Linda's High School Reunion

While Stacey and Linda were in IN, Linda attended her Pendleton High School Class 40th Reunion at a bar called Shouts in Coopers' bowling alley.
   
Linda went to see our nephew Rick and her brother Abner before the reunion. Stacey and Linda stayed with Kim and Kenny Bourke during most of the time they were in IN and also visited with Linda's Mom for an over night stay.
 
Linda also saw her brother, Imon, at her Mom's house with our neice Shelly and Anita also dropping by for a visit.

Stacey's New Dell

Stacey's iMac computer had quit working about two months ago. Brent and I looked inside, but decided it wasn't anything we could fix. Rather than try to have it repaired, I decided we would buy a new computer. The iMac prices were nearly $1,200 for a new machine from Apple. I thought that was way too much! So, I looked at Dell's web site. I found a Dell pc that was comparable to the iMac in looks and specs. Dell called their machine a Studio One. The list price was $499, but it was on sale with shipping and tax for a total of $503. At less than half the cost of the Apple product, I ordered it and didn't tell Stacey.
I had been watching the tracking information and I told Linda it should be delivered. A few minutes later, I had started outside to mow, but I noticed a FedEx truck coming up the drive way, so I went back inside. I told Stacey to answer the door when the door bell rang. The delivery guy handed her the box that had Dell in big letters on the outside. She looked at me and said, "It's for you!" I said it was for her. I signed the delivery acknowledgment and we shut the door. Stacey, Linda and I unwrapped the completely white Dell. It has a cordless keyboard and a cordless mouse with a Windows 7 64-bit operating system. We set it in Stacey's room and powered it up, then I installed iTunes and Thunderbird and a few other programs and turned Stacey loose on it. She has been playing songs and reading about the Pacers since then.

New John Deere Mower Trouble

I had hooked the trailer to the back of the truck Tuesday evening and when I woke up Wednesday morning, my back had a catch in it and I was having trouble moving around. Linda went to work at the day care and when she came home, my back was a little better. We decided to go ahead and drive to Bowling Green. I pulled the trailer to the front of the Home Depot store and parked. We went inside and purchased a new John Deere LA 175 riding mower. The two guys pushed the mower out of the store and onto the back of the trailer. They also loaded a FREE JD cart into the truck. We tied the mower down with our straps and then drove to Pauline and Brent's house. Julie came running out the door with Pico and Poco right behind her as we were getting out of the truck. We had hugged Julie and Pauline drove in and scared us all because Julie was in the driveway and so were the dogs. She slowed down and stopped when she saw that the dogs and Julie were running loose. We went inside for a little bit, then Brent drove us to Brownsville to eat pizza. After we ate, we went back to P&B's house and played with Kyle while Pauline packed a suitcase for Julie to go to the farm with us. We drove home and Julie took a nap in the car during the ride.
Thursday, I fixed breakfast and then Linda and I went outside to unload the lawnmower while Stacey and Julie watched a movie. I unhooked the straps and Linda helped by letting down the tailgate of the trailer. Julie came outside to see what we were doing when I had Linda get on the mower to drive it off the trailer. Linda asked Julie to climb on her lap and I took a picture of them on the mower.
 
Linda sat Julie down and she walked off the trailer and I told Linda to start the mower and back it off. WRONG! It wouldn't start, it wouldn't crank, the lights wouldn't even work. I checked the fuses, unplugged the fuse and plugged it back together. I decided to read the owner's manual, nothing in there that helped. I tried everything again. It was like the battery was dead or there was a switch that was not working. I thought there might be something the store did to the mower to keep it from starting in the store, so I called the Home Depot store and talked to a customer service person in the lawn and garden section. He said to try jumping the battery and if it started it was the battery needed charged. I said OK. I went out and jumped the mower off the battery in the Mule. It started right up, but wouldn't run when I took the cables off. I let it build up a charge in the battery a little while, then unhooked the cables and drove it to the equipment shed and filled the mower with gas. I mowed about a half hour and shut it off. It started again, so I let Linda mow about a half hour.

A couple hours later, I went outside and tried to start the mower and the battery was dead. I called the Home Depot and talked to the same customer service person, he gave me a couple options to choose what I wanted to do. I chose to take the battery out and return it to the store for replacement. I drove the HHR to save on gas and when I went inside the store the customer service person had a battery waiting on me. He gave me a better battery and a $25 seat cover for the mower for my troubles. I returned to the farm, installed the battery and everything is fine now.
 

Friday & Saturday

Friday morning we had agreed to meet Jason in town for breakfast. It seemed like it had been a long time since we had saw him at Jone's Restaurant. As soon as we sat down, Stacey and Jason were giggling and arguing over their favorite teams and NASCAR drivers. Stacey gave Jason a Chicago Cubs shirt she had bought for him while she was recently in IN. Julie was tearing the paper wrapper from around her straw and throwing the paper wad at me.
   
That is something that I've done to her since she was barely able to set up in a chair at restaurants. After I would throw the paper wad at her, then she had to throw it back. Now, she usually fires the first shot! Oops, my fault on that I guess. We always do it, what can I say? Julie really liked riding in the 65 Mustang with the top down, she could see a lot of things and was telling us everything she saw on the way back to the farm. We then did the usual things, Linda and Stacey took Julie for a Mule ride with Daisy running and then ate pop sickles at the end of the ride. Pauline, Brent and Kyle came over around 5:30 PM.
Saturday morning after breakfast, Pauline, Brent and I went to town in the pickup truck and bought a used kids' bed at the Methodist Store. We returned to the farm and Linda washed the plastic covered mattress while Brent bolted the bed frame back together. We then turned Julie and Kyle loose on it.
 
Later in the afternoon, Linda and I drove the 65 Mustang to town to set things up for the CRC Cruisin' The Square cruise-in. Julie, Pauline, Kyle, Brent and Stacey came to the cruise-in later and Julie drew out the winning ticket for the 50/50 drawing right before the end of the cruise-in. When we returned to the farm, we took another Mule ride and threw rocks in the creek. As we were going back to the house, we saw that Nancy Riddle was there with her niece, Kaylee. Nancy and Linda went walking on their exercise routine and Kaylee and Julie played together and ate popsickles at the pole barn while Brent and I finished hooking up the computer to the web cam and watching the kids play. Pauline wasn't having any trouble with Kyle because the Mule ride had put him to sleep, so she was listening to music and dancing with Julie and Kaylee. The younger girls took turns riding "Wilbur", the stick pony and then the tricycle. Nancy and Linda finished their walk just before dark and sat down at the table to drink a bottle of water and watch the girls play.

Kyle & Pop Sickles

Linda dressed Kyle in a cute shirt and short set and put a pair of really small sandals on him, then said he was ready for his 'close up'. I took a look and set him at the end of the little bed, put his hands on the foot board's rails and he stood there holding on. I took a few pictures and then Coco jumped on the bed and gave Kyle a lick, Kyle leaned back away from Coco and when we told Coco to get down, Kyle laughed and I took the third picture.
   
When the pictures were done, we went on a Mule ride, then stopped at the 'pop sickle barn'. That was what Julie started calling the pole barn. We ALL had pop sickles this time, including Kyle.
   
We went back inside the house and Kyle took a long nap while Brent read Julie a story.

They headed home around 1:30 PM.

Hay Fields & TR-3

There has been a few days of mostly dry weather and Larry Anderson cut the hay in the fields down the road and across the creek last week. He rolled the hay on Saturday and has hauled it out of the fields and up on Jone's Ridge to his farm. I think he had about thirty rolls.
 
Phil Garmon cut the hay fields across the creek from the house yesterday and he should roll it on Thursday.
 
I had ordered a new fuel pump from Moss Motors for the Triumph TR-3 last week. While Stacey and I were outside and I was mowing back in the 'holler' it was delivered and left on the back porch by the door. We found it when we went back inside the house. I opened it and later took it down to the pole barn. About 5:30 PM the sky became cloudy and the air temperature cooled down, so I went to the pole barn and began removing the old fuel pump from the TR-3. It came off fairly easy and scraping the gasket material off the engine block wasn't too bad. By now, it was raining hard and the rain hitting the metal roof was making a loud roar. I put the new gasket over the studs in the block and began by placing the fuel pump in the proper location and screwing one nut on the stud. That was the easy part, trying to get the other nut started was tougher. I ended up dropping it several times and finally lost the nut on the car. By that time I was dripping sweat and could hardly see. I went to the house to cool off when the rain stopped. After about an hour, I went back, used my glasses and found the nut stuck on a piece of the engine block. I picked it out with a screw driver and then managed to twist my hand around the pump and get the nut started on the stud.
 
Linda had came down to the barn by then, so after tightening the fuel lines I told her to start the car. It didn't start until I sprayed carb cleaner in the intakes of the carbs. It would run a minute or so until that was burnt up and then the motor would die. We quit for a while and went to see what the rain had done, then went inside and had supper. I kept thinking about what to do and about 10:30 PM, after Linda and Stacey went to bed, I went back down to the pole barn and used the air hose to blow some pressure into the gas tank and force gas up to the pump. The TR-3 started and ran after I did that. I'll take it out for a test drive tomorrow.

*UPDATE* Linda drove the Triumph to town with me following her Thursday morning. The car made it to town and back and the fuel pump worked fine, so Linda parked it in the pole barn and began wiping the hand prints off the fenders.
 

Julie In Hospital

Brent called us early on the 12th, which was his birthday, and said that Pauline had taken Julie to the hospital on her doctor's recommendation and they had admitted her. He said Julie was coughing and having trouble catching her breath, so the hospital had gave her medicine and put her on oxygen to help her breathe. We told him to let us know what was happening when the doctors came in later and if we should come over to help with Kyle or anything. He said they would let us know if they needed anything. We talked to him later in the day and he said Julie was better, that the hospital was giving Julie breathing treatments and he thought they would be going home on Friday morning. OK then.
Friday morning we called and Brent said he had stayed the night and that they had seen a doctor that morning, but it didn't look like they would let Julie go home. We waited a while, then instant messaged with Brent and I told him we would come over to the hospital and he could go home for a while. We left home and drove the HHR to P&B's house and setup Coco's cage inside, then went to the hospital. Pauline and Brent were there with Julie. Stacey and Linda gave Julie a bag of stuff to make her feel better. One was a book that Stacey read to Julie.
  
  
  
Geez, I'm not sure she needed the other thing that was in the bag. It was a a toy that looked like a radio, cassette player, CD player, but with a microphone that Julie could talk into and her voice came out of the speakers. It was way too loud for a hospital. There was no way to turn it down! Oh well, we shut the door and laughed about it, saying stuff like we should have just bought a drum set, it wouldn't have been much louder. Julie had fun with it. Pauline went back to work and Brent went home for a few hours to shower and take care of their dogs. Stacey, Linda and I stayed and played with Julie until Brent and Pauline returned. We left a little bit before 5 PM and went to Rita's to pick up Kyle. Brent came home and said Julie was having to stay another night. Pauline was going to stay at the hospital all night.

Coming Home & Brent's Birthday Cake

I rode along with Brent to relieve Pauline at the hospital about 8 AM. Pauline changed clothes and went to a class she had scheduled a couple of months ago. Brent and I played with Julie, helped her change her clothes and put her shoes on. The way she was feeling, we figured the doctor would let her go home.
  
Julie was going to the play room just a few doors down the hallway and having fun until the doctor came to her room. I stepped down the hallway and told Brent that the doctor was in the room, so he took Julie back to the room to let the doctor have a look at her. He listened to Julie's chest and looked at her charts, then said she could go home after another breathing treatment. He talked with Brent while I kept Julie quiet and sitting on my knee. The doctor took the time to explain thoroughly to Brent the procedure he was recommending Pauline and Brent follow with Julie. He answered Brent's questions and made a few comments about how he thought it would go. I thought their doctor was very professional and should do an excellent job treating Julie. We had to wait about a half hour for the breathing treatment, then a few minutes longer for the proper paperwork and prescriptions before we walked out with Julie. Brent called Pauline and let her know we were headed to their house with Julie once we were in the car. We stopped and picked up sandwiches before going on to their house. Stacey and Linda were ready to eat when we opened the door and Julie went inside and gave them big hugs. Julie ate a little bit, Stacey read her a book, she took a nap and then a shower when she woke. Overall, after the nap, she seemed in pretty good shape. Pauline came home with the prescriptions for Julie and Brent gave her the first breathing treatment at home about 4 PM. We then watched Julie and Kyle play while Pauline finished Brent's Birthday Cake by icing it. Julie sang "Happy Birthday Daddy" on her microphone/boom box while we watched and giggled.
  
  
We moved to the dinning room and ate cake and ice cream. We needed a break and I could tell Pauline, Brent and Julie were tired too, so we left shortly after finishing our pieces of the Birthday Cake. We drove home for a while in a thunderstorm, but we were going a little faster than the storm was moving and we drove out of it after about 10 miles. The rest of the trip went smooth and it didn't rain any more until we had parked the HHR in the garage.

Cook Out

This morning, Linda and I went for a ride in the Mule with Daisy running around the fields. I was checking on what needed mowed and how the hay fields looked. Around noon, we all took the 65 Mustang to town and parked under the awning at J&D's, went inside and ate. After we had finished lunch, Jimmy and I talked about me helping him with a car show during the Burkesville Bicentennial Celebration October 21-24. When we returned to the farm, Linda went to work at the day care, Stacey and I watched a recorded WWE program until it was time for her to go to a cook out. Jason had invited Stacey to a cook out at his grandparents, Hazel and Odis, in Burkesville. Christie and Bryant, Jason's brother, were there too.

I dropped her off and then headed back to the farm. Linda came home after working and walking with Nancy at the park in town. A phone call let me know that Stacey was ready to come home at 8 PM, then I went and picked her up. Stacey said she had a great time and that the food was good. She said Hazel had also made a butterscotch pie that she liked.

Road Trip

Stacey and I left the farm at 8 AM in a thunderstorm. I drove to the bottom of the driveway and took a picture to have to show to the road relocation crews. I am going to ask them to rework the area around the bottom of the driveway where they have slanted the dirt towards the driveway. It now funnels the water that is running off the hillside onto the driveway.
 
We went towards Columbia and took the Cumberland Parkway towards Bowling Green. The rain was coming down hard and water was ponding in the slow lane, so I drove in the fast lane most of the way. About two miles west of Glasgow, I was about to pass another car and that car began to swerve to the left, went back to the right and hit the guard rail. I was pressing hard on the brake pedal and the ABS was alternately applying and releasing the brakes to keep our car from skidding. The other car bounced off the guard rail, spun completely around, went across our lane of traffic and slid through the median at about 65 mph. I thought it was going to roll over, but the grass in the median was wet and it just slid to a stop with the front wheels on the pavement on the other side of the median. I was nearly stopped when the other car drove out of the median and headed back towards Glasgow. Whew, that was too close, about 30 feet when it went across in front of us! We continued on to Smith's Grove and then to Brownsville and Brent's office at the Edmonson County School Board building. Brent cleared up some problems with one of our computers while we talked to Lamar and him. When he finished, Stacey and I said good bye and headed on to Bowling Green. We stopped at Mancino's for lunch.
 
After lunch it was still raining when we went inside Sam's Club, shopped for groceries and supplies and checked out. When we went back outside it had stopped raining. We packed the frozen food in a cooler, closed the hatch and headed towards the farm. As we drove towards Columbia, we could see the rain clouds a few miles ahead of us.
 
We eventually caught up with the rain, but it was a light rain the rest of the way home, not near as hard of a rain as we had drove in earlier. We parked inside the garage and unloaded our stuff, then took the computer in and returned it to operation.
 

Burkesville Bicentennial Celebration Schedule

I have added the Burkesville Bicentennial Celebration Schedule to the right column of this page. The times of events may change as this is currently being adapted by the celebration's planning committee. I attended their meeting as a representative for J&D Restaurant. The J&D Restaurant is presenting a car show that will be part of the Burkesville Bicentennial Celebration.

Heat Relief

Practically everyday had been above 90 for about a month and a half, some days were near 100 degrees. It was miserable being outside with the high humidity. But now, wow, it feels a lot better around here since the temperatures have dropped into the upper 80s and the humidity has went down. Linda had taken Coco to the pond and he was chasing the frogs and went in the pond water. He was a muddy mess, so she brought him down to the creek and they were walking in the water to rinse some of the black mud off.

 
After she rinsed him off, he ran around cutting and turning, then running and jumping like a jack rabbit. We picked him up and walked over to the pole barn, where Linda had a couple of pop sickles. She shared with Coco while I drank a cold pop.
 
We managed to start a fire in the fire pit. The wood was what Linda had lopped off of the trees and it was still green. We used a few marker stakes to start the fire that were left by the road crews and we had picked up. We sat back and listened to music coming from the speakers in the pole barn while watching the fire until about 8 PM. When we went inside, Stacey said Jason had called her from Jamaica. He is out of the country on a cruise ship trip with his dad, David Strange.

A Busy Thursday

We started the day with pancakes since the egg recall, then took Daisy for a run. Linda was taking a shower when the door bell rang. It was Jeff Dick, a guy that had worked with Linda in IN at Lehman's. He was on his way to Dale Hollow Lake and stopped by for a while. When Linda finished her shower we all talked and got caught up on what had happened since we moved to KY. We showed Jeff around the farm in the Mule as we talked. I said good bye to Jeff and went to the bicentennial committee meeting in Burkesville. I also talked to Dorothy (the 'D' in J&D Restaurant) a short time concerning ordering ink pens to give away at the car show.
 
After the meeting, I returned to the farm. Linda said that Jeff had stayed about a half hour after I went to the meeting, then headed towards Star Point on Dale Hollow Lake. I had another meeting to attend. The Tennessee Valley Authority is planning to upgrade the main power line to Burkesville and it may or may not cross our property. They are planning on installing a 161 kV power line on metal towers or metal poles in a 100' wide clear cut path. Their planning currently has 13 possible routes for the power line.
 
I talked with a representative of TVA about the procedure to decide which route they would implement. He also explained that if they buy the right of way, it is a permanent right of way and that they pay for it and the timber that is cut too. He would not say what price they would pay or how much the timber would be worth. I really never got a straight answer about how they determine which route they will finally build. I think the meeting was just a procedural meeting that TVA must conduct to make sure the public has been informed of their intent. I went back to the farm and Linda was staining the pressure treated benches with a gray stain down by the pole barn.
 
Around 6 PM I rode the Harley to town and attended the Cumberland River Cruisers Car Club meeting.

Recycling, Furniture Store & Cell Tower

Friday morning, Linda helped me unhook the finish mower and hook the tractor to the bush hog. I drove the tractor and she went in the Mule and we cleaned up a few areas that had become over grown. We returned the tractor to the shed and when we were going to drive to Columbia to eat, Stacey asked if we could take her aluminum cans to the recycling center. Yep, that would be a good time, make one trip take care of two things. Linda helped Stacey pour the cans into plastic bags and load them in the back of the pickup truck.
  
We drove to Columbia and ate lunch, then stopped at the recycling center.
  
We carried the bags inside and they dumped them in wire baskets, weighed the two baskets and told us we would get $18.50. I signed the paper and Stacey took the money. We went across the road and into Wal-Mart, bought groceries and took them home. Henry Holley was parked in the driveway when we drove in and parked. He was needing to use the hay wagon for a hay ride on Saturday. I told him he could use it, so he said he was coming back later to pick it up. A couple hours later, Henry brought Jake and two other boys, loaded a few bales of hay on the wagon and I helped them hook it up. The hay ride was going to be during a birthday party for Jake, who had turned 14 years old the day before. They pulled the wagon down the hill and headed up the road. About two minutes later, Brent drove in and parked. Pauline, Julie and Kyle were with him. Pico and Poco jumped out of the car too. We walked up to the pond and sat outside there for a while talking and letting the little dogs run.
  
Saturday morning after breakfast, we loaded into the Traverse and Brent drove us to Greensburg. Pauline and Linda like looking through Central Furniture that is just outside of the town. We looked through the entire store and Linda talked to the sales woman while looking through a couple catalogs. I took a couple pictures of items I liked because it is hard to tell exactly what color the wood and fabrics are in the store compared to what we have at home.
 
We had lunch at Pizza Hut in Columbia on the way back to the farm. Later in the evening, Brent and I took a ride up the road to David Branham's place to see what the crew building a cellular tower had been doing. After leaving the highway and driving down a gravel road, we crossed a dry ford at the creek and headed up a very steep gravel road up the hillside.
 
When we reached the top of the hill, they had build a turn around area big enough for semi-trucks to unload the pieces of the cell tower with another road over to the actual location the tower would be built.
  
They had cut the rocks into a square and were chipping the inside out with a hoe-ram. It is basically a big powerful jack hammer attached to a track hoe. Then they remove the end, replace it with a bucket and scoop out the debris. A dozer then shoves the rock to the edge of the clearing.
We drove back down the hill and to the farm and went inside. Pauline and Linda were fixing supper when Nancy and Steve Riddle stopped. Nancy and Linda went walking after Linda finished eating. Brent gave Julie a breathing treatment when she had finished her meal.

End of Visit

Sunday, while Linda was fixing lunch and Pauline was packing, I fed Kyle a bowl of cereal mixed with formula. I sat him in the corner of the love seat and spoon fed the cereal to him.
 
He liked to eat even though he was congested and his chest was rattling. We had taken his temperature and he had a slight fever. They think it is caused by him starting to cut teeth. When Kyle was done eating, we had lunch. Pauline and Brent took Julie and Kyle and their dogs when they left for home about 3 PM. Linda and I went out and mowed the grass until dark.