Wooo...what a week.  Juggling 5 programs at once has pretty much kept me busy
all week long.  Surprisingly, it felt pretty good to stay this busy for a
week.  Sadly, it greatly cut into my Bat and blogging time.  Ok, I'll recap my
3 day birthday weekend.  I took vacation on Friday and slept in to start my
birthday.  Rising late, I drove to Manchester to get my driver's license
renewed.  I love small town DMV's, 2 people in line ahead of me.  10 minutes
later, I had my new license in hand.  Amazingly enough, my photo actually
turned out alright.  Fifteen minutes later, I was on the farm.  Twenty minutes
after that, I was out running the rear mount cultivator on our 930 Case.  We
managed to get 40 acres done before we had to stop to watch my brother race on
the dirt track in Farley.  Unusually cool this year, we had to dress up in
coats and blankets in the 50 degree weather.  

My brother's race was early on, so we didn't have to sit in the cold the
entire night.  He had a lead in the first half of the race, then a caution
allowed the pack to catch up.  After the restart, he made a pair of driving
errors that dropped him back to a fifth place finish.  Afterwards, we could
see that he was pretty angry with himself (which carried over the next day or
2).  Saturday was another cool and rainy day.  I managed to finish splitting
this year's firewood supply in between the rain drops.  That evening, I went
to a polka mass with the parents.  Now for those reading who don't know what a
polka mass is, a polka mass is a Catholic mass with all of the accompaning
music played to polka tunes.  It is always weird to hear the beer barrel polka
played during mass.  A music leaflet is provided with the changed religious
lyrics to go with the familiar music.  The mass was jam packed with the
elderly, or as my Dad put it, it was like being in a retirement home.

Sunday was another cold day.  My sister decided she wanted to dump off her
children so she can go and have fun.  So, Dad and I watched my youngest niece
and nephew for most of the day with some help from Mom when she got off from
work.

So, that was my birthday.  Throw in a few gifts and an angel food with cherry
frosting birthday cake to complete it.  Like I mentioned, this week has been a
blur of work for the most part.  Although last evening I went out with the
roommate and another friend to catch a funk band playing for free in the local
park.  I am amazed how many kids have a gut bigger than me these days.  It is
truly scary!  When I was growing up, we never looked like this.  These kids
looked like guys do when they are in their 40's and hadn't exercised since
their 20's.  Sad.

Oh yeah, some positive news on the weight loss front.  I actually lost weight
over my birthday weekend, which is pleasantly surprising.  For this first time
this year, I weighed slightly under 180.  Hopefully by next week, I'm at 179,
which would put me down an official 25 pounds since I started upping my cardio
and lowering my cookie intake.  I'm pretty happy that I haven't stopped losing
weight at my current rate.  I figure I should be down to 170 by Labor Day
weekend.    I have this suspicion I'll have to go to 165 or even more to get
to the figure I want again though. 8(  So, the sacrifice of the food will
continue on longer than I first had planned.  I do miss ice cream, cookies,
cake, muffins, pie, pizza, brauts, hamburgers, droool, mmmm.

And as for my earlier cryptic blog entry.  Appears there was nothing there
after all.  Ah well.  

So for this weekend, it is home to the farm for Father's Day.  Not much
planned for Saturday, but Sunday we will be heading up to Prarie Du Chien,
Wisconsin for the Rendevous event.  So if you are in the area, look for a guy
dressed in bleached white sack cloth, a black wide brimmed Amish-ish hat, and
carrying a .50 cal. black powder rifle on a sling in the morning hours. 
Tonight's blog brought to you by "Sadeness (Part 2)" Enigma