Buying a new car

Actually that is kind of a misleading title. I was really just doing research online in order to do a better job of buying a USED vehicle for our second daughter to drive back and forth to college.

Anyhow, I stumbled across this article and was stunned and kind of shamed to see how easily we fell for some of the ploys used by car salesmen to suck in innocent buyers. (We drive a beat up old '94 minivan that we bought new from a dealer who used several of the tricks described in this story to get a few extra bucks from us.)

I will know better next time. You can too if you take time to read this admittedly long article.

Creamsicle

BlackJack....Northview's other equine

New "face" in the blogroll

I added a new link to the Blogroll this morning to a colorful and interesting blog from Central New York. The author stumbled on Northview via flood photos and generously gave me a link way back last month.

I am returning the compliment, (albeit kind of late in the day) especially since just their Blogroll alone is worth a visit. Anyhow, welcome to NYCO's Blog.

*Just a note: If you are an upstate New Yorker, plan on spending a while if you click. NYCO links to dozens of pertinent stories that you will find yourself wanting to know more about.

This is Frieland Andre Magma, daughter of Frieland LF Volcano. We finally got a red one!

Still more global warming

A Coyote at the Dog Show wrote an interesting post linking to this story last Sunday. Seems global warming is affecting Mars a lot like it is reported to be doing here on our comfy little home on the third rock.

"In fact, Mars may be in the midst of a period of profound climate change, according to a new study that shows dramatic year-to-year losses of snow at the south pole." Says Space.com (Sound familiar?)

Okay, our ice caps are melting; their ice caps are melting. If we accept that ours are wasting away to mere snow cones of their former selves because we drive to the mall too often, should we assume that Ray Walston and Bill Bixby found themselves somewhere unexpected when they shuffled off this mortal coil? And that now that the front yard is red and doesn't need much mowing they bought a new SUV and are spending their time 4-wheeling among the red rock.....polluting the atmosphere in wanton disregard of what they are doing to their climate? Maybe they need a treaty?

Or should we rethink our arrogant assumption that we are turning up the boiler here on earth and instead look to the head honcho out there in space for answers to hypothetical climate change?

Of course, if we think we have strange weather these days, up there on the red planet it snows dry ice. Imagine talking about THAT kind of weather around the water cooler.

The Same Old Same Old

Those who are longtime readers here at Northview Diary will remember how long and hard we agonized over the hostile takeover of the cooperative we had long shipped our milk to by a financially struggling cooperative in New England.

We felt that we were being sold a bill of goods by the new owners, so we called for our contract and moved to another company. It doesn’t pay as well as Allied Federated Cooperatives did and we miss having good people working hard to negotiate favorable prices for us. However, this news story from the Burlington Free Press, made us awfully glad we changed. Seems Agri Mark, the folks who shut down our old cooperative are in big financial trouble and they are taking the cost of their problems right out of their members hides.

We may be experiencing record low milk prices right now, but at least nobody is dipping into our check book to pay for what looks an awful lot to me like bad management. A number of farmers are leaving as soon as their contracts are up.


We are glad we never joined.


Still it will be a terrible shame if Agri Mark goes under. They are one of the few independents left in the region. The demise of each small coop results in a worse monopoly on processing and marketing dairy products than already exists and this does not mean good prices for producers.

Dang dog

Sorry to have been AWOL since Sunday. It was entirely invountary. Alan's delightful border collie, Nick, decided that day to run over to the window to bark at Lizzie's horse, which she was allowing to graze on the lawn. He used the phone jack for a handy dandy brace so he could see better. It was not up to the strain of a forty-pound hound bouncing up and down on it, all the while screaming epithets and bellowing death threats at the intruder on his own personal, carefully marked, lush green (thanks to an overkill of rain) grass. A teeny, tiny plastic piece parted company from its shell and the whole shebang gave up the ghost. What with the flooding and all, repairing dog damaged wall jacks is a low priority I guess and it didn't get fixed until tonight. I have to give the phone guys credit though; they were still working tonight at 6 PM.

After almost three days without phone or Internet one thing has been proven.

I am addicted. Relentless restlessness, irritability, crankiness, crabbiness, it was like being without coffee. Worse even. It is going to take my family weeks to recover I fear.

Sorry Ralph, Liz and Becky, you'll have to blame Alan. I told him to put the darned dog out...about five minutes before the phone jack joined the Hesperus on the reef of Norman's woe.

Home again

Came home from camp today, with the car stalling at every intersection and rain pouring down. Found the river on the rise with rushing black water pouring under the bridge. There are flood warnings out for both our “home” counties and it is looking pretty bad.

Again.

We had a great week though. The lake was as warm as a bathtub and yet refreshing in the heat. Fishing was poor, but we caught lots of trees and stumps as well as some rocks and a good part of the State of NY.

Alan took up fly fishing, which yielded the best catches of the week, including a big fallfish and a number of small-mouthed bass.


I don’t need to catch fish to be happy. A good book and a pair of binoculars….and my camera of course, and I have every thing I require for contentment. A fresh cup of coffee bumps it up to total luxury. Took many pictures and "note blogged" since a little red notebook is much more portable than a desktop. It was all good.

Wish it was just beginning.

Before the storm

Beggers

Solid comfort

Going fishing just after sunrise

Postcard from camp

Hope your week is going great as well, with no snags worse than this one in your world.

Sunflower

Powerful flood photos

Dan Weaver has some aerial pictures of the river at its worst on his blog. Even having seen much of the flooding they are amazing.
Upstream. A Mohawk Valley Blogzine.: Aerial Photos Of Flooding On The Mohawk River.

It's time

Jobs for today... boot up the old computer, find the list of things we need to bring, (until I created this list I had to drive down and buy a new plastic collander every year for three consecutive years). Pray that the Lexmark printer has just one more task left in it.

Accompany Liz food shopping.


Take the middle seat out of the mini van so there is room for the cot and the dog crates.

Do last minute laundry, water ALL the plants, pack the field guides to birds, trees, and wild flowers and all the binoculars. Oh, and the Collin's Complete Field Guide to American Wildlife and Cache Lake Country.

Go to the library for stacks and stacks of other books. Try to get down to the hospital to see mom, or at least give her a call. Replace the worms the %^&%#!* birds ate out of our compost bin/worm bed.


Milk the cows and feed the calves for the next to the last time before CAMP!!!!!


See you next week!

Still more rain

Possible solution to a watery problem

Out in the barn tonight Liz and I were discussing ways we could share this outrageous largess of water we are laboring under with our friends to the south and west. They are suffering from an interminable drought, while we are getting too much rain. Rain that is wrecking our neighbors' homes and businesses.


All day rain.

All night rain.

Sluicing, sheeting, rattling rain that is washing out all the roads that the boss just finished regrading for about the fifth time this summer. Rain that is preventing us from storing our crops or getting the cows fed properly without using up what stored feed we have.

We have way too much; they have too little.

Seems like a solvable dilemma.

However, we struggled to come up with a way to create enough wind to blow the rain clouds over hills and mountains to where they are needed.

Then Liz came up with a brilliant idea.

Politicians.

Lots and lots of politicians. Granted the rain will likely be kind of warm by the time it makes it to Florida and Montana, but there is enough hot air produced in Massachusetts alone to push the rain all the way to California. I think that if we point Kerry and Kennedy and Dean west and use everyone in the White House as a relay south, the watery unbalance that is plaguing our nation will soon be remedied.
It's worth a try.

Here we go again

Look what we have for today.

THE NATL WEATHER SVC IN ALBANY HAS ISSUED A * FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF N. CT. WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS.EAST CNTL NY & SOUTHERN VT. THIS INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING AREAS IN NORTHERN CT.LITCHFIELD COUNTY. IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS. BERKSHIRE COUNTY. IN EAST CNTL NY.ALBANY. COLUMBIA.DUTCHESS.GREENE.RENSSELAER.SCHENECTADY. ULSTER.HAMILTON.MONTGOMERY.FULTON.HERKIMER. SARATOGA.WARREN.WA & SCHOHARIE COUNTIES. IN S. VT.BENNINGTON & WINDHAM COUNTIES. * THE FLASH FLOOD WATCH IS IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM EDT THIS MORNING THROUGH LATE TONIGHT. * LOW PRESSURE MOVING EAST FROM THE GREAT LAKES WILL INTERACT WITH VERY MOIST AIR OVER THE REGION TO PRODUCE A GENERAL RAINFALL OF ONE TO TWO INCHES OVER THE REGION THROUGH TONIGHT. HOWEVER.THE AIR OVER THE REGION WILL ALSO BE VERY UNSTABLE TODAY AND TONIGHT. THIS WILL RESULT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THUNDERSTORMS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING ONE TO TWO INCHES OF RAIN IN AN HOUR. THESE HIGH RAINFALL RATES COULD RESULT IN LOCALLY EXCESSIVE RAINFALL AMOUNTS & PRODUCE FLASH FLOODING. A FLASH FLOOD WATCH MEANS THAT CONDITIONS MAY DEVELOP THAT LEAD TO FLASH FLOODING. FLASH FLOODING IS A VERY DANGEROUS SITUATION WHICH RESULTS IN VERY RAPID RISES OF WATER LEVELS & LITTLE TIME TO REACT. YOU SHOULD MONITOR LATER FORECASTS & BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION SHOULD FLASH FLOOD WARNINGS BE ISSUED

Just what we need!