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What are horses good for?

You can’t really eat them, unless you’re into that culturally. They don’t have wool or fleece that you could shear off. All they do is eat enoromous quantities of food, get out often and let you ride them if they let you.

Some people make oodles of money racing them or breeding them together to make more of these dasterdly animals. Everyone that lives near the cities or comes from the cities thinks that horses are what define a farm, when all they do is make a mockery out of farming itself, raising prices for everything horse related that could be put to better use on a beef or dairy farm.

And there’s a lot to be said about women that like horses, nothing too positive.

All I can figure horses are good for is glue. If you can’t tell, I don’t like horses much.

I’ve started anew an endeavor as a commercially liscensed driver this past week and it’s been enough to drive a man to stop driving completely. I am currently helping out UFC deliver fertilizer to the farmers around the Gibbon area. I’m helping out a friend, Jason, who’s manager at that location.

Having had little actual time behind the wheel of a big truck, I was a little hesitant and green but confident in actually attempting this small feat. So off I go from the plant and pull onto State Hwy. 19 and get no more than 500 yards and DOT decides to pull me over. I was really worried he’d find something wrong with my liscense (a temporary/seasonal, also first BIG liscense I’d had) or something wrong with the rig I was driving (not the newest or greatest machine). If he had, I was certain I’d quit right then and there. But I was let go with a warning for not having a seatbelt on. I’m almost that with certain these trucks; seatbelts were a late addon.

Anyhow, I got that outta the way and enjoyed a few days of learning the ropes of driving truck and working at a coop. Then yesterday (Saturady) I had the unique opportunity of wrecking a truck engine.

I was told to take out a bigger truck than the one I had grown accustomed to. Fine. Start out and get stuck in driveway (new soft gravel and very heavy truck = not good). Got that taken care of and start out. Never get this pile of junk above 20 miles/hr – due to weight or inexpierence I’ll never know. Doing fine, keep driving as slow as a turtle until I pull upto a stop sign and stop, naturally.

Then notice cloud of dust go by, fine, then a gray vapor starts coming up from under the engine. Get out and sure enough a gray liquid is pouring out – most likely cracked head gasket or head. La-te-da. What a week! I just don’t think things could get more peachy than that for starting out something so new and almost foreign. But I made it and had some good help along the way, otherwise I might never even started. And to think I honestly worried things like this would happen before I even agreed to help out.

Things can only get better right?

Having just got done watching The Day after Tomorrow, I really started to wonder if there could ever really be such a thing as a good apocalyptic movie. I still have the horror that was Deep Impact deeply imbedded in my brain, but yet I was drawn like a moth to the flame. That and the superb body of work the Jake Gyllenhaal is putting together. But the director was the same genius behind Independence Day and Godzilla. So suffice to say, I should have known it sucked, I think they even say that he director these other duds on the DVD case. Silly to ignore such warnings.

All these movies ever do is make the impending doom of the world’s imminent demise the only real story, but it’s so large and grandeous of a problem that everything else gets dropped or faked for the sake of the doom. Sure the end of the world we currently know it would be horrific, but can’t they try to entertain you at least. Indepedance Day at least attempted that and even the most memborable sinking of a commerical cruiseliner Titanic made for a decent movie, not to mention a huge payday for those involved.

And the awesome CGI work the gets generated by these apocalyptic doosies is enough to stop watching as soon as it plays out pitifully as well. Who would believe cartoonish wolves would be so troublesome? You almost half expect them to start talking as they so badly out of place in the movie.

This movie didn’t suprise me, but after hearing people said they watched it and didn’t feel like they wanted to gouge their eyes out with dull spoons, I gave it a chance. I don’t think this genre will ever get my attention again. It’s just that bad.

Had the honor of visiting MSU, Mankato for the first time in three since I graduated. What drew me back was the opportunity to be a science fair judge for the first time. I had gotten requests in the previous years to do so, but always had something going on the weekend they had the event, but this year it worked out. I has somewhat interested to see how the judging went after years in elementary school going to the local science fairs.

All in all, the judging and fair were okay. I would have liked to have been given more time to do the actual judging and view other projects, but with 1300 exhibits, it is somewhat impractical.
After the judging was done, I strolled about campus to see how things looked and/or had changed. The biggest change probably was the new CSU revamp, which is more open and welcoming for a gateway into the university, but really doesn’t face any particular avenue or access to campus, which is offputting, but fits in well with the similarily ill designed Taylor Center. Lots of new, hip furniture with oodles of computer stations and workspaces make it appear they actually thought about the present and future a bit, which is nice.

The other big change was the University’s dedication to it’s athletic facilities, which was well underway when I finished there, but still seems to be progressing. I know they have faced financial hurdles with the State over funding, but by the time they’re done they’ll have pretty much everything sports related brand spanking new.

It’s kind of pathetic that sports play such a large role at MSU. They are only Division I in hockey, so it’s overkill for all the other programs. All that money could be going to education and tuitions that continue to cost more and for what? So they money can go to sports facilities? But then again, the local billionaires that helped spur the growth probably wouldn’t want to be associated with anything boring like a science wing that’s named anything other than Trafton.

After reading about certain celebrations held on April 20th of this year 2005, I thought I had to recount my experiences with the date.

A few years back, when I was in college, I had the great honor of learning what 420 meant in and of itself. It seems to me that the exact year may have been 2000, but I’m not sure. I had went over to the apartment of a few friends that I had gone to high school with and had not seen probably since then. Being typical college kids, they were into experiencing all the joys of partying and the like. I just remember a lot of munchies, incessant reruns of SouthPark , and funny shaped metal pipes.

All the guys said they were making a point to stay up to 4:20 am, but were lax on details as to why this was such a crucial time, although it seemed entirely feasible given the male collegiate lifestyle. So, being interested in being part of this endeavor, and having not seen the Southpark movie, I obliged their request to hang out til this time.

Little did I realize until the fateful time arrived that 420 itself was a reference marijuana and that was a universal holiday and reason to light one up. Also how odd that they used those oddly shaped metal pipes to partake in these festivities. Ah, you live, you learn.

This holiday also heightened my awareness of the ‘neat’ graffiti that miracously appeared on Hwy 111 north of Nicollet one year, say sometime in April and was subsiquently redone the next year.