The Car Is Packed

I can't believe I missed so many days without blogging, but I guess I have been a little busy the past week. We have been getting ready for our big trip and I think we are ready for it! This is my final item on my 'to do before we leave' list and then I am shutting down my computer and headed to bed. We are planning on leaving Missoula by 6:00 a.m. and geocaching on our way to Billings, where we will pick up a friend at the airport and take him to Cody, Wyoming. Then we will head for Casper, Wyoming and jump on the Interstate to Cheyenne, Wyoming - hopefully arriving sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 p.m. as long as everything goes smoothly. It is snowing around the state, and it looks like the mountain passes will be a little hairy, but the Subaru does a great job on the snow and ice, and I don't have much worry about our travels - mostly the people who will be on the roads with us...What else is new in the past week?

Work has been progressing quite well. This week we took all the tin off the building and yesterday we cleaned up all the garbage inside of the building. Not to mention a few hundred pounds of frozen pigeon poo! Uck! We did start taking down the last of the roof, and today it was about 1/3 of the way down. This part of the roof was a little tricky because it is solid wood, which is 4x6 tongue and groove, and 30,000 board feet of lumber. Most of the building should be gone by the time I get back.

Today, I managed to step on a nail. I was walking on some railroad ties and they were wet. My foot slipped and I put my foot right on the board below it. DOH! Lucky for me, I was wearing my thermal hunting boots and they have a thick sole, so the nail didn't penetrate my foot very far, but enough to really cause some pain. Laura looked through my records last week, and determined that I needed a tetanus shot, so looks like I will be getting a shot in the next few days... Ironically, Laura was planning on getting a tetanus shot in Cheyenne so I guess we will just go together. I am not too worried about my foot or tetanus, but I guess it's always better to err on the side of caution.

Well, 5:00 a.m. is going to roll around sooner than I would like, so I should wrap this up and find some shut-eye. It will be a long day on the road and a short night in my warm bed. I will try to update my blog when I have some free time, but no guarantees. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Happy Face Chili

I'm sure you are wondering what the above title is all about?.? I'm going to keep you in wonderment for a few more moments until I have ran through the order of events leading up to this semi-amazing miracle.

Last Friday I spent some time on the Clark Fork river, shooting at some ducks with some of the guys I have met around town. Notice I said 'shooting at' because I took 6 shots and never once made a feather fall. It was some sad shooting to say the least. However, it was nice to be out and enjoying my day off from work.

We started talking about some recipes we like for the ducks and geese and I thought about making some duck chili. Well, Saturday we prepared ourselves for a day of football and got the chili in the crook pot to start warming. We pulled three ducks out of the chest freezer and cut the breasts into small chucks and browned them on the stove before adding them to the pot. The duck chili turned out pretty good in my opinion, and I have been eating the leftovers all week. When I warm the chili up in the microwave, I cover it with a paper towel and instead of the usual random splatters it appeared to me as a sign. As if there were more to this splattered paper towel than met the eye... Heck, it was my birthday and I was having a good day, so maybe the chili knew it. Even though this is Cerebrations and Explanations I have no deep thought or logical explanation for the happy face paper towel, but sometimes things just can't be explained. It is simply amazing.

As I mentioned, Sunday was my birthday. Laura and I slept in until 9:00 and then went and did some shopping. We watched a movie and then went for a walk up the mountain, which was nice because we have not been out for a walk in a few months. Hopefully while we are in Cheyenne and Kearney we can find some time to take a walk or go for a run - it has been a while since I went for a run and actually enjoyed the route...

Work has been doing well. The building is slowly coming down and I am pulling nails and collecting all the wood most of the day. Not exactly exciting work, but it's a paycheck and money in my pocket so I won't complain about that.

This evening I received a package I had been eagerly awaiting. It was my new external hard drive case. So, naturally I spent the evening putting together my new external hard drive. I put a 200 gig hard drive into it and it is currently backing up all my pictures and music. It will be nice to have the external hard drive because I can take it along with me when I travel, and it can plug into the laptop as well. My desktop computer already has three hard drives inside of it, and the IDE ports are full, so the external hard drive is the easiest way to add another hard drive (or maybe two eventually) to my computer without taking it apart and filling up the case. I now have 640 gigs of hard drive space to work with, which seems like a lot, but eventually I will need to find more room for all the files I have.

Only 1o days until we have the car packed and we are on the road for Wyoming! We are counting down the days and since it is getting late on Wednesday night we practically have 9 days... The best way to speed up time is to sleep on it, so that's my plans right now. It's bed time! Until again

-=Nolan=-