Happy Birthday To Me

         Me and birthdays have a kinda bad history.
       Not horrible. But less than ideal.
     This year my wife made me a beautiful cake. She put it in the microwave to keep the dogs from getting it. We had them in the house because it was around 10 degrees. Somebody. I won't mention any names but it was a boy child that's a teenager took the lovely cake out of the microwave to cook himself some lunch. He left the cake on the counter and are his lunch. Then he went to the living room to watch TV. Cake still sitting on the counter.
     When we heard the plate hit the floor, my wife said "Who left the cake on the counter?" It must have been a good cake, the dogs ate most of it before we could get in there.

     But it was better than my 20th birthday. It was on a Thursday. I worked 3rd shift then. Going in at 11,  getting off at 7. But the guy who worked 2nd shift said that he would swap shifts with me. I would work 2nd shift for him and my regular shift on Wednesday night then I could be off Thursday night to celebrate. Then Friday night we would each work our regular shifts. AWESOME! I'd get to work 40 hours, he'd get to work 40 hours. PLUS, I'd get paid a birthday bonus of 8 hours. And get to celebrate my birthday with some friends (or at least people I liked celebrating with)🍕 🎂 🍻
     So I go to work Wednesday at 3 and work 16 hours. I got off at 7, go run around for a little while and go home to sleep at 1. I set the alarm for 7:30 cause that would give me time to take a shower and make the party.
     My plans got interrupted when the phone rang at 2:55. The guy from 2nd called in sick. They need me to come in and work his shift. Ummmm, it's my birthday. I worked his shift last night. He's supposed to work his shift and mine tonight. He said he might make it in later, so maybe you'll stop be able to go celebrate.
Sorry, Charlie.
     I called a couple of the friends that I was supposed to meet up with and told them I might be late, but go ahead with the party. Nothing to worry about there, they were going to party regardless. He didn't make it in later. He didn't make it in to work 3rd shift. He didn't make it in Friday for his shift either. Guess who got to work another double? You've got 3 guesses and the first 2 don't count.
🎯
     If you're keeping score at home. It worked out to me having 2 8 hour shifts, 2 16 hour shifts, 1 15½ hour shift. 63½ hours worked. Plus 8 hours of bonus pay. Best check I got the whole time I worked there.
     The guy from second shift, he got fired. Turns out he had been stealing tickets and turning them in on his time sheet. It wouldn't have been discovered if he hadn't missed 3 days of work.

     I did get a fantastic gift this year:

     

I Don't Have Any Vegetarian Friends

Sorry, Angy.

A discussion on the twitter yesterday got under my skin a little bit. People were talking about having ______ friends. I let it kinda slide on by, cause I was trying to work at the moment. But I would like to comment now.

   I don't have any vegetarian friends. Nor do I have any gay friends. No black friends. No white friends. No Hispanic friends. No atheist friends, nor Christian friends either. If someone is my friend, I don't 'qualify' them. They are my friend . (read that as FRIEND PERIOD).

  Friends are the people you can not see for weeks, or months, sometimes even years and start up a conversation. They may ask you about your family, or not mention them at all. Friends are something that you collect as you go through life. You may meet 20 people when you start a new job, and wind up with 3 of them as what you would truly consider a friend. Or you may be lucky and all 20 of them become someone you consider as your friend. 

  Now to clear things up though, I have friends (or used to) that are homosexual, black, white, hispanic, asian, jewish, catholic, christian, wiccan, atheist, vegetarian, vegan, native american, next door neighbors, miles away on the internet.

   But I don't classify them. They are or were just friends.

Some people I almost expect them to parade me around showing me their various collection of friends.

BTW Left-handed, Lesbian Lebanese friends are VERY RARE.

Thank You for reading and Good Day!

Nelson

This was one of the first posts I wrote in a blog that doesn't exist anymore. But I kept a copy of it.

It Was 15 Years Ago Today.......

Our Wedding Day!

     Back when I had color in my hair. and I could get down on one knee without falling over in pain and didn't need help getting up afterwards, I made a brilliant decision. I asked Yvette to marry me. Oddly enough she said yes!
    We haven't had a perfect marriage. I'm sure of that. I'm not sure any marriage is ever perfect. But we were perfect for each other. We're still perfect for each other. I love her. She loves me.
     I know there were people who thought our marriage would never last. I know this because there were a few who told me so. And if you looked at it logically, it shouldn't have. A woman who grew up in the city married a guy who had grown up in the country. She had 3 adopted children. I liked children "if they were cooked right". 15 years ago, 4 children ago. 
     And finally, after 15 years, we are going to have a honeymoon. 5 days and 4 nights with NO children. 4 nights with no children. Guess what we're going to do?

  That's right.

 Uh huh.

SLEEP! 

     No one crawling into the bed waking us up. Nobody waking us up to let us know they are home. No one waking us up to let us know there is squash in their room that needs to be killed. (Any flying bug in our house Jeremiah calls a squash, cause that's what Daddy does to them) No one waking us up to let us know they killed a squash.
     We're going to go on a cruise.
      And I'll leave you with this thought.

          I've been listening to this song almost everyday since I first heard it. And it's right. 

A Little Bit of Love, A Little Bit of Faith, A Little Bit of Hope.

     It makes for a cool song.

It makes for a dang good marriage!

 
And 15 years later, I'd do it all over again.

Can I Trouble You For a Second?

  I need prayers.  

Could you pray for me? 

Prayers Needed!

     If you have very many friends on Facebook, you probably see one of those phrases every day. Possibly even several times a day. To me it's pretty simple. I can either ignore their plea, or I can take a few seconds and ask God to help them through their problem. I may click on like, or I may not. Sometimes I might even comment that prayers have been sent.

       I grew up in church. I hadn't accepted Jesus then, but I knew who he was. I knew about praying too. We would have 3 or 4 every church service. Short and Simple Prayers. Long Involved Prayers. Loud Prayers. Whispered Prayers. (I hated the whispered prayers. You were never sure when they finished. And everybody was looking around to see if the persons lips were still moving)

     The idea of asking someone to pray for you, that was kind of unheard of when I was a child. I'm not sure how old I was the first time I was in a church service and the pastor asked for prayer requests. 

     But now. Oh, now, with Facebook and text messages and Twitter. It's easy to ask the world for prayer requests. And like I said, I'll probably pray for you. I don't care if you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or anything else. You want prayer, you got it. You ask for positive thoughts, you're probably gonna get a prayer said for you. I'm not going to judge whether you're worthy of my prayers. That man I'm praying to, I'll let him be the judge.

     And I hope you don't judge whether I'm worthy to be praying for you. Again, Somebody already has that job. 

     But if I ask for prayers, just know this. I don't care WHO you're praying to. If you pray to God, He will hear your prayers. If you are praying to Allah for me, God will hear your prayers. If you're praying to the left field wall in Wrigley Field for me, God will hear your prayers. 

     Omniscient. It means All Knowing. That's what God is. He knows your needs. He knows my needs. And I'll let him decide whether my prayers are worthy. Cause that's His job. It's not mine, it's not yours. It's His.

     And if you think the left field wall of Wrigley Field is God, I'll be praying for you.

If You're Easily Offended, Don't Read This!

Signs, Signs, Everywhere There's Signs

This was one of my favorite signs for years, I always thought if you READ the top part,

Is the bottom part really necessary? 

I mean really, 

IS THIS NECESSARY?

Then a couple of years ago, I ran across this sign and the voices started running through my head. Like the final leg of a mile race. Flat out, full bore running.

Then I went a long time without seeing any signs that affected me.

Then Monday.

  

     I saw this sign and drove by it, then realized I may have missed something important so I turned around and drove by it again. And took a picture.

My first thought was that somebody had tampered with the sign.

Then those thoughts started running again.

Does that mean the sausage is shaped like a penis?

Is the sausage made of penis?

    I'm almost serious about that. I live in the county where the President of the NCBA is from. MAYBE this is a test market for a new National Cattlemans Beef Association product?

     But I really thought it was just somebody vandalizing a sign. But I shared it with a few people. And I got a response from one person, that well. It made me wonder. 

     What's Pizzle?

     A grocery store in Austin has been named in a civil suit. They sold Beef Pizzle as human food. Adulterated, non-inspected pizzle. Sold for human consumption. The outrage. The tragedy. 

     I'm not sure exactly how it happened. And I'm not sure if it was raw pizzle or something else. My mind is kinda drawn towards thinking they took the dog chew toys and sliced them up and labeled them as Smoked Boneless Turkey Necks. Which is sort of what a beef pizzle looks like. A turkey neck. 

    Try not to think of that the next time you are getting ready to eat your Thanksgiving Dinner.

 

Perspective

     I was thinking the other day, "Gee, I SHOULD write something on my blog". But what could I write about? I hadn't seen anything to make me want to write. At least nothing that made me want to write more than a paragraph or two on Facebook.
     Until Monday. Monday, I saw a story about a rancher in Nevada whose cattle were being rounded up by the BLM. They were seizing his cattle illegally (according to the article).
    The federal government (MY federal government) trampling on the rights of some poor citizen. I was horrified. But then I realized I had heard of this guy before. There had been something I had read with that name. 
     So I did a Google search. And I found it. Where I had seen the name before.
     Seems this rancher decided back in 1993 he shouldn't pay grazing lease fees to the BLM. Evidently he had been paying grazing fees before that. But for some reason he decided he shouldn't do that anymore.
     His decision for whatever his reasons, and there were evidently many, has led to lawsuits, court cases, news stories. 
     A couple of the reasons given: 
He should be paying the fees to state agencies, not the federal government
His ancestors were farming the land since the 1800's, long before there was a BLM.
     I wouldn't be real quick to use that second one as a defense if I were him, might lead to some other peoples then wanting to get some restitution from him. And I'm not sure he can use the first as a defense if he paid the grazing permit fees prior to 1993.
     But then in 1998, the desert tortoise managed to be found on the land he was grazing his cattle on. I don't know much about them but evidently they are considered a vulnerable species and need protection. Which means cattle were no longer allowed to graze on their habitat, whether the grazing fees are being paid or not. 16 years ago. SIXTEEN YEARS.
     If I read some of the news reports earlier correctly, this poor rancher had 1000 head of cattle grazing the contested land. According to that same story the rancher valued his cattle at $1000 each. 1000 head of cattle at $1000 each. That's $1000000 worth of cattle, if that story is correct.
     I'd like to say I'm on the side of the rancher. He's being forced out of his livelihood. 
     But then I look at it from a different perspective.
     A millionaire had been using this property rent free for 21 years. And is finally being evicted. 
     Same story, different perspective.
I'm editing this. After I read it I realized I had left out some things. There are 67 cowboys being contracted to round up the cattle. Evidently several federal law enforcement officials are out there to protect the cowboys doing the rounding up.
     I personally think this has made such big news because news reporters are doing there best to make it a big story. So they can convince their bosses that they need to be sent to cover this story. In Nevada. Clark County Nevada. Las Vegas is in Clark County Nevada. Coincidence?
     

WHAT Happened There?

     I have been thinking about how I could use this picture. I knew I wanted to use it in a post, but I wasn't sure HOW to use it. And as I sit here writing, I'm still not sure. So I guess I'll start writing and see where my mind takes me. :-) .
    So, what happened here? Was there a herbicide failure? Did someone forget to turn on the sprayer? Did it rain too soon after application? Or was this deliberate?
     Deliberate? Why would someone do this deliberately?
     Open your mind.
     Follow me to an alternate reality.
     Enter Nelson 's world.
     Why? WHY?
     Testing. Trying to figure out something. Is that last application of herbicide worth it? How do you decide something like that? The only way you can find out is to conduct a field trial.
     Yeah. THAT'S what it is. A field trial.
     But wait, do you know what a field trial is? If you're a farmer, or you are familiar with farming you probably know. But for those of you who aren't, you may not. So I'm going to give you a little idea.
     This idea of mine about it being a field trial may be right, it may be wrong. I don't know. I don't know the farmer who works that field.
     But let's just imagine. Farmer Brown wonders if that last application of herbicide is worth it. How COULD you figure that out?
     Well here's how you could do it. You take a field that is all the same crop. Planted the same day. All of the field has been treated the same all year long. Until it comes to that last herbicide application. And you just don't spray part of the field.
     Then, when you harvest the field you keep the grain harvested separate. When you take it to the grain elevator/terminal they test it. They weigh your load, test for moisture content, and check for foreign material (weed seed). If the grain is too wet or too much weed seed is present (foreign matter) you get docked.
     There is a constant moisture that grain elevators adjust grain to. The level of moisture that is considered 'dry'.  For grain sorghum, that level is 14%. The higher the moisture, the more it costs the elevator to dry it and the less they will pay the farmer. 16% moisture results in 2% shrink and a 4¢ per bushel drying charge. 20% moisture would result in 6.7% shrink and a 28¢ per bushel drying charge. I didn't know the precise numbers so I called a local grain elevator to find out. Thanks to Brett who answered the phone and answered my questions. I really appreciated it and it just reminded me of how much I miss being IN farming. He took the time to answer my questions when he didn't know me from Adam.
    But back to my idea. If you know how large an area you harvested and how much grain you produced from that area, you can determine what your yield was per acre. Knowing the yield per acre and knowing the cost per acre of production let's a farmer make production decisions.
     Weed competition can result in reduced yields, moisture dock can result in lower income. They may have been trying to determine if skipping a herbicide application would affect their bottom line. Like I said, I don't know the farmer, I don't know what happened.
      But I do know this. When I was growing up, if a farmer had a field that looked like that and it was visible from the road, he would have needed a good answer for WHY it looked like that. He wouldn't have been able to go into the farm supply, or the feed store, or the coffee shop, or the sale barn, or the grocery store, or the post office, or even church without someone asking him about it. And some churches, well he might have been the subject of a sermon, or at least put on a prayer list.
      But in all sincerity, I wonder what the difference in yield was between the 'clean' area and the 'messy' area. Or if there was a difference. For all the talk about sustainability, if a farmer doesn't make a profit, he's not going to be able to sustain his farming effort.