Straw

See this wagonload of strawbales? See the barn and elevator? Over the past few days (week?), our neighbors have gotten several loads just like that. I wish I had kept count but it was something like 10 or 15 loads, I think. Anyhow, the idea is...you have a couple people on the wagon dropping the bales down to the ground. Then you have one or two people putting the bales on the elevator, which takes them to the haymow. Then, you have a lot of people stacking.

Make sure that if you do this process, you include friends and ice cream. The friends make it go a lot faster, and make it a whole lot more fun. The ice cream, well, you know...

Also, take random baby-bunny-holding breaks. Isn't he adorable?! He fit in my hand...

This picture (the one above) was taken from on top of the wagon. We're about even with the haymow on top of the stack. Below, that blue thing right behind Elizabeth is the top of the truck.
After the wagon is unloaded, the loose straw has to be swept off, so that the wagon can be taken back to the farm and traded for a full wagon.


Gloves are very necessary, to prevent blisters. Sunscreen is typically a good idea, unless you're part of the population that doesn't burn. And be sure to be prepared for outside temperatures in the 90s.

Anyhow, it was fun. It's always nice to be with friends, and doing something productive makes it even better.

Okay...my blog has been updated. What about yours? :P

hahahaha

Ok, thies ies fort yuourt vieewieng pleasurte. IE prtomiese IE'm spellieng evertyuthieng cortrtectlyu. Myu keyuboartd ies havieng some iessues, as yuou can see, and IE thought iet was funnyu. Except IE have college to do. IE thienk IE'm goieng to bortrtow Jess's laptop fort that. Annetta ies overt herte laughieng at me...honestlyu, iet's the keyuboartd's fault!!

RThies looks liekie onie of rthosie fortwartd rthart yuoyu giert, rthart rtiell yuoyu rthart onlyu smart 0pieo0plie can 5rteiad rthie,m. rth8ies 8ies giertrt8ieng wo5rtsie. B&YUW~!

Disclaimer: I don't know what populism is, actually.

3. What is populism and how did it interact with nationalism during the 1930's in Latin America?

So like there was a lot of land, and it was divided up by things like Spain and Portugal, and they ruled it. But the Original Inhabitants of these lands didn’t like the whole ruling thing, so they got mad and started shooting and stuff. Spain and Portugal were like, “whoa dude, these guys are revolting…we must stop them,” and so they started working on stopping them. But, the Original Inhabitants unified under the cause of Nationalism, which pulled them together into units of cohesiveness, which then in turn worked to revolt effectively against the Spaniards and Portuguese. So then Spain and Portugal were like, “Who cares…we didn’t even like this place anyhow! There are too many mosquitoes, plus, we can always invade California or Africa...” and sailed off across the ocean blue.

Then there was squabbling amongst the Original Inhabitants of this land. Or rather, by this point, they were Original Inhabitants plus lots of other people who had moved to this land and weren’t kicked out. So the squabbles were confusing because there were a lot of sides to the squabbling. They needed to pull their act together and unify, but they were fresh out of unification ideas, unless you count the unification ideas that involved guns. And they had already used Nationalism once. They couldn’t use it again, because people figured out that nationalism had a lot to do with the Poor Working Class, and the people squabbling were the Urban Middle to Upper Classes of people. The Poor Working Class was out planning squash and trying to survive. Finally, a smart person was like, “POPULISM!!” and someone else was like, “Dude! What is that?” and the smart person was like, “It’s just like Nationalism, only it’s for the Urban Middle to Upper Classes!” So they all sat around and ate squash and stuff and planned strategies.

So then the people unified mostly under Populism, and made sure that the people they elected as presidents agreed with them, except for the ones who were like dictators or rigged elections or shot people who disagreed with them. And thus we have Latin America.

Ahem, please don't mind the general untidiness of the blog...it needs serious work, but my spurts of inspiration never ever turn out how I want, and then they leave me and I'm stuck with a blog that looks worse than before. I'll fix it...eventually :P

Of Lakes and Lasagna

Nadea, that title should make you jealous. At least the lasagna part. And how do you like my alliteration? I thought it was cool...

So anyhow...you all should remember our friend Rachel, mentioned on my blog many times, I'm sure. In the beginning of May, she went to a far away location for a summer school course. We're talking, hours and hours and hours away. And she was going to be gone all the way until the end-ish of August, which made us sad, especially Jess, because she would be leaving for college and wouldn't see Rachel till fall break or something. But then...Rachel discovered she had a summer break. And we decided to keep it a surprise from Jess. Today was the day that the surprise occurred. It was spectacular, of course. Aaron (her brother) wanted to surprise Rachel too...so we had a complex surpriser/surprisee situation, where neither party knew they were surprising the other, nor did they know they were being surprised. Well, Rachel knew she was surprising Jess, but she didn't know when she would be.

With some help from our Comfort Inn managers and fellow employees, and some serious conniving and plotting from many different people, we pulled it off. We got Jess to Rachel's house on a fairly shaky alibi, and they were both quite shocked-- Jess moreso, because she of course though that Rachel was hours and hours and hours away. And the timing worked out awesomely!

Unfortunately, Jess had to go to work about 45 minutes later, but Annetta and I were able to stay a little longer, and went down to Lake Erie and hopped around in the waves, getting completely soaked and trying not to drown (we didn't drown, by the way).

In other news, VBS finished up on Friday. It was a good week. I think we had more kids than they thought we would, and it was great fun being the game leader again.

Also, word to the wise: turtles pee when they're scared. On a completely unrelated note, I picked up a turtle today and it got scared.

Um...I think that's about it in my life for now. I'm really tired. What are your plans for the 4th of July?

Oh...wait...wait. I forgot about the lasagna part of the title. After we got home, I made baby lasagnas and ate one while writing this post. It was pretty good.