Yesterday at the hotel breakfast room we had to listen to a couple discuss which had more alcoholism, bars, and churches: New Orleans or Nashville. The man loudly described how alcoholic everyone from New Orleans is. Apparently he is from Nashville because his wife insisted that there were way more bars in Nashville than New Orleans.

This morning we listened two ladies discuss someone's diet: "She can have 45 carbs a day, and every protein she eats cuts down on her carbs. You know carbs is sugar."

Please turn up the tv in the breakfast room!

My Anniversary

Today begins my sixth year of work at Herman Miller. It's now officially the second longest employment at one place I've had, and I'm on vacation today!

See You On The Grill

Renae the Chicken Wrangler:

The last chicken in the pen:

The last one wouldn't go down to the end with the door so I lifted the chicken tractor and the chicken had about 8 seconds of freedom:

Last Saturday at the demolition derby I commented that all of the cars being smashed up were one day driven off a car lot as a new car that someone was so proud of and probably took really good care of. Three years ago on August 28 I would never have thought my Honda Fit Sport would be used to haul live chickens to the "poultry processing facility".

We pick them up after 5:00 tonight.

As my co-worker said, "See you on the grill."

The Time Has Come

Just got this message from Renae. It looks as if the day of reckoning for the chickens has come.


I called kapinga's - can you pick up some cages after work from them - probably 4 of them. She said we can bring them tonight and pick them up after 5pm tomorrow or by noon on sat.


It will be easier to take them tonight instead of tomorrow morning. We'll probably weigh at least some of them when we catch them tonight so don't worry--you should get some more pictures!!!

EDIT: And why does everyone ask if I'll cry or if I'll have a hard time eating the meat and no one asks that about Renae???

Teaching Reflection

For some reason I was randomly looking at the obituaries in the newspaper of a town in which I used to teach. I was surprised to see that some former students’ father had died. It was a dysfunctional family—the father was extremely harsh with his boys, but when I disciplined one, the father was immediately in the principal’s office complaining. The boys showed the scars of harsh parenting. While they were rather distant, one came to me when he heard that I wouldn’t be returning to the school, looked at me, started crying, hugged me, and then let go and walked out of the door.

It was very clear he knew the difference between discipline in love and punishing you because I’m a bully and can.

This is me getting ready to walk out the door this morning for work:

And it's not the first time I've done this, but the other time it was at least the same style of shoe just a different color!!!

Special Visitors

Sunday was a special day--my cousins, Dave and Judy, who were vacationing on the west coast of Michigan, spent several hours with me. We went to church and then ate at my house. I thought a central Illinois farmer would like to see the local muck fields with crops of celery, onions, squash, and beets.

This is Judy and me in front of my condo.