A birthday at the Mill...

About two years ago Evan declared his wish for his 21st birthday to be spent at Chicago's own The Green Mill.
Well his birthday flew by a few weeks ago but he works nights so the trip was out.
This week however he worked days covering for his boss. Tuesday night the Deep Blue Organ Trio was playing so we went.
What a great evening of music. Evan is way cooler than all of us, his passion and love for music is great to see.

Happy birthday my man!

What a good mommy...

When a Chicken has 3 or more eggs in her nest she will usually go "broody". She will forgo water and food to sit on those eggs to keep them warm. Since we have no Rooster we pull the eggs every other day and if she starts to brood, Kim will block her from going into her nest box. Takes about a day or so and she's right as rain. Kim started feeling bad that she wasn't going to be able to do her "thing" so she got some fertile eggs from another chicken nut, I mean friend of hers for Nugget to sit on. She did a great job for 21 days. One started to hatch but died, the others never hatched. Feeling bad Kim called her buddy and got 4, 8 day old chicks for Nugget to mother for a week or so. She looked at them and rounded them all up under her wings for warmth and nap time. After a day it was time to show them where the food and water is. Nugget is amazing and the chicks follow her all over.
I have to say they are pretty cool and it's amazing to watch but I'm glad they are just guests...


There are two on top, and one under her wing. The other is a rebel...

OCD & GPS

I never thought I had any OCD tendencies but I discovered I do.
On my GPS unit, displayed in the lower left corner is the est. time of arrival. Today's target was Montgomery Alabama. Estimated time to my hotel? 4:19. No big deal. I got stuck in a little traffic and soon it was 4:23...what? Being the master of quantum physic theories, I realized that I would have to go over 60mph to get my 4 minutes back. Now I get the concepts but am totally weak on the math. It took forever to get those minutes back on track. Phew...crud, I gotta pee. Soon I was up to 4:27. I couldn't stand it. I was absolutely freaked at the extra 8 minutes. 8 lousy minutes? I have to get gas? NOOOOO!!!! It is so much easier to lose minutes than to gain them. Soon I was up to 4:35. Holy cow 4:19 seemed like such a wonderful magical time. I couldn't help stare at that horrible time feature. There is no way to disable that. I have to get into my tech kit and get some gaff tape. Not much gaff can't fix.

Corn Nuts, Armadillos and nothing but time...

So my buddy Brian and myself had to drive a box truck full of presentation stuff to do a meeting in Dallas TX. It was quite clear early on that this was going to be a long boring drive. To start off the hopes of breaking up the monotony, we decided to take the Missouri/Oklahoma/Texas route down and the Texas/Arkansas/Missouri/Illinois route home. Both about the same miles but hopefully some different scenery. Ok, the Arch... We're in MO... trees, roads more trees, a few hills...what's this I see? a real life, well dead Armadillo on the shoulder of the road. COOL, my first one. Whoa... another and another. So counting dead Armadillos is going to be my "pass the time" road game. By the time we got to Oklahoma, the big MO racked up 24 Possum on a half shell sightings. We saw none in OK by the time we got to our hotel. The next day we head out for Dallas and soon see a flattened critter on the highway. Bored again, Brian ups the anti and grabs his camera and proceeds to try and capture the road kills while me driving 70mph. Soon his excitement is almost beyond control as he captures just the splat mark. After a couple of dozen attempts I couldn't take it any more... MY TURN! I must say it's not as easy as it sounds. We both were shooting too early, with some practice I finally get my prize. A partial carcass which is ok but not as good as Brian's full. As far as the state count goes...
Missouri - 24
Oklahoma - 9
Texas - 6
AR - 0, Night time is tough to see.
We stopped and loaded up on every flavor of Corn Nuts they make...
We're hooked...nuff said. Man the miles fly by when your shooting flattened things and munching on Corn Nuts.

Schmitty


Brian.....miss


Brian....SCORE!


Doug....miss


Doug....Score but points deducted for partial mirror obstruction



Oh man, are we bored!