Weekend Fun

We had a very full weekend and were occupied from Friday afternoon through Sunday night! This was fine with me. I've never been a fan of low key, "relaxing" weekends. This might have something to do with the weekly boredom of being unemployed. Even when I am employed, though, I still feel that way. But, anyway, this weekend was fun! On Friday, we had four friends, Aaron, Andy, Chris and Jason, stay with us. They were on their way to Western ND for a hunting trip. We grilled steak, and made corn and potatoes. We had plans to prepare fresh potatos from our garden and the thought of it was mouth watering! Justin went out to harvest some and I imagined him coming into the kitchen with an armload of fresh, earth-smelling potatos.

There used to be a burger restaurant in Grand Forks that was owned by a local farmer. It specialized in wood fired burgers and french fries and I thought it was delicious. It was fast, but the food was a step up from normal fast food. The decor had an agricultural theme, with murals on the wall of lush wheat and potato fields. There was a scripture verse on one wall, 1 Corinthians 3:7, which says,

"It is neither he that plants anything, nor he that waters, but God who gives the increase."

I admit, I had to look up the book and chapter. I haven't studied scripture since my days of confirmation and Sunday School. I have always liked the poetic language of some Bible verses. The kind of irritating thing is that the verse I am referring to is not specifically about agriculture but is actually about a divided church in the ancient city of Corinth, and the language about planting and watering refers to the two ministers that founded the church. They disagreed about who was responsible and who should have credit for the growth of the church. The Bible is full of metaphors and other literary devices, and not suprisingly, people on the Internet have interpreted this verse many different ways. It is used in lessons about evangalism, to encourage those who can't get through to someone they are trying to save. I even found another blogspot site where the blogger named his blog after the verse! (I would link to it but I read it and it wasn't very good. The writer took a trip and only wrote one paragraph about it! ONE!? About a whole trip? Why even bother? Also, it hadn't been updated since 2007). The verse is also commonly used in agriculture related lessons so I am going to interpret it that way, just like the restaurant owner.

Anyway, that might have been boring for anyone reading this. The reason I brought up the scripture verse is that our potato harvest kind of reminded me of the verse. Justin came in from the garden with one small potato the size of a golf ball! He had dug up two plants and that's all that came of it! I expected more of an "increase" than that, especially since the plants are huge! Fortunately, our guest Andy's family has a large potato farm so he was able to diagnose the roots and suggested that they weren't getting enough water. The good news is that he said its not too late to start watering them more so we can increase our "increase"! What a relief.

Allan loves when guests come and he was really friendly.


There he is, lounging in Andy's arms like a cute little baby! You can see he is relaxed by the way his paws are positioned.

Allan's fun went downhill when our friend Chris arrived. He has a 6 month old puppy named Mercury (Merc for short.) Merc is very friendly and playful and wanted to make friends with Al. Al was not crazy about making friends with him!

It is hard to see in the picture, but Allan's tail is puffed up and his is on guard! He didn't know how to react to his guest. He even hissed a few times. Merc was oblivious to Al's discomfort and made himself at home. Poor Allan! Whenever Merc was in the room Allan stared him down with his back arched and his fur puffed. When Chris brought Merc downstairs to put him in his kennel I saw Allan slinking down the stairs behind them. So, although he was scared he was also curious and had to investigate! He is funny.

After we ate, we went to a bar by the river to enjoy the lovely summer evening. Justin and Andy stayed home with Mr. Puffy Tail and Merc. We were only there for about 1.5 hours due to Bismarck's lame 1 am bar closing time and when we returned Allan was back to his old self, lounging in the window on the back of the couch, with his tail twitching and whackin Andy in the face occasionally.

I'm going to pause now and write the rest of the post later because it is getting too long and I need to do some productive things like go the the Y to compensate for my weekend sloth and gluttony and buy some food because there is nothing here to eat except frozen hamburgers and grapes. . .come back later for part II, which involves a weekend trip.