Country Learning

From our local, weekly paper this week:

"District judge finds 'no factual issues' in Brandt lawsuit"
A school district and private college decided to build a new football field & track complex together, in an effort to save money and better utilize resources. Mr. Brant didn't like it and sued the college. The judge felt that Mr. Brant was nuts.

"Senator makes a refueling stop in Marion County"
Senator Pat Roberts ate lunch at the college involved in the above lawsuit. This was the Senator's 102nd stop in a 105 county Listening Tour. Glad we're #102 on your list, Senator.

"Prevention the only cure for zebra mussels"
Zebra mussels have made their way to Marion County and officials are not pleased. One person felt that prevention (like posting signs telling of the evils of zebra mussels) was a waste of time and money, and wanted federal money to be allocated to eliminate the infestation. The response: "It's an inevitable that I'm going to die. But, I'm not going to put on a black suit and lay in a box waiting for it to happen. I'm going to take some action. I'm going to work out in the morning, I'm going to eat healthy food and carrots and stuff that I hate so I can live longer."

"Local vet on the cutting edge of laser surgery for animals" (Complete with picture of vet holding laser)
Ha, ha! laser, cutting edge. "I've always been intrigued with new technology and I enjoy surgery. This was a natural combination of the two," says the vet. "A veterinarian from Illinois came to Hillsboro to train him on the equipment for one day and taught him how to use it in eight different kinds of surgeries." Well, golly gee. We got us someone from Out East to come and now he can do EIGHT kinds of surgery! Maybe we won't need to take our cats to the local farmer/mechanic to have them fixed. Oh, wait. I bet that laser-fixing costs a whole lot more than what the farmer does...

Our driveway has had a significant issue for as long as anyone can remember: it is lower than the fields on either side of it, so it drifts shut easily with minimal snowfall.

John's uncles like to remind their wives about the driveway, "That's how much I wanted to go on a date with you. I'd even navigate that drive way to get you!"

This morning at 7:30 the first construction worker (also a neighbor and attends our church, and if we tried hard enough we could probably find a family tie) showed up. By the end of tomorrow we should have a higher driveway with ditches and new rock, including rock around the circle that you can barely tell used to be part of the driveway AND dirt moved around the house to promote better drainage there. Fancy!

Unfortunately, Jacob won't be able to watch the excitement today, but they promised he could ride in the equipment tomorrow.