Late November, it sucks! …. 11/30

It’s called planning. My father-in-law had it nailed. When ever he and his wife would venture down the highway even if it was to the next county all was in order. Nothing was left to chance. There wasn’t a detour unknown. Gas stops, lodging and meals were all planned out, logged and color coded on their travel journal.
He was his own Triple A.

On the other side of the coin was my father would jump in the car with bag in hand. If you were not a step behind him you’d be left on the curb. With him the open road was just that,
"What adventures are around the corner? Let's go see." was his credo.

So this is where the two of us come from. We, Rosebud and I have two different view points even if it’s just a trip to town. Thankfully, over the years some of the both of them has rubbed off on me as well as has the experiecne of six week of semi driver school and 2 years pushing big rigs. A semi isn’t like a car, you just can’t put it into reverse and get out of a pickle if you’d make a wrong turn. You planned ahead and still sometimes find trouble on the road.

So now we are planning a tour of the south for the spring. I for one want a little surpisre ending at day’s end. However, getting stuck in Chicago or Atlanta rush hour isn’t the surprise we’re after. So, I’ve been "trip planning" looking into to things like which motels will take in our dog and what sites missed on proir trips.

You may say I have a little time on my hands now that we are in the tweener time of the year, November, it's a bummer, the Pilgrims should have stayed on board or headed to Miami Beach

Quite Procrastinating... 11/29

We’ve got 30 days to deal or no deal, to hold or sell.
The time is thin to take that write off whether short of long term.

I use to sit on a lemon thinking it would turn into a rose, wishful thinking. Finally as my hair got thiner and my wallet I put this fantasy thinking aside and took my medicine, a lose is a lose and the faster you get off dead horse and admit it the faster you can invest in gold mines. So here we are with one month to go before Uncle Sam puts your tax saving lose into next year. We have 30 days to bail or to hold… ( I am talking investor here and not day trader)

If you have made your move the question is where do you stash the cash? I am now thinking that the Board of Trade wouldn’t be bad. It has to come out with the next big thing (or maybe we all could pools our cash and do it ourselves). Bio energy, that’s the ticket. I can see combining two future items together, gas and corn… it would be called "e-Gas" and it could be big. Our state lab and universities are now working on another gem very similar, converting wood chips into "w Gas", we’d slam this one too.

All this activity is trying to displace straight gas so that we can tell the entire middle east to take a long walk off a short pier. But the problem is that we this need petro gas in some form. The other problem is that any real alternative is years off and several zillion dollars away. I use to bitch about the traffic when our population was 2 million now it’s 3 with more Mexican drivers crashing the boarder daily. There is only so much room on our highways as it is. Anyway you cut it …it’s still going to take 5 hours to get around Chicago.

The Answer? It’s simple we bring back trains (mass transit) for use around town even in Des Moines. Then in our cars we burn WATER!
Yes water, which has the two most powerful gas elements known to man excluding by brothers.

6 and 10 …and that’s a push. 11/28

Each early fall our gang make their prediction about our local team. I thought they'd have 6 wins and 10 - L’s. Iam a realist and have been around the block once to often with the boys in green and gold. Their lack of "houts-pa" isn't the teams fault, it's the boys in the front office that need their tails kicked.

However, my true team is on the left coast, the Bolts. Last year they looked marvelous then they dumbed their QB? What were they thinking? Now with a rookie QB who I thought was the best thing coming out of college in years other than my daughters that his team would go far they are looking good. Even I can't tell a good piece of football flesh compared to the Yahoo in Green Bay. I could go on and on but you'd drop this blog site as fast as a date with Ugly Bett.

So now that we are at the halfway point in pro-ball it means only one thing and our local team has tanked once again (no, I didn’t stay up to see if they beat the Seahawks) and it’s time to switch to college hockey anyway. I tried that too but our state’s defending men’s NCAA champs have fallen flat on their faces. Someone must have dulled their blades. It’s very unlike the Badgers to get kicked off the ice five weekends in a row.

The Badgers football team finished 11 and 1 but seeing they aren’t in proximity to any large media center nor affilated with any church, mosque or temple they will be past over as an oh-so-run and head to the Toilet Bowl.

So what’s left in our fair state to cheer on? The Bucks ah-no, the Brewers? ah-no! There are two hopes left. The Badger men’s basketball team – a big maybe…. Then there is the other defending Badger champs…the Ladies’ Hockey team. That’s right, girls with pads on…. And they don’t think anything thing about putting you into the boards.

But ladies hockey? Boy you really have to be at the end of things to waste an afternoon watching them skate even if you could. We only get high lights ever so often but those girls can really fly.
There is one last hope to make this coming winter "bear-a-bull"... no T. Brown I have not turned into a flatlander to cheer on Chicago teams, only the Bradley U. basketball whose school head officer told to NCAA to go flyer a kite when the school was asked to change it's athletic team's name from the Braves... charge on, charge on!

Stuffed 11/27

This year it took many hands to get through our Thanksgiving dinner. One person was in charge of the veggies, three others did the pumpkin pies, a crew of two did the bird and Rosebud did the stuffing while remembering to take out the "inners". Our annual event like other families’ has seemed to improve with age and so has the verbal tennis match that accompanies the prelims.

Thankfully I have been relegated to the duties of overseer. What I am thankful for on this day is that my younger brothers take delight in doing the dishes!

Several decades ago our chief operating officer would take things in her own hands and no one dared cross the line into her kitchen without proper credentials. It was a one-person show getting the multi-plattered servings onto her table. Sad to say our chief is now longer, gone to her reward but annually many of us return to her kitchen to cook up memories of her.

Try as we may to duplicate her Thanksgiving touch by adding pinch of this and a tablespoon of that, it’s just not the same. It’s impossible to replicate a cup of humility and her smiling face.

Yes we over eat, stuffed our faces and tummies. Everyone has a chance to get caught up with one another. Then we said our good byes hoping to see one another over Christmas. But all families have a way of increasing as well as going their separate ways. I just hope that our kids carry the same positive memories about us as we carry of our parents… please pass the gravy it’s getting mushy in here.

Our kind know it all… 11/22

China had Buddha, we, the town of Hazelhurst, have the Winger, that’s Gene Winger. He’s been a fixture in our town for years. As a lad I use to work for his father and I know for a fact where Gene proper perceptive comes from.
It’s in the Gene’s…

One day I was trying to get a concrete casting from it’s form and it would budge. Gene comes up to me and says, "Don’t force it use a bigger hammer." and he hands me a sludge hammer.

For me from that day forward Gene’s insight has always been on the money. It was a pleasure coming to work each da soaking in his down home wisdom. Even in the evening we were blessed with his sharp eye as he drove the towboat for our water ski shows.

Now years later we are treated to wisdom at a place called Whitman’s in greater downtown Hazelhurst. Not only gems come from him but he has all the towns’ news wanted and unwanted. He’s got the latest scoop on everything and everybody. Gene is our town’s newspaper, radio station and evening TV newscast without commercials.

If you every stop at Whitman’s don’t sit on his stool, as you enter it’s the last on the left and it’s reserved for a very special person. I have to go there regularly for if I don’t they’ll talk about me behind my back, yet I know Gene will straighten the local lagerts. By the bye have a turkey drumstick on me tomorrow!

As for me? I am off tomorrow and come to think of it Friday and the weekend,
I may not even post till Monday,
so suffer my people while the battery is recharged.

Dear Diary… 11/21

Am out wild turkey hunting in the woods out back but I can’t seem to get my bottle top open. It’s bang bang in the distance for our world is now a blur of blaze orange. We’re invaded by every hunter known to mankind, last night I could even get a sit at Whitman’s, terrible, terrible happenings.

So, I went home to work on day’s blog and I seemed to be having brain fade.
I’ve been at this now for about about a year, logging daily thoughts if you could call it that. Others call it blogging.
So the question is…
in the grand scheme of thing does it really matter?

Don’t answer that!

On the side of my deck is a brand new paper diary. It was given to me many a Christmas ago by a well meaning daughter who thought that I needed a creative release. The poor thing died of neglect, the diary that is, nare an entry. It’s like most things that we all start on... for the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As for today it's as Yogi said - it’s like diva via all over again. I know I have written all this before in my blog , wasn’t it last Feburary 18th?
Yes, brain fade is a fact. The damned thing is in your closets just waiting to jump out at us each morning. Didn’t I wear that outfit yesterday and I know I’ve got an appointment this afternoon or was it yesterday afternoon?

The real bad case of it is telling yourself that you need to fill your car with gas five days in a row and the thing coming to a spurting stop. Don’t tell me you don’t have this problem as well. Admitting it is the first step in brain fade’s cure and Doctor Blog can help.

The second step is to read tomorrow’s blog where I go into great detail about mind improvement. There isn’t one of you out there that couldn’t benefit from my proven cure. That is if I can find my notes which I seemed to have misplaced. Hummm!

I am legal!!!! 11/20

I was told that I couldn’t drive a car for six week after receiving a new knee. Ha, no way. I cheated and have been driving for the last 4 weeks but please don’t tell the kids. As a parent you try to set an example for them to follow.

Let’s see… looking upon all my brothers, friends and family I would say that many of us have stubbed our toes. Sure two drinks and I can drive home or was it three of four? Hay you can’t run a boat wide open through the Minocqua Lake Tomahawk channel at night with blinders on. And come April 15th, isn’t $200,000 in itemized deductions a little high?
It’s the old… "Am legal till I get caught deal"

Ok, so I admit this is the first thing that I’ve done wrong since getting busted for speeding 25 years ago. Unlike Jimmy Carter I didn’t lust in my heart… the only thing in my heart was a little too much acid reflux.

I didn’t keep to many fish over the limit last summer.
And the only thing I have a problem with is my F----ing language.
So as for my illegal driving while under the influence of painkillers, so was America’s hero, Mr. Farve.

It’s now been six weeks and I am driving better now than when I was an over the road semi driver… and that was frightening. Beep beep!


By the way Mr. Buffet’s life story is on TV tonight that’s Warren not Jimmy is on CNBC at 7 pm.
What a guy! Warren that is not Jimmy.
He gave $31 billion to Bill Gates? The blind leading the blind

The Dow at 10,000...
What a difference a day can make. 11/17

Oh you missed CNBC last night? Well, it seems there was a hick up, just kidding. But there you go, right when you weren’t looking. For me it really doesn’t take much in this day and age to make me knees rattle.
I’ve got a theory, want to hear it?

No? well, then quite reading today’s blog.
For all of you truly enlightened people I will continue, please read on..
.
For decades there was some sort of stability to things. And just what caused this rock solid feeling? In the past people were a little slow to react and for good reason. They couldn’t react because 90% were out of the loop. They had newspapers with day old stock reports and two day old news delivered to them each morning along with their milk bottles.

In their place you’d be a little slow on the gun as well… just a tad late to react.
So where were the big deals made then as now? in the cities of course. If you lived out in the country, you were really cooked as well. So out in the hinder land no one knew squat! And when they did it was weeks later. i.e. December 7th 1944, Davenport Iowa… "You mean the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor?"

Mass communication has changed things big time. Just think, you are reading this and I just posted this seconds ago and thousands of miles from where you are. What I am saying is that we now all have the ability to know of things as they happen.

Prestro, you to can get in or out of different markets in seconds worldwide and now at commissions never heard of. You can even lose your shirt (and other things) on line playing poker and the markets.

Just think of the times many of our parents witnessed when the advent of radio was a big deal. But what we have been given through the advent of hi-tech is mind boggling. It's no wonder why today we only have traders wherein the past we were "investors."

I am still trying to understand what a "short" is other than faulty electrical wiring.

A 12,000 Dow Jones?
Where are we headed? 11/14

Are you long, short or indifferent? Me too, am sitting on the fence.
Where to hide the coin jar is a problem these days. I tired the mattes but the dog was hiding under the bed.

At one time I was into to everything that was thrown at me by my advisers. Each one had its merits (the suggestions not the advisers) and risk factors which were set in 4 point typefaces, very unreadable. So in we jumped headfirst but the pool was 2 feet deep, talk about brain damage after hitting the bottom.

Now that I am an old fart and no longer in my right mind we hired another financial consultant. It’s one of those if we win he wins and if we lose, well let’s not go there.

As semi-senior citizens we have to watch our nickels and dines. For as Rosebud told me, "No more buying gold mine stocks in the Antarctic." But how does one put on the brakes and look at the up sides, I mean the real up sides.
After laying many an bomb, our nest egg is the size of my you know what.
I asked one of my brothers and got his responce in return...
"That is a very good question."

So in this day and age where does one place his or her fortune cookie? There seems to be two thoughts out there, the Ying and the Yany. The donut or the hole?
We are talking mid-term here for the only thing that’s short term is a friend’s Napoleon complex and the only long term thing is the mess in Iraq.
The Dow is over 12,000 and it’s way to little late to get in on the ground floor unless you are a player, a hit and run person.

As for me, am into sawdust futures, pass the chain saw. It’s such a grand idea to turning the stuff, wood chips, into E-gasoline just as Iowa is turning corn into bacon via the gas tank. To go along with that I'll have two over easy and burn the toast, please.

Work outs~ 11/15

I’ve been at it hard and heavy for a good 2 weeks now. I mean one hour and half drills. Arnold would be proud. First, there is 30 minutes on the bike doubling the heart rate then grabbing some water and heading to the work out machines. One day it’s for lower body the next day it’s the topside. Why you ask? Good question.

My primary goal was to walk with out a limp; the second is to quite looking like a blimp, which rhymes with limp, which rhymes with gimp…next the you know you’re a whimp.

I have this photography that’s on my deck and it’s of four amigos’ (sp) of which I am the oldest. These are 4 buddies from teenville days. All four of us look like we should be committed to the nearest home. So I made a promise to myself…. self , you ugly piece of left over turkey stuffing, you need to shape up.

It’s as simple as that, making a promise to yourself and having the boilerplate to keep at it. If I can do it so can those three other slugs. Yet it’s only been two weeks, I am gunning for 12 and I would bet against it.

After the first three days I said, "this is bull." I couldn’t bend over to take my shoes off, sore wasn’t the word for it. But now after 2 weeks I think I can keep at it. Plus seeing I’ve got no clock to punch, no pressing engagements and there is nothing to stop me from working out accept a nice warm bed in the am. Maybe come February when it’s –10 my lead bottom will have a problem getting in gear.

However, if gravity sets in I’ll let it…rolling down hill to the sunny south, please pass the sun block and golf tees.

Tis’ the season, which one? 11/14

Are you all ready? The gun is about to go off and the shoppers are into the blocks. The race for holiday shopping started last week with a blitz of TV ads reminding us that there are only 580 days to Christmas.

At present the major players are once again reconsidering their name for the season. Is it " Happy Holidays" or should it be "Merry Christmas"? Last season the chief muckety mucks put the pressure on mass merchant’s and Christmas got axed for as they said, "We can’t afford to offend anyone of another conviction." So what kind of conviction were they talking about?
Well, last year this metality was a sales bust, a very Blue Christmas season at the cash register.

Not to worry for the mental giants have now allowed us all to reuse the word Christmas this season. Where is all this headed? to the same place that many of us were last year , the inter-net and not shopping malls. For some reason the big brass up stairs just don’t get it.

So where am I headed?
to the woods of course.

This weekend and that of Thanksgiving week is not and I repete NOT the beginning of the shopping season here in Wisconsin. To the majority of folks here, it’s a dash of blaze orange and the start of Deer Gun season. It’s time to be out in the hunting shack passing gas with the boys, break out the cards, brandy bottle and wool blankets.

Whose deal is it? …yep, tis’ the season.

Things that don’t bother me... 11/13

Stale popcorn
Flat beer
Cold pizza
Bumper to bumper warranties after the bumper has rusted off
Left handed socs
Right handed crafting knifes
People that drive Buicks (most people)
Unmarked squad cars
Double parked cars
People walking down an up escalator
Fireworks on the 3rd and 5th of July
Slow no wake zones
Fivesomes on the course
Sermons from people that haven’t a clue
Dogs that don’t mind (I’ve had two)
Dancing deers in front of the headlights
The new extend speed zone in town
A dog that has to be let out 5am daily
More and more condos being built that aren’t selling
Letters to our editors who can’t write without a ghost writer.
A gathering of fools in Washington, letting us
keeping them in one spot to keep an eye on them.
Not being able to find a parking spot at the Whale, it’s a good sign.
Lastly…Not being able to hear the Marvins for 8 more months.

A big game 11/10
No it’s not Wisconsin at Iowa nor Ohio State at Michigan but Minocqua Lakeland at Waupaca.

I mean folks this is big, bigger than the Irish at the Trojans. This is real football. There aren’t any high paid players with egos out to here. No sir, just underpaid students with acne trying to pass Driver’s Ed. The winner heads off to Madison to play for the state championship game (division 12)

The last time Lakeland made it this far was my son’s senior year. They played the big farm kids from Antigo. I drove down to the game and was 5 minutes late. It was on the first play a kick off that he was knocked silly and out of the game and so we were the under-manned T-Birds. Not this year. This is the year we kick butt instead.

I can think of nothing better than sitting out on a Friday eve watching things develop. Like one big huge snow storm that hitting the Midwest. The weatherman has a front coming in with 6 to 8" of wet snow due prior to kick off.

So hats off to our T-Birds who last hoisted the champ trophy high in 1983.
I even have in my mind to find my old snowmobile and drive down to watch the game in person So it’s a coin toss whether I’ll be there physical or in spirit, then again there’s the radio.

A Perfect Outcome 11/9

Will Rodgers would have loved commenting on things in the present day, seeing he kicked the bucket, I’ll step in and embarrass myself. Now that the election has passed gas again, the outcome couldn’t have been better.

The Republicans are still in the White House, Democrats in the House and in the Senate will be in grid lock. So what’s ahead in the next two years? Look behind, it’s same old same old but this time with slight new twist. The Democrats will be licking their chops, the Republicans their wounds and us independents are sitting on the fence smiling and here’s why…. the President can’t go Willie Nelly into some new disaster by getting us involved in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela or Iowa although he'll try . The House can’t formulated new give-away programs although they’ll try. Nor can the Senate pass funding for new super highways into the mountains of West Virginia although they’ll try.

So what about the elections?
The only positive thing that happened was that a few more of us got out of the house and cast a vote and some of the electronic voting machines actually worked.

If you had your eyes open and ears you would have noticed that something big was missing once again. No one and I mean no one had a positive view of things. Were any sound positive foreign policies brought forth? Did anyone have an answer to our health care problems? If so their voice couldn’t be heard. No, it was the same old ragging that has come so common place.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see a smiling face with a mouth that uttered intelligent positive positions? Oh well, fairy tales are a thing of the past.

Total Knee Replacement 11/8

"Will not hurt a bit, it’s a cake walk, it’s only a matter of weeks"…
a word of advice, don’t believe it.

These were things other people told me about having a knee replaced and it’s just plan bull. I might think differently in several months from now but as for now after 5 weeks of post op… forget it.

If I were you and had the same problem, I put it off till either I was crawling on all fours or my complete nerve system was on the fritz. Everyone is different I know, but it feels like a crew of carpenters are hitting my kneecap with sledgehammers. There is also an area that as dull as my personality. Not there but around my knee.

You ask, how much does a simple operation like a knee cost? That is a very good question, the bills in the mail we were told, at least one of them.
Anyway this was what it was all about…

"Break dance lessons $150 per hour , an Athletic Club Membership for knee rehabbing $880 per year, and the main reason to possibly break 80 on the golf course…priceless!

Cast for vote into the wind… 11/7

Thankfully we are past the election. And frankly Scarlet, I don’t give a damn. Which crooks are in office really hasn’t effected our country in the past hundred and forty years. I know some of you take this politically thing seriously. But come on…(Ok, once or twice we had a yoyo in office, Mr. Carter couldn’t tie his shoe laces)

Over the past five weeks we were hit with a mess of negative ads… I didn’t see one candidate put a positive spin on things. All were throwing rocks once again. So what’s there to do? Turn off the TV and listen to some CD’s for the radio is also jammed with negative thoughts.

Issues are a thing of the past only mud make the difference. Take some soil, add water, and stir until juicy then fling it! It doesn’t matter how much or where, throw enough and some is bound to stick.

Blue states, red states, pink states, purple states… I not stay up into the wee small hours to see if my chad counted, no way. For we all know that Wall Street has discount the election three months ago and is getting along fine, thank you and so I am I… it’s my new positive attitude in which I have tatooed on my forehead, "I don’t care!"

3 and 4 or is it 2 and 5? 11/6
Where do you go from there? Is it five loses and three wins?
That’s the record as it stands today well under 500. It’s disheartening. If I were a business man with 4 losing years or 4 bad deals within 12 months I’d be looking at the employment section of the newspaper.

But then looking at things, we are told that we are restructing, taking a debit rewrite off and that the red ink will be black in the next quarter. The only problem with this " business thinking" is that it doesn’t apply in the real world. There is no Next Quarter. As Al Davis said "It’s just win baby!"
And that means NOW.

But this year’s lack of success and lack of many others can be over looked as we all bid our past/present hero farewell. Just as Jack Walsh had his last waltz as CEO of GE, now our QB is doing the same. The same as he did last year and quite possible (hopefully not) next year. Now, we the faithful of the green and gold are stuck in another year of folly while the team’s board of directors once again cash their pay checks, as Yogi would say, its deja vu all over again.

Ya, ya, we are rebuilding once again, the last time it took 25 years.

Be true to your school, all three of them 11/3

Ok, yesterday we took a hit in the rating, my blog that is. It’s very hard to correct world problems in two paragraphs. So today we look closer ro home to the great boarder war between Wisconsin and Iowa. The question isn’t who is right (we are) and why they are wrong, or do you live on the East Side or the West Side of the Mississippi River? Are you a leftist or a rightist?

Facing a friend nose to nose both of you are asked to point to the right… what happens is that both of you arenow pointing in the opposite directions. So it’s a case of perspective as are 99% of the political commericals that we are suffering through at present, oh when will it ever end. I don’t know about you but I am up to my eye balls with all the negatives ads and that’s all there is out there…

The question isn’t which crook you are going to vote for it’s a given both sides mud slingers. But the big question is which team you are going to cheer on, the black and maze (Iowa) or the cardinal and white (Wisconsin)?

The game is a week from Saturday and this game even more important than the mid term elections for it could determine world peace for the next five months. It’s huge, almost big.
So, do you like an air game or a ground game?
As for me I’ll wear both school colors and hope it ends in a tie…
then the question becomes, why do they play the game?
TAILGATING of course.

The ground floor…11/2
In 1957 Fidel rocked the boat, changed things around with our near neighbors to south. Over the next fifty years Cubans have swam, rowed and hijacked planes to get into Miami (welcome to it). Castro reminds me of Spain’s G. Franco, the guy just will not kick the bucket.

But here’s the big question, what happens when Fidel finally take his last breath, what next? My son’s friend Carlos, a fellow Navy flyer and a second generation Cuban transplant, told Kent that Cuba is going to explode in capitalism. He said there were three huge gold mines just waiting to be tapped, tourism, agi-bus and the classic car trade.

Once again the US has blinders on as other country’s business communities many of them are already investing in Cuba. Once again we will be starting behind the rest of the world due to a that foreign policy that isn’t. Far from getting into to Cuba on the ground floor, we’ll be starting in the basement. We have made a messed of things in the middle east, why not do the same in our back yard? i.e. Central America is alot closer, let's invade Costra Rica. to heck with North Korea and Iran.

Which gets back to a simple question, "Can one person effect the lives of the many?" Just think if the world hadn’t witnessed… Fidel Castro, Lincoln, Stalin, Martin Luther King, Washington and Jefferson, Hitler, Christian Bernard, Mohammed, Jesus Christ, and your our grandfather.

So as we bumble through another day today, just think about how you can positively effect the lives of those around you… it’s simple, just smile and to hell with foreign policy.

Sing along with me… 11/1
Five days a racking,
Four days a log splitting,
Three days rain gutter clearing
Two callused hands
One sore back..... " it's the 13 days of fall"

Fall chores are now finished! So…
Bring it on, we’re almost ready, winter doesn’t stand a chance.
I’ve only got three more things to take care of.
The first is the 72 Chevy Blazer with snowplow; it’s needs a little mechanical work.

The second is our Simplicity Snow Throw. Last year one of the auger bearing blow and I just let it sit thinking I had all spring and summer to fix it, wrong.
Lastly, there are three snowmobiles that need attention. I haven’t been able to use them for three winters and they have been collecting acorns.

All of the above have something in common, snow. I have let thing slide and for several reasons, First is that we just haven’t had the usual 3 to 4 feet of snow for the past 6 winters. Blame this on North Korea's testing, why not everyone else does.

All three things require some type of action, either fixing the things myself or having to get up off my lead bottom and haul them into a repair shop$.

Lastly, why even think about snow when it’s not going to happen again this year. Well on second thought maybe I’d better take care of the snowplow, I’ve got to be able to get into Whitman’s and get updated on current world events.