Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Odds and Ends

Odds and Ends

Last night I didn’t have nightmares but strange and vivid dreams. I was a young man walking through a technological world of education. I couldn’t figure out where I was at, where my cubical was, where the classroom was, where my dormitory was….but I kept looking and going down hallways and seeing doors open and close. These doors were like bank vault doors or the sealed hatches on a submarine. An Air Force officer was complaining that the Russian students were cooking again in their rooms and stinking the place up. I drifted back to sleep and my golden doodle, who is white was pink in the dream. We were in a van and there were dried up bee hives on the roof and front windshied. My dad tried to brush them off so he could see better and they started to swarm. That was pretty traumatic...woke me up.

Welcome to the world of Percy Goodfellow. Anyway I must have been thrashing about because I woke Linda up. “Last time we ever go to bed before 11 O’clock,” she muttered.

Yesterday I split wood for a couple of hours while Linda took the car in for servicing. I made some progress on the block pile. I have about twelve full cords split in a pile and perhaps nine more in the wood shed. Still waiting to be blocked are ten piles of trunks that probably hold another twenty cords. There are at least three definitions around here of what a cord is. There is a full cord which is 8x4x4 ft. Then there are “face” cords that constitute a third of a full cord and finally stove cords that are about a fifth of a full cord. Everybody bandies the word "cord" around like they all mean the same thing. They don't.

Linda got up and made some coffee and is reading the newspaper on her IPAD. When I think of how the technology has changed in my lifetime. Imagine Kindles instead of books and IPADs instead of newspapers. My father was born in 1912 and told me he talked once to a civil war veteran on the square, who remembered talking to his grandfather who fought in the American Revolution. Is that mind boggling or what? My great grandchildren will able to visit me in the nursing home, if the country can still afford them, and through me reach back a long way. How cool is that?

After the basement flooded we had to get rid of tons of paper back books that had gotten mildewed. I spent another couple hours yesterday hauling them up the stairs and taking them out to the outdoor wood stove. For those of you that don’t have such a wonderful device let me say that they allow you to get rid of a lot of stuff and warm the house at the same time. The insurance man called and is sending a check for the remediation and new floor coverings. For awhile I thought they were going to try weaseling out of the claim but they grudgingly agreed to pay it.

The new router is installed and working. I am still getting only two bars on the WIFY upstairs but we called the provider and got them to bump up the processing speed. The system seems to be working faster and that is progress. We are so far out in the country that the high speed fiber optic cables will never reach us, so I guess we are stuck with what we have. For now it seems to be serving our needs.

One thing Wisconsin has a lot of and that is Bars. Every bar seems to have a grill and on Friday night serves a fish fry. These are nice but are getting so expensive we can’t go out every Friday night like we used to. Still there is one called the Wooden Nickel where the two of us can get a draft beer, burger and fries for under ten dollars. (Plus tip) Even that is a lot when you are watching your pennies. Gasoline is a huge household expense when you live in the country . On the other hand we save by having a well, in ground septic tank and outdoor wood burner for primary heat. Those three can get pricey in town. So, we manage OK out here and it is peaceful and quiet. Another cool aspect is that our home sits on the ten acre site my great grandfather homesteaded (well maybe not quite but his name is very close to the top of the abstract) around the turn of the century.