Daughter of a Farmer

On more than one occasion I have been told, "you are the smartest person I know." I find this slightly scary- 1-because I don't feel all that intelligent. I mean high school and college were easy for me but that is thanks to a very good memory and NOT anything I ever did and 2-If I am the smartest person they know I think we are all in trouble cuz there's a LOT I don't know.
My friend Janet is one of those people who has been awed and amazed by my knowledge:) on more than one occasion. So one day she asked me why I know so much(mostly about pretty random stuff) and I told her it's because my dad was a farmer. I mean farmers have to know a LOT of stuff. They have to know math-so they can run their business. They have to know all kinds of sciences so they can grow whatever it is they are growing. They have to be historians- so they know when to plant things or do certain things. I think the biggest thing though is they have to be good engineers because something is always breaking down and there isn't money to buy a new one or have someone else fix it.
I think I have inherited this last trait from my parents- this idea that if you can fix it yourself you don't throw it away-even if every other person on the planet would! Take for instance my computer. It is something I use pretty much every day for work. Not that I love the computer-it is just a necessary evil. So my computer has been having problems for about 1 1/2 years now. It is super slow and if you are impatient and hit more than one button at a time it will totally freeze up and requires trying to get it to shut down in order to wait the 10 minutes it will take to reboot! I have had Mike, my bro-in-law, wipe it clean and reinstall everything twice. Then while we were away in Macedonia it decided it had enough and died again. So I set out to make things right and did my own reinstall(luckily I had seen the writing on the wall in March and backed up all my documents!). My boss Paul- has been laughing at me for the past few weeks- telling me to let it die-to take it out back and shoot it if I need to:) But I am confident that it will last at least until I come to the states for the summer!
So the other day I noticed that my watch band was starting to crack(it is made out of this plastic stuff) and i thought- oh no! I love this watch and I don't want to have to buy a new one. Then the little strap thing that you put the band in once it is through the latch ripped off on Saturday. Now most of you would -as Paul says-let that watch die -but NOT me! I went to the hardware store and bought some electrical tape.
So I showed up at the office today with my 2 different colors of electrical tape(the packet came with 3 colors but I didn't think red would go with the orange band). And I asked Paul which color he thought would go best for fixing it-white or black. His response was- what are you using it for? And when I told him my master plan of restoring my orange watchband to mint condition with black electrical tape he just laughed and said- you are the daughter of a farmer:) and I love it-I am and I am proud of it!!