Happy Birthday To The Cowboy

We celebrated the Cowboy’s birthday today with a trip to Billings and lunch at CJ’s.  I had a hair appointment for what I call, “my last good haircut for a while,” and we needed just a few things at Costco and WalMart.

We fought a serious head wind all the way back to Big Timber, the semi trucks on the freeway were struggling!  We stopped at Nat’s to retrieve Emmi and the Cowboy had some minor repairs to do–a leaky toilet which was a quick fix and a light bulb way up in the ceiling requiring the use of a ladder.

The Cowboy struggles with anything labeled “Apple!”  He has a fixed dislike of Apple products and has been using Nat’s discarded iPad under duress.  He loves the tablet concept just not Apple!  So his dear wife gifted the Cowboy a Samsung Galaxy Tab A for his birthday.  He had to leave it at home to charge this morning but tonight we have him up and running/swiping! 🙂

Early today I was on Facebook and saw some scary photos of a fire in Big Timber in the wee hours of this morning.  The old high school building burned–Nat and the Cowboy both went to high school in this building.  It had been abandoned/unused for 30+ years.  The current high school was built in 1981.  The building’s present owner had no interest in maintaining or repairing the building and the structure was probably in all honesty no longer usable–it was a community eyesore and some people thought it a danger/liability.  Big Timber, MT has an awesome volunteer fire department.  Our historic Carnegie Library sits just across the alley from the school building, the community civic center is attached to the old school on the west side, there are also homes and other businesses just across that alley.  None of these buildings/homes appear to have sustained any damage due to our awesome fire department!

The wind seems to have died down, hopefully for the night but it’s supposed to blow hard again Saturday.  We are busily packing this and that–packing is a touch different this year.  We are traveling with a truck and trailer–in the past we had a motorhome with lots of horsepower pulling a thirty foot trailer–needless to say, I’m being a touch more careful about “weight!”