How High Up is Up?

How can you  tell if knowledge of a scandal (or 3 or 4 scandals for that matter) goes all the way to the top? It's easy. No one gets fired, because firing is the only sure way of making people talk. To think something is 'OUTRAGEOUS' is admitting that you don't really want to find out what happened. To fire someone, knowing they'll begin talking as soon as you fire them, is to be serious about finding the answer.
I doubt anyone will lose their jobs. Just reassigned to a higher paying position.

It's Finally Over. The Grand Opening Was Saturday April 20, 2013

 

 

 This is the reception/grooming room prepared for the big day. We had a lot flowers sent by well wishing businesses from the community as well as contractors.

 Our son with his youngest eating some of the bisquits and gravy we fed our guests up until 11:00 AM. We switched to grilled hamburgers and hot dogs at that point. Dan ran that operation for us.

 This is our daughter Juli giving free pony rides to customers who brought youngsters to the celebration.

 This is Marilyn visiting with 'locals' while they enjoy their lunch with us. Notice Ralph on the far left. That was one of the few times he wasn't moving quickly from our kitchen to our garage where where the meals were being served. He was a huge help always working behind the scenes.

 This is Char serving food in the garage and son Dan having just dumped a load of grilled burgers and dogs in the roaster. That's his wife going thru the serving line during a lull in the action. The two on the right are raising 4 of our 5 grandaughters for us.

 This is another daughter in-law who is  helping raise 3 of our 4 grandsons for us. These two are both delightful people. Dad who is son Tom is holding this same child in the above picture where Ralph is on the left.
We think we a had about 200 customers and friends visit us during the day on Saturday. There still are a lot more people wanting to come take a look. We will be forever in debt to our immediate family including my brothers and sisters in-law as well as some close local friends and we can't leave out Ralph and Char who came from Denver to help. A truly wonderful day.

 

We've Kind Of Moved Into Our New Kennel

                                 This is the east side of the bathing and blow dry room.

 Marilyn grooming. The cabinets are still under construction. The window to the rear opens into the kitchen/break room.

 When the dogs come outside, they are here. There are 5 overhead garage doors here that can be opened to make it pretty much outdoors. The floor drains toward the the inside wall where there are several drains.

This is the inside part of the boarding area. 30 cages in all. The floor here also slopes to the walls and the drains. When we get done, we'll give you a full tour.

Our Youngest Grandchild

 She always comes right to Grandpa to be picked up but this look on her face is pretty typical. I believe she looks at me like a grown-up would a train wreck. She's thinking, "Man, this is wierd."

This was Christmas morning. She's showing us some of her take from her stocking. The coincidence here is that it's a Pez dispenser just like the ones her Mom collects. Such a fortuitous gift.

Time For A Progress Report On The Kennel

 To avoid the frustration of making the pictures go where I want them, I hereby accept the order in which they fell. SO....we'll start in the back of the building. This is the kennel area. This indoor area has forced air AC and Heat, and zoned by itself. The cement slopes to the wall where there are several drains. This allows for more efficient sanitation with our pressure washer. The dogs can go out the doors to the area below. Okay the next pic isn't what I thought. The outside picture is the last picture.

 This is part of the 'wash' and 'blow dry' room. There are 4 heavy duty electrical circuits on the far wall for big dryers.

 This is the reception and grooming room. The front door is just out of sight on the left. All of the tile was installed by my sons. It is completely flat and the lines are laser straight. It would seem to me that if you are talented in auto body repair, it also qualifies you to do almost anything that requires artistic talent and a high level of craftsmanship. Many parts of the trades industries are like that.

This is going back again to the back of the building. This is the 'outside' area of the kennel. This too, slopes to the wall for cleaning. There are 5 big garage doors surrounding this inner building and they can be operated by remote control from our house. They will be open in nice weather and closed in bad. This area has two hanging heaters to keep it warm in the winter to aide sanitation and keep snow at bay during snow storms.

"Kevin, Say It...Say Roof."

There are often two ways to pronounce common words. As a matter of fact we hear them pronounced those two ways so frequently that we don't realize what is being said. The locals will often do it in regard to our hometown of Tekamah. Sometimes it's "T-kay-muh" and sometimes "ta-KAY-muh." The story goes that it is an old Indian name or that it might be a misspelling of a town back east when the group of men gathered to lay out the town in the mid-1850s. They drew the name out of a hat and one of the men was from the eastern U.S. No matter how you say it, we all know what is meant and give no thought. There are no authorities on the subject.
Mispronunciation can have its downside as my friend Kevin found out many moons ago. Unlike myself, Kevin was a town kid and had all the advantages of the city school, including a teacher named Mrs. Valder. Mrs. Valder retired just before I started making the trip from "Tobin School" to the high school in town. Mrs Valder was famous for being a hard core English teacher. She was old school but not mean as she was often judged, but rather focused on perfection. Everyone learned to diagram sentences, proper pronunciations, the rules of punctuation and of course that generally speaking, a preposition is the wrong word to end a sentence "with."
Now back to Kevin, he became a successful carpenter with several employees. He had all of the staff and talent to take any project from planning to completion, no matter the size. As is the case with many professions, the big jobs are sprinkled with pesky little jobs that need to be completed to maintain your good reputation in a small town. Thus was the case when Mrs. Valder left word at Kevin's shop that her roof was leaking somewhere on the south end.
Kevin didn't want to take any of his help away from the big projects and so called on Mrs. Valder himself one morning.
He was in a hurry and so when he arrived he immediately went about setting up a ladder and went to the top of the house. The roof was generally in good shape but the chimney drew his attention instantly and sure enough there was a problem with the flashing where water could run down the chimney and get into the house. Luckily for Mrs. Valder, it was a small problem that he could fix fairly inexpensively.
He climbed down and knocked on her door. She was very happy to see him and after exchanging pleasantries, he said, "Mrs. Valder, I've already been up on your roof and have found the problem. It's. ..."
She put a finger in the air and interrupted him and said, "Kevin, it's pronounced roof, (like the 'roo' in kangaroo) and since Kevin thought that was how he pronounced it he gave a nervous giggle and said, "Well anyway, I've been here for a bit and already set a ladder on the south end of your house and I climbed up on the roof. ..."
Again she interrupted him, "Kevin, it's roof, now say it." He smiled, she didn't. "Say it, Kevin, say 'roof.'" After a pregnant silence, she again said, "Say 'roof,' Kevin, the way you're pronouncing it is close to what a dog says. Now say 'roof.'" Finally Kevin realized that he was in way over his head and said "Roof." She smiled, relaxed and said, "There, that's correct Kevin." And then she went about lecturing him about how he was a bright, well-educated young man and that there was no need for him to butcher the English language like that.
Kevin said he left the house a lot smarter and with a smile on his face. He knew at that moment that Mrs. Valder was no phony. All those years of school teaching and demanding that everything was correct were not for show, she was a true believer in education.
I've often thought of this story and Mrs. Valder. She was a true educator. Not unlike many of our teachers of today. Without those "tough" types our society slips a bit every day until another "stickler" shows up and raises the bar back to the top.
Or should I say through the roof. Err..I meant roof.

The Other Shoe

This pic is an addendum to the post. Marilyn snapped it without flash during the snow storm. The light was from the porch light. The near blizzard conditions never materialized. It was actually just normal Nebraska weather for the second month of the year.

We're waiting for the other shoe to drop. About a week ago the National Weather Service began forecasting a near death experience storm to pass through the area. Today it arrives and like most winter storms, it's going to depend on where you live. The two feet they began forecasting for this area has dwindled steadily down to what is now 8" for later today. I do know there is a major event south of here with the two feet and an inch of ice. It makes our forcast look pretty tame.
Todays agenda includes plugging in the engine heaters on the snow blower tractor and the emergency farm generator tractor, putting the semi tractor-trailer inside and unload the srap lumber in my pickup into the burn pit. I must attend a 9 AM meeting at the courthouse and then we'll count our blessings.

Why I Prefer The Embassy Inn and Suites

On January 12^th, we passed the 125th anniversary of the Blizzard of 1888. I’ve read varying accounts of the storm and about the devastation it caused and about the horrible tragedies, death and heartache. It hit on a day that started out calm and unseasonably warm and struck with hurricane force winds that continued on for days. The temperatures dropped from near 30F to in some cases, -40 degrees below zero and it deposited nearly 4 feet of snow in the time span of just a few hours. The winds were so strong it blew the roof off of barns and school houses and left many trapped or pinned down right where they were when the winds hit.  Some school teachers were considered heroes because after losing the roof to the building, they led their students to the safety of a neighboring farmhouse.

Of the 235 people who lost their lives in the storm, most were school children. Other folks died within a few feet of their home, unable to find their way in the blinding snow and unable to hear loved ones banging on pans from the porch. It’s worth taking the time to find and read the accounts of that storm. It points out the fact that when Mother Nature throws her best punch, we lose.

I recall a storm we witnessed firsthand. In the late 1970’s we put afloat with several families and boats from near our place on the Missouri River in route to near Ponca Nebraska. We were going to caravan (or would that be (boatavan) up stream to camp, fish, and basically carry on with family activities on the banks of the wide Missouri for 2 glorious fun packed days and nights.

Our armada was beached all in a neat row that Friday night, in what turned out to be a sandy beach/picnic area/cow pasture. The cow herd left us kindling for the fire but none ready to use on that trip.

We pitched our tents and the volleyball net. I picked the beautiful spot for our tent that we were sharing with friends.

We ate supper and the sky turned nasty looking. It was bedtime soon after that and we all bedded down in our tents because it was beginning to rain and it put the fire out. It began to rain very hard. The winds came up and the lightning was ferocious. The river where we were camped wasn’t too wide. I would guess it to have been maybe 200 yards wide and there were several strikes within a quarter mile of us over the next two hours. At about midnight my friend on the other side of our big tent said, “Cliff, push down on the floor of the tent.” I did and it felt like a water bed. I had to push down about 7 or 8 inches before I could feel the ground. We were in trouble. We and our wives were in more trouble than the others. My choice spot was actually in a depression caused by rain water running to the river. We bailed out of our tent and everyone headed to try to save their boats that were all sinking from the rain water. Five gallon and minnow buckets were pressed into frantic service. All of this scooping action went on as the lightning intensified. When the rain finally quit, some of the runabouts had their tops and storm covers put up and the kids and an adult were moved from the soaked tents to the interior of the wet boats. Most of us spent the rest of the night huddled around a fire trying to dry our clothes. It didn’t work. Dawn finally broke after what seemed to be an eternity and we began loading 50 pound sleeping bags into the boats, along with even heavier tents, coolers and unused food and we said good bye to our glorious weekend retreat. We’d all been up 24 hours to that point and we had to navigate muddy, turbulent water to try and get home. The two hour trip home took nearly 5 hours. We had to steer clear of picnic tables, large cottonwoods trees, old sows, steers, footballs, and 55 gallon drums all churning in what appeared to be chocolate milk.

We got home to read that the storm that night dumped over 7 inches of rain near Ponca in a two hour period. We could attest to that.

Lessons learned that night were many. One neighbor sold his tent and vowed never to sleep on the ground again; and he didn’t. I vowed to pick spots for my tent that were a bit higher than the surrounding terrain. My other big lesson for camping in the rain was to get up at the first sign of a storm and keep your bedding dry. Then you can go back to bed.

But the biggest lesson of all is that Mother Nature always wins the big fights; all we’re ever left with are the stories.

This Is A Great Speech...

By a great Man. I wish he were President.
His level of intelligence and understanding of society were clearly far above and beyond anyone else in room. He dwarfed everyone. I can see why this wasn't covered by the mainstream media. It didn't match their agenda.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQfGm919A9o

Quote

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.
 Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary de-tour, not a dead end.
Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
~Denis Waitley~