Week in Reveiw

You all know we were in Albany last weekend for the annual Equine Fair & Expo. We went mainly to see the extreme mustang makeover and Craig Cameron's "Extreme Cowboy Race". It was definitely worth the time spent. We watched part of the cowboy race on Saturday evening and then went back Sunday morning to watch the finals. Here is a photo of part of the course:




The guy in the wheel chair there and the guy in the red jacket standing next to him were the judges for the contest. Craig Cameron is the guy to the right with the blue denim jacket on. You can see he is holding the microphone in his hand. He was having trouble with his voice because of a cold or something but he made us hear him alright. It was a kick watching the cowboys and cowgirls make their way through the course. The fastest time was around 6 minutes and they were scored 0-10 for each obstacle with 30 seconds on each of the 13. We don't know who won the contest because they didn't announce it while we were there

The extreme mustang final was on Saturday and we were able see most of it. The program is that 90 horse trainers are selected from applications and 1 of 90 mustangs are assigned to each trainer, then they have 90 days to work on them before the finals. At the finals they bring the horse in and demonstrate their success or lack of success to the judges. They are scored and placed according to the way they perform. I believe the winner gets some money, but I don't know how much. Once the competition is over the horses are all adopted out at auction. We saw the last three go through the auction and the third to last brought in $300, the second to last brought $5000 and the last one brought $1500. Kind of all over the place. They all did a very nice job training their horse and it was a good show. Most of the trainers claim they would rather train a wild, untouched mustang than a domesticated horse.

Anna had a lot of fun during the weekend too because of all the vendors there selling their stuff. She came away with a cool yellow denim jacket (you would be jealous Tara) and a couple of Tee shirts. She was a bit disappointed that there weren't very many boots because she was hoping to buy a new pair. Like she really needs another pair :)

We got home from Albany on Sunday afternoon and immediately loaded the horses up and headed for the fair grounds for our ride with the posse. Even though we were tired from messing around at the show all weekend we enjoyed the ride then went to Subway for dinner and got home late.

The rest of the week was fairly typical for me but Anna was off for spring break and Delaine was off several days during the week. They both worked on Friday. I got a call from Anna on Friday during my lunch break while I was talking to Mom on the phone. I got off my call with Mom and called Anna back to see what was up since she rarely calls me during the day. She was a little weepy on the phone and finally told me that the pickup wouldn't start when they went to go to lunch. Turns out she had left the headlights on when they got out of it Friday morning and the battery was dead. She wondered what to do. I suggested getting someone to come and give them a jump start. It wasn't an emergency so I didn't want to drive the 35 miles back to town to get the pickup running. One of gals at the office talked to her boyfriend and he volunteered to come and give them a jump. When he got there the jump didn't work so he took the battery out and took it down to Les Schwab to have it charged. I knew the battery was good because it is practically brand new since we replaced it when we bought the truck last summer. So they skipped lunch and worked the rest of the afternoon until I got off. I went into town and picked the battery up and put it back in the pickup, and it started just fine with a freshly charged battery. That was around 4:00pm so they were pretty hungry from missing lunch. We went home and snacked some because there was not time to eat since we were taking the horses out to Dodge Creek for our Friday evening ride. After the ride we stopped at Subway again and had a sandwich with the posse group and got home around 9:00pm. I think it will be a good while before she leaves the lights on again . . .

The Friday evening ride was sort of interesting because we all brought and obstacle to work our horses with. One of the gals brought a bunch of balloons and tied them all around the arena, we brought a blue tarp and made a "pond" on the ground, there was an umbrella and a lariat. I couldn't get Dustie to go over the tarp though I certainly spend a lot of time trying. The highlight of the evening was when I tied the lariat to a big orange highway cone and drug it around the arena. It spooked every horse there including Dustie! She was fine with it for about a half revolution around and then she noticed it following her and got a bit excited. She spun around like she has never done before and start moving back and to the side and the spun the other way and was backing and starting to loose her balance so I let go of the rope. Then I did it again and she repeated her excitement again. Then the third time I did it she was pretty good about dragging it. It was nice to find out she could move like that . . .

On Thursday Anna took her first private lesson on her saxophone. We found an excellent instructor we hope can help her improve her playing. The instructor is a lady that comes from Chicago and is a professional. She has played with some very highly rated symphony groups as the lead oboe player. She also plays and teaches the piano, saxophone, flute, bassoon and clarinet. She is very nice . . . she and her husband moved to Roseburg last summer to get away from the rat race in Chicago. She has been playing three gigs a day most of the week and was just getting burned out and wanted to slow down a bit. Roseburg ought to be a good place to slow down. Anyway we're excited for Anna to be able to take lessons from such a high level professional. I've been kicking around the thought of taking piano lessons from her, do you think a 55 year old man can learn to play the piano?

Today we worked outside some and I increased the size of our round pen to around 50'. I decided to get the tarp out again and see what Dustie and I could do. I worked her around the tarp for around 20 minutes when she finally decided run across it so I worked her that way for a while and she finally settled down and walked on it, then I walked her back and forth across it and turned on it a couple times then put her back in her stall. I'll do it again tomorrow and maybe I'll ride her across it too . . .

Week in Reveiw from Roseburg

We're really looking forward to next week as it is spring break and Anna will be out of school. Delaine will be off several days next week too. Maybe we can slow down a bit and relax some.

This week has been typical with something cooking almost every evening. One of the highlights of the week was Anna's spring concert at the Rose Theater. We spent the evening there listening to the bands play. There are four band groups at the high school that usually perform at the concerts. Morning Jazz Lab, Symphonic, Jazz Band and the Woodwind Band. Anna plays in the Symphonic band and they did three pieces, none of which I recognized. Their band instructor generally chooses music from the 20's or 30's for some odd reason. I would love to here them do something contemporary. They have one more concert this year before school is out. I really enjoy listening to the kids perform even if the music is out of date. We are considering enrolling Anna in private lessons with a local instructor. The instructor is a gal from Chicago that worked as a professional horn player for many years. She finally got burned of the entertainment so she quit it and moved to Oregon to set up a shop where she can schedule her private lessons. We've yet to talk with her but I've heard a lot of good things. We should know more next week as we get to make contact with here. I'm excited for Anna to get lessons because she really enjoys playing but hasn't gotten much out of her high school instructor. Not to mention we just had her horn rebuilt and it sounds great.

On Tuesday, Anna went to Medford with the band to compete at North Medford High. They didn't place but I think they all had fun. She got home around 9:30pm and I was already in bed and asleep. While she was gone Delaine and I went to a special Posse meeting at Ten Down Bowling alley to discuss our connection with the sheriff. The lady that is the new liaison for volunteers met with us and went over the action from the sheriff's department. We were supposed to be getting applications to join the sheriff's posse but she didn't have any. They aren't quite ready to take applications and the sheriff has named another group as the "Temporary Official" sheriff's posse. Most of our group is upset because we do so much community volunteer work the the other group does very little of it. They mostly do gaming and have little interest in community volunteer work. It's an ongoing saga and we'll have to wait and see what the outcome is. In the meantime we still plan to do the parades and Camp Millennium and child ID and the drill presentation for the retired folks and security for the half shell this summer and all the other volunteer work we normally do. We will do it until our group disbands or they tell us to stop.

Anna is still tutoring Cody and they had two session this week, one on Monday and the other on Friday. It turns out the Cody's mom is our home owners insurance agent. Roseburg is really pretty small. Also Anna had a Spanish club part on Thursday evening, they had fun.

This weekend we are spending in Albany at the annual Horse Fair and Clinic. Craig Cameron will the there doing an extreme cowboy competition all weekend and they are having the extreme wild horse makeover finals. We'll be spending most of our time at those two events with some time in between to shop. Saturday evening and night we'll spend with Sheridan and Mark in Woodburn. (We're looking forward to spend the evening with you.) Also, Sunday we will celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary. We may go to dinner after the we leave the Horse Fair.

What do you all think about Mr. Obama's gaff on the Jay Leno show? And what do you think about the A.I.G. bonus scandal. I think things are getting out of hand and a little dicey . . .

More to the steer chasing story

I didn't mention this when I posted the episode with Anna's steer, but as we were in the heat of the chase I lost my glasses. My phone popped out of my pocket and I reached down to pick it up and must have not seen my glasses or they came out at a different time. I often stick them in my pocket when I'm not trying to read something. So I got my old pair of glasses out to use until I could either find mine or get another pair. These were and older generation prescription and the lenses were so cloudy and scratched I couldn't see that well with them. I figured I wasn't going to find my good ones so I went down to the vision center to get a new pair. While I was in there I couldn't find any that I liked better than my originals so I talked to them about just replacing the lenses in them with my new prescription. They said no problem and took a pattern of the lenses. It took a week and a half to get them in so I've been wearing the old ones all that time. What a pain! Well the new lenses came in this past Thursday and now I can see clearly again! Made me realize how much I depend on my glasses. It also makes me think I should have a spare pair of glasses . . .

Roseburg Weekend . . .

I must follow up with a comment on our weekend. Delaine was sick Saturday and Anna went to the high school and worked at the "Battle of the Books" for the elementary students. In the evening she went to Winston to attend the church dance. It was a sock hop . . . they had a good time. Saturday I spent most of the day burning slash and cutting firewood. I did take some time to set up the panels into a round pen so we can work Jazzy effectively. She is a pain when there are no boundaries.

Sunday we went to church and then took the horses out to the fair grounds to ride with the posse. I had ridden Dustie on Friday evening at Dodge Creek and really gave her a work out so she was pretty attentive of Sunday evening. I've been working on her trot and her lope and working to get her to slow down a bit. She's getting pretty good at the trot to lower her head when I ask her and now she is learning to drop her head at the lope too. I notice when she drops her head she slows down and is a bit more relaxed. All in all she is doing very well for being such a youngun' She has a great attitude even when I work her into a sweaty mess.

Something Different this Week

I thought I would do something a bit different this week on this here blog. Maybe a bit self indulgent but what the hay anyway. Here you go:

A day in the life of Ron

Weekdays:
3:45 am - slowly get out of bed because it is so dang early in the morning. Go in and shave and take my daily multivitamin (yum), put eye drops in both eyes because I notice as I get older my eyes are very dry and scratchy when I wake up. Get myself dressed to my socks. Give my lovely wife Delaine a kiss goodbye (I'm not sure she know I do this) for the day and head down stairs.
4:00am - Eat a banana (if there is one there) and drink about 8 oz. of orange juice if it's in the fridge. If my joints and back are kind of sore I take and naproxin and down it with a glass of water.
4:05am - Check my email and the stock futures quickly before heading out into the dark, cool morning air.
4:10am - 4:15am - Morning prayer - Leave the house and head for work. Sometimes I have to stop for gas on my way out of town so I leave a few minutes earlier. The drive is 35 miles and takes me about 40 minutes to travel the distance. I usually set the cruise control at 55 mph to help conserve fuel.
~5:00am - Arrive at the plant. Go to admin and check my inbox for anything that could have been left from the day before then head on over to the plant and to my office.
5:10am - 5:30am - Check daily production and downtime reports to alert myself to any issues that may have come up overnight. Check the order file and look for any safety grams or announcements or market information that can be shared with the crews and posted on bulletin board in the shop. Collect the previous days time sheets and read over them to alert myself to any issues that may have come up overnight with the crews as well as ensure the guys did the work we left for them.
5:30am - 6:00am - Meet with the night shift crews as well as any of the day shift guys that have come in early. We usually set in a circle and it's share time. The guys share with me their successes and issues from the previous shift and I share with them the order file and any news related to market condition and shift scheduling that has come up. Also I share with them any successes or issues that may have come up the previous day. This time is very useful in guiding the ship and lavishing praise on those that do well and discuss issues and concerns with those that need the help.
6:00am - 6:30am - Take the time sheets I've collected and update our computerized timekeeping system. Seems odd that we have a computerized time keeping system yet I still have to spend a minimum of 1/2 hour a day updating the information. Seems like there are some opportunities for improvement here.
6:30am - 7:00am - I generally make a complete round around the plant. I head to the finger joint building through packaging and past the residual system and circle back through the I-Line, Rip Saw and Cold Press areas on my way back to the Lay-up Lines and Hot Press areas, then on around to the Dryers (even though they aren't running) and back through the Thermal Oil building past the air compressors back to my office in the shop. I think it's about 3/4 mile around the building. As I go I make notes of anything I observe that may need attention, like housekeeping, guarding, worn parts. It's a pretty quick trip but necessary.
7:00am Check in with the day shift crew all days except Wednesday as we have a maintenance meeting at 7:00am on Wednesdays. This meeting involves all maintenance leads and department leads and supervisor. You can imagine what we talk about . . . a few things are issues with equipment, project work per department, up time per department . . . and so on. Sometimes we try to solve the world problems too, but so far not much success there, so we generally try to focus on those things we actually have some control over.
8:00am - Senior staff meeting every day except Tuesday when we have a project meeting where we update each other on progress on our Finger Joint and Cold Press projects (they are both nearing completion so we will soon drop the Tuesday morning project meeting). The staff meeting is general supervisors and plant manager only. That is six of us when we are all there. Here again we go around the room and update each other on the previous day and any special projects or personnel issues we are working on. The plant manager updates us on sales and marketing and gives us direction on anything else that affects us.
~9:30am - 12:00 - We're usually all done with daily meetings by 9:30am or so and this is the time I get to work on work orders and address any maintenance issues within the plant. I also use this time to work on special projects that have been assigned to me or that I've come up with on my own. One thing that has recently been occupying my time here is our energy conservation project. I generally go online to energy profiler and look at yesterday's usage and plot it and share the information with all those that can help our quest to cut our energy bill. You get the point I'm sure . . .
12:00 - 1:00pm - Lunch break . . . usually hit McDonalds for chicken selects or a fruit and walnut salad then park and read (Ensign, horse journals, trade journals) , make phone calls to family . . . you know what I mean because sometimes I call you. If nothing else I will take a short (10 - 20 minute) nap in the car.
1:00pm - 2:00 pm - Scheduling meeting at the admin office. The plant scheduler gets an update from all the department leads and plant supervisors. Again, we spend some time during this meeting trying to solve the world problems with little success. Too dang bad all the politicians won't attend our meetings. We could straighten them out for sure. Maybe we should run for office (Ha!).
2:00pm - 3:00pm - make another quick round around the plant and meet with the swing shift crews to share information on market and order file and issues that have come up during the day. Check in with them to ensure our lead man has given them plenty of meaningful work for the evening. Talk about safety too while we are together.
~3:00pm - I head to the admin office to do my final check in with my boss where I pass on any pertinent information regarding the day then off I go . . . I hop in the car and head for home. Most days I'll stop at the Chevron station for a quart of water and a "take me home" snack then the 35 mile trip back home.
~4:00pm - 4:30pm - Arrive at home to begin our evening family activities which I normally write about. You know the stuff - Anna tutoring, tending to the horses, attending posse meetings, attending animal neglect meetings, attending search and rescue meetings, attending band concerts, watching American Idol . . . Blah, Blah, Blah . . . and hope you all enjoy.
~9:30pm - off to bed . . . nightly prayer then sleep . . . ummmm

One thing we did this week out of the ordinary was to go the high school play Oklahoma. The kids did a very nice job . . . there are some very talented kids going to Roseburg High.

And the weeks roll by . . .

How was your week anyway? I hope you all had a very good week and did something fun.

Delaine's birthday was on Tuesday and her folks wanted to fix dinner for us so we went over there for the evening. Mary fixed pork chops with grilled potatoes and carrots. We had birthday cake afterward and visited with Sheri, Fox and Mary for a bit then went on home. I got Delaine some flowers and had them delivered at her office for her birthday. The flowers are pretty. Since Wednesday Anna and I have been here without Delaine because she went to San Francisco for a nursing convention. We'll pick her up in Eugene on Sunday and bring her back home. We've missed having her home and will be glad when she gets back. Okay, here's the rundown for the rest of the week . . . Wednesday Anna and I went to the Posse meeting without Delaine, everyone missed having her at the meeting. The meeting went okay for us but some of the folks are a bit disturbed because it looks like the new Sheriff isn't going to include us in his posse group automatically. If we want to be part of the sheriff's posse we will have to go through and application process individually and he will decide if he wants us or not. Delaine, Anna and I really aren't that bothered by it because we're not sure we care to be involved in all the politics of the sheriff's posse. All we really care to do is have something meaningful to do with our horses. We'll have to see how it all washes out in the next couple of months. On Thursday there wasn't anything really pressing so we stayed home and watched American Idol. There's only one singer I like and that is Lil Rounds, who do you like? Anna did have a Spanish club meeting after school but that was it. On Friday I took Anna to Winston to tutor Cody after school then on our way home we stopped for Abby's pizza. It was good! In the evening we took Brazo and Dustie out to Dodge Creek for a workout. I decided to try Delaine's saddle on Dustie but it didn't work very well. The saddle is too wide for Dustie and wound up pinching her at the withers so we didn't have a good ride. I won't do that to her again. My saddle (Uncle Donald's saddle) fits her perfectly and she never complains a bit with it on, so I'll stick with it for a while longer. The old saddle is in need of repair but I haven't found a good saddle repair shop around here yet.

So that brings us to Saturday (today) . . . Anna and I had our day completely planned out. We were to take Curtis to the weigh in then bring him home and turn around and go to Subway for lunch on our way out to Dixonville to get a load of hay. Well the weigh-in went pretty well to begin with. I got the trailer hooked up while Anna got the halter on him and got him ready for the trip. She lead him from the lower turn-out all the way up to the upper driveway and we got him loaded without much trouble at all. "Piece of cake", we told each other. We got to the scale and waited our turn to weigh . . . everything going well so far . . . our turn came so I backed the trailer in and Anna got Curtis out . . . took him to the scale (he weighed 605) then on to the squeeze chute for ear tagging. Still going very well. She brought him back around to the trailer and he loaded very nicely. We were congratulating ourselves on how smoothly the whole thing went as we drove back home. I backed the trailer part way down and Anna got in with him as I held the trailer door and waited for her to be ready to lead him back to the pen. They hopped out and down the hill they went. Still doing pretty good even though Curtis was a bit reluctant to lead. When they headed down the little drop off on the way to the pen Curtis decided to run and jump a bit and try as she could Anna could not hold onto the rope. He broke loose and headed down the road. For the next hour we chased him around our neighbor's places and our place through the blackberry bushes and poison oak and scrub oak and you name without any success of getting him herded back to his pen. Finally our neighbors came to our rescue and helped us herd him into the neighbor's arena where we could get him corralled. It took a tractor, and Suburban and the Jimmy to get him herded into the arena. Anna and I were bleeding from the blackberry vines and we were filthy and sweating too by the time it was all said and done. Once we got him in the trailer we brought him back up and put him into the stall for the night. We both breathed a sigh of relief and hopped in the pickup and headed on out to get the hay. We did stop at Subway on our way out and had lunch. We got to Dixonville and got the hay loaded and I grabbed the check book to write a check and danged if there weren't any checks left. So we left with a promise to return later with a check to pay for the hay. We drove the 20+ ,miles back home and unloaded the 45 bails of hay. We got ourselves cleaned up and headed back out to Dixonville with a check to pay for the hay.

After all that messing around and blowing our plans we decided to treat ourselves to some fun and dinner. We went to the benefit car show at the fairgrounds and drooled over some of the cars there and later went to Kowloon for Chinese food. It's so nice to be home in the house and relaxing a bit before going to bed.

What a week . . . what a day . . . Maybe next week will be a bit calmer.

White Chili - Very Yummy to the Tummy

Prep Time: 50 minutes

1 small onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
2 cloves minced garlic
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Jalapeno pepper, minced (wear gloves when handling Jalapenos)
4 ounce can chopped green chilies, drained
1 teaspoon powdered cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups low sodium chicken broth
2/3 cup cooked white kidney beans (could be plain white beans), rinsed and drained
8 ounces cooked chicken breast, cubed (about 2 cups)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese


Saute onion and garlic in olive oil in soup pot until tender. Add Jalapeno, chilies, cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and salt, then saute another minute. Stir in chicken broth, beans and chicken. Bring to boil. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Stir in cilantro and cheese and serve.

Makes 3 (1-1/3 cup) servings.

(Per serving): Calories: 300, Fat: 14g, Saturated Fat: 5g, Protein: 25g, Carbohydrates: 19g, Fiber: 4g, Cholesterol: 13mg, Sodium: 647mg

Weekly - blah, blah, blah 2/28/09

We finished burning another week here in Roseburg . . . (Random Tara)

Anna kept us busy again this week. Tuesday Anna played on the pep band at the last basket ball game of the season. It was the first game we went to this year where Roseburg won. They were over Grants Pass 59-55 and actually played a pretty good game. The pep band has dwindled to just a few kids as the season has gone on. Just the die hard band members I guess . . . unfortunately their instructor is pretty bad and has managed to run most of the kids off.

Anna tutored the little girl in Winston a couple of times this week and then was out of school on Friday for teacher in-service day. She worked at the doctor's office for most of the day. Friday evening we took the horses out to Dodge creek for a workout. I got Dustie all sweaty from loping and Anna got Brazo all sweaty too. She got on Lacey at the end of the evening and loped her a bit but I never saw Lacey break a sweat. It was fun!

We managed to watch American Idol this week but no movies or any other TV. Maybe this evening we will set home and vegetate and watch movies. We're all tired and we aren't taking the horses out so we can relax and rest a bit before next week starts. Next week ought to be interesting since Delaine is going to San Francisco for a medical convention and Anna and I will have the ranch most of the week . . . just the two of us. Delaine's birthday is this next Tuesday by the way so we will have something to celebrate this week.

Saturday I went in to work for a while to do a last check in with the three millwrights we a laying off. I wanted to be sure they had everything they needed from me and I wanted to make sure I had their current phone number so I can stay in touch with them. It's pretty sad that we are having to lay off millwrights . . . this is the first time in my history that I've seen this without actually shutting operations down. The plant was down this past week but will be back up next week and we are planning 8 days down in March. All based on market pull. I got notified that all admin employees are getting a 20% cut in vacation time this next year and we're losing our two floating holidays as well as our 401K match and the ability to carry over unused vacation days. Tough times . . . The cut in vacation will mean I have 12 days instead of the 17 days I had previously earned including the floating holidays. It might make it tight for time off this summer. Aside from the negative there we are going to start producing thick LVL in the new cold press this coming week. Must of the debugging is complete and we are ready to start using the equipment for production. That is when there is any demand for product out in the market place. We won't produce to build inventory just as needed for orders. I know we will make it through and it will get better . . . just don't know what it will all look like when we come out on the other side of this down turn.

Mel, I'm glad you started to post on your blog again, I was wondering if you had given up on it. Have you ever read about the affect of periodic fasting on diabetes? I read an article in the Eugene news paper that was touting the good things periodic fasting can do for the human body and human spirit. Funny really that our church leaders have known that for many, many years.