Merry Christmas

Very quiet this morning on this Christmas day. The snow flakes floating down so slowly it's surreal.

Merry Christmas to All!

Positive Changes, Happy New Year!

Follow the instructions on the page at the link below.
Elion

Tell 'em Mike - Mike Rowe on Work in America

Joe Satriani - Surfing With The Alien ( live 2006 )

Pure talent!  Amazing.

It's Rainin' it's Pourin'`

It's 8:30 pm here and we already have two inches of rain and counting.  It's supposed to turn over to snow and give us 2 to 6" inches of the white stuff and while this is a Nor'easter technically it doesn't appear it's going to be  that bad.  Let's hope!

UPS dropped a couple of boxes today, hmm wonder what's in 'em?

Barn was fry tonight when I went down so the patch I put on seems to have worked.  We bought our roofing from a Home improvement store last time, appears it wasn't shall we say the best quality, it failed after 4 years...  This new stuff I purchased is a much heavier grade roofing.  We shall see.

Socialism experiment!

Disclaimer - this email was forwarded to me and I have no clue where it originated from. All I know is I did not write it, but thought it was awesome and wanted to share it with you...


An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on)


Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.


These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this? Neither could I.

Potato shortage next year...

Seed Potato shortage in New England.

Seed Potatoes, you know the little ones...certified disease free seed.  Rose just got back from getting hay today and brought an order form for seed potato back with her.  The form says that "Due to an extreme shortage of seed potatoes in Maine and Canada" because of the wet weather that all orders must be placed before January 6th to be guaranteed seed for your 2012 garden.

That's a little scary, ok, scary to me.  ;-)

Buy Some Jack Daniels

I'm going to go buy a large bottle of Jack for the holidays because of this...

Jack Daniel's Funds Travel Expenses for Soldiers

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-- Tennessee whiskey maker Jack Daniel's is donating more than $100,000 to pay for plane tickets and travel funds for soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., to spend the December holiday season with their families all over the country.

The distiller is also asking the public to make additional contributions that could help hundreds of cash-strapped soldiers who otherwise would be stuck at the post on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. Donations can be made to the Operation Ride Home campaign online at www.jdoperationridehome.com.

I'll pick up a bottle to say "thanks" to Jack Daniels for doing this. The holidays can be tough for those away from their families; that JD would do something like this, even with the poor economy, is nothing short of amazing.

Go buy a bottle of Jack for the holidays - help a soldier get home to his or her family.

Awesome! Lets all create a shortage of JD this Holiday season!

Dads 77th Birthday

Great time at Mom and Dads this afternoon, quite the crew showed up for Dads 77th birthday bash. Happy Birthday Dad! Tacos were the order of the day, Mom had all the fixin's, I cooked the meat, and with Rose and Lisa's help somehow managed to not burn anything. ;-)  Good food, good fun.

I somehow got skipped in the Pitchnut games, next time Dad! 
You kids all remember right? "Pitchnut is a variation of the French-Canadian game pichenotte which comes from the game carom". The game is sometimes referred to as "piche" or "pish".  The game board was a treasured heirloom item for Canadians.  There's more history of the game here. Pichenotte.com

Back to the Party...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!   Wow 77 huh? 

Spring already? The Catalogs arrive!

WOW, SPRING Has sprung in NH early this year. And I thought the stray seed catalog or two I would normally receive in January was early.


STOKES SEEDS
Stokes is on the ball this year and is officially the first seed catalog to hit my coffe table this year.

Nice glossy catalog, I find it's easier to wipe the drool off (the Dogs not mine...) of the glossy pages.

They are sporting some interesting Stuff this year as well and we'll look hard at the following for inclusion in the Sanborn 2012 gardens.
295H Mini Orange Hubbard should be easier to find than the blue.
306J Sunshine looks good too. High Vitamin, great flavor, Stores well. I'm in!
They have a Cat in the Hat book called "Oh say can you Seed?" that the twins will like I think.
267Z Archimedes a blocky Green to red pepper that looks promising.
Rose will like the flower selection in this catalog.







High Mowing Organic Seeds
I also received a catalog from High Mowing Organic Seeds as well.
Nice catalog, non-glossy, their heirloom tomato selection intrigued me, they also have a lot (Yes a LOT) of specialty green I'd like to try.


3058 Indigo Rose a fine looking jet black skinned tomato.
3040 Gilbertie also looks like a tomato to try this year. Looks a lot like the polish sausage I tried this year that a late summer storm took out. (We'll be staking the tomatoes with two or three steel stakes this year).
2925 Baby Blue Hubbard is similar to the Mini Blue we grew this year did well we'll try them again they seem to store well too.
2520 Lacinato (Dinosaur) Kale is one we'll try.

Two great catalogs already, let the 2012 garden planning begin!

Trans Siberian Orchestra - TSO

What an incredible show!

Jarrod & Crystal gave us a pair of tickets to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra at the Verizon Center in Manchester. We had great seats, about 1/2 way back.

Start to finish perfection. Sound quality was fantastic, show was so over the top at times we'll probably have to go again just to see what we missed.

This show had it all. Great Story, drama, incredible solo's vocal and instrumental, solos by all members of the cast, lets see... at one point in the show we counted an 23 amazing musicians on stage at once.

Light show like I've never seen, Fire, colored fire columns, fire breathing dragons, fireworks, sparks, cannons, fog, and oh yeah, they made it snow in the stadium! Did I mention the lasers "oh there were lasers..."

They did a salute to the troops and asked all servicemen to stand and be acknowledged so all in attendance could thank them for their service.

This band, no "this Orchestra", donated through "Greg and the Morning Buzz" a dollar from every ticket sold for the local food pantries in NH, $10,000 was donated in one evening. Thanks for restoring a little bit of hope!

The videos are from my cell as are the pics...

Thank You Jarrod and Crystal for a great time!
.

Trans Siberian Orchestra at the Verizon

Off to the show!  

Jarrod and Crystal got us some tickets for the Trans Siberian Orchestra for the upcoming performance at Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, NH. 

They are playing arena's around the country almost nightly right up until New Years.

We can't wait to see them, should be a great show. 

Fall Rituals

Nana and Papa took the boys out to choose their 2011 Christmas ornaments for the year, we go out and let the boys pick one each year. The boys picked a couple nice ones this year.

Raking Leaves with James & Jason! Who said raking wasn't fun? James and Jason helped to rake a sizable pile in the yard and after I got a couple quick pics started diving into the pile.

We took a nature walk earlier this afternoon. We walked around the barn and down to the pond, we found the pond was high for this time of year.

The Big Pine lost a huge branch and left a 8" diameter 10 foot long widow maker in the branches, we'll have to watch for that one to fall this winter. We noticed the Oaks are still carrying their leaves, the oaks here are to young to drop acorns yet.

We saw lots of deer sign, and raccoon too. The boys played with the milkweeds and we admired the Xmas trees Nana and Papa planted years ago, maybe we will chop one down for Christmas at Nana's house this year.