Down the Swan

Here are a few photos from my recent drive down the Swan Valley.  The first two photos are of Swan Lake.

 

 

Pretty massive entrance!

Well being of U.S. states

Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota all aren't doing too bad.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125849/Hawaii-Tops-Utah-Nation-Best.aspx

Hawaii's residents had the highest well-being in the nation in 2009, pulling ahead of 2008 leader Utah, and coming in with a new high state Well-Being Index score of 70.2. Utah and Montana are also among the top well-being states in the country, sharing the same score of 68.3.

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index 2009 state-level data encompass more than 350,000 interviews conducted among national adults aged 18 older across all 50 states. Gallup and Healthways started tracking state-level well-being in 2008. The Well-Being Index score for the nation and for each state is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities.

The Well-Being Index is calculated on a scale of 0 to 100, where a score of 100 would represent ideal well-being. Well-Being Index scores among states vary by a narrow range of 9.7 points. The 2009 Well-Being Index score for the country is 65.9, unchanged from 2008.


On a state-by-state basis, U.S. adults' average satisfaction in 2009 with their own standard of living -- that is, "all the things you can buy and do" -- fell in a fairly narrow range, from 82.3% in North Dakota at the high end to 69% in Nevada at the low end.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125834/Standard-Living-North-Dakotans-Satisfied.aspx

Trivia

• Number of U.S. states in which laws exist that require children to pay for the medical care for indigent parents: 30

Minimum number of states where nursing homes have used these provisions to sue children of non-paying residents: 2 (Pennsylvania and South Dakota)

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8074570&page=1 

• Amount that one House Democrat on the Banking Committee lost in a stock scam between 2000 and 2005: $3,000,000

(Office of Congressman Alan Grayson (Orlando, Florida))

http://www.businessinsider.com/rep-alan-grayson-ponzi-scheme-victim-2009-7

• Number of times Bush and Obama, respectively, used the word "evil" during their first six months as President: 18, 14

• Minimum number of Americans named either John or Jane Doe: 212

• Estimated number of U.S. adults who believe the media did not adequately cover Michael Jackson's death: 6,500,000  -- or in other words 3% of the U.S. population

http://people-press.org/report/526/coverage-of-jackson-death-seen-excessive

Road trip

Tuesday I went on a road trip (minus the bars and liquor).  Every day - for what seems like forever - has been cloudy, gray and gloomy.  I needed a change.

I decided to visit Missoula, MT -- 130 miles away.  I have lived in Montana full time now for almost 9 years and have only visited Missoula once during this time.  Since the livestock auction is well on the edge of Missoula I don't count my visits there.

The morning was our typical recent very foggy morning.  It wasn't until I reached Flathead Lake that I left the fog behind.  Then when I dropped down into Missoula over two hours later did I pick up signs that the Missoula Valley also had been foggy that morning.  By afternoon all signs of fog was gone and the weather alternated between cloudy and rainy.

When my dad was alive we had visited Missoula a few times.  And when he was hospitalized in Missoula for open heart surgury I spent a few weeks there.  So I have some memories of Missoula.

I visited their large indoor mall and over the noon hour it was dead.  Hardly anyone was around.  About the only activity were the moms sitting watching while their young kids played in an indoor play area.

I visited the REI store to compare GPS units.  I have been researching which unit to buy and I wanted to see the units in person and talk to someone who uses them instead of merely reading another online review.  After seeing the screens side by side I ruled out buying an Oregon model due to the dim screen.  Now I need to watch for one of two other models (Dakota or DeLorme) I am interested in to go on sale.

I didn't visit the hospital and that area as I wasn't on a mission to retrace steps but I did walk around downtown.  Missoula is a college town. While I don't believe the university was nearby, its influences could be seen in the types of stores downtown. Kind of hip and urban.  Still, the university must be some distance away as the stores were also a mix of bland and dowdy.

Parking meters everywhere. I hate paying for parking.  As my goal was to merely wander around I found non-metered parking on the edge of downtown.

Train tracks run by the north edge of town, between the town and the interstate.  Unlike the trains that run across northern Montana which mainly carry grain or shipping containers, the trains I saw in Missoula only carried coal.

 

Here is the train station. Apparently it is either owned or operated by the North Pacific railroad due to the logo. Considering the last passenger train came through in 1979, the station is quite nice and is well maintained.

Don't you love the old brick buildings where the owners painted billboard advertisements right on the side of the buildings?

Newer building art.

And just plain odd art.

Here is an example of what looks to be classic 1960s architecture.

Doesn't this look like a new building trying - and failing - to look 'old' and trying to fit in with the old building styles?

Being a university town Missoula is a bicycle friendly town.  Here are examples of bicycle parking areas both on and off the sidewalk.

Here is a photo of a house on a mountain overlooking Flathead Lake.  Whenever Tammy and I drove by this house we would forget to take a photo until it was too late.   This photo is not that great but at least I got one driving by myself at 70 mph.

Here is an example of the difficulty of road building along the west side of Flathead Lake.

As you can see from the photos - no snow. In fact there was no snow (other than on the taller mountains) starting at the north end of Flathead Lake and then south.  Most mountain tops disappeared into the clouds.

A number of drivers drove slower when you couldn't pass them then faster when you could.  One old farm truck pulled out in front of my and two other vehicles when we finally could go highway speed.  This truck then drove 45 to 50 mph in a 70 mph zone and we couldn't pass him on the mountain roads for quite some time.  *argh!*

During my trip my driver's door window quit working.  I rolled it down then up.  After that nothing.  At least it quit when closed. All the other car windows still work.  Today I checked the car fuses and learned apparently one fuse controls all windows.  So the fuse doesn't seem to be the problem.

I think my road trip worked.  The days since Tuesday have been partly to mostly sunny and feel good.

Lion smell tonight

I don't know what a mountain lion smells like.  A few days ago when I told my neighbor Bob about the mountain lion Wyatt thinks is on his property, Bob claimed they had a strong smell, similar to a skunk.  Bob told me it now made sense when the other night their border collie dog didn't want to go outside.  Usually he can't wait to get outside but that night he didn't want go outside to go to the bathroom. Jan said it smelled like a skunk was outside.  Bob thought it was odd as he didn't think skunks were active and out and about this time of year.

Tonight I just stepped outside a minute to get another log for my wood stove and noticed a strong though faint smell.  Maybe a little similar to a skunk smell.  Hmmm.... could it be that a mountain lion came through my property earlier this night?  Good thing I keep a few logs just outside the house door.

Happy Valentine's Day

Lions, auctions, pumpkins, video games... Oh my!

I know I haven't posted much lately on my blog but it has been because not much is going on.  It is that time of year where one waits for Spring. And I haven't felt like posting an entry with little to say.  So I have been saving up.

While I haven't been doing as much as I'd like to, I have done a few things.  I have cross country skied a few times and also gone hiking several times in the snow.  I am working on going through those photos and writing up blog entries about them.

I finally cooked the three small pumpkins I grew in my garden last year.  They were green when I picked them before the heavy frost.  They all turned orange and I finally cooked them now that I needed pumpkin paste for making bread and muffins.  They were just starting to get soft, but otherwise fine for cooking.  The pumpkins had excellent seeds, and after roasting them, I am munching on them now.

The icy driveway has now melted.  When I was back in MN and ND the snow wasn't shoveled and got packed down then literally turned to one large sheet of ice as it was in the shadow of the house much of the day combined with the runoff melting from the roof.  The temperature has stayed in the range of lower 30s to near 40 the past week and that finally took care of the ice.  I still have snow all around.

Today I went to an auction.  There was nothing advertised of interest to me as it was antiques, collectibles, flooring, carpets and firearms.  But it wasn't far away and I hadn't been to an auction in a while.  I arrived hours after it's 9 am start time.  Nothing of interest, though one item was a Defenders video arcade game and another was a Foosball table. 

Wyatt was at the auction with his girlfriend.  This was the first time I met her and she seems very nice.  Of course this then made me miss my girlfriend and had me wish that she was at the auction with me.

Wyatt also told me he has seen signs of a mountain lion on his property to my south.  He has seen tracks and deer caucuses from kills on his land.  He thinks it is a young to medium sized lion.

Good thing my other neighbor didn't replace her small horses after the previous (now deceased) mountain lion killed them.  And I suppose I'll have to be careful when out in the pasture until the lion moves on.

Bill update

Monday afternoon after re-taking the census test I stopped by the nursing home to see Bill.  Marilyn was also there so I had a chance to visit with them both.

I used to hike with Bill until he fell on ice one year ago this week and hit his head.  The swelling in his brain ended up giving him the symptoms similar to many strokes.  He lost his ability to speak other than gibberish, though from his eyes he appears to be aware.  Also he is somewhat paralyzed on one side and can't stand or write.

I hadn't seen Bill since last summer and I had expected his condition to have deteriorated since then, especially since the government health care system won't provide for therapy anymore as apparently they don't want to throw 'good money after bad'.  With no therapy he hasn't improved, but even after all this time he looked good.  He didn't seem to have deteriorated any further.  Perhaps his 'good' physical condition is a result of being in  good shape from all the hiking he had done.  Then again, not exactly a good thing when one is now trapped in their own mind unable to effectively communicate with the world or do most things for themselves.

I spent three hours visiting with Bill and Marilyn.

Cheryl, Bill's niece from Wisconsin, is a 'Jill of all trades' and a photographer.  She had sent Bill three photos she blew up to various poster sizes and which Marilyn had hung on the wall in Bill's room.  They were very nice photos.  One was of the Northern Lights seen from Wisconsin, a waterfall we had seen during a hike she went on with us when she was here last Summer, and the third photo was of Lake McDonald.

Waistband for skirts

Last month when going through my mother's stuff, in her sewing stuff, I came across a kit for making skirts.

Just look at the drawing.  That is so "1960s" that it is classic.

The following image is of some stretchy decorative material for the skirt or waistband.  I like the pattern.

Re-taking the census test

Since I had scored only a 97% on the census test the first time I took it a year ago, I decided to take it again in an effort to improve my score and try to get 100%.  If interested, the account of when I first took the test can be found here.

One would think 97% would be good enough for me to get hired as a census worker, but that has not happened so far.  I spoke to a person who was hired for the preliminary work in 2009 and she told me that everyone she worked with was a veteran, and that is the only reason she believed she was hired as she did not get a perfect score on the test.  Veterans get a 10 point bonus to their score.  So if they scored a 90% on the test, their total would be 100%.  If they scored 97% on the test their total would be 107%.

Flathead Valley has lots of veterans and right now the unemployment level is near 11% so competition for jobs is fierce.  A far cry from North Dakota where census officials in the western part of the state were on the local news pleading for people to be census workers.  North Dakota has the nation's lowest unemployment rate.  Western North Dakota is where the massive oil exploration and development is happening and the problem is not finding a job, but in finding a place to live.

I am not a veteran so the best I can do is 100%.  I agree with helping veterans, but getting a 10% bonus is a little too much.

The test is 28 questions.  I also learned that if you get only half (or 14) correct, this is not a score of 50%. but a score of 77%. Huh?!  Only the government can come up with a decision like this.   So it appears someone can test badly and still get a good score.  Add in a 10% bonus and my friend said that explained some of the 'doorknobs' she worked with on the 2009 census prep work.

You know.. as to how important the census is to the states for apportioning money and representation, and the claims of census under-counts etc., you'd think the states would try to ensure qualified census workers were hired - even if the federal government is the one doing the hiring.

The test was again held today at the local job service center.  There were two sessions and I took the noon session.  Last year there were 20 to 30 people taking the test; today there were eight of us.  Of the eight people, three of us were re-taking the test.

People re-taking the test did not have to fill out the forms again.  We only needed to show our passport or several other ids.  We still had to locate on their maps the grid with the location of our address.  Apparently the census bureau tries to have you work in this area or a nearby one.

Unlike the last time I took the test, the census worker conducting the test was experienced in running the testing session.  We started and ended on time.  He also graded the tests at the end and gave us our scores.  Apparently there are four tests as I had test D.  He had a template for each of the tests and he laid the appropriate template over our answer sheets to quickly check the answers.

I was halfway through the test when I realized I was taking the test I had taken last year.  The questions started to be more and more familiar.  Unfortunately I couldn't remember what I had answered last year.  Uh oh... the pressure is on now to get a higher score.  How could I live it down if I got a lower score on the same test?

I finished the 28 questions in a little over 20 minutes of the 30 minutes allotted to take the test.  I spent the rest of the time double checking my answers and was able to double check half of them.  This was good as I discovered I had one answer wrong.  For the question about matching names, my question had two names not found in both lists instead of the one I had initially thought.  Combinations of: Allan, Allen, Schmidt, Schmitt, Marie, Maria, and various versions of Roderiguez.  It is easy to confuse these names.

This time I scored 100%.  If I hadn't gotten 100% I could have taken the test again at 3 pm as there were seats available to do so.  Apparently you can take the test over and over with only your highest score counting even if you get a lower score on a later test.  So I imagine most people who take the test end up with high scores.

I was pleased with my test score especially as I had not practiced with the test quiz online at the census department's web site.

Now I have to wait for them to call me if they hire me. Apparently they are hiring people to work this Spring to follow up on the people who do not fill out their census form and mail it back.  Then in August or later they need people to tabulate and verify the census data collected.   Like I said before the Flathead Valley has lots of veterans so my odds of getting hired is lower than you'd expect for a person who got a perfect score on the test.  Then again, I wonder if one would want a job collecting census data from people who don't send their forms in?  Knowing the number of anti-government types in this Valley, this job may not be that pleasant.