Great party last night at the Northern Lights Community School graduation ceremony. When you have 14 participating high school Seniors you can do things a bit differently. Traditionally, the Juniors give the grad dinner, Matt's a Junior. We brought the big BBQ over and with two other big BBQ's we helped cook up burgers and dogs for about 100 people. Then the Jazz band (with Matt on the Bass Clarinet) played "Eye of the Tiger" as the Seniors came in. Most of the Seniors were very casual under the black robes with blue jeans and sneakers in plain sight. Every Senior got to take the podium; some sang, some spoke, some cried. One very refreshing song was performed by the Praise Team from "The Rock" with the member Senior playing guitar. Another student pulled what I call a "Dumbledore"; he came to the podium and spoke a few words: "toaster. box. aluminum." and then sat down. As the grads left the stage the full band played Pomp and Circumstance. This graduation ceremony is very special for these students, since most of these students would have been high school drop-outs without the intervention of people who cared and NLCS. One of the grads is 21 years old. They are all smart, sharp people, but they were poor students or had too many complications in their lives or had a specific disability such as dyslexia to do well in a traditional school.

Had some showers move thru the area last night, including while were cooking. Very drizzly this morning with a chance of T-Storms today and tomorrow.

Matt plowed the garden Wednesday evening using the W6, and then while discing the garden the WC broke its fan belt. Had to order one from NAPA, should be in today. He probably should have ordered the lower radiator hose also, since the hose needs to come off to replace the belt. If I'm lucky they might have the hose when I pick up the belt, but I doubt it.

Gas is still at 3.899, although I see that oil prices have dropped sharply ($127/bbl). I don't think that prices at the pump will drop, but I'm still hoping they will since I need to pick up some good gas for the tractors and the older cars this weekend. Need to fire up the 455 and hear it again!

I'm hoping to start tearing down the '70 Ventura II and the '77 Catalina this weekend if the weather will cooperate. There is definitely a line of showers in North Dakota heading this way, but if they don't amount to much the ground might be hard enough to work on the lawn.

Traffic last night on the way home from work was a bitch. My normal 20 minute drive home took 40 minutes, all of the extra twenty minutes in negotiating the traffic thru town. Summer construction has closed a four block section of Hwy 2 in the middle of town. Since the detour is very poorly laid out over roads that were already busy, the traffic in downtown is really bad, so a lot of folks (myself included) take the long way around town past the Hospital on Golf Course Road and across County Road 63. It now appears the County Road 17 is closed for construction and the detour for that is now running past the Hospital as well, so that there was a solid line of cars on Golf Course Road yesterday afternoon. Then, a block past where Golf Course Road crosses Pokegama Ave and becomes 10th St the road was closed for more construction. I don't know what was happening, if there was a train or an accident or what, but traffic to cross the Horn Bridge was backed up over a mile (traffic across the Hwy 169 bridge is backed up that far during the day because of the construction on Hwy 2). So, I finally managed to change lanes and sneak down a couple of back roads and go home via the Blackberry bridge. So, this morning I came to work via the back roads and I will go home that way today. If I can get out of the Hospital Parking lot onto Golf Course Road. Even at 7:00 this morning traffic on Golf Course Road was much heavier than normal, I usually see one or two cars but today it was a solid string.