and the roofing paper. Nailed it down and coated it's sides and most of the top with more roofing tar.



Installed the new shingles and nailed them in, then made some roofing tar and shingle sandwiches. Tasty!

Total time: Approximately an hour and a half.

Thank go to my Uncle Delton who gave me the advice on how to repair it, which I mostly followed. Thanks Delton. "Yeah yeah."

A tree fell on our house.

The last few days have been interesting.

• We had a big storm that I drove home in to try to avoid getting hail damage. (And because I only had about an hour left at work and could do it from home.) It was like driving through a carwash.
• Late Wednesday night of the storm a weaker storm knocked down a large tree limb on top of our house.
• We found it Thursday night. Very little damage to the house. A few shingles and some underlayment. A serious dent in a small area. Shouldn't be too bad.
• Alex fell and severely brised his upper lip. When I saw his mouth was bleeding I thought he had broken his teeth. Now they are swelled up so that his upper lip kinda extends around to almost the bottom of his top teeth. Nice.
• I called around to see about getting the tree removed. Insurance deductible is $500. I thought that was high for something God did. One of the tree guys I called actually tried to get me to agree to some kind of overcharging deal with the insurance company. He sounded like an ass. After we put the kids to bed, I headed up on the roof with my saw, intending to just trim up the brances which could causae damage if it did fall, but perhaps in the back of my mind...wanting to be a hero. I must admit that I actually thought "what would happen if I jumped on top of the tree and hung on like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove?" So I started cutting some of the branches off and throwing them over the side of the house. CRACK. Huh? I kept cutting off branches. CRACK. I realized it was going to roll off the house. I held the tree up with one hand and cut off the rest of the big branches. I picked up the tree as best I could - I don't know how much it weighed but it was 12 inches thick and about 15 feet long. I helped it off the side of the house and it fell perfectly. A neighbor with a chainsaw cut up the wood for me and I hauled it to his house. I'll clean up the rest of the branches this weekend.

A comment on the Isreal situation

I rarely read Ms. Vanderbilt's column, but this morning the following comment on this story stuck me as something that is often overlooked in our media:

Israel is in an intractable position. A generation of Arab leaders have hijacked the Palestinian cause as a means to divert attention from the suffering of their own people and their inability or lack of desire to improve the quality of life of their own citizenry.

How true.

"Daddy, give me a beard"

One of the dumbest people I know

One of the smartest people I know

This will be removed upon request.

An honest look at myself. . .

I can be a very negative person.


Ever since we returned from our trip to Wisconsin I have searched through camera reviews for a good digital cemara. I decided on the Canon Powershot A540. I told Sandy that was the one, she said no problem. Now I just had to find a good deal. Online they were all about $250 with shipping. Some more some less. The reviews were excellent. But the A530 was a better deal. The main difference seemed to be that one was 6 megapixels and another was 5. Most online photo reviewers have agreed that for people not printing big enlargements, there is very little difference. So I was fine with that. We ended up buying the camera at Sears and it will cost us, when we are done, about $180. We got $100 back from our Visa Rewards card, so basically, we got a digital camera for $80. Economic purists would disagree with my math. Nevertheless - we got a good deal on a nice camera.



So here's the thing. I'm in a funk because I read some bad reviews on the camera we got. Some people bitched about the terrible quality of images at ISO 400 and higher. Like I would ever use that. Other people said that the A540 was a better camera. Even though in a side by side comparison--they had both had basically identical specifications. I'm upset because I read what other people said and I didn't agree with it, or want to hear it.

I always do this.

I look into something and decide what I want, and then find negative things about it later, and get pissed off, even though I would have been just fine if I hadn't have read something. And that's what I'm really upset about--my lack of self confidence in my own decisions.

I have tested out the camera, and I think it's fine. Some of the pictures it took were a little grainy, but the light upstairs wasn't that good, and maybe I had moved. Who knows. I took some shots outside that were fine. I took some shots inside that are great. And to top it all off, I never wanted a digital camera in the first place. I have been ripping on digital cameras for years. I own a real camera--a 35MM Canon EOS Rebel G that takes excellent pictures, has full manual controls, as well as full auto mode. It takes kick ass pictures. I also have a Pentax K1000 (albeit with a broken light meter) with the good metal body that is looked at by many photographic purists as the best camera that a person interested in learning how to take good pictures can own. It's a classic. And I own it. And it takes great pictures. (You don't really need a light meter anyway, you pansy.)

Somewhere, there is a little boy with no camera at all. And somewhere else, a little boy with a crappy camera takes excellent pictures and is proud of himself. So I'm just gonna shut my damn mouth and be happy for once.

Say cheese.

I thought this was funny -- BusyTown Police Blotter

http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3938

A Dead Friend

Yeaterday Annika and I went for a walk to Wrights Small Engine Service to pickup my lawn mower blade. On the way back we found a dead Monarch butterfly on the ground. She wanted me to pick it up for her. She started talking about how she was going to take it home and protect it so no one would step on it and she loved it and said it was her friend.

I said something like "OK, but it's dead Annika. I just want you to know that."

She said "It's a dead friend" and continued to talk about how much she liked it.

And you know what, when my friends are dead, I'll love them, too.

Karen is intrigued

That's what I am looking for folks. Intrigue. A raised eyebrow. Perhaps a raised unibrow if you are like that guy that sits a few desks down from me and smells like. . .programmer. You know the guy I'm talking about. The one where are first you feel really bad for his wife and then you realize that based his armpit stains alone no woman would allow him to leave the house anyway. And then later on you meet the wife and feel sorry for the guy instead and realize why he looks the way he does? I mean, who wears house dresses to a Christmas party anyway? Yes, kind of like that.

I suppose you might want a hint.

Fine. But it's fuzzy. Like that guy's coffee cup.

Quick Update. . .

I haven't been blogging lately because I'm working on a special project. . .you'll just have to wait.

Bloggie trading card #2: Heather

What is this?

1. A picture of Bill Murray holding a pet Mogwai.
2. Something I did in my spare time.
3. My uncle Fritz and his cat Mr Twinkles.
4. _?_
5. Something sent to someone who believed it was genuine.

When all else fails. . .pour beer on your yarden.

Sandy has been struggling with our perennial and square foot gardens (insects and a general failure to grow healthy plants), and I have been struggling with the lawn (mainly to grow new grass in bare spots and get rid of anthills). We have tried lots of things.

• Watering by hand a cup at a time
• Lovingly pruning and deadheading
• Miracle Grow
• Commercial insecticides
• Crying
• Blaming the weather (Too hot, too cold, not enough rain, too much rain)
• Blaming the squirrels
• Building containment units for our gardens
  
• Using a grass patch to grow instant grass
  
• Mowing high
• Mowing low
• Alternating mowing patterns
• Collecting the lawn clippings
• Allowing lawn clippings to stay on the yard

What we haven't tried is pouring beer on the lawn and plants. Let me take a step back. . .

A month ago I received a DVD from Netflix - Jerry Baker: Year 'Round Lawn Care. It basically details how to plant, grow, and maintain a healthy lawn. His presentation is quick with lots of quips but. . .I like him. He seemed like a friendly guy. He's kinda like someone's grandpa. He's the guy that would play tricks on his grandkids and steal their noses. And he just looked like an honest guy, and he spoke directly and with candor. "Don't mow your lawn before 7 pm. It's bad for the grass and it's uncomfortable for you." The most interesting thing about the video was his formulas for lawn care "tonics" using household products like ammonia, shampoo, mouthwash, and pop. I had seen a news segment about someone who used this type of household formula years ago on TV, and it interested me, even if the person was portrayed as being a little loony.

So I had a stroing sense of deja vu that I found myself face to face with the tonic man. However, I am skeptical. It might not work. It might be worse than anything we have tried. Here are some of the things I found today when searching for "lawn beer" on google:

From a May 2004 story posted on the NBC news site in Cleveland:

In May, 2003, a story was done about a former Greenskeeper from Colorado. He used a lawn tonic could be made from common household items in a home, like pop, beer, and liquid dishwashing detergent.

“I have the best lawn in the neighborhood,” said Tim Heffron, lawn tonic expert.

He says all it takes to keep his lawn lovely in Colorado’s scorching summers is a mixture of pop, beer, ammonia, dish detergent and mouthwash.

“I started using it about five years ago back in Oklahoma, where it’s 100 degrees every day, day in and out,” Heffron said.

From an August 2002 NBC news site in Denver:

A Parker man is using a home formula he found on a cable program to keep his lawn green in our drought conditions. He’s using a concoction that includes mouthwash and beer, and is getting great results.

Tim Heffron hand-waters his lawn only lightly on his regular watering days but gets a great looking lawn because, he says, his "lawn tonic" reduces the natural tendency of grass to resist water.

Heffron uses a regular fertilizer in the early spring to jump start his lawn, then applies his lawn tonic about a half-dozen times across the growing season. He uses it on his grass, his small plants and his trees. He says he found the formula on a cable show and has also used similar mixtures while working jobs he held at golf courses. There are dozens of variations of this lawn tonic recipe. Heffron said this version seems to work well in Colorado.

Put the ingredients in a 10-gallon hose sprayer, and water your lawn with the mixture. You'll find your lawn will need less water during our drought.

From an article by Bruce Zimmerman a Canadian horticulturalist with a radio show:

One must always be on guard when someone says that a product is natural or organic. One question I get from my listeners is, are these next two mixtures natural / organic and / or safe.

MIXTURE ONE:

1 CAN OF BEER
1 CUP OF AMMONIA
1/2 CUP OF LIQUID LAWN FOOD
1/2 CUP OF MOLASSES OR CORN SYRUP
MIX IN A 20 GALLONS OF WATER
FEED YOUR YARD EVERY THREE WEEKS

Yes, I am sure this works because you are adding yeast, pure nitrogen, manufactured chemical fertilizer and natural sugars to feed the bacteria which breaks down the organic portion of the soil profile releasing it's natural stored food. Is Beer a natural food eh?

MIXTURE TWO:

1 CUP OF SHAMPOO
1 CUP OF CHEWING TOBACCO JUICE
1 CUP OF ANTISEPTIC MOUTHWASH
IN 20 GALLONS OF WARM WATER
PLACE THREE FINGERS OF CHEWING TOBACCO IN NYLON STOCKING AND SOAK IN ONE GALLON OF HOT WATER UNTIL WATER IS DARK BROWN. USED TO CONTROL INSECTS AND DISEASES YOU SHOULD SPRAY THE WHOLE YARD EVERY TWO WEEKS.

Yes, I am sure that this mixture works too. The shampoo acts as a sticker and spreader of the mixture. The mouthwash is an anti-bactericide. The tobacco is a very deadly pesticide so toxic that they are not registered for consumer use for decades. Indiscriminate spraying of this mixture is dangerous to all life including the beneficial insects in your yard.

From an article by Walter Reeves, a Georgia gardener:

BEER FOR YOUR BERMUDA? I have mentioned before my disdain for television hucksters touting lawn care "formulas" made from household products. The presentation is enthusiastic but the recommendations contain only tiny nuggets of scientific truth.

It is true that household ammonia contains a small amount of the nitrogen fertilizer that turfgrass needs - but it evaporates before becoming available to the plants it is sprayed onto. It is verifiably true that detergents can make other chemicals spread and stick to the leaves of plants - but the proportion of detergent should be only a few drops (not tablespoons) per gallon. Otherwise, the detergent will burn the plant leaves like a herbicide would. It is true that soil micro-organisms need and consume carbohydrates - but they specialize in the complex carbohydrates found in plants, not the simple sugars found in soft drinks and beer.

Sometimes I just want to slap the folks promoting horticulture pseudo-science.

So. . .I don't know what to believe. Maybe that's the point. You can't just read or see something and take it at face value, you have to try it for yourself. If it fails, go back to the drawing board.

I don't like Jerry Baker's website. It looks like he is hawking every gardening product on the planet. But I also realize that an old man like Jerry is not the one programming the web pages either, he's just a guy with a good looking lawn and garden, so we are to believe. His archived articles are straightforward and fun to read, however. From an article on the deterrance of Geese:

TIMELY TONIC

Geese aren't the only things around to bother your yard and garden; there are also those four-legged furry critters with big, bushy tails. Squirrels can get mighty hungry this time of year. Keep 'em away from your plants with my Squirrel Beater Tonic:

* 2 tbsp. of cayenne pepper,
* 2 tbsp. of hot sauce,
* 2 tbsp. of chili powder,
* 1 tbsp. of Murphy's Oil Soap, and
* 1 quart of warm water.

Mix all of the ingredients together. Pour into a 20 gallon hose-end sprayer, and liberally spray on all of your plants.

So this weekend I am going to mix up some soap and beer and detergent and mouthwash. I'll forgo the chewing tobacco juice for now, as I don't chew, and I would like to move away from using deadly chemicals. I'll spray it on a part of my lawn and a part of my garden. I'll see what happens to that part. If that part looks better after a few biweekly applications, I'll stick with it. If it looks worse, then I'll drink the beer myself. If it's not good for the plants, at least I know it will be good for me.

Our Trip Back to Green Bay

We recently returned from our weekend trip to Waupaca and Green Bay. Highlights were seeing my dad in Waupaca, having fun at Bay Beach, and seeing my old house. (My brother wants to remember it as it was not as it is, so I am putting pictures of the house on a separate page.)

Sandy wrote on her blog about the trip, so you can read her account of the day in Green Bay there. I am choosing to simply post a few pictures of our trip, two of which are stitched together from smaller photos. Here we go:



Alex didn't want to go on any rides alone, so there were few pictures of him. Next time we go, I'll take more, no matter what he is doing.


Women flock to me no matter what I am doing. Here I am helping Alex (who loved the water) enjoy the slide in the lake. Good times to take pictures of my bad hair are: at the lake, at my wedding, any other time is good too.


A Wisconsin badger who lives at the New Zoo. Pre-flattened for rug use.


A panorama of the Green Fountain Inn.


These people didn't forget their picnic basket at home, and, as such, had a nice lunch with a table cloth and all the niceties. I believe that they noticed me when I took this picture.


Sandy is married to me, so this is what our picnic looked like. We ate sandwiches off pictures of ferrets.


A picture with my dad.


The Hospital staff at King wants sick people to stay away from the hospital apparently.


Night sky.


A house owned by the Eisners. They moved into the neighborhood and drained a swamp to build their dream home. These people are lowlifes, in my opinion. I got 4 words for you: Wisconsin Circuit Court Access. These people have been in court more times than Judge Wapner.


A beautiful picture of Annika at a park we stopped at in Tomah on the way back to Rochester.


No comment.


You can take the girl out of Minnesota, and I do believe that our stop at Packer Stadium took the Minnesota out of the girl.


What could be more Wisconsin than a white tail deer? This was taken on my morning run on the railroad tracks.

Pictures taken while running in Waupaca, WI

The previous evening my father had given me a pair of running shoes. I woke up Sunday morning, at 5:15, and decided to run. I brought the camera. I was not able to run constantly, but I ran when I could, and took some shots of things I thought were interesting.


I ran along some train tracks and the rails were very shiny, so I took this shot...


A interesting at the Waupaca Foundry parking lot, which I ran through.


Me.

A portrait of failure

Is a pair of free shoes from my Dad all it took to get me running?