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.

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Kinda fun having this blog. I was browsing back thru my posts and found one where I did some comparison's on the price of gas and the price of a new car. I decided to update it with todays numbers to see where I'm at:

Regular unleaded today is 3.899/gallon
1993 Chevy G20 (Gladiator) averages 14 mpg $200/mo maint
1988 Plymouth Voyager (VGer) averages 23 mpg $200/mo maint
2008 Ford Escape Hybrid 34 mpg city 30 mpg hwy (EPA est). We'll use the city even though I drive mostly highway. $35K or $1050/month
I drive about 1400/month or 17000/year.

Cost per month (very simplistic) based on gas at 3.899, 1400 miles per month, and above maint OR payment:

Gladiator: $592
VGer: $438
Escape: $1218

I don't think so.

Even looking at it more simplistically:
Gladiator $4760/year gas
VGer $2890/year gas
Escape $2040/year gas

So, over a year, I would save $850 in gas driving the Excape over VGer. And the payments are $1050/month? Even with the Gladiator I would save only $2720, not even 3 months worth of payments.

I don't think so.

And I won't even look at what the price of insurance will be for a new car, or what the price of maintenance might be in five years on the Escape.

I don't think so.

Gas is still at 3.899.

Spent most of the day Friday on the M-D W6 plowing and discing the garden. Then got the A-C WC running again on Saturday (bad battery cable) and used that for discing the garden. What a difference. The W6 is a brute, just walks the 2 bottom plow thru the garden. The WC is so much smaller and has much better visibility, turns much sharper (narrow front); much better suited for discing a small area like the garden.

Moved the '69 Pontiac Catalina Wagon, '70 Pontiac Ventura II, '77 Pontiac Catalina, and '81 Plymouth Horizon out to the front yard on Monday afternoon, I need to start stripping them down and salvaging parts. Gonna let Matt and the NLCS haul some of them away as part of their fundraiser, but I haven't yet decided how much. Still need to move the '89 Dodge Caravan Turbo, '89 Dodge Caravan, and '91 Plymouth Acclaim out front also.

I'm just about ready to decide to quit the car hobby. I love tinkering with the cars, I love looking at the nice ones. But I'm just no longer up to all the physical labor involved any more. At the very least I'm going to knock it down to one car project instead of the four car projects I'm currently staring at.

That will still leave me with more hobbies than I have time for, but maybe I won't feel so pressured.

Saturday was the North Central Minnesota Farm and Antique Association's annual auction. Matt and I took an old ground drive rake down to get auctioned, haven't heard if it went or not. There was some VERY nice equipment down there, including a restored John Deere A, a restored Allis Chalmers WD, a running Ford 9N, a really rough Ford 8N, a "yard art" Farmall F-12 on steel, and an unstyled Allis-Chalmers WC in rough condition (as the guy said, "it ran the last time I used it"). I've never seen a treadless rear tractor tire before. The tread was worn smooth on that WC! I think a neighbor down the road bought that one. There were two or three or four more tractors also.  Probably one of the biggest auctions they have had with hundreds of items. There was nothing that I needed, so we went home to work on Matt's WC.

Gas: Price at one station in GR is at 3.859 at 7AM although the other3 I passed were still at 3.799. The word on the street is that the price is expected to go to or over $4 by this weekend (Memorial Day). Price per barrel went briefly over $135, current price (Bloomberg.com) is at 132.90, although the rumor is that it will go over $141 in next month.

I have a feed for the gas price map at GasBuddy.com that I want to post here, but I need to figure out how I want to present it.

Gorgeous weather. Matt started to plow the garden last night, I'm hoping to finish it this afternoon.

Auction at Blackberry this weekend, need to finish getting the rake down there. They have a lot of equipment in the auction, I think I heard almost a dozen tractors. Saw one, a fully restored Deere on steel. I probably have a pic of it here.

I need to resume searching for a camera.

Gallup's latest "Cultural Tolerance" survey shows that more people think wearing fur is morally bad (39%) than people that think that divorce is morally bad (22%). Link to Gallup Poll results. Sad sad sad sad.

On a brighter note, if this weather continues the garden might be dry enough to plow and disc tonight or tomorrow night.

If society disintegrates a garden might be nice. Not that I think it is likely to do so any time soon, mind you. Some days I wish it would, other days I hope it doesn't. Not sure which it is yet today.

Ran errand at noon; gas at 3.799.