Impatient

The little spinning baby countdown says 17 days to go.

Nine months is really not a long time

but 17 days seems like forever.

I want to walk without waddling,

sleep on my tummy,

give up the back ache, heartburn,

constant looks from strangers,

and wear pants with a button and zipper.

More than that,

I want to meet Baby K,

hold him,

rock him,

kiss the bottom of his feet,
smell the top of his head,

listen to him breath when he sleeps,
and see if he had Cody's nose

or curly hair.

I just want him here...

17 days to go.

Happy Mother's Day!

Comfortable

A brunette arrives at the stockyard, inspects a bull, and decides she wants to buy it. The man tells her that he will sell it for $599, no less.

After paying him, she drives to the nearest town to send her sister a telegram to tell her the news.

She walks into the telegraph office, and says, "I want to send a telegram to my sister telling her that I've bought a bull for our ranch. I need her to hitch the trailer to our pickup truck and drive out here so we can haul it home."

The telegraph operator explains that he'll be glad to help her, and then adds, "It's just 99 cents a word."

Well, after paying for the bull, the brunette only has $1 left. She realizes that she'll only be able to send her sister one word. After a few minutes of thinking, she nods and says, "I want you to send her the word 'comfortable'."

The operator shakes his head. "How is she ever going to know that you want her to hitch the trailer to your pickup truck and drive out here to haul that bull back to your ranch if you send her just the word 'comfortable'?"

The brunette explains, "My sister's blonde. The word's big.
She'll read it very slowly...
com-for-da-bull."

(I knew you'd get a kick out of that one, Dad)

Recent Baby Kleven Pictures

As Kelly would say, "pieces and parts"

Kelly's Chin

Emmett's pictures

Welcome Emmett Michael Riddle McCue

My sister had a baby boy at 2:30 Friday afternoon.

21 inches

8 pounds, 12 oz.

lots of light brown hair

Happy Birthday Emmett!

Congrats Heather and Michael

1/5 of your basketball team is here.

Dr McGilli-cud-dy and Cows don't mix in Utica

Our neighbors at the Utica bar

made the Madison newspaper yesterday.

It wasn't for their famous fish fry:

__________

Cow-hitting good Samaritan arrested for OWI

Bill Novak — 4/24/2008 6:22 pm

Helen McCollum says she was just trying to help a guy staggering down the highway after he had hit a cow in the middle of the road. Instead, she was arrested on a drunken driving charge after hitting the same cow, which did not survive.

"I was helping this guy and I was busted," McCollum called The Capital Times to say today.
"This is why people don't stop and help others anymore."

The Dane County Sheriff's Office reported that Michael Geisler, 43, Edgerton, hit the cow standing in the middle of Wisconsin 73 shortly after 3 a.m. Wednesday morning. The accident happened near County B. Geisler was slightly injured, the sheriff's office said, but refused to be taken to the hospital. He was not charged with any traffic violations.

McCollum, 50, who bartends on Tuesday nights at the Utica Bar -- just down the road on County B from the intersection -- lives in Cambridge and was going home after closing up for the night when she came upon the accident scene.

"I'm driving along and I see this car with the airbags hanging out the windows," she said. "While I'm looking at the car, I ran over the cow he just hit."

McCollum stopped her car, got out and went to see how Geisler was.

"I put him in my car and called 911," she said.

McCollum said she had one drink after work -- a glass of Dr. McGillicuddy schnapps -- which resulted in her arrest for driving while intoxicated. If convicted, it would be her second.

"I put out some snacks that night for my customers, to thank them for their cards and phone calls because my dad died last week," she said. "I wasn't drinking at all all evening. After I cleaned up the bar after closing, I had one glass of Doctor to mellow out."

She wasn't too mellow after the Sheriff's Office deputy arrived.

"The deputy smelled it on my breath so he made me do the whole test for drunk driving," she said. The test was going along OK until she had to do the straight walk.

"I was shaking," McCollum said. "I just ran over a big-assed cow."

She passed the breathalyzer test the first time it was administered, she said, but policy dictates a second test a short while later because deputies are supposed to observe subjects for 20 minutes.

"I blew a .11," she said, and a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent is legally drunk in Wisconsin.

"They handcuffed me and took me away."

The thing that bothers McCollum the most is getting busted after being a good samaritan.
"My car has a damaged undercarriage, but the guy at the body shop said I could have driven it after hitting the cow," she said. "I see this guy, hurt, walking in a daze out in the road, and I get busted. They didn't even ask me how I was.

"This is why people don't stop anymore," she said. "They are scared to stop because of what
might happen if they do."

When McCollum called 911, she said the dispatcher didn't believe she hit a cow.
"They told me I was the second person to call in to report a cow in the road that day," she said.

Which leads to at least one question...

So she drank a glass of Dr McGilli-cud-dy.

How big was the glass?

A Vacation for my Palate

Two weekends ago, I had the misfortune of having to stay in San Francisco over the weekend with some of my colleages. On Saturday, we headed to Sonoma:

On Sunday, we hit Napa:

And if you are thinking about visiting the Kleven household and are wondering if we'll have wine to drink...

Pictures from Vegas

The friendliest pirate I know.

Thanks!

Last fall Cody went bear hunting and came home

with a bear skin (still in the freezer) and

various cuts of bear meat

(most still in the freezer too).

We have very willingly shared

our bear meat with others.

My Dad sent this note today:

----- Original Message -----
From: Vern Riddle <vrriddle@acegroup.cc>
To: Cody KlevenSent: Sat Apr 12 13:33:24 2008
Subject: I was so hungry I ate a bear!

Today was the day. Up to this time we had always had a convenient reason to skip the bear and eat chicken, beef, pork, turkey, polish sausage, italian sausage, bacon, lunch meat, venison, buffalo or veggie burgers. But today, Jennifer was attending a local fashion show (jeans or bike shorts? - - I don't know) and suggested that I might fix myself some bear meat. So I did.

It was simply "Guy Cooking". The first thing I did was to fix myself a stiff bourbon and water, this at 11:30 AM. Then I dredged the bear chops in flour, salt and pepper, and fried it in a sea of butter. When they were nearly done I added some gravy, and finished them off in that while I baked a potatoe, and made another bourbon and water. Shortly, very shortly, it seemed, it was time to eat.

Riley was very excited! Bear has somewhat unique aroma which neither of us was familiar with. But, I "tucked in" as they say Down Under. The flavor was distinct if not delicious, and I chewed the meat well while trying find a comparable flavor from my memory of things eaten. I chewed and masticated beyond what was necessary, because the meat was very tender, and finally swallowed. Not bad. I finished off the first chop, then the second. By then I had decided that Bear was indeed edible, even if I probably wouldn't order it off of a menu. I tell you this because in hard times, you could feed it to your family.

Thanks for the gustatory experience. I hope the rug turns out nice.