The Hill at Oso Lago.

A forgotten area....

Saturday was a pretty good day here around the house. We spent the day working.  We mowed, weed-eated (ate?), dug and pulled stumps, and reclaimed a space that had not been used for a while.

Two years ago, in August we fenced in an area that had a big bunch of bushes in it. We put the goats in it to eat the bushes down and then cut the bushes down to the stumps. There were 8 or 10 there.  I’d always heard how good the goats were at clearing land so we wanted to give it a try.  They did there job (as you can see in the top picture), but we got a little side-tracked on our job.
The goats both have died since then and the fenced in area began to grow over even MORE than it did before. I mean, since we had it fenced in and couldn’t get to it easily to mow, it became a grown over, forgotten area. Eventually, we needed the fence for other projects and moved the goat shed into the dog’s pen… but the area was still grown over.

The setback of losing the goats took us off track and then we lost focus and went on to other things. Every time I mowed, I’d think about it… but it was going to take a lot of work to get back to what our vision was for the area.

I’d like to say it was just other work, not enough time, not enough money, etc. that caused us to focus on other things, (and it was those things at different times) but it was also, busy weekends of family time, Waldameer amusement park, time out with the kids and Amy.  None of them, bad, none of them a thing that shouldn’t be done… but all of them competing for time and resources. We lost our vision.

That vision had motivated us to a good start, but a good start is not nearly as good as even a mediocre finish…

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About 2 months ago, I was driving to Lockport, NY in my truck. My truck is a running joke at work. I can safely say that I have one of the oldest vehicles in the lot (that is not a classic hot rod). Probably the oldest among the management team. Laugh as they may, the truck is a good old truck in excellent shape really. I think they are jealous that they have a vehicle payment.

So I was going to visit a customer and had brought along the production supervisor. On the way home from the trip, my truck began acting up. It was hesitating and “missing”.  It had done this a few months back and I attributed it to bad gas.  But this wasn’t bad gas. I decided to do a tune up. Here is what I found:

Just a LITTLE build up.

So, as we are packing the back of the truck and the trailer, the time is ticking down. The boys were losing focus and I needed to give them specific tasks. The clock continued to tick. Amy was putting in some things. I yelled “grab some food”.  Amy stepped in some old rotten apples on the side of the driveway that I had dumped out of a wheelbarrow. She began to fuss with her shoe.

I yelled to the kids to get in the truck. Amy was still messing with her shoes. I yell to her to get into the truck. It’s got to be a half hour. She said, “but my shoes are gross and I need to go to the bathroom”. “No time” I replied, “let’s go!”

She jumped into the truck and I started it up: 4:28 we’re rolling out the drive way.  The neighbors must have thought we were nuts. As we were driving we began going through things we should have grabbed. Surprisingly, the list was small because as I would say… “Oh, we should have grabbed… ” Amy or one of the kids would say. “I grabbed it!”  Sometimes I would be the one who had packed it.

What did we forget two things that were fairly vital to most people. In this case either one was not as important as they may sound initially.  What were those two things you ask?  They were Toilet Paper and Water.  Granted water could be fairly important but where we were going had plenty of streams that in a true emergency we could have boiled and used for drinking water. As far as toilet paper goes, it’s nice, but not necessary in the big scope of things.

As I said in the last post we gave ourselves 15 minutes to stop during the trip. Now let me tell you what I learned from this stop.  Many times a convenient store is a better place to stop and pick up a few things because, although more expensive, they are infinitely faster. We stopped at a convenient store, Amy went to the bathroom, I began scoping water, TP, some paper plates, etc. I had grabbed a few things and Amy came out of the bathroom and said… “What are you doing? Those are expensive here.”  I said, “I know that, but in reality, if we were stopped, that would be my last concern.” She gave me “THE LOOK”.  If you are a married man, you know what “THE LOOK” is.  It’s that piercing look (depending on the lady and circumstances it can happen in a blink of an eye, a glance or an intense glare) that says… “Go ahead, do what you want, but I wouldn’t if I were you.”

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Loaded and ready to go. We are stopped at a gas station at this point.

On Thursday, April 1, 2010, at 4:00 pm I gathered the family together. It had been a busy day. I had taken the day off to do some work around the house. I began cleaning our back woods “dump” area. I’ve posted about that area before. It’s an area where the previous owners for decades had dumped bones from butchering what looks to be pigs, old appliances and other junk like mattresses.  The kids had been busy playing hard with a dozen other neighbor kids. It was spring break for them and it had been gloriously warm for April 1st. So when a break appeared and all the neighbor kids went home for dinner, to check in, etc. I explained to the family that a poisonous cloud was heading our way on the prevailing winds. I told them we had 30 minutes to gather what we could and head for the hills. Literally. We would flee to the Allegheny National Forest and camp high among the “inland mountains” as the Erie news stations calls them.

April 1st. April Fool’s day. Was it a trick? No, it wasn’t. It was test/challenge/motivation to go on a quick camping trip. It was a dry run to see how we would react to unexpected news of an impending catastrophe. I am going to review what we experienced, what we forgot and what we successfully accomplished. This wasn’t a hardcore “bugout” on foot, etc. and it assumed a few things. I’ll detail those things. I wanted to keep it fun and exciting for my family also.

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We’ve got higher speed internet access through my Cell phone so I hope to begin updates soon.

…fart is still one of the most popular words in the household.

… Wii is well received by everyone in the family.

… We have a ton of snow (a lot more added today), just like last year.

… I am going to hire a personal trainer to get over the hump on my weight loss.

Actually I could go on with a lot of stuff here but I won’t bore you.

I hope everyone has a happy new year. I am hoping I can get a high speed solution and a new computer to solve my dilemma of not being able to write like I want to on my blog.

Hiking the Tidioute Overlook with my beautiful wife!

I started a lifestyle change in February of this year. I know God has given me a certain number of days on this earth and I didn’t want to shorten them up by foolishly wasting my health away.  He gave me children to be a father to and a wife to be a husband to. I changed my eating habits. I started working out. So far, I’ve lost over 100lbs and still have about 90 to go to my goal weight.
In the pictures above there is a smiling guy who isn’t very happy and a happy guy who is smiling. Can you tell which is which?

Ethan and the Turkeys in September. They are larger now.

Well, the weather is changing and some things are settling down. I’ve got a lot to update so much to follow up on and I just feel like writing for a bit. So I’ll start with some basics.

We bought 10 turkeys. We had my parents pick them up for us in Ohio and when we went to visit we grabbed the first 10 we could get our hands on.

They are getting big and I am getting ready to take them to slaughter. If I have the time, I may do a slaughter or two myself, but I have a fairly local place that just charges a couple bucks each to do the deed and package them. They even get stamped (if I want) and can be resold.

So right now we’re trying to work down our freezer a bit because we are going to have over 100 lbs of turkey going into it soon.

Yes, I AM looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. MMMMM… Fresh turkey.

Well, we’ve got about 9 inches of snow. Erie only had 2.9 inches, and they are still a couple inches shy of the snowiest winter on record (a record set in 2001).

In other news, I start a new job on Monday of next week.   It’s a temp-to-hire position, which seem to be all the rage in the current economic environment.