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KNtoran's Blog - Page 6

The weekend is over now and I have gotten the pictures of the flood damage up on my flickr account. If anyone wants to see them they are on public viewing. My flickr account is kntoran91. Have a look and see how much we survived. The Mississippi river is taken all this water in and it is playing havoc on down the river. I heard a very interesting stat last week. In three weeks Iowa had some 9 trillion gallons of water dumped on it. This amount of rain was equal to supplying water to the Atlanta metro area for the next 53 years. Now that is a lot of water.

I am happy that the water levels have receded and that life is getting back to a more normal pace. We no longer have to find ways to get people to my work. All the main roads are reopened. Less stress for everyone around. As life gets back to normal I can not help but think of all the people who lost valuables and some even their homes to the floods. I know there is a lot of community outreach going on to assist people in rebuilding their lives.

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Well it is still raining around here. We are now in record territory of the amount of rain received so far the first half of the year. Last I heard we are just 1 and one half inches away from having a record rain fall for the month of June. I think we are going to break that record, set in 1993, today or tonight with the rain. I know we are very wet when a small storm causes streets to flood out.

The farmers are not doing much better. Right now we have around 2 million acres that were not planted this year due to wet fields. The farmers who want to plant have just one more week to get crops in. At the same time those who have replanted some flooded fields may lose crops again as rivers from the recent rains, yesterday, are expected to crest tuesday at three to four feet above flood stage. I guess that is better than the ten feet, or over, above we saw earlier this month. I have a feeling this is going to cause food prices to go up some more.

I am hoping that July turns out to be a drier month. On average July and August are the two dryest months we have here in Iowa. We normally see less than three inches of rain in each month. I know I am not getting any work done around the outside of the house because of the rain all the time. With the ground being so wet it is hard to work. I guess if July is dry I can finally get some things done. I want to design and possibly build a deck on the front of the house and widen my driveway. Those are the two most important besides my patio.

Well that is where I am standing right now. I hope everyone is still awake now.

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Well another week has passed me by. I am a little older and still not out of debt. I doubt I will be out of debt for at least 15 more years. Hopefully by then things will be looking up for me. If I am still around. I plan to be do not get me wrong. I have plans to live till I am 120 if not longer. I want to set foot on the moon and on mars as a private citizen. I would love to spend a few months in outer space. I have some big dreams.

On the news front they still have not caught the predator. We have had no new sitings of him so I think he is laying low until all the hype has a chance to calm down. This means he is actually watching the news and playing it smart. I think that is going to make it a little harder to catch him. He will be caught for that I know. We have some very good police officers and under covers working out here. The clock is ticking on him. I hope he is caught soon so parents can relax some and children can play in the parks again. It is quiet outside my house instead of the normal scrams and yells of children playing. I miss listening to the kids have fun as they play.

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It has been a little while since I last posted in here. I am still around for those who may have missed my wonderful words. The water table is still high as we found out after the recent storms. The rivers all flooded again for a short time. Any rain we get now runs right off into the rivers. We do not need any more rain but we are getting a few storms on a regular basis. I guess it helps some of the replanted fields and the other fields that are still growing.

On a good note we started to see the Iowa grown sweet corn start to hit the markets. This is good as that is something most of us look forward to each year. I know it is a very profitable business for local farmers. They are always sitting on some street corner selling their sweet corn and people are buying it like they never have had it before.

Our local vineyard has been busy and they are now selling their wines in more local shops and even the airport now so travelers can take some home with them. I think that is wonderful. I hope more and more people come to visit and with everything going on in the next few weeks I am sure more will be coming.

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Another week has passed for me. I went out and bought a camper. It is a used pop up camper that needs some work done on it. I am hoping to get it in the raised position today so I can air it out and start working on it tomorrow. I will have to borrow my sons to get them to help lift it up. It seems there is at least one cable that is broken and needs to be replaced. I think a couple of the lifting arms are not quite right either. So I need to get it in the raised position to see what I need to do to repair it. I would like this repaired and ready for camping by the second saturday in August. We will see how well I do. Hopefully I can get it all done in a couple days.

Other than that I have been working a lot of over time. After tonight we will be back on regular shifts. I am happy for that. I was getting tired of all the over time. The good news is we will be having a new employee start on the 28th. That will take away all my overtime I get each week. I will be happy to be working just 40 hours in one week. That is a big change. I cannot remember a time when I worked just 40 hours in a week. I know I will still get some over time when people take time off but that is few and far between usually. For now I can hardly wait to once again be on the 40 hour week.

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Well it is getting busy down where I am at. The county is having its fair and I have to go visit the fair a couple days. My sons girl friend is showing her cattle at the fair so we need to go support her in that. Plus I have other family that have entered things in the fair. have to go see how they do too.

The big event for this area is the hot air balloon classic that used to be the hot air balloon national championships. The town south of here hosts it and the balloons going up twice a day can fill the sky with lots of shapes and colors. This even is usually from the last weekend of July to the first weekend of August. It is a nice event that I gop see all the time I can. I have a work mate that lives across from the balloon field so I can see the show without paying to see it everyday. This is a event that many go to and the traffic is fun at times.

I may try to get some pictures of this event and the fair to post on my Flickr account. If your not familiar with my flickr account look up my name (Kntoran91) on flickr and browse through my pictures. I do not have a lot up now but I plan to get more up soon.

KNtoran's Blog - Page 6

Today I am currently uploading a bunch of pictures to my Flickr account. They are some of a birthday bowling celebration with my youngest son, some of my pets the eldest cat and the newest addition to the pet family a kitten named Louey.

I got some pictures of the hot air balloons that are going up around the area this week. I hope to get down there and get more as the week goes by. I hope you all enjoy the newest pictures on my flickr account.

KNtoran's Blog Public Member Blogs - Page 6

Another week of flooding. It seems that the storms we got the first part of the week has flooded all the fields that were flooded back in June. At this rate the ground water table is not going down anytime soon. It is good news for the corn crops that are out of the water. In the months of July and August the corn uses a lot of muggy weather to really thrive. We have that now. I hope that the water levels go down soon so the crops that were replanted have some chance of growing. I am not sure how badly damaged they are going to be sitting under water again.

In June the crops were under water for more than 2 weeks. I know that long under water the crops all died. This time if they are under water for less than a week, I hope, maybe they will have a chance of surviving and allow some type of harvest to take place. I guess we will see about that.