Fleet Farm Culture

I have had another true Wisconsin cultural experience...shopping at Fleet Farm. This store (part of a chain) is also known locally as a "man's mall". Think of Home Depot meets Wal-Mart meets Gander Mountain meets Tractor Supply Co. In one trip you can buy clothes, bait, military surplus (explains why there aren't many surplus stores), tires for your tractor, ammo, lumber, toys and food. The whole reason for my visit was to acquire wool pants, a flannel shirt and suspenders which I achieved for $40. No, I have not gone native, it was to get into the Cub Scout College theme of Paul Bunyan by dressing as a lumberjack. I was one of the best dressed and warmest. I'll post a picture once Hello gets updated to work with the beta Blogger.

Outside of going to Fleet Farm, it continues to be busy. Here's the rundown:

• Went to Oshkosh twice this week. Once for a team meeting at a bowling alley where I proved that my role in any sporting event is to provide comic relief for the other players. The second was for Cub Scout College for which I had to get up at 5am on a Saturday. Yuk.
• I now have HDTV through Charter. It's pretty, but the signal still has quite a bit of interference issues. The best part is that my cable bill dropped by $24 after ditching the movie channels I don't watch and the sales rep that lowered my internet cost to $30 from $42.
• Noticed that in one of the Chevy "This is Our Country" commercials the background for the "This is our philosophy" is one of Norman Rockwell's Boy Scout prints.
• Speaking of commercials, I can't wait for Wednesday when the political ads. Apparently Wisconsin is home to some of the most vicious negative ads this season. What's grating is that several of the ads published by the Democrats and their supporters are blatant lies, at least the Republican ones have some basis in truth and some people will vote based on a lie they saw on TV. Yes, I actually do look up the claims.
  
• Co-chaired a Rotary leadership conference for local high school students this week. I really enjoy working with high school kids that actually want to learn. One of them reminded me an awful lot of myself when I was a high school junior. I almost prefer talking to the kids at the conference to most of the Rotarians.
• Brian's football team won the league championship last night. It was another good game, but they came close to losing in the end as their defense started to fall apart. The players and fans from the opposing team (out of Racine) reminded me a lot of the average high school students in Pontiac--very thuggish. None of the other teams were as whiny or played as dirty as these guys. I got a couple of decent pics at the game. I need a better camera before next season for these distance shots...