Weekend adventures

Friday night I called my uncle to see if he wanted to go to Kidron with me to an antique store. I planned on FINALLY getting that Rolls Razor I've babbled on for so long. He was excited at the idea and said yes. He had to run to the bank when they opened at 9, so I picked him up at 10am.
Off we went on the 45 minute drive. We talked the whole way down about what he's been doing, (I'll get to that in a minute), and before we knew it, we were in Kidron. Smiling, I pointed out the store and pulled in. Hmmmm.......not very busy for a Saturday, I don't see a single car in their lot. I pulled in, popped the car in park, and spotted a sign on the door. "We will be closed january 1st-7th". ARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now why wasn't this sign up last weekend when we were there??? Boneheads!!
I decided not to be angry, so I just headed for another store I knew of in Berlin. He saw all kinds of things he wanted, but didn't find anything. I picked up a nice pipe rack for myself. Solid cherry, with racks for 6 pipes and a humidor in the center, (including 2 old pipes), for $12. Woohoo! He mentioned that he wanted to get some saspirrala since he got one the last time we brought him to that area and loved thes stuff. So......rather than deal with the tourists in the Berlin stores, we ran to the bulk goods store I mentioned last week. We walked in and there were 6 bottles in the cooler. I reached in, got him one, and a birch beer for myself. He says "hey, gimme all of those", lol. He finally got his prize for the day. I figured I would show him one more antique store before heading home, only to pull in just in time for them to put up an "out to lunch" sign on the door....blah. We stopped at the one in front of it, only to be highly dissapointed. It was one of those women tourist traps. (sorry ladies lol) Yanno, full of fancy scented candles, old wicker baskets, overpriced quilts.....you know, the kind of stuff you can take home and decorate your house in "country".....lol yea right. We left and headed for home. On the way home he was talking about wanting to see his fathers grave again, so I stopped in since we were driving right past it. (my grandfather died when my dad was 3 and my uncle was 5) Since there was still snow on the ground and it is a flat stone, we couldn't find it. I told him we'll come back in the spring when the snow melts. We left, went to his house, talked for a while, and I headed for home, of course calling Lisa on the way laughing about the store being closed.

Now....back to what I was saying about my uncle. As I've said earlier in other posts, his place is being left to me. It's where my grandma raised my dad, uncle and aunt, (who's already passed), on 8 acres in the same township where I grew up. He was talking not long ago to some friends about it, and they talked of the nightmares of probate court and the costs involved. He decided that we shouldn't have to deal with that mess, and is just having the place put in my name sometime in the next few weeks. He has some good sized savings already broken into 3, and they'll each be changed over to my sister and 2 cousins since we are the only 4. It kinda bothered me to hear him talk about it, but again, it made me proud that he knows I will take care of the place.

OK....it's all handled, right?? Nope. He wanted to make sure I knew about the rest of it since it involves me as well. He wants to be cremated, and will be making all those arrangements this week too. The reason he wanted to find my grandfathers stone is he wanted to see if it was big enough to add his name and my grandmothers to it. He wants his and grandma's ashes buried with him, but not ALL of his. He laughed a bit when he made his request to me, but he wants some of his ashes loaded in 12 guage shells and shot over the back of the property. That's going to sound downright strange to most of you (if not all), but when you figure he has spent his entire life on that property, and has been an avid trap shooter for just as long, it just makes sense. It's no different than my dad wanting scattered on the reservior where we fished for so many years. I laughed at my uncle a bit, and just answered "If thats what you want, I'll be happy to". That's all he needed to hear.

Yesterday was mostly spent sitting around and talking other than my trip to the grocery store. Our talk was about plans for this year as well as the future, along with some other discussions. We decided to follow Farmergeek and give saurkraut making a try, and made a small list of other things to stockpile/store. We ended the night watching the last episode of "Seven Deadly Sins"
on the Discovery channel and went to bed still talking about our plans till I passed out cold. I'm thinking of making a list of this years goals and posting it here......who knows, I may do that tonight.

Off to work!