General Commentary (May be military related) email: Kudzuacres1@juno.com

 
What I Did During My Summer Vacation

Okay, so I am taking vacation for a few days to do some things around the house and to move some things from my Mother-in-law's farm which is about 70 miles form here. Monday, I went to several business appointments I had been trying to get for weeks and which of course came up the first day of vacation. Tuesday looked like a good day to get some things done so I packed off to the farm, moved a lot of stuff around, packed up tools and other items I needed to move to my workshop, loaded the lot on my pickup and it started to rain and rain and rain. Two inches in about two hours. Since I didn't have the load covered when the rain started, I unloaded the things that that shouldn't get wet. After about an hour of the rain, I decided that I wasn't going to be able to move anything other than what was on the truck, so I locked up the shop, got in the truck and... it wouldn't move. Thinking it was spinning on the wet grass in front of the shop, I tried backing up. Nothing. Got out and looked and both rear wheels had sunk up to the rims. Oh, goody! Went back in the shop and waited an hour for the rain to stop. It finally went from the deluge stage to merely rain so I walked over to the house, got my M-in-law's pickup, back to the shop, get dry clothes from my pickup, go see Rayburn about pulling me out if it quits raining and spent the night at my M-in-law's rather than driving back home.

Wednesday, get up, go to Rayburn's only to find that he is covered up with work. He runs a small automotive repair shop, but he will be able to help me in an hour or so. An hour passes and we go to get the tractor to pull out my truck and...the battery is dead. Jump start the tractor, pull out the truck, reload the "don't get wet stuff" and finally around eleven, manage to get on the road. Stop by to see my brother who runs the paint and body business and who is suffering from severe epileptic seizures. He has been to a specialist in B'Ham and is scheduled to have surgery which should alleviate most of his symptoms. Point out that if he is symptom free, he won't get his Social Security disability. He says that the few weeks he has been unable to work have been enough to last him a life time. I don't think he has a real good grasp of the concept of retirement. Of course, if your work and your hobby are virtually the same, I guess retirement doesn't make a lot of sense.

I finally made it home about three, got all the things unloaded, checked my business email and found that my vacation has been cut short by an all day meeting tomorrow.

I think I'll go enjoy today.
posted by Larry at 9:28 AM

 
I am taking vacation this week which means that all the people I have been trying to get appointments with for the last six months have been calling and saying that they have time to see me. Oh, the pleasures of the small business world.

My mother-in-law has decided to move to an independent living facility and sell her farm. I have to get all my "stuff" out of the barn and grain bin and this looked like a good week to do it. Plus I need to do some work around the house and maybe finish insulating and sheetrocking the upstairs to my shop. I seem to be caught in some kind of Star Trekish space-time warp where I work so that I can have the money to do the things I want to do, but since I work, I don't have time to do what I want.

The education system in Alabama is stranger than I thought. I have friend at Church who has a MS is chemistry and over twenty years experience running chemistry labs for industry. He also has taught 7 years in Tennessee and is certified there in chemistry, physics and math. He is looking for a teaching job in Alabama to finish off his career. He says he enjoys teaching and would just really rather do that than continue to work in industry.

He has applied for several jobs. He has a problem. No one will talk to him until he has an Alabama teaching certificate, so he tried to get a certificate and was told he couldn't get a certificate until he had a job. A little "Catch 22" sort of thing, but he was dealing with it. This week, he was talking to a former co-worker who said he was leaving his job to teach and coach in one of the county schools. He hadn't applied for a job, the Principal called him and offered the job. The gentleman has no teaching experience, no education courses and no certificate.

I think we may have identified a problem with education in Alabama. Teachers are selected based on who they know, not what they know.
posted by Larry at 10:33 AM

 
When I emailed Terry over at Possumblog to tell him that thanks to him, I had been wasting time for a whole year writing things here that maybe three people read, and that counting me, he said that I needed a post that pointed out to the world that I had been doing this for a year. So here it is. Blame Terry. a year ago, I emailed him about something and signed it, "Larry at Kudzuacres" and he said that would be a good name for a blog. Kudzuacres, not Larry!

I have had one troll and several notes from nice people. Thanks to Terry, I feel that I have new friends from around the world. I plan to have lunch with Terry the next time I am in B'Ham and I'll bring him all my back issues of Road and Track since he likes cars as much as I do and we can talk about Auburn and how it is the best school in Alabama south of Jacksonville and probably upset the people in red and white at the next table. We can bemoan the misuse of "lead" for "led' and how in our day you had to learn grammar before they let you at a computer and some nice person will remind us that in our day, they didn't have computers and Terry can explain that when you start writing using a chisel and stone, you learn how to write correctly and not run you sentences into next week and how to spell right since it was a lot of trouble chiseling off mistakes and how this would be a real good place for a period.

Anyway, if you have a problem with this blog, blame Terry.


posted by Larry at 11:50 AM