I was in Scotts Bluff Nebraska for most of the weekend. My sister, her husband and I drove up Saturday day morning in order to be there for my grand niece's dance recital that evening. We spent the afternoon with my nephew, his wife and two kids, watching the kids play and  trying not too become to worn out by simply watching them.
   I have a grand nephew there, Rykin, who is two right now, and he seems to be running on either full bore or asleep. There doesn't seem to be any in between settings on that kid. He is so fun to watch however, as he is pretty sweet, and most of the time, he is very well behaved. But he is now walking, or should I say running, and if you blink, he in to everything. But in a very good way most of the time.
   My grand niece, Aubree, is now 8 and has turned into an even smarter, better behaved and beautiful young girl. She danced in three different dances during the recital and she was, of course, the best dancer in her group. The best part though is she seems to like it, and enjoys the whole dance thing.
   My nephew and his wife, Luke and Kirsten, were perfect hosts for the weekend, feeding us all and finding places for all of us to sleep. They have become quite the adults in the past couple of years.
   We left Scott's Bluff yesterday afternoon for the drive back to Imperial, stopping only once in Sidney Nebraska to go to Cabela's Sporting Goods store, and to eat some dinner at one of the local restaurants.
   I needed to pick up a Nebraska Parks Pass and fishing license so I can maybe do a little fishing over the next couple of weeks. I also found a new GPS unit for my truck. Poor Emma, my current GPS unit has done a pretty good job these last few years, but she is now seriously out of date on roads and there are no ways to really update it. I also wanted something with a little larger screen and a few more features. So the new one has lifetime updates on roads, as well as traffic updates, which will come in handy  when I travel through large cities. It also shows every lane of the road you are on and will tell you which lane you need to be in if you need to turn off onto another highway. I am looking forward to putting it in place and seeing how it works.
   Mark and Kathy made do with a couple new fishing poles and a new reel for Kathy. What is really nice is that all of us had enough, or in my case, nearly enough Cabela points to pay for the whole thing. I think I ended up having to shell out about $30 for everything I got, so not to bad of a deal really.
    The three of us just relaxed last night and watched the movie 'Rock of Ages' on their big screen TV. I've seen the movie several times but it is still fun to see once in a while. The plan today is to try and get some of my laundry done. There isn't a whole lot of personnel clothing to do yet as I haven't been on the road that long. But there is a need to wash all of my bedding and towels before going on the road again. So I will be staying here for at least one more evening before taking off again.
    Mark has volunteered to take a look at my trailer bearings this evening if there is time for it. He is a real genius when it comes to building or fixing nearly anything. On Thursday night last week we went over to one of the shop buildings where he works in order to put the truck and trailer inside in case there was a bunch of hail or even a tornado that evening. While there though, I finally got my right rear window regulator, the thing that makes the window go up and down, replaced so that it now, after nearly a year of being broke, works.
   But while I did that I had asked him if he could suggest a fix for my hitch as I kept having one of my tension bars fall out and then drag along the ground. I thought maybe it would mean cutting off a piece of a bolt and using it as a pin to keep the end in, but when Mark took a look at it he found that there was a big crack in the actual casing the round end of the tension bar fits in. So he took the whole hitch out and beat on it, ground parts of it, beat some more on it and then welded up whole sections of it so that when it went back on, the tension bars fit perfectly. One other thing he did which is really cool is that he welded a couple of metal beads on top of the piece that fits into the truck receiver and then ground it down so that it is still able to slide in and out as needed, but the up and down play in it is now nearly gone. That is going to make a big difference in how the trailer tows behind the truck and feels while going down the highway.
   For now though it is time to get busy and get a few things done that I need to do. Will try to get a few photo's posted in the next day or two, but it is pretty busy around here right now.




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   Pulled into Imperial Nebraska early yesterday afternoon after spending several hours driving the last couple of hundred miles. It wasn't too hard of a day of driving, sunny with a little wind, but overall, not too warm.
    No one was home when I first got to my sisters home, but they left to door open for me and it was nice to walk in to a nice cool home and take a load off. I brought in a few clothes for my stay here and then settled in. I read my book for a little while, it's the newest Janet Evanovich novel, 'Takedown Twenty'. But in the end I simply fell asleep and napped until I heard my sister mowing the lawn out side my window.
   Went out and helped with what ever I could, but she is just a mowing maniac with her own little riding mower. It didn't take very long for her and Mark to finish it all up and about the only thing I helped with was dumping the grass catcher once in a while.
   Once that chore was done, and the grass clippings had been taken out to the dump, we loaded up and went over to pretty much the only restaurant left in town. Lucky for me it is a Mexican food place and overall the food is pretty good. I had a nice dinner of Carna Asada, steak, with rice and beans. It was very tasty, but my brother in laws meal, shrimp fajitas, looked even better. Next time that is what I'm going to try.
    There was an amazing rain storm that went through the area late last night after we had all gone to bed. I laid in bed for more than an hour and just watched the fire works outside the window. As a result of all of the rain it is nice and cool out this morning, though it looks like it will start to warm up again soon. The weather channel is saying that additional storms are due in the area later this afternoon and for several days in a row. High wind and hail and maybe tornados, oh my. I need to go out and check on the trailer and make sure it and the truck are ready to go just in case it needs to be moved in a hurry.
   Other than that there isn't a whole lot that I need to do today. I think I'll try and finish up some pictures I've been working on as well as read some more of my book.... and then there is always time for a nice nap at some point.


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    Made it into Nebraska yesterday afternoon. It was a nice day for driving overall, sunny for most of the day, which made it a little warmer than I would of liked, but it was nice to not have to drive in a pouring rainstorm for a change.
    Other than driving all day there wasn't much else going on. The country has now changed from lush green hills and corn fields to a flatter, drier landscape of western Nebraska. The vegetation is still plenty green here as there seems to have been plenty of rain in the area recently.
    I made one long stop for lunch while passing through Council Bluffs. Had seen a sign for a Chinese restaurant and that sounded good for a change. It was a buffet, so there was way more food consumed than I normally eat, but on the plus side, I was still full feeling all the way through dinner time and didn't need any more food for the day.
  Also stopped in the town of Grand Island Nebraska and walked around the local Wal-Mart there just for some exercise. I passed by a pioneer museum there that would of been fun to visit, but it was after 6:00 p.m. when I went by, so it was already closed for the day. So it is now on a list of things to see next time I pass by this way.
    Spent the night in a rest area just west of Kearney. Screwed up a little bit in that I had meant to stop at a Cabela's store before I made it into the town of Imperial. I had been under the impression that there was one in North Platte Nebraska, but the last one I passed by was actually in Kearney. That's okay though, just wanted to pick up a Nebraska fishing license and a State Parks pass, but those can wait until I pass through Sidney Nebraska next week on my way to Chadron.
   Will take my time travelling this morning. It's cloudy and cooler this morning, plus there are less than 200 miles left for me to go to. Looking forward to seeing my sister and her husband again even though she will most likely put me to work helping them mow their yard. It will be good to be out walking around again.


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   Day two on the road already. More than 900 miles away from where I started yesterday morning and I feel like I am starting to get the hang of driving the truck and trailer back again. Sometimes it seems like a miracle that a person can go so far, so fast, without getting on an airplane.
   The driving, while a lot, hasn't been too onerous. I like the time I spend behind a windshield most of the time, and the last two days have been no different. Yesterday it meant going west out the far end of Virginia and then on into Kentucky and then on into Indiana. I spent the night in a rest area just north of the state line there until about 8:30 this morning. Seems as though every semi-truck that parked next to me had their generator on all night.... most likely so they could keep their own air conditioning on so they could sleep. It made it a bit noisy, but I have plenty of ear plugs for just such instances.
   I have been driving pretty steady for most of the rest of the day with stops just for food, gas or to go to the bathroom. I'm somewhere just west of Iowa City, Iowa right now, and hope to find another rest area in the next 60 miles or so.
   It has been fun to watch the scenery go by as I have been driving. I left fields of tobacco and cotton yesterday and have now made it into the land of corn and soybeans. The miles just tick by at about one per minute on average, so there is only a little more than 600 more to go before I pull into Imperial.
   Tomorrow I'll cross the Missouri River at Council Bluffs and remember the times that I have canoed below on the Missouri River on my way to St Louis. Hope to be in Western Nebraska by the end of the day tomorrow, but I think I'll take it a little easier and maybe stop a little more often. Right now though I need to get back on the road while the sun is still out and it isn't raining.




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    Packed up and hit the road this morning. Even though packing involved hauling up all the gear I had been using for the past 3 months of living in a real house, it still only took me about 30 mins longer to actually hook up and be on my way. Of course I did get up a couple hours earlier than I would usually rise, and I didn't spend much time with reading the comics or doing the crossword.
    I pulled out around 10:30 and headed for the interstate in Christiansburg. I felt a little weird driving with the trailer behind me. I had pretty much forgotten what it was like towing Esmerelda behind the truck, but once on the highway it settled down into the routine I remember from before. I headed south and a little west to the town of Abingdon before turning north toward the town of Lexington, KY. The road is pretty good for most of the way except for a 9 mile section of really narrow, nearly single lane, road connecting up two sections of different hwy's that Emma, my GPS, decided I needed to take for some reason. I managed to get through it without either running off the road or running somebody else off, but it was kind of close at times.
    There was also this huge, torrential rain storm that hit somewhere around the town of 'Beefhead' Kentucky. Rain was coming down so hard at times that I was down to 15 mph and even then it was kind of hard to see the road during the worst of it. Managed to get through it though and the good news is that the truck and trailer are now pretty clean.
    I'm holed up at a truck stop outside of Louisville right now, but am about to get back on the road for another hour or so. With any luck I'll find a nice rest area in the next hour or so and then wait out the rest of the evening. So far it's about 400 miles down and another 1,100 to go.




   One last thing: I miss my friend Rima. I hope she is doing well tonight.


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   Heading back out on the road again later this morning... just as soon as I can remember how to hook the trailer up. Will be heading towards Nebraska first with planned stops to visit with some family along the way. Will eventually make it on into the Denver area sometime late next month.
    Looking forward to seeing old friends and new places but also painfully aware of what I am leaving behind right now. It has been a wonderful 3 months here in Virginia and I will certainly be back later on.


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   Yesterday turned out to be a pretty good, and pretty productive, day for me. Got started by watching a cute little husband and wife team come out and pump out Rima's septic system tank. Yucky!.... But they did a wonderful job even though the metal handle to the concrete lid broke in two before they could get it off. They finally managed to remove it using various chains, pry bars and shovel blades and then pumped it all out into a large tank truck they backed all the way in  from the main road.
    Once that was done I headed into town to pick up a 'big ol' eye bolt that I could put through the middle of the concrete lid so that in the future it would be much easier to take it off and put it back on again. Turns out that it takes more than an hour to drive into town and back and the cost of a 6" eye bolt is quite steep. Of course a lot of the cost was for the 1/2" dia. concrete bit that I also had to purchase. But it was soon done and I headed back to the house to get back to work.
   Prior to drilling the hole through the concrete lid though, I took the truck and loaded up all of the firewood I had cut the day before from the tree I had cut down. It filled about 2/3rd's of the bed of the truck so there was quite a bit of firewood to take out and stack in the wood shed by the house. There was also enough large pieces in the bunch that it became apparent that Rima was going to have to locate a log splitter at some point, so that all those pieces could be split into smaller chunks to dry and that will fit in her furnace easier.
    The stacking of firewood was soon done and it was on to drilling the hole for the eye bolt in the septic tank lid. My newest cordless drill also has a hammer drill setting, and it blasted a hole right through at least 4 inches of concrete. Other than a short little stretch when, I think the bit hit a rock inside, it had no problem going all the way through. So now there is a nice big eye bolt that can be used to lift the lid in and out of the hole.
    Once done with that, and after taking a short break for some ice tea on the deck, I grabbed the chainsaw and headed out to cut down yet more trees. There was another black walnut next to the fence line in the pasture just west of the house that needed to come down before it got any bigger. It had already swallowed the top two wires on the perimeter fence so it was a little harder to deal with. Lucky for me it was already leaning the right way so I just cut it off about 6 inches above the top of the fence and dropped it neatly into the pasture. I then cut the wires going into the tree trunk, stuffed a 2"X4" in between the trunk and the rest of the fence, just in case I cut to far, and then cut off the lower 3 feet right above the ground.
    I'm finding that it is easier to just 'log' the tree up right where it lands instead of hacking it into pieces I can pick up and then bring back to the house. So I 'bucked' most of the tree into pieces that are easy enough to pick up and transport and then stack. Didn't get it all done though as it started raining like crazy while I still had about 20% of the tree to still cut up. So finishing up that project is on my list of things to do today.
   Also on the list is installing the last 60' or so of fence out near the road. Once that project is done Rima can let the horses out into the middle pasture and let them have some better grass for a while. There is also a couple other trees to cut down if there is time as well as a couple of bales of hay to load up in the truck to take over to a friend of Rimas who is ill and needs some extra hay for her horses. So it is going to be a very busy day for me.




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  A pretty good day yesterday. Pretty much back to my regular schedule again, reading the comics doing the crossword puzzle, checking email and facebook. It was a very pleasant morning that lead into a very nice afternoon also.
   Headed into town in late morning and did some much needed shopping including a new book and a couple of magazines to read. Also picked up a few groceries that we were lacking, including a pack of strawberries and some Asian pears. From the grocery store it was on to Home Depot where I picked up a length of gutter and some of the associated other parts that go with it. Will try to get that installed in the next day or two on one of the eaves on the barn.
   I was back at the farm by late afternoon and was preparing to finally work on my truck window when it decided to start raining. Oh well! Just stayed inside instead and put some chicken in the oven for dinner as well as made a strawberry-sour cherry pie. Rima was quite happy to have some for her late dinner when she finally got home after 8:00 p.m. The pie actually turned out much better than I thought it would. I just used the same recipe as I use for strawberry-rhubarb pie and just substituted in sour cherries for the rhubarb. As of this morning there is a good deal less than half a pie left over so it couldn't taste to bad..... I might just have to find another flat of strawberries before the end of the weekend rolls around.
    Hope to go work on the truck after finishing up here and then maybe cut down a tree or two this afternoon. What ever gets done it will be a busy day for me.


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    Finally.... finally on the mend! So, more than a week since I woke up in a hotel room in Lexington, Ky with a fever and a pain in my guts, I finally feel like life is back to normal. Unfortunately it is about 5 days to late in some respects. It would of been a lot of fun to drive to Oswego last week and spend a couple days touring the country and then dancing to the music of the Great Bear Trio and Perpetual e-Motion. But it just wasn't meant to be this time. The photo's and video's coming out of the dance weekend sure look like it was a lot of fun though.
   I have slowly been getting back into the swing of things here in Virginia. There are still a couple of things I really want to get done before taking off back west, so I have extended my stay until at least next Monday. That should give me enough time to finish up the fencing project I am working on as well as cut down a couple more trees and do a hand full of other smaller jobs to do.
    Rima and I managed to cut and stack another whole pile of wood a couple of days ago. It was from a bunch of trees I had cut down about a month or so ago, so they had dried out enough already to lighten them up quite a bit. Even with that though, it was quite some effort to get it all done. I put a new bar and chain on the chainsaw before starting the project and with me picking up and holding, and Rima running the saw, we soon had quite a pile of nice hardwood fire wood cut and stacked.
   That is about the only heavy toting I have been doing since feeling better. I got started hanging fence yesterday, but that was basically just rolling the fencing out on the ground and then pulling it up on to the posts to be tacked in place. The roll weighs somewhere between 150 - 200 lbs, but it is manageable if you don't try to pick it up all at once. Got about 100 feet of it in position and then tensioned before hitting a spot that needs some more fence posts. Prior to doing that though I need to drop a 60' tall black walnut that is right in the middle of the fence line. I hate cutting down such nice trees, but this one is a sprout, along with two others, that came out of the stump of one that was cut down many, many years ago.. Plus, it is leaning so much now that I'm a bit surprised that it hasn't blown down in the past. Either way though it will need to come down before I finish up that section of fence.
   We had some friends spend the night with us over the weekend. Good friends Ken and Carol from Indiana and a couple of musicians, John and Twila (sp) who were touring with them. Nice to share a couple of meals and listen to live music out on the deck over breakfast yesterday.
    I'm headed for town this afternoon as there are a couple of errands that I need to do prior to getting ready to take off next week. That shouldn't take more than a couple of hours though so I expect to be back sometime in the late afternoon. Still looking for some time to work on the truck a little bit to get it ready to go. Otherwise, life is good again and it is nice to be looking out on a beautiful day.  




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   Still feeling a bit puny these days. My 'gut's' are certainly doing better than they were 5 days ago, but they still just aren't right. Was feeling like I needed to go into an emergency room a couple of days ago, but thanks to our hopelessly inefficient health care service in this country, I kept putting it off long enough that my condition may actually be getting better on it's own now. Still; any time I can be this hungry and then this timid about eating anything.... well there has to be a problem. There is one bright side to it all I guess, so far I've managed to lose more than 20 lbs. Though I wouldn't recommend doing it this way to any one.
    Right now though the biggest impact on life is that Rima and I won't be travelling up to Oswego NY today to do the Great Bear Trio's "Groove" dance. What a bummer that is, since I've been looking forward to it for nearly the whole year. Not only are GBT playing, but they also have Perpetual e-Motion as their secondary band. Sometimes life just isn't fair.
    There is also the fact that I have barely stirred outside of the house for several days now. At times I feel pretty good and then I'll eat or drink something and it sends me right back to bed. So far today though it is feeling a lot better, only a very minor bit of pain.... but I'm still going to go and lay down after finishing this.
    Right now I am just hoping that I am on the road to recovery. I really don't want to do much except hang out and take it easy. Still lots of chores that need to be done, but they are on the back burner until I'm certain there won't be a relapse. Still looking at leaving and heading west, but the exact date is really up in the air. The idea of driving for 4 days straight doesn't really appeal to me right at the moment. Will just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.


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   A very interesting couple of days have now passed and lots of things have happened in that time. Rima and I took off on Friday morning headed for Lexington Kentucky, and  a 3 day dance weekend known as Dance Trance. There was very high expectations for lots of hot and sweaty dance fun as one of the best contra bands, 'Latter Day Lizards', were playing and Lisa Greenleaf was doing the main calling duties. So we were both really pumped for some great dancing and a chance to see a lot of friends from near and far.
    So we picked up a friend of ours, Elizabeth, in Christiansburg on the way out, as she was going to car pool with us, and headed west for the town of Lebanon Virginia. We were going there in order to pick up some final items in Rima's sons house before it was finally sold. No problem with getting there and loading up the last few items and then it was back onto the highway for the rest of the road trip. It was nice to take some of the back roads up through the lesser known areas of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. But even with the back roads we still pulled into Lexington around 5:30. We then met up with another friend, Tom, for dinner at a local 'Whole Foods' type grocery store where they have an in store café. We had a pretty good dinner there while we all caught up with each other.
   We left Elizabeth to go with Tom afterwards and then went and checked into our hotel where we had a few moments to relax and get ready for the dance. It was soon time to take off for the dance site and a wonderful night of fun. Right from the start the energy was high and every one there was smiling from ear to ear.  Even though it had been a nearly 8 hour trip in the car I was still stoked enough that I only missed two dances out of the whole night. One, a square dance, which I don't really like to do all that much, and one when I had to go out to the bathroom and then get something more to drink. Lot's of old friends to see and talk to there, including one all the way from Colorado. It must of been fun because it was over way to soon and it was time to go and get some sleep.
    I thought it would be a night of dreamless sleep, and most of it was pretty much like that, but I awoke around 5:00 a.m. with a tremendous pressure inside my stomach area. Within minutes it was so bad that there was no more sleep, indeed there wasn't even a way to actually find any comfortable position. After several hours of pacing, trying to lay down, trying to sit down and then some more pacing there was finally a little bit of throwing up and that did finally ease the pressure enough for me to finally sleep some more. From then on it was a matter of sleeping awhile, waking up and taking drugs and drinking some water, and then trying to  sleep some more.
    I ended up staying in bed in the hotel all of Saturday and Saturday night and didn't even really feel human again until late yesterday morning. Thankfully, Rima did manage to go out on Saturday night and dance at least the first half of the evening dance, even though she wasn't really willing to leave me at all. But it seemed like what ever it was that had hit me wasn't going to kill me, so I finally convinced her to take off and have some fun.
    But I couldn't talk her into doing any of the dancing yesterday afternoon so we took off for home before 10:00.   It was a very long drive home and we did have to stop at one point and let me just walk around for a little bit. I was actually feeling okay by the time I got back to the house so we spent some time outside mowing the lawn. We also grilled up some steaks for dinner and had a baked potato as well as a baked sweet potato and a left over caramel pear for dessert. It was wonderful to actually eat something again as I had not had much in the way of food for more than 48 hours. Of course it might not of been such a good idea to eat all that food as I had some more aches and pains late last night trying to get to sleep again. I finally ended up taking more drugs and dragging the heating pad out and turning that on. It seemed to melt the aches away and I finally managed to get to sleep again.
    Still feeling a little 'puny' yet this morning so I am taking it rather slow. Had hoped to have a productive day cutting down trees and cutting them up into firewood, but that may not happen as I envisioned. I am hoping that at some point what ever is going on with me will pass and I'll be back to my old chipper self.  In the mean time I'm going to go ahead and work on some photo's that are still not ready to be posted.




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     Yet another couple of days have gone by in a blink of the eye. It has been a really busy couple of days for me all in all, some of it filled with work type projects and some of it just hanging out and having fun. I'm still busy digging holes and planting 6"-8" dia x 8' tall wooden posts in them. To date none of them are growing but by my calculations there are only 4 more that I need to get planted in this round, but of course there will still be plenty of them to do at some later date.... preferably next year sometime. So that is what has been keeping me busy lately.... as well as whacking weeds when ever there are a few spare moments..... and clearing brush for the next round of fence fixing.
    So it was nice on Saturday when we got invited to one of Rima's grandkids birthday party over in a local park. We spent a lot of the morning on Saturday just running around town enjoying the sights. We stopped by the local farmers market where Rima picked up some eggs and veggies while I went straight for the hot out of the oven cinnamon and blueberry rolls. Man those things are good.
    After that it was a quick trip to the market to pick up some ice and drinks for every one and then on to the park. Her grand daughter, Brynn, was turning two so it was fun to just sit back and watch her and some friends wear themselves out on the playground equipment and by just running around. Add in some sugar saturated cupcakes and you soon had super charged kids that all of a sudden, after a bit of crankiness, decided what they needed most in life was a nap. Good call actually because I was getting tired just watching them run around.
     Sunday morning was nice and relaxed, but Rima and I were both up and about by mid morning.  We had a nice breakfast and then headed outside for our primary chore of the day. We spent most of the afternoon sawing up the big pile of wood next to the wood shed. It had to be cut into much smaller pieces to be stacked in the wood shed in order to dry out so they can be used as firewood next fall and winter. Rima did most of the chainsawing as I held each piece that needed to be cut. Seemed like an awful lot of work, and I guess it was, but in the end we only got one and a half of the bays, out of six, in the wood shed filled up. I'm guessing between one and a half to one and three quarters of a cord of wood. Each cord being 4'w x 8'l x 4'h. Quite a bit of good old hardwood, but there are still four and a half bays to fill up yet.  Of course there is still one other good pile of wood stacked up waiting to be cut, and at least two more trees that will come down before I leave, but it might not all get done before I take off.
       Monday was spent in finishing up the gate structure I put into place last week. I needed to actually cut, stretch and nail on the fencing first off and then put 3 more tension wires onto the post to help hold it into position better. Even now, after only a few days of having the gate hung on the post, it had already pulled the post out of plumb a little bit. It's a lot of weight to hang on one post when you think about it. The gate is 12' long and weighs maybe 125 lbs total. So the moment arm on it is somewhere around 750-800 lbs over all. I put one more brace wire directly behind the gate post and then one 45 degrees on either side of it. It will still sag somewhat over time, but this should help hold it up a lot.
    Also got one more post hole dug and post installed. It's been more than a week since our last rain and the ground was dry down more than 16 inches. I makes it even harder to dig the holes, but as I said, not to many more of them to go.
     Yesterday was much easier as I headed into town a little before noon. Lots of errands to run so it took me pretty much the rest of the day. On top of the list was getting my hair cut again. Got that done first thing so I should be good to go for a couple more weeks now. It even seems to look pretty good. I also stopped in at Home Depot and picked up some termite trap stuff to install around the house as well as some wasp and bee spray. They have several types of wood eating bees here in the east, several of them that are bigger than bumble bees back west. They do a great job of helping out with pollination of various plants, and I also noticed that several of them were hauling small caterpillar's back to their nest to leave for their future offspring but the bad thing is that they keep chewing holes in the wooden roof joists out in the barn for their nests. Several of the joists are already so honeycombed with holes that they may be in danger of collapsing if it continues on the way it has been going. So, sorry to say, the bees have to leave before that happens and even then I'll need to come back at some point and 'sister' a couple more joists in next to the ones they have chewed all up. I wonder if paint would discourage them?
    Once the trip to Home Depot was done it was off to Tractor Supply to pick up a new roll of 'cattle' fencing. This is a heavy wire style of fencing, 44 inches high, made in the shape of squares that are larger at the top of the fence, about 8"x8", and go down to about 2"x8" at the bottom. Since the roll comes in 200' lengths it was nearly impossible to pick it up and get it into the back of the truck. So it is going to be quite interesting to see how I am going to actually get it back out of the truck and then get it attached to all those posts I have been putting in.
    So today is looking like it will be a very nice day. On the list of things to do is go and whack some weeds and then figure out some way of getting that roll of fencing out of the back of the truck with out either hurting myself or dropping it in some place where it will be hard to work with.
    Once done with those things it will be time to take off for town and a quick trip to town and some lunch with Rima. Once there though I also need to pick up her lawn mower at the shop where it was getting repaired. This afternoon will include more post hole digging I imagine, and then some brush clearing if I get the chance. Will just have to wait and see how the time goes. But right now it's time to get out there and get something done.




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