Roller Coaster Heaven

On our first official day in Ohio we went with my sister and her kids to Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. In case any you have not heard of it, it is the roller coaster capital of the world. They have 17 roller coasters, and 3 of the top ten steel roller coasters in the world. It was amazing. I don't know if I am getting to old or what but after about 5, I got a really bad headache and could not ride anymore coasters. It also could have been because we road this huge wooden roller coaster and for those of you who have not ridden a wooden one before, they are very rickety and bang you around. Here is the wooden one we road:


One kind of coaster I had never done before was one where you stand up in the cars. It was kind of crazy.
But our favorite was definitely Millennium Force.


It is their best and biggest and was rated the #2 roller coaster in the world in 2006. When it opened in like 2000 it broke 10 world records for a coaster including highest and fastest. It goes 310 feet in the air and 93mph. It was crazy amazing, I should have brought some 'Oops I crapped my pants' adult diapers. Here is a video of it that I found on youtube so you can experience it for yourself.

Trip

Margo and I took off this next week so we could take a little trip. We actually left Thursday night. We drove up and spent the night with Margo's aunt in Springfield, MO on Thursday night and today we drove 12 hours through lots of corn fields to my sisters house in Cleveland, OH. She moved here this past year and this is our first chance to come visit. We are going to stay here for several days and then go see our friends Trav and Kate in Columbus, OH. We have some pretty exciting things planned so stay tuned daily for updates on our trip.

Goats

I guess you all have figured out we are fans of goats. And if any of you don't know, they are a part of Margo's work. She works for ATTRA which is a sustainable agriculture information service and she is a livestock specialist for them. And more specifically she deals with goats, sheep and dairy cows. Anyway, a few weeks ago an editor from Time magazine called her and interviewed her and asked her a bunch of questions about goats for a piece he was doing on goats. He finally did the article. We had hoped she would get quoted in Time because that would be pretty cool but the guy said it ended up being a shorter piece so he did not quote anybody. It is still kind of cool that she was a source for this article. He also did a video as a part of the article for online. Anyway I thought I would put a link to it in case any of you wanted to read it. Click here. And if you want to watch the video click here.

Come Dine With Us

Margo and I have been looking for a patio set all summer long. We mostly have been looking for a set at a yard sale or in the classifieds but have had no luck. Yesterday we went to Lowe's (we go to Lowe's a lot) and they had all their patio furniture 50% off because it is the end of the season. They only had like 3 sets left that we liked so we bought a set. Then we realized we were in the CRV not the truck so we had quite an experience getting it to fit in the CRV. Anyway, we got it home and put it together. It looks nice and is much better than the white folding table with lawn chairs around it when we have people over and eat outside. Now we get to see who comes over to eat with us and gets to use it first. Here is a picture of it.



If you do come over, if you are lucky Hello might grill you something.

Sad Day

A very sad thing happened yesterday. Dave Mathews Band saxophonist Leroi Moore died. Dave Mathews Band is my favorite band. Leroi was one of the founding members of the band. He was in an ATV accident in June and died yesterday of complications from his injuries. He started out as a jazz musician before joining the band. He played bass, baritone, tenor, alto, and soprano saxophones, as well as the flute, base clarinet, and wooden penny whistle. When watching him play I always liked to see all the horns around him and how he would just go from one to the other with no problems. Anyway, we were very sad to hear the news. Here is a youtube video tribute someone did for him. It is just pictures of him with the band playing one of my favorite songs (even though it is a cover) for background music. There is a cool solo by Leroi about halfway through.

Fair Weather

In case any of you (who live in NWA) don't know, the Washington County Fair is this week. I hope you all can go (especially you with kids) and check it out and have a good time. I always loved going to the fair when I was little and looked forward to going every fall. Our favorite thing at the fair is going to look at the animals. There are also all the usual fair rides, games, and food. And lots of cool local stuff like the exhibits, a tractor pull, and dutch oven cooking contest. I think it is the biggest county fair in Arkansas. I hope you all can go, it is a good chance to get to be around all types of people from the community.

Catfish Like Meatballs

Our friends Adam and Sarah came out last night to hang out and watch some Olympics. As a side note, I love the Olympics, I could watch it all day long. I love being able to watch tons of different sports and see the U.S. kick some foreign ass. Anyway, we decided to do some fishing in our pond and try to catch us some dinner. Adam and Sarah brought some old frozen meatballs they had to use to try to catch some catfish. The catfish loved them. We were able to catch more than enough for dinner. We fried them up using my special recipe and also made some hushpuppies. It was a really good meal. Here are some pics of the fishing.

Here is Sarah's first catch of the day. How many men does it take to get a hook out of a fish?


Sarah with her catch


Here is the one I caught. Have you got your tickets to the gun show?


Here is Adam with our supper

Goat Research

I said in my last post I was going to explain a little more in depth about why we are going to try to stay away from the popular meat goat that everyone has these days...Boer. I know most of you may not care about this but there may be some people out there who read this who raise goats, are interested in raising goats, or knows someone who raises goats. I think this is important info for people who raise goats and may not realize what the research shows. I like Boer goats fine but there are some things people should know about them if they are planning on raising them because that is what everyone is raising these days. So, here is the research that explains my point.
Researchers at Tennessee State University tested three types of meat goat does against each other in the same conditions: Boer goats, Kiko goats, and Spanish goats. They tested purebred does that were exposed to bucks of their own breed. The does were managed together under semi-intensive conditions and kids were weaned at three months. Only 82% of the Boer does delivered at least one live kid, while 96% of the Kikos and 92% of the Spanish does produced at least one living kid. Only 72% of the Boer does weaned at least one kid, while 93% of the Kikos and 88% of the Spanish does weaned a least one kid. Here is a big one....More than 20% of the Boer does died or were culled for infertility of chronic health problems; Kikos had a survival rate of 99.1% and 93.9% of the Spanish survived. All of the does were dewormed twice a year but based on fecal testing, 54% of the Boer does required additional deworming compared to 10% of the Kikos and 17% of the Spanish. Almost all of the Boer does were treated for hoof problems twice, compared to 58% percent of the Kiko and 79% percent of the Spanish treated once.
I think the research speaks for itself.

New Billy Goat

We bought a new billy goat last weekend at the Centerton Livestock Auction. I love going to the auction and wish we lived closer so I could go more often. If I did I think I could turn it into my own version of farm gambling. Buy goats when they're cheap and try to resell them to make more money. It would be fun. Back to the billy goat. Some of you may know that we bought a little billy goat back in May, a really cute spotted nubian. When I bought him I told the lady I was wanting to get something to breed with my nannies this fall and she said that the nubians are slow growing for the first year and he would probably not be big enough for this year. I didn't believe her but she was right. The little billy has not grown very much so far and we don't think he will be ready for breeding this fall so we decided to get a grown billy and we happened to stumble across one at the sale that we liked. As I have talked about in previous post, we are trying to stay away from boer goats (which are the popular goats these days). I am going to explain the reasons for this a little more in a new post coming soon. This new billy probably has boer in him as most meat goats around here do these days. Because he does not look like the traditional boer billy, he went for pretty cheap. He is about 2 years old we think, he is a pretty big, and looks good. And, not kidding, he is the horniest billy goat I have ever seen (I am not talking about horns on the head). I have never seen anything like it. He is always chasing after one of the females trying to do the deed. Even at the livestock auction, he was trying to hump everything that moved. A random fact for you non-farm people about billy goats. The reason they stink is that during mating season they pee on their face because they think it attracts the female. Nice. Here is a pic of him. I am trying to think of a good name for him that relates to his increased sexual desire.

New Technology

Margo and I have entered a new era of TV watching in our house. Since being married, we have not paid for satellite or cable. We have just used bunny ears on our TV and watched whatever channels we pick up. We don't watch that much TV, but we would probably watch more if we had cable or satellite. Anyway, it seems that congress has mandated that all television communications be switched to digital by February 17, 2009. You would think congress would have more important things to worry about besides fancy TV, like a war, a bad economy, bad energy policy, and stuff like that. But I guess not. Maybe if they worried about those things more than TV their approval rating wouldn't be the lowest in history (even lower than W.). Ok, enough political talk. At this point we don't want to get cable, satellite or a new fancy TV in order to watch TV, so we sent off for the coupons for one of those converter boxes that are always on the commercials. Basically, they hook up to the old school TVs and bunny ears and make it possible to receive and watch the digital TV channels by down converting the signal. So, we got our coupons, bought a couple converter boxes, and hooked up our two TVs. Now for the exciting news. Before the converter box we got CBS, ABC, and PBS (AETN). With the new fancy converter box we now get CBS, ABC, CW, 4 channels of AETN, NBC, and FOX. We were very excited because some of our favorite shows come on these new channels. Who knows, maybe one of these days we will get a fancy TV and satellite or cable but probably not for a while.