Journal

I arrived at Leah's last Saturday around 1:30; she had dip, crackers and wine ready to snack on to tide us over until we went to Joe's in downtown Chicago. Joe's is in an old building and has wonderful ambiance, good service, but not overdone, and excellent food.

We arrived at the Lyric Opera in good time to hear Tosca. I enjoyed it, although as Leah says it does not have the magnificence of other operas that have wonderful choral scenes. The ending when Tosca jumps off the parapet to her death could have been better - it looked like Tosca was going for a stroll.

Our apres opera drink of Courvoiser was at Leah's and we watched Mama, there's a man in your bed a delightful French comedy. I highly recommend it. Up on Sunday morning, I got to read the Trib while drinking coffee - since moving to the farm we don't get to read the morning paper while drinking coffee because there is no morning paper. While Leah cut up the veggies for her gigantic salad we watched The Music Teacher which was wonderful. Opera is the backdrop of the movie and it is filled with pathos and drama so won't be for everyone but I thought it was lovely.

Leah fixed a very tasty dinner of chicken, rice and the gigantic salad and then took me to the train stop to go back to the airport. It was a great visit.

Pat decided to attack the old cistern in front of the house, so on Friday he rented a jackhammer. As he broke up the concrete top of the cistern we shoved the pieces of rock in the 17 foot deep hole. (I think this cistern used to connect to the old house; the kitchen had a pump handle and sink and I remember getting my hair washed under it while someone pumped the water.) Every now and then the bit on the jackhammer got stuck and it was difficult to dislodge. Sure enough the inevitiable happened; the bit came off and dropped down the cistern. I thought we should just pay the $20 or so for the lost bit, but Pat got the extension ladder and stuck it down the cistern and retrieved the bit.

After chipping around the cistern he decided it would be nice to get rid of the concrete pad in the back where a little chicken coop once stood. There was a lot more jackhammering to do on this than on the cistern. Pat did several loads by himself last night and this morning I started clearing rocks and rubble. We worked on it until 2:00 this afternoon - Pat jackhammered, we put the rocks in the Gator, I drove the Gator to the cistern and dumped the rocks in. Pat estimates we moved about 4000 pounds of rocks.

After he returned the jackhammer we played a game of Bocce called Boules in France. We saw people playing it in a park when we were in France last fall. We have plenty of place to play here although our uneven ground adds an element of interest.

Kind of tired tonight!

After much discussion, we finally decided the granary built in the late 1940's was not worth saving. It wasn't usable as it was and would have taken a lot to renovate. Yesterday, the demolition crew came and within fifteen minutes the granary was a heap of tin, wood and junk. It took several hours to load the stuff into trucks that hauled the remains of the granary to the landfill. We've ordered a Morton building - ours is the first picture on the left on the top row, except it will be brick red. We'll put the Gator, riding mower and the gardening things in it. Should be very nice.

Another structure bit the dust, too. The strong Kansas winds blew the 100 year old plus smokehouse over. It was leaning severely so it didn't take too much to finish it off.

I envision about 200 years from now that some archaeology student is going to wander onto the farm and accidentally find the old cistern and think they have found an archaeological treasure trove. We have been dumping all sorts of things in there to fill it up - rocks, an old tractor tire that Pat cut up today (tires are hard to get rid of-you can't take them to the city land fill and it is illegal to burn them), three old computers and a monitor, a big old heavy iron implement of unknown use or vintage and this afternoon to top it off - the approximately 50 jars of preserved vegetables and fruit that had been in the cellar since the late 1950's. The jars were truly gross; only a microbiologist could have found them interesting.