Mud pies

3/31/06 6:29 am.
40º F, Overcast, S wind 11 mph.

Good morning,

I had a chance to play in the mud yesterday. I moved some of the driveway around yesterday - high spots put into the low spots. At this time of year, the soil is pretty wet and when we drive over it, the weight of the vehicle squishes the gravel to the area between the wheels and to the outside of them. Makes for a messy drive out. It also makes for brown sidewalls on the tires. I know it will keep squishing until the soil dries a lot more, but it isn’t too bad cardiovascular exercise though. While doing the playing in the mud, I noticed there are a lot of pine trees, pole size, which have died. There also are a lot of small pines coming up too. Guess the Good Lord decided it is time for a change of crops! I will cut out the dead pines that are close to the driveway, rather than have them fall in the driveway later. There also are a few dead ash trees too. They will come down for firewood next winter. I also noticed several burls on some of the pine branches. I will have to cut them free and see what I can do with them. Never worked with burls before. Have to figure out something.

There was a smattering of rain last night, but nothing what was predicted. We are supposed to get some rain and wind today. The wind is already up some. Should be much more wind before nightfall. I did get tarps over everything needing them yesterday before quitting for the day outside. Don’t know how much I will be able to accomplish outside today with the predicted wind and rain. Maybe the rain will allow me to burn the accumulated trash - I hope.

Woke up to warmer temperatures this morning than we have had in a long while. The winds have been off of the lake some the past few days, keeping it cooler. The temperature yesterday was close to 50º F, but it was about 15º F warmer in Green Bay. Has been that way most of the week. Will be nice for that to happen later in the year, but we are ready for the warm weather at the moment. The weatherman is talking of possible snow in a few days though.

I have been inundated with folks trying to sell me Medicare Supplement insurance lately. It probably is a good thing that this thing is online most of the time, or the phone would be ringing as much as the mailbox is filled with ads. It is amazing how many different ways there are to try and attract ones attention. Also each product is the best! I did contact the Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner’s office to get the materials they offer. Most I used when selling insurance, but they have gotten much bigger and with a lot more pages to each booklet. I am also getting a feeling of how the folks I serviced felt with the bombardment of propaganda. Fortunately I only followed up on requests and didn’t have only a single product to fit everyone. It helps that I know something about Med Supp. so there is less confusion for me than for others. The key word is patience. A lot of folks don’t use it in doing the research. On the positive side, it looks like our out-of-pocket cost will be less with Medicare. That is good news.

Margriet must have had a mad on yesterday - she attacked the floors in most of the house. All clean again. Maybe it was that she didn’t have her computer to play with yet, at least not online. We are again waiting for a return from Microsoft on the problem. Hope it comes soon and the solution is also at hand. This is some frustrating. Thought we were improving things, but doesn’t seem to be the case.

It appears we will be eating fish chowder and tuna salad sandwiches for the next 4 days or so. At least that is the amount I divided up into containers. It is not a bad thing to endure! Last night I made a link of smoked sausage with boiled potatoes and canned peas for supper. We have half of the meat leftover, so I will have to figure out what to do with it for supper tonight. Another difficult endurance trial! One of the local stores has chicken on sale for 29¢/#, but our freezer is too full to take advantage of the sale. We normally wait until the price is about 39¢/# to buy it, so expect we will buy more shortly. A terrible situation to have too much food to store.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,


Chris <><

Nice weather

3/30/06 6:52 am.
36º F, Bright clouds, S wind 8 mph.

Good morning,

A beautiful spring day yesterday. Temperature got close to 50º F and the wind was relatively quiet. The mud season has not really yet hit here, other than one short stretch of the driveway. Will have to do something about that part this year. Overall though the countryside is really drying up nicely. The warm weather and the lack of rain or snow has really helped that. We also have had some days with pretty high winds. The weatherman is predicting that we will have some rain, possible thunder storms too, tonight. When we went to Green Bay on Tuesday, we noticed one place particularly, that normally this time of year is about 40 acres of water from melting snow and a huge flock of Canadian Geese. This year there is only the small creek, but all of the geese were still there. Fortunately, there have been only a couple of grass fires so far this year. Fire danger should be higher this year I think.

The fishermen have been out on the lake for the past couple three weeks now. The Kewaunee city workman have put the launching ramp collection booth in place and are busy getting the docks and slips in place too. Guess they figure there will be a season this year. I have not heard if the fishermen have had good success or not. Not too sure if they are going out because of success or because it is time of the year. The smaller lakes have lost their ice covering this week pretty much too. There are a lot of boats in peoples yards getting cleaned up and ready for the season.

Last night it was our turn to bring soup and sandwiches for the Lenten service. Last week they ran out of soup and almost out of sandwiches. I made my usual fish chowder, but doubled the recipe and Margriet made tuna salad sandwiches, just in case there was not enough brought by others. As it turned out, there was more than enough of everything as everyone else also had the same idea and brought more than they normally would. Someone also brought a case of large cans of tomato soup - just in case. Of course the food was good and we had a good time in the kitchen getting it ready and serving it. Howard made a couple pots of soup from dehydrated mixes. Of course that was a topic of teasing!

I used a different recipe this time and it turned out very well, but not a "thick" as the one I normally use. About half of it was left over, so we gave some of it to one of our members who is having a rough time of it, and brought the rest home with us. Guess we will be having Fiskesuppe for lunch for a time to come. When we were in Green Bay, we picked up 3 "used" (day old) sub sandwich bread. Figured it was easier to make three sandwiches than a dozen or so. After they were made, Margriet cut them into several smaller ones to serve. The folks seemed to like them as there was not much left. Next time we need to make a bunch of sandwiches, we will do the same as it worked pretty well.

Margriet still doesn’t have her computer working yet. We did get an email back from Microsoft indicating some changes to make, but they didn’t have any effect either. They also asked for an information file from this computer, so ran it and another on Margriet’s computer, sending both of them to him. Hope he comes up with a solution soon. Margriet is really getting grumpy not having it to play with. I am too. One thing, we sure are learning more about these machines!

While we were in Green Bay, I stopped at the Home Depot to see if they would accept a check from church to buy gift cards to send to Grace Lutheran Church in Long Beach, Mississippi. They will. Last month’s special offering was to be directed to Long Beach and the total came close to $500.00 to send. Margriet and I will make up the difference to make it even money. I really was surprised to see we raised that much, but happy we did anyway. Talked to the Treasurer last night and she will cut a check so I can pick up the card(s) next run to Green Bay.

We have a couple of folks who are members of a woodworking group in Green Bay and convinced the members to gather up tools they no longer use/need to send to Long Beach for them to use. The have also received about 200 gallons of paint and some of it at least has been sent on the buses heading south. The tools will follow on the next buses heading south when they start running weekly in June. At the moment the south is overrun by college students on spring break. We hope there will be more buses heading south than those already planned and some folks from our congregation also are onboard them.

At the Synod Camping meeting on Sunday, about 25% of the folks attending had been to the south to help there. The high number really surprised me. One of the constant themes they said occurred over and over again was that the people could not understand why the white folks from the north were coming down to help the dark folks in the south! It is an interesting comment. One of the guys, who was a member of a 60 man group working together, said that one "dark gal" who had lost everything and had nothing left or income, was moved to tears. She decided to make a meal, gumbo, for them, even though she had no real means to. She went door to door asking for ingredients, picking up crabs here, or clams there, and continued until she had enough to feed the 60 men until they could not eat anymore. The man said he had no idea how she was able to acquire not only the ingredients, but also the means of preparing the food and serving it. He was reminded of the loves and fishes. All the men thought they were more than compensated for their time and effort. Amen.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,


Chris <><

A good day

3/28/06, 7:47 am.
33º F., Sunny, NNE wind 5 mph.

Good morning,

Yesterday was an interesting and good day. We received a package from the other side of the puddle - filled with Stroopwafels and Zoute Drop! Stroopwafels (syrup waffles - very much like a cookie only better) I really like and there were 6 packages of them in the box.. They are not available here so have to resort to other providing us with them. Our church secretary picked some up in Chicago (I think) some time ago, but other then that, we get them only when a package comes this way. The Zoete Drop (very salty candy which has a licorice flavor which is a favorite of Margriet’s. She also has 6 bags of them to chew on. Because of the high salt content I don’t care for them, but Margriet I think is happy about that. I ration the Stroopwafels out, one a day with a cup of coffee, but Margriet is less disciplined, so probably will have the Zoute Drop gone long before I am out of Stroopwafels.

There is a story about how we got the package of goodies. We sent a tee-shirt to Astrid some time ago. On the front of it had the face of a pig and the word Piggly. On the back was a pig’s curly tail and the word Wiggly. It is an advertisement for the Piggly Wiggly grocery stores here. One of Astrid’s friends saw the shirt and wanted one like it, asking if we could send one to them. We did. They wanted to know how much it cost, we told them, but said that it would be neater to get some Dutch goodies in payment. So we picked up the box at the post office yesterday. We are a bit sad though, as the postage on the box cost €52.00, about $60.00 U.S. to send That is very expensive for bags and packages of goodies that cost only about $2.00 each, I would guess. To say the least, we will enjoy the gift very much.

This morning Margriet got an email from a Dutch gal who spent something over a year here with her family, while her husband worked in Algoma. The world stopped until Margriet had a chance to reply to her. Not too excited! It is the first since they left right after Christmas. Betsie I said she is having a hard time getting back into small everything, having gotten used to everything so big with a lot of space here. Betsie is a sweet gal and has a nice family. She, another friend in Kewaunee (who had spent some time in The Netherlands), and Margriet would have "tea" every once in awhile while Betsie was here. All three girls totally enjoyed the time and were able to speak Dutch for a short time.

We still have no resolution for Margriet’s computer. Waiting for a response from Microsoft. Sure hopes it comes soon. Need to get the dad-gum thing up and running again!

We are going to Bible Study this morning and then off to Green Bay on a supply run. We have to make a pot of soup and some sandwiches for tomorrow night’s supper at church. We will pick up some supplies for that too. Really not that much to get this trip.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,


Chris <><

Un-accompolishments

3/27/06, 10:01 am
36º F., Sunny/warm, SE wind 6mph.

Good morning,

This past week has been busy with un-accomplishments. Spent the first couple of days getting ready for the Council meeting on Tuesday evening and the semi-annual meeting coming up next month. Wednesday morning, Margriet’s computer decided to stop accessing the internet after upgrading her system to XP a couple of days earlier. I have spent most of my time trying to solve that problem with the engineers at HP and Microsoft. So far - un-accomplishment!

The manufacturer website instant messaging really work great. After spending a few hours chatting with HP’s website we concluded that it had nothing to do with the hardware in-place. At first I thought the LAN was at fault, as both computers reported both were connected to each other and to the web, but would not allow sending or receiving emails or websites. The only thing that seemed to work were the tracking and pop-up threats entering, but were not visible on the screen. Only knew they arrived when we ran a scan and they were removed.

Next step (actually a multitude of steps) was to contact Microsoft and chat with their folks. After running a bunch of tests without improvement, I was emailed a bunch of things to do and the tech said he would call back in about an hour. The email was several pages long with a multitude of things to do - it took several hours to complete. Guess the tech gave up on me and turned me over to an engineer, via email, giving more things to test. Some of them were the same I had done before several times. One of the tasks was to download all of the system information of Margriet’s computer, save it, zip-file it, and email it too him to look at. It took me until this morning to figure out a way to do that since her computer was/is unable to access the internet to send. This morning it dawned on me to save it to a floppy, then put the floppy into this machine and send it to him. Da! Did that a couple of hours ago. Hope to hear a response back before the end of the week.

Just for the heck of it, I printed out the system information to see what it looked like - 43 pages of mostly things I don’t understand nor really want too. Don’t think there is too much information left to seek, other than the finger prints on the keypads! I did a similar download on this machine, so have something to use as a bench mark for the next problem. Hope I never need to use it. I am learning much about these machines in the process (so far not any new nasty words, the old one seem to suffice), including that Microsoft has had similar problems with the upgrading from ME to XP in the past. Hopefully they will be able to solve the problem.

The council meeting did go well, in spite of my thinking there would be some discussion on a couple items. We are getting ready for the semi-annual meeting next month. I decided to build a form to hand out to the various teams/committees, collecting similar information from each to add to the annual report. This time I thought it might be interesting for folks to see who is on each team/committee and what are the future plans they have. Usually the reports only contain what each has done and the report is completed in a couple of minutes at the last minute. This should give the folks two weeks to complete the reports and have something in their hands to remind them. Hope it works.

Yesterday there was a Synod meeting for our Synod’s camping ministry in Neenah. I am the delegate for our congregation. We stopped at church between the services so I could hand out the last of the team report forms, then headed for Neenah. On the way, we stopped at Grandma’s Café in Kewaunee for breakfast of pancakes and Margriet had an egg and toast. The main purpose of the meeting was to approve the possible borrowing of $450,000.00 to add and finish storm shelters in two fo the Bible camps. One camp had a storm go through with winds in excess of 65 mph, sustained for about 45 minutes. It took out an huge number of trees, while trapping 150 campers and staff in buildings for several hours without any electrical or water resources. Hopefully this will allow the completion by the end of the year. We did have a good time and of course I ran into old friends from other times and places. Margriet got another view of "church" she has not seen before in the process.

We arrived in Neenah way too early, so spent some time driving around the area seeking out some of my old haunts when I was selling insurance in that area. Found a couple of parks and a lot of construction. Some of the places I stopped at for coffee and to complete necessary paperwork, are no longer there or completely changed purposes. Two buildings that Joy (ex-wife) worked in are completely gone! One has been replaced by an expansion of a hospital and the other by a different, much larger office building. Both buildings were constructed in the mid-80's, so was surprised to see them gone. The office building sat at the edge of one of the canals and blended in with the old buildings in the neighborhood. The replacement has been constructed over the canal, completely blocking all but the water running under the building. There is much new building going on in downtown Neenah, unfortunately the new does not fit in with the architecture of the old at all and is really out of place. Huge, square, shinny, blocks of construction in the middle of many turn of the century architecture. It really is a shame. Many of the buildings which were torn down could have been saved, but that is not the American way.

One of the areas that had been farm fields, now has been planted with shopping malls. Since we were so early, we had to stop at a custard shop for some German Chocolate Fudge custard (very good) and then a walk through a brand new Wal*Mart Superstore. The store is beautiful, but the prices for most things, especially food, were cheaper at our local stores or where we shop in Green Bay. We walked through, shaking our heads and sampling the free food they were handing out. I did pick up a new pair of 99¢ flilp-flops for $1.68 though.

The weather has been beautiful the past week. Below normal temperatures have allowed the water to drain off slowly and not too much mud around this year. That probably will change this week as the temperature is supposed to be above normal with some rain showing up too. Too bad I have been fighting with the computers and not able to enjoy the out doors much. About all I did outside was to bring in the groceries and burn the trash. There is much to do, but the critters don’t seem to help much.

Margriet has a sour-cream apple pie in the oven. One of the farmers from church brought several bushels of Courtland apples to church to give away. She promised me a pie would be build last Wednesday and now is blaming the computer for forgetting to accomplish the task! Of course it is an item for teasing!!! Spareribs and cabbage on the menu for supper tonight. Doesn't sound too bad to me!

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,


Chris <><

Shocked!

3/20/06 7:36 am.
23º F, Sunny, NNE wind 7 mph.

Good morning,

I really got a shock on Friday when I went uptown to get the mail. The price of gasoline had gone up 10¢/gallon over night! What was shocking is the price had risen 6¢/gallon the day before. That was on top of the price rising 17¢/gallon the week before! I am a grumpy consumer to say the least. One disconcerting thing is that the state "average" price of gasoline is about 30¢/gallon LESS than in northeast Wisconsin. Guess the vehicles stay parked as much as possible.

The van is about ready to have new tires, but with the slowdown in the number of miles driven, they are still in better shape than I thought they would be now. It will not take too much warm weather, before they will need replacing though. While at the station I usually gas up at, I noticed the shop was empty and has been very un-busy often in the past couple of months. Chatting with the mechanics a bit ago, they said the only real busy times they have had was during the snowstorms and then they froze their butts off and ate little. I suspect folks are driving less and therefore fewer normal maintenance or repairs necessary. I suspect the supply chain for the repair departments are also affected drastically too.

We also have noticed an increase in food prices, while the amount of each product is less on the store shelves. I know that transportation costs are also rising, so suspect that is having an effect. We are tending to really watch what we are buying and the cost more carefully than normal. Sales are becoming much more important to us, but will not drive out of our way to get them normally. Occasionally we find some things surprising - like the name brand brats we got yesterday for 99¢/# yesterday! We picked up several pounds of the me and they are residing in the freezer at the moment awaiting for the proper time for some great meals.

I was looking online for something last week and stumbled across an article about logging and peeling lots. In the process of seeing what else was on the site, I discovered (learned) I have been using the drawknife wrong! I learned in 1967 helping to build the bunkhouse at deer camp. Phil taught me to peel with the bevel down on the blade. What the website showed was to have the bevel up! It really does work a lot easier! All these years working harder than I had too. Actually there are times and things needing the bevel down, but for general peeling, up is the way. Using it the "right" was, allows the blade to slide more easily parallel to the surface with out digging in. It also allows the small knots to be cut off with less effort - pushes the waste away from the log, rather than the knife into the log. Should also allow for more time between sharpening with more metal in contact with the log.

In snooping around the website, I also came across a couple of interesting sites: (http://diybandmill.com/ and http://www.forestryforum.com/board/). Both deal with building and using portable sawmills. If you are interested in seeing how folks solve problems and most do some pretty good "backyard engineering" there is a lot of both on them. I have gotten a few ideas to use on other things than sawmills.

We celebrated St. Pat’s day in fine style. Margriet made corned beef and cabbage and we had a feast! It really was good. There are some leftovers, so we are enjoying it more than once. This is the first time that she made corned beef this way, so learned something besides how to fill her belly. We had a rather large (for us) piece of meat and it took a long time to cook, just like it is supposed to. I sliced up the leftover potatoes and turnips and fried them with some of the corned beef left from LSM for breakfast the following morning - good. Suspect that Margriet will have a hotdish or some such in mind for the remainder of the corned beef. I sure will not object any!
We went to the Green Bay Home and Garden Show on Saturday morning. Since we are old, we get a discount and like that part of the deal. It was a nice show, but not as big as we expected. What did surprise me some was that there were fewer folks there selling new housing, rather many more selling remodeling and upgrading of existing homes. Not really too much for gardening, except several selling deck systems and/or construction. We did have a good time and stopped at the International House of Pancakes for some pigs-in-a-blanket for a late lunch.

Margriet and I were ushers yesterday for church and I had to give a Temple Talk at both services. I went to the beginning fo the first service, gave the talk, then came home to pick up Margriet so we could both go to the late service. Didn’t have that planned out too well, would have been better if we ushered at the first service, then we could have left right after I did the talk at the start of the second service. Oh well .... Maybe next time, but I doubt it.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,



Chris <><

Done!!!!!

3/9/06 6:56 am.
33º F., Foggy, NNE wind 3 mph.

Good morning,

The hot seems to be here. I don’t think the temperature has gone below freezing for the past couple of days. Yesterday and the day before have been in the mid-40's. The snow is melting in a rush, so it will not be long before our driveway in particular, an the rest of the land too, will be mud for sure. Or at least a lot of water on top of the soil and/or ice. There are several schools delayed this morning thanx to the fog. All are to the sought of here.

I finally was forced to buy a new snow shovel. The old one I use the most broke once again. Dale threw it out and I rescued it from the dumpster. I have repaired it about a half dozen times in the years since, but enough is enough. Since this has been a poor snow year, so there are a lot on sale. I picked one up for less than half price. Now of course it probably will not snow until next year. The last snow shovel I bought I think was to use at the store about 1980. Still have it, but it is designed to be used on concrete and were are beyond the sidewalks here, so it doesn’t work that well here.

Our Bible study breakfast went well. Lots and lots of food. Way too much. Margriet built a couple dozen muffins to take along, leaving the remainder at the host home. Last night in church the owners told Margriet and I how they liked the muffins - but ran out! There really was a lot of food and all good. Most was homemade too. The way it should be I think. I am really struggling in the task of finishing the next workbook. For some reason (maybe it is having too much information to sort though), I can’t get everything to "fit" in a way that makes sense.


3/14/06 7:16 am.
24º F, Windy, W wind 14 mph, 35 mph gusts

Good morning,

Obviously I didn’t get this finished last week. Besides working full time on a Bible Study workbook when I could, I also was fighting with my computer. This was having a lot of problems with the web and staying online for some reason. After a lot of emails to ITOL service folks, it was concluded that the phone line was/is the problem, though there also were a couple of problems with the setting on this machine too. Now it is up to the phone company to get things right again. Seems we have a problem with the phone line on a periodic basis. Makes for a couple of grumpy folks here at least.

I finally finished the workbook yesterday afternoon about 3:00 pm. One of the biggest problems was the file I have my research in became corrupted for some reason and I could not use it. Finally had to delete it. Fortunately, I did make a hard copy of it, but that meant I had to transcribe it into the workbook file, rather than cut and paste a lot of material. I did lock myself into a room at LSM and worked a lot on the workbook there, but no scanner for the notebook, so a lot of keypad work. A couple of times the room was appropriated for some classes to use, but I did lot done there. I did shirk some of my duties though to accomplish what I did. The wordbook is the last half of the last unit in this series. We have had a two year run on this topic and I don’t know what is next. Might just take a break for a bit. Have to go a bit early this morning so I can print it out - all 19 pages.

The weather until Sunday was beautiful May weather. The temperature got up to the 50's and the sun was out most of the day. Sunday things changed with the wind. Actually Saturday night with a real thunderstorm and heavy rain. Sunday the wind became very strong and the temperature dropped closer to normals for this time of year. Some of the gusts were above 50 mph. Sure glad we are down in the woods here, but we still felt the effects of the wind. Really blew things around. We also got a bit of snow, really freezing rain, which made a bit of a mess everywhere. One advantage of the wind is it dries things up some. Also with the lowering of the temperature again, the melting has turned to a bit of freezing again at night, again slowing down the runoff and creating new lakes and rivers. The snow storm we were to get passed to the north of us. Barron County got 23" of snow last night. Wish we were there! I did get a chance to try out the new snow shovel - sort of. Used it to remove the freezing snow on the ramp, but the edge is too sharp yet, so kept cutting into the wood some.
Sunday I was supposed to give a temple talk about prayer. I knew my plate was over filled, so asked the gal who has it next week to switch with me. Instead, Howard showed a power-point presentation. With the computer problems, workbook, and some other things, I knew I didn’t have sufficient time to prepare for it. Or my head in a right place. When we got home Saturday, we both were very tired and I really went to bed early. Sunday after church, I took a fiver that lasted THREE HOURS! Guess I was a bit worn out.

Margriet started to download the new operating system, XP, on Sunday. I was not too much help as I was trying to get the workbook finished. As a result, most of it loaded, but she was not able to access the web. Finally she gave up and used my machine after I went to bed. Yesterday morning, when she opened up, everything worked, including the web. She, nor I, have the faintest idea what happened to let it decide to work, but the look on her face was priceless. I had a hoot, and chuckled for most of the day. Glad it is working now.

The biggest achievement of the weekend was Margriet giving her first sermon and leading worship at LSM. She really did a great job. I also have a new name for her - Preacher Woman! It fits. She is walking on cloud-nine since. Not too sure who was more nervous - she or I. I did a lot of prayer walking during the service. I really am proud of her and how far she has grown since I first had any kind of contact with her. The worship service experience did just exactly what it is supposed to do for the students in her.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,


Chris <><

White and hot

3/6/06 6:26 am.
29º F., Snowing, NNE Wind 5 mph.

Good morning,

After a couple of warm days, the snow is back - but it is still warm. Most of the roads in the state are less then desirable to drive on. The central part of the state is getting most of the snow, with 4-5" in many areas. Have not seen any school closing or delays though. We have a bit over an inch on the ground now and it is still coming. Snow should keep up until about noon.

The snow we got on Wednesday night had a layer of ice under it and a crust on top of it, thanx to the warm weather. I didn't move the van at all, until Friday and there was a pretty good layer of ice on the windshield under the snow. I got lazier than usual, sweeping off the snow and then moving the van into the sun, letting the heat generated inside to melt the ice. Worked pretty good too. There still was a layer of ice on the top of the van when we came home from church yesterday. After sitting in the sun for awhile and the van on a very small incline, the ice slid over the windshield in one sheet, stopped by the windshield wipers. Looked really cool!

I spent almost the entire day Thursday trying to download thMaxas Lucado program without success. Finally got a response to an email query to the publisher with some things to try. They didn't work either. I have something set on this machine which is blocking it, but don't know what. Suspect there is a virus or popup blocker somewhere causing the problem, but yet to find it. I have resorted to using the notebook and putting the information I need on a flash drive, then extracting it onto this machine.

I have been outside removing bark from the poles I have cut the past few days. A couple of the pole are wet and frozen. Those are really fun! Kinda like shaving a big icicle with a potato peeler. It really takes a lot of force to c ut through the ice and bark on those. Earned my keep with them. Late yesterday afternoon, I re-stacked the pile, taking the un-peeled poles out from the bottom of the pile and putting the peeled ones on the bottom. Brought back memories of playing the game "pick-up-sticks" with the sticks about 15-20 feet long! I only have about a half dozen yet to do, then have to get more for the pile.

While out re-piling, I noticed some wild turkey tracks a few feet to the north of the peeling buck. Checking them out, the came from the direction of the road to the east and headed into the upper swamp to the west. They traveled about 30-40' to the north of our bedroom window. At first they took me some aback as I had never seen them in the snow before. Was kind of cool to see. More fun when there are actual turkeys in the tracks though. Have seen them in the fall walking outside of our kitchen window more than once. There is a flock of about 25-30 which calls the area within a quarter mile of FISKLAND their home range. Fun to see them.

One of the most enjoyable things about this time of year and being outside, is the absolute silence most of the time. Not only does the snow provide some outstanding beauty, but it acts like a blanket for the sound. You can almost hear the snow flakes fall. The wind has been rather calm the past couple days, so being outside is really a joy. Love it!

Tomorrow we are having breakfast with the Bible study group at one of the gal's homes in Kewaunee. Margriet is building some muffins for the occasion. Everyone is bringing something for the deal. We finished the first half of the current unit last week. I still am writing the last half. I would like to finish the second half before tomorrow’s meeting, but I don't think that will happen. We have LSM this weekend too, so it would really be nice to have it finished.

With Lent now here, we seem to have a calendar filled more than normal. At least four days/evenings a week at church for one reason or another. With LSM this week, we will be doing some "church thing" nine out of 10 days! Too busy for these old folks. I have cut back on some of the activities, or it could be more worser. At least I can look forward to not being President after April and not being on the staff of LSM after May. Not sure what I will do with all of our free time. Not!

Margriet is building some fancy fudge for her ladies book study group tonight too. Hope the gals don't like it - I do! The gals are having a good time with their study. Each session seems to get a little longer than the previous one. I think that is a good thing.

Supposed to have some kind of moisture coming from the sky for most of the next week. That coupled with more or less warm weather (at freezing point for highs) could lead to some school closing and weird driving conditions too.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,


Chris <><

Humid it is!

3/2/06 7:34 am.
22º F., Overcast, 100% Humidity, NNE Wind 9 mph.

Good morning,

We have an inch or so of freezing snow on everything this morning. Started out as freezing rain just before it was time to go to church last night, then changed over to snow sometime after I went to bed. There are several schools closed or running late in the middle to the northeast of Wisconsin. We are just on the border of the mess. The snowplow that went by a few minutes ago was a grader, so they are having some problems with scraping off the road surface. Graders can apply a lot of down pressure to the blade, while a normal truck cannot. Everything outside looks like a black and white photograph again. It is a huge change from Monday night when we came home from church when there were a gadzillion and four stars in a inky black, clear night sky and not a sound anywhere.

The Easter season is upon us. We started with a soup and sandwich supper, followed by services last night. As always, the food was great and I think I ate too much. Had a good time chewing the fat too. As the sanctuary was filling up for the service, Margriet and I were standing near the front talking to a couple of other folks when it felt like someone hit my left eyebrow with a ball-peen hammer. I got a couple of Tylenol from the car, but the ache seemed to stay about the same. As the service started, I told Margriet we were going home. Don’t know where this came from, but really not comfortable at all. The last time this happened was when I was at deer camp during the deer season before I had the stroke. Only then it was 10 times worse. That headache hit as I was walking from the bunkhouse to the cabin the first night at camp. It put me on my knees, blurring my vision, and I think I ate about half a bottle of pain-killers. I went to bed earlier than normal last night and woke up with a mild headache behind my right ear. Popped a couple of pills and that has disappeared.

I finally got around to reinstalling a program from Max Lucado on this machine. It too disappeared when the hard drive died. I had a real problem loading it for some reason yesterday, only to find it would not work this morning. I just uninstalled it and will have to install it once again. It is a slow loader for some reason too, but remember it was an easy load the first time around. Oh well, it is a good and useable program. One part of it I really like, and had a use for yesterday, is entitled "What does the Bible say about _________?" You fill in the blank and it gives you references, both from the Bible and other major authors on the question. Very helpful when doing research. We have the program loaded on all of our computers (eventually this one again too) including the notebook. We use it for our devotions and Bible study when we travel.

I guess Bram is really growing up! He now has his own email address and knows how to use it. Margriet had a chat with Brenda yesterday and it was followed by an email from Bram, in response to one Oma sent to him. I also got into the act, sending him a picture of the Algoma Beach in winter that he swam at when he was here. I got an email back this morning, saying he didn’t remember swimming there. I will send a picture of him swimming. He is learning English, but apologized for writing in Dutch since his English is not very good. Oma had to translate for me - much to her delight. Brenda had sent 6 new pictures of Kalle via email the other day. I got what-for from Oma for not having printed them out yet to take to church last night. Guess I better get after that today!

Margriet made some cherry/chocolate bars for church on Sunday. They really turned out well - very heavy on the chocolate. There were some left in the pan to take home, so put them on the shelf above the coatracks in church while I put my coat on - then left them there! Monday we went to church and they were gone - almost. One of the gals put them into the refrigerator, so the gals who had class Monday night chewed on some more of them, leaving only a couple for us at home. Probably a good thing.

We picked up another USB flash drive while in Green Bay on Tuesday. The one I have been using for "church-like" activities filled up. It took me awhile to figure out what was wrong with the old one. I could download from it, change the file, but could not put it back on again. The expanded file was too bid to store again. The folder for Bible study has gotten very large, so no it is the only one on the old drive and everything else is now on the new one. Expect I will need to divide it again as the files/folder increase in umber and size. Sure beats the old floppy disks or CD’s though.

Time to get Max’s program installed and the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,


Chris <><