Iced Tea Forever

Brother Doug,

Your profession has come in pretty handy for some of our family members.  So I’m frustrated that when I need your services, I’m 2300 miles away!

See, I have a pipe that’s leaking.  It’s leaking badly.  The good part is that it’s leaking into a drainage area for my sump pump.  So it’s nothing I have to clean up or anything, but it’s not something that will ever get better on its own.

And oh man, what a pain to change it.  It goes down into the bottom of the hole thingy where water drains to be pumped out, then it goes up and out into the ground or something.  What a pain. I’m sure it would be real easy for you though.

Tell you what.  Come out and fix it for me and my wife will make you all the rhubarb pie you can eat!  It’s really good, she made a couple rhubarb pies a few weeks ago and I ate the vast majority of them.  So I know what I’m talking about.

Whaddaya say?   It’s all wrapped up with tape, just waiting for you.

A little while ago my wife and I were heading home from a night on the town. I was safely motoring down the road when I was pulled over by a cop.

He said my tags were expired. He asked for my registration, so we dug around in the cubbyhole until we found it. He took a look and said, no, this one’s old. We dug around some more and found another one, but that was old too. He went back to his car, and we finally found the current one.

With the current tag on it.

I said, sorry, I just hadn’t put it on yet.

He checked the dates and discovered that I’d had the tag for six months. That’s when he went from being polite to chewing me out. He said it was “asinine” that I hadn’t put the tags on yet.

I put them on the next day or two. At least he didn’t give me a ticket. Thanks for the warning, Brian Hoffman.

The bad news is, I can’t find the current tag for the other car.

Our ‘98 Monte Carlo left us sit beside the road in pouring snow/slush the other night. Piece of junk.

I had it towed to the mechanic, and he called me later and said it was the fuel pump. “It’s expensive,” he warned.

Before I called him back I looked to see what I could find on the internet, and sure enough it WAS expensive. The cheapest fuel pump assembly I could find (in a quick search) was at Auto Parts Warehouse for $308.

That’s insane. I called him back, and his price was way over $400. We had a little chat and I told him how much cheaper I could get it online.

I didn’t want to wait for days for it to come, and mechanics don’t want customers to get their own parts, so he dropped it down a little bit for me.

I also had him do a pressure check on the cooling system, as I’ve been losing a little antifreeze.

I went and picked it up the old crate today. And received the verdict that the intake manifold gasket is leaking coolant. To the tune of $800.

Here it is Easter weekend, and what do you know but Hoosierville gets dumped on with yet another snowstorm. This is just insane.

So what should I counter this with, but something hot.

My buddy Stanny sent me these pics last summer of field burning in Utopia. They don’t burn nearly as much as they used to of course, thanks to all the environmentalist wackos, but they still do some. Field burning is awesome. I got in on it a few times in my farming career, but not a lot.

Click each pic to see the full version.

15 minutes, Mark.

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Here’s a recent picture of Hans and his family.

Oh yeah, Hans is a lot younger than you thought. That’s him on the upper left, and little brother Benj on the right.

I last got a haircut this summer sometime. Then I went quite awhile without one, and when we were in OR last September I mentioned that I needed to get a haircut.

Oh no, my Mom and sister cried, don’t cut it.

Fine, I said, I’m going to let it get so long that you’ll never bother me again for cutting it too short.

And I went home and focused on growing my hair.

It was nasty.

I grew it as long as I could stand, actually it was quite a bit longer than that.

It kept getting longer. . .

and longer. . .

It got to the point that something needed to be done with it, it was shaggy and unkempt. But what to do? A mullet? Ponytail?

At one point I told my wife that as a bonus, I was going to quit trimming the beard too. So then that got all shaggy to match.

I finally got it cut. This was the monumentalist of events. I lost track of how long I suffered, it was probably close to six months.

Now I’m all back to normal, and celebrating with iced tea in a jar.

At the tractor pull last summer at the county fair in Goshen, this one tractor threw a rod right through the oil pan right in front of us. Pretty cool.

1. There is nowhere for customers to park behind the post office.

2. Never try to stir soup while shaking a bottle.

3. Rivel is nasty. More on that later. I freely admit, I probably messed it up, but really, what can you expect from flour, salt, and an egg?!