Chicken Swap Time!

This morning was the Carlton Feed Mill Spring Chicken Swap... sounds pretty darn backwoods hick style don't it? But it is a good time.... folks there swapping/selling/buying all sorts of things.... birds of all varieties such as chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, turkeys.... puppies, kittens, goats, cows, rabbits, horses, donkeys, as well as all sorts of other non-living stuff like jewelry, honey, feathers, wool, maple syrup...etc,. etc.

There is also an Amish family that comes every year and makes outstanding homemade bread, cheese, doughnuts etc. YUM!

So we took Fin and got a shitload of comments like "look at that huge dog!" and the like.... its a bit weird to us because we don't think of him as that big - because we are with him everyday I suppose.... He did great - let everybody pet him and even gave a little boy a kiss.... he was really interested a Scotland Highland cow and the goats in the pickup.
here are the pics...

After the Chicken Swap we went off to Grandma Diane's where Fin got spoiled with way too many treats... she couldn't believe how big he has gotten since he hasn't visited in a while.
DellMarie asked if she should bring him down for Thanksgiving or Christmas and she said Grandma Ann would have a stroke! HA!
Alright... sun is shining... I'm going to go make a cocktail and grill some burgers!
Good day to all you!

Two Weeks Ago......

I was shaving my beard off... wow... time flies by huh.
Anyway... an update.... I got a bit of hair cut off too... trimming up all that winter fuzz I guess.
By the way... I really, really don't want to come off in any way as being vain here.... just providing a picture for the record....
We had the kids out for their weekly "community outing" at work today and ended up at the lake walk in Duluth... freakin' awesome today... 70 degrees... sun.... YES!
Yes, you are looking at a huge chunk of ice/snow/beach sand/gravel... it is about 4 feet high and 50 yards long. The white you see in the pic below off to the left is ice.... still out there... almost gone though.

Tomten 09 planning commission party next weekend. Look for invites next month! We are just three months out! DINGWOP!

Sping Has Sprung Because....

... I shaved my beard!
I had a sneaking suspicion that the horseshit weather we've been having - snow, ice, cloudy, stuck in the low 30's crap had to do with the fact I had my winter beard still intact.
So with that bit of knowledge, I went ahead and shaved the thing off last night!
And, as if to prove my theory, I woke up this morning to sunshine. When I let Fin out for his morning pee, a robin red breast came tweeting along beside us, as if to say....
"Thank you, kind sir, for shaving your beard... you have brought us spring, sun and warmth!"

In an opposite reaction, DellMarie woke up - as I shaved after she went to bed - and said, among other things, I look morbidly grotesque! She's claiming the sex is off limits until it grows back... but really, who can resist the WayneMan and his charm?? She'll be wanting to rock it in about 12 hours or so....

Here is the pictorial proof....

Before...
Considering a Burt Reynolds mustache.....
And finally....... remember, I took one for the team here - in order for spring to arrive....
I could post pictures of the mass of beard hair and the three razors I destroyed (kidding!) but I thought that would be a bit gross.....
I haven't shaved the old beard fully for probably 12 years or so.... had the goatee's here and there....
DellMarie keeps shaking her head at me and giving me the stink eye.... I keep trying to tell her... it will grow back.

Never thought you'd be reading about Wayne shaving his beard in such detail did ya???
Now... where's that Robin? DellMarie just said he flew the coop because I look atrocious! HA!

Come On Already!!!

I must preface this by saying I hate when people talk about the weather because is just shows how much they don't have anything else worthy of conversation BUT... this is what Fin and I woke up to on March 31st....ugh......
We still have a couple inches covering the ground...

I have become convinced my beard has had an adverse effect on the weather... so I think it may be time to shave the thing off.... I'll keep ya'll posted.

Oh, my love affair with the cookie tin banjo has not faded.... I was going to throw up another vid but, alas, the camera is dead on batteries yet again... I guess it is time to go buy some rather than using the half dead ones laying around the house... in the meantime... DINGWOP!

The Swiss Colony Banjo Take II

Found some batteries for the camera. After dinkin' for a bit, I found a cool little banjo-esque kinda tune happenin'...

The Guts of the CT Banjo

Due to the overwhelming response by my sister and Chad.... here are a few pics of how the banjo came together... it needs some improvements but doesn't sound too dang bad for the Swiss Family Cookie Tin Dingwop Prototype....

Here is the bridge... a bolt that I ground off the bottom end of the head so it would lay flush on the tin....


The inside of the banjo.... nice place to store your goodies/contraband/dingwop/etc. etc. You see the neck goes through the tin, all the way to the back of the tin where it is held by screws, which, in turn, hold the neck to the body and provides a way to hitch up the strings....

Another picture of the neck and the cut out of the tin, where the neck enters the tin....

You can see the 4 wood screws.... could use just about any screws I would suppose... just the ones I had handy... And the "headstock" if you can call it that.... I used tuning pegs I had from an old guitar... a bolt for the nut. The neck is a chunk of maple I scored from the woodshop at work - fretless of course... which is cool because you can get that nice slide into and out of notes... so this dingwop cost me zero dollars to construct.... ooops, I take that back, I bought the tin from Goodwill for 49 cents!the things I need to improve upon.... pay a bit more attention to the headstock portion... I just hacked it out with a handsaw... could have made it much nicer than it is....
The neck portion INSIDE the tin needs to be cut out like ------i_________i---
if that makes sense.... basically the neck can't be sitting against the top of the tin - because the tin needs to resonate... with the neck body against it, it doesn't work so much.... I did hack it out but not as well as I should have....
Buy some freakin' strings.... I had some old used up acoustic guitar strings laying around - if I had a set I could have strung it up proper.... anyway...
The cut out in the tin body could have been a bit more percise and attached to the neck itself...which it isn't....
I'll post another vid of my ramblings on this thing... I can't put it down! My stoopid camera is dead on the batteries and I don't have any handy right now... so you'll all have to wait in hushed anticipation........ until then......

The Cookie Tin Banjo Prototype

So I stumbled across some crazy cat on the ole internet playing a cookie tin banjo.... which is just that, a homemade banjo-type dingwop made with a cookie tin.

So, naturally, I had to whip one up of my own.
Now I don't profess to be any sort of banjo player... in fact, I've never even played one... but that's not stoppin' me...
Mind you, this is the first attempt - I've got a few more tins I've been collecting so I'll hopefully improve upon this one but this is what I came up with.... sorry for the grainy/dark video.... just used my cheap digital camera...