New Camera for a New Town

I finally have a new camera! I am so excited about this! My last two camera's have been the Nikon CoolPix L19. I've liked those but chose the CoolPix L20 just to stick with the family, plus they're cheap and really great. From what I could tell there's only about a 20 dollar difference and it bumps you up to 10 mega pixels as apposed to 8 with the L19. Otherwise they're the same. This one isn't silver like the last two, it's red. Kinda neat.

I hope you enjoy the pictures and movies that come from me, they should be more frequently coming now, and better quality. In fact I have a new post with a picture taken from my new camera, over in my "Cat Wanderings" blog... it's about time I updated that one!

Hello Scooter.

My mom's new bunny's name is Scooter. Just thought you'd like to know.

The Trip!

We are THERE!! Seattle! It's pretty crazy that we made it all the way. Three days of travel, concluding with a fun barista jam at Victrola, where Seattle and L.A. competed against each other. It was a crazy drive.

Day 1: St. Paul MN to Billings MT, 849 miles, at 60 miles per hour equals about fourteen hours of driving. We did it in about fifteen to sixteen hours because of stopping for gas and such. We stayed at the K.O.A. in Billings which was an interesting experience, I've never done K.O.A. before, I've also never slept next to a refinery before either. That wasn't the best, especially hearing them burn off something early in the morning.

Day 2: Billings MT to Spokane WA, 529 miles, also at 60 miles per hour AND THROUGH MOUNTAINS!!! I'm glad that I installed a transmission cooler before we left cause the 6% grades up and down were crazy on my truck! Especially for so long - six miles up at a 6% grade will easily heat up your engine! My truck was easily running at speeds of five to six thousand RPM's for almost the whole time. We stayed at a K.O.A. there too. That one wasn't so bad, oh yeah, except for the freight train barreling through town blowing it's horn at three in the morning. It might as well have been running through our tent it was so loud! In the morning I looked over to see that the rail road tracks were about 50 feet away...

Day 3: Spokane WA to Seattle WA, 305 miles, 60 miles per hour. Some more mountains and desert, actually. A lot of eastern Washington reminded me of North Dakota, I thought that was interesting.
All in all it was a good trip. My "service engine soon" light came on near northern Minnesota, I stopped in a small town and had a guy check what it was for; it was for one of my O2 sensors, first bay second sensor. Really no big deal, maybe a little lower mileage but it wasn't going to hurt the truck. And we also found that Angela was driving on three wheels, basically. One of her tires was inflated to 15 PSI.

Mom's New Bunny

I forgot to mention that my mom got a new pet for her classroom, a little bunny. She got it at the State Fair. As far as I know the jury is still out on names for him, so if you have some good ones, send them this way.

My Days in Brainerd

These days in Brainerd have been fun. Ange and I have had a lot of time to relax and be together and then I've had a lot of time to have some real fun learning time. My second day here I started to learn how to weld! Greg and I did a little MIG welding, some stick welding and some heliarc welding. He had to build an aluminum truck bed, with some bumper and exhaust modification. It was pretty fun!

This area has such a history of mines and quarry's. I drew on a map to show you that all the digging they did remained there and that the lakes near by were actually mines that filled in with ground water.

We also went to an old ghost town that had failed about fifty years ago or so, called Manganese. If you check it out on Google there's not much there to see, but we went and saw some foundations of what used to be a hotel, bank and the post office. Sadly people have been filling these holes with garbage. It's neat to see tree's and plants grow through a concrete foundation.

Yesterday I woke up at six and Greg, Chris and I slaughtered a bull (this picture's kinda graphic and bloody). Besides welding and farming Greg also raises beef cattle, and this bull they kept for themselves.
"That bull's about as organic as they come, he hasn't had a shot in his life." Greg said gathering up tools we would use to slaughter him. "Does he know he's going to die?" "Nope, and I'm not even going to let him on to it."
After we quartered the bull we took him to a neighbor to be processed. This was a hard thing for me, to meet the animal we were going to kill and process. I didn't have a hard time skinning and gutting the animal, it was watching it die that was a little trying. It just goes to show you though just how removed we as a people can be from the foods we eat. Because, yes, I do eat beef occasionally, and this was a good chance for me to see and be thankful even more for the sacrifice that this animal made for me. Albeit it wasn't really his choice, it was still a sacrifice. Greg was reminding me about when Israel would sacrifice a bull on an alter. They must have tied it down or had some super strong guys to hold it, cause that's a big animal.