Congratulations to Sargie's son, Cale, (far left) for being awarded "Trainer of the Year" at Anytime Fitness in Green Bay where he is employed.

February 21, 2016 - Sunday

28 degrees/cloudy/snow flurries/calm winds

Pentoga Road

Again, congratulations to Cale for receiving recognition for all the hard work and time he's invested with his position as a personal trainer. Cale has built up quite the clientele and seems to be at the gym almost any hour of the day or night. We're proud of that boy!

Speaking of personal trainer, I could use one myself. Making the mistake of stepping on the bathroom scales last night, I about fell over backwards at how much I've gained over the past two months. I think I'll blame Jody and Kari for all their good southern cooking that I inhaled last week. Yeah, that's it.

You know, I go through this every single, doggoned, winter... and every summer, after losing the previous winter's insulation, I swear I'll not add any additional pounds during the cold months ahead. 

Some people have a seasonal gain of four or five pounds. Mine seems to run somewhere between ten and fifteen pounds and it's been that way for the past twenty years or more. I know I have to lose it and I swear, this is the last year I'm going to eat my way through the winter months. Uh huh.

Since we will be joining many of the Milligan's for a weekend of R&R in Escanaba beginning this coming Friday, there's no sense starting a diet now, but after, watch out. This beachball that I call my belly is going to disappear.... I hope.

Page Two

Luke and family visited in northern Maine this past week and stopped to see Ivy on their way home.

Three of my nine grandbabies: Abigail, Coleman, and Ivy

Page Three:

Saturday began as a lazy affair, but I found myself outside chipping away at the ice on the driveway. It was warm and everything was melting so fast that I thought I'd lend Mother Nature a hand.

It began as simply scraping a bit of ice in the turn-around (on the left above) but one thing led to another and soon, I became a man possessed.

I've always admired my sister and brother-in-law, Jeanne and Boyd's paved drive. They keep it spotless during the winter months, seemingly never to have a layer of packed snow by the season's end. Ours, on the other hand, usually accumulates an inch or two of hard-packed ice, especially in those shaded areas. 

The ice was scraped and or chipped to the end of the drive then the pavement was cleaned using the plow. 

Sargie and I took our usual day-off trip to town and bought bread, milk, and fried chicken. We later returned home for an afternoon of stuffing our faces and watching Netflix. No one suffered from any undo stress on Pentoga Road yesterday!

I spent most of last evening pricing goat fencing online. Garry made the suggestion that I consider fencing off the area behind the back yard where thick brush and weeds grow, and acquire a few goats. At first I chuckled, but after thinking about it for 1,157 miles, it began to make sense. Stay tuned on that one. It could get interesting.

In my quest to grow giant vegetables, I sent away for some ultra-giant cabbage seed, supposedly the biggest the world has ever known. I'll believe that when I grow it.
This came from China.

Sargie works from noon until five today. I'm going to head down the basement and clean, at least in the area around the furnace. I'll call the repairman and have him come out sometime this week. We'll need the furnace in working condition before we leave for two days this coming weekend.

It's time for a cup of coffee and listen to the news. I see that Hillary won in Nevada, Don in South Carolina, Ted and Marco are slugging it out, and Jeb suspended his campaign. I don't know why I care. They don't seem to care what I think. Oh well, I'll just keep plugging away because you know what they say.

A man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

I wonder if it's preordained what Grady's going to be when he grows up?