Week 8 - Fences

The day has finally come when our fence is being put in. I was taking my good old time with the trees until the middle of last week when I came home to a bulldozer and trailer with fenceposts parked behind the house. Excitement mixed with anxiety as I realized that I still had a bunch of trees which needed to be taken down. I started chopping away like a madman, going all Gears of War as I curbstomped branches off the downed trees rather than taking the time to cut them neatly. Good news is that it's the start of a new week and all the necessary trees are down. As it turns out, they didn't quite have enough posts to do the job and they were held up before starting.

That's where the moral of this story comes in - always make sure that you have communicated everything 3-4 times to a contractor before you commit to a project. When the guy came out, my wife talked to him while I paced off the property with his assistant to get a quote, etc. Despite clearly pacing off corners and discussing gate locations, when the contractor returned 2 months later (despite a 2 week promised turnaround), he was unsure of the actual location of the fence. Worse so, he was pretty sure of the location and his idea of where it belonged was incorrect. I stuck around the following morning to wait for him and walk the line, and it was a good thing I did. Otherwise we would have all been disappointed by how much he had accomplished when I got home from work. However, problem is solved and I have clarified the pathway of the fence. They are working on it as we speak (I hope, finally not rainy today) and we should be able to start moving animals in this weekend. I'm very excited to have animals around again, they make me more relaxed and cheery.

The moral of the story coming so early in the post, you can guess that it's been a pretty simple week. Dad was right, chopping down trees  really is an equation of 1 hour of chainsaw to 10 hours of clean-up. There is so much crap around the place now, but that means we get to have a few bonfires and the weather is so perfect for it right now. Cool crisp mornings, sunny days which just barely ease the nip in the wind, and dewey, damp evenings with dark silence of approaching winter. I love me some October!

In other news, the phone that I dropped last week in a toilet is cleaned and finally dried enough to be working again. Lesson has been learned; add "Don't text while peeing" to "Don't call someone in the shower" "Don't text in the shower" "Don't call in the rain" "Don't text in the rain" and "Don't leave your phone near the dishes". Needless to say, I think I've learned all these great (and no-brainer) lessons with cheap phones, but I'm finally ready to stop neglecting the value of the phone and upgrade to the new generation. It's time to get a smartphone. My plan comes for upgrade this November, so I'm starting to count down the days until I can check my email when I receive it rather than be the one guy at the meeting who didn't know the meeting was cancelled.

My Spartans lost again this week and they've officially blown it. As long as they win out from here, they still have a good chance to go to the Rose Bowl, given that the Leaders Division player will likely be 3rd best and that Iowa still has to play Michigan. All pressure is now on the MSU vs scUM football game this Saturday at 3.30 and I am so excited. If nothing else comes to fruition this year, I can still gloat in a 5th straight win against the other guys down in the whore, something that's never been done before.  Speaking of football, my fantasy team continues to be blown out of the water by everyone else in my league. I'm living proof that the automated draft can kick your ass clean back to the stone age. There is just no way to trade yourself out of the black hole.

Friday night, my in-laws treated us to a night of beer tasting here on campus. It was a very relaxing way to end the week, and as always, the barrel aged beer was my personal favorite. We had a good time of food and fellowship for a couple of hours and tried probably 10 different beers, including a probiotic, gluten-free mango tea beer which tasted pretty good in all honesty. The cranberry cider was awesome too, as was the Belgian blonde imitation. The Belgian-style takes me back to the first few weeks in the Netherlands when I was hooked on that type of beer. We hit it pretty hard in Leuven when we went down there - but a story for a different day.

I might have created a monster in my sister with Gears of War. I don't play a whole lot, but I would consider myself to be pretty good at the game. I have great statistics and those can't lie when you play by yourself against the computer. I don't have a current Xbox Live subscription, but I regularly tear it up and the computer is pretty vicious towards me at this point. Well, I introduced my sister to the game and all of her pent up violence came out very quickly. Next thing I knew, she was lighting up waves of drones on fire (pure luck) which egged her on to running out into the open field and I was obligated to follow her. She sure knows how to keep things exciting, but at the end of the game I found her trying to keep on playing. If she fails out of undergrad now I will personally blame myself.

This is essentially how she looked during the whole game. Convincingly dangerous but unpredictable.

I'm headed off to the lab until next week. My method of measuring hydrogen continues to over-saturate the machine, blocking measurements for 24 hours, and I continue to get aggravated about it. Here's to hoping this week brings some real results which can at least be read.