Blah Blah (January) Blah.

The rest of January involved a lot of chilling, chil'en and chillin'. 

So I finally made it home again. I decided to climb up onto the roof of the shop to see if the sparrows were in fact getting in through there.  They were. They had managed to chew through the insulation at the very peak of the roof on both ends of the shop.  I plugged up the holes with some foam insulation.  It worked!

For like a week.

I may have to up my list of "Things I Hate" from 2 to 3.

I took a few pictures while I was up there.

 I also remounted my electronic rain gauge. Apparently the mount supplied is only good for areas where the wind does not exceed 35 mph. Every time it got windier than that I got false rain data. 

The highlight of this phenomenon being when I, while on the streets of downtown Oklahoma City, was shocked to discover we had received 7.42 inches of rain during a two hour period on the evening of December 31st.  (Click the image for a closer view.)

I double checked with the National Weather Service. The wind data is quite accurate, but alas, not one actual drop of rain on December 31st. (I fixed the archived data on our computer, but if anyone knows how to correct data already uploaded to the wunderground site, please let me know.)

The best part of being home was spending time with Katie and Anna again.

 I also went out to look at the wheat.

The wheat after corn looked spot-on.

The dryland, belive it or not, looked quite a bit better than this time last year. (As long as you weren't curious how deep the moisture profile was.)

Wheat that is not dead is wheat that is not dead. And sometimes that is the best that can be expected.

 

It was still to early on the wheat after wheat to know what to make of it. Irrigated no-till wheat after wheat is a new thing for me.

I also had my first look at the new oil gas well Over East.

Picking up Anna from school.

Betsy officially reached the point in her pregnancy where her body starts relabeling "blood-for-brain" with "blood-for-baby."  I suggested that we might want to leave our trash inside the Wendy's store rather than take it with us.

 

There's Anna!

I hauled some wheat. 

I spilled my coffee getting into the truck.  The fact that it froze onto the truck made it seem that much more tragic.

We went to Witchita on the last weekend of the month. We stopped at Dodge City's McDonald's's Stagecoach.

And saw the progress in Greensburg.

And made our very first public announcement regarding Threezie.

I went for a night on the town with the guys.  Since we were all on diets, we decided to eat four courses at the four healthiest restaurants we could think of.

Appetizers at BWW.

BBQ in Kechi.

Seafood (not pictured) at RL and dessert at OCP.

We hung out with all the fams too, although there were no pictures.

Hey! This reminds me that I also went up to the No-Till on the Plains conference in January. I saw some folks I hadn't seen since college, got my head filled with mush, ate some Cozy Inn, watched some Downton Abbey with Bill and Jane, and ordered a set of these sweet streamer nozzles which I had never done before since it would have involved using the phone.