Good on ya, Scotland

Last week Marilyn and I agreed that neither of us thought the referendum would come down nearly as close as the polls were predicting.  But I was still anxious to hear the real numbers Friday morning.  Not that Scotland’s departure from Great Britain would have had any particular impact on me, or anyone else in North America – I just hate to see countries going down this increasingly popular Balkanization route.  Its sometimes hard to live together, as any married couple can attest, but the benefits vastly outweigh the costs.

I hold to a view that is uncommon in western Canada – I don’t want to see Quebec separate either.  Unlike the Liberal solution to separation, I also don’t believe that Canada needs to acquiesce to every stupid demand that Les Quebecois may make on the rest of the country.  I listened to some dewy-eyed Quebec youth babbling on before the Scottish referendum about how wonderful it was to be part of this historic undertaking and how much they were looking forward to the results of the vote.  I doubt they were nearly as enthusiastic the morning after.  In fact I suspect the flight home was very subdued.  I hope those youths got a good solid dose of reality and were forced to take a hard look at their own beliefs about Quebec.  And more particularly about Quebec’s and their place in confederation.

Meanwhile, on a completely different subject ….

I decided to put new tires on my little tractor after one of the rear rims split wide open and threatened to let the tube sneak out.  I was actually really lucky that it didn’t die somewhere on a Buchanan street between our two houses.  It took a while to round up a new rim but the internet came through.  Then I phoned the tire shop in Preeceville.  I had a price from Combine World at Allan but he kind of pissed me off because he said he was going to phone me back about a rim and I’m still waiting for that phone call.  I guess he’s been busy.  For the past two months.

The kid at the tire shop in Preeceville was really pleasant on the two occasions when I was looking for an oddball belt so I phoned him about tires.  Turns out his price wasn’t much different than Combine World so I asked him to order a couple of tires.  Then I asked if he wanted a credit card number to guarantee the order.  “No problem – it will take a couple of days for them to come in – you can pay me then.”  Sure enough in a couple of days he phoned to say the tires were in so I took the new rim up but I still had one tire on the tractor and it was full of fluid.  They mounted the tire and again I offered to pay but he said to just wait until they had done both tires.  So Tuesday, about 2 weeks after he initially ordered the tires, we finally got everything done, and I finally paid him.  Try that anywhere in a city.  Whenever we get annoyed by the fact that everyone in this small town knows everyone else’s business we need to remember that they also trust everyone.

The big news in Buchanan is that the woman who looks after the water treatment plant put too much chlorine in the water.  Rather than that turning into a big problem our mayor – very sensibly – thought that this would be a good opportunity to flush the lines.  Apparently they need to shock chlorinate the lines every few years anyway so they just took advantage of the mistake and got the shock treatment out of the way.  We noticed that the water was off briefly one night and the next morning there was a strong chlorine smell to the water.  Other than that I haven’t noticed anything but it is a big topic at coffee row. 

I spent today changing oil in various diesel engines and losing the keys to the truck.  I have a bad habit of absent-mindedly setting them down in some spot that seems logical in the moment but is in fact an incredibly stupid place.  Normally I am eventually able to retrace my tracks and find them but, as of now, they have me stumped.  Fortunately Marilyn has a set.  And – unlike me - she hasn’t lost hers.

The only other excitement in our lives is that I have put signs on some of my equipment and set up a primitive website for my digging equipment – I hesitate to call it a “business” but I suppose it may someday qualify for that appellation.