Up Too Early

Woke up before 5 am, couldn't get back to sleep so tried reading the novel on my nook, Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. Read for about 40 minutes, tried sleeping again, got up at 6 and washed dishes and emptied the kitchen trash. Still awake, I am yawning but I know it's useless to try again so I'm sitting here wondering what to do next and figured what the heck, I'll update my blog as I've been very negligent these past couple of months.

It's December, which is probably obvious from the date on this post. There is no snow on the ground. We had a couple inches a week before Thanksgiving while I was downstate visiting Hal's sister but it went away quickly as the temperatures warmed back up into the 40s.

Just came back in from feeding the chickens, let the old rooster out by himself so he has a few hours unmolested by rooster the younger. I saved Mr Chicken (which I am now calling him) from some sort of listless death last month, by isolating him in the warmer garage and feeding him boiled eggs, treating his legs for scaly leg mites, and massaging his crop as he smelled as though it had gone "sour". He now follows me around, allows me to pick him up, and practically begs for handouts. Yes, I seem to have created a pet chicken. To think I was going to have Hal butcher him and the old ladies. The old ladies can still go, when we have the time and freezer space, as they have turned on him as well, The only other dark cornish hen I have, same breed as him, likes to beat him to a pulp. Well, I do believe they are descended from dinosaurs, what can one expect?

Speaking of freezer space, it is full from 2 deer which we mostly finished processing the other day. I still have to package the "dog meat" the scraps we grind that are full of unpleasant tasting bits that the dogs love. I add a little to their dry kibble after boiling it.

I went hunting on Thanksgiving evening with Hal. We did not see anything. I hunted the next night and bagged an old doe. Seven or 8 according to the DNR. We'll know for sure when we get the TB test results back.

On Thanksgiving which we spent with Hal's parents, oldest brother and his son (whom I picked up at Detroit Metro Tuesday night, we had smoked venison rump roast courtesy of Hal, instead of turkey. It was very tasty but I did so miss my turkey.

It is after 9 am now, and I've been up 4.5 hours. I should eat breakfast now and walk the pups. They will like that.

It's August!

I have been negligent in my blogging. But I have been busy. Many things have been going on but I won't go into detail yet, just highlight a few things and come back later to elaborate.

Rocket's been ill, he seems better now but we still aren't sure what's going on for sure. Cancer has been ruled out for now.

Hal is tearing up the front deck to replace the rotted joists and add new deck boards. The original builders did not seem to use pressure treated lumber.

I have picked many cucumbers and zucchini and grean beans. Pickles are forthcoming.

Working on making beaded jewelry on and off.

Reading large books. First one was Drood by Dan Simmons, current one is Raptor by Gary Jennings. Half way through that one now.

Had a couple guineas and a chicken disappear. The guineas while nesting, the chicken in broad daylight, no idea how.

Lost 6 pounds, probably gained back 3.

Been to the beach (Lake Huron) twice with my neighbors, took Luna the second time. She had a blast.

Only kayaked the Au Sable once so far. Lovely day.

Eleven ducklings hatched in June. Moved them to a separate pen from mom, hoping she'll lay some more eggs and do it again.

Waiting for the bread machine to beep so I can spread out the pizza dough for dinner tonight.

I think that's good for now.

A Beautiful Day

Another fine, sunny blue sky day today. Temperature reached 39 degrees fahrenheit, a good 7 degrees warmer than the prediction the other day. Took a couple long walks with Luna, a shorter one with Rocket to drop him off at Uncle Butch's, of course. It was such a nice day I closed the gates to the front yard fence and let the chickens and guineas out to free range. Not the ducks though, I'm not sure I can trust them to come back inside yet.

The birds enjoyed their freedom, making a bee-line to the chimney on the west side of the house where they found dry, fluffy dirt and had themselves a bath. Could they pack themselves in any tighter?

They were very well behaved birds and followed me back into the run a few hours later when I shook the food can. For once it wasn't any yelling and chasing and trying to get them off the coop roof to get them inside.

I made a pizza tonight. It had pepperoni and broccoli and venison sausage and mushrooms for toppings. We had some red wine with it.

The birds are now shut into their coop for the night, Luna and Rocket are asleep on their beds, Hal and I are watching a fairly bad scifi movie on the SyFy channel (taking a break from the Olympics tonight). When it's over I may go read my book by Kelley Armstrong, Haunted. Yes, that's what I will do. I think I'll start on the afghan for a twin bed tomorrow. (I have started the chain, but I'm still thinking about what stitches to use.)

Toodles.

Hal's Going Hunting Tomorrow

He's off to the wilds of New Hampshire with my younger sister's boyfriend. He's got his SUV packed except for his lunch and over night bag. They were originally heading to Maine but the guy with the cabin had to cancel so the backup plan was the BF's place in NH. They had a good time there last year so I suspect they'll have a good time this year.

While they're gone I plan to read a lot of books, (reading Mailman by J. Robert Lennon at the moment), watching old movies, having some chips and dip, hot dogs, garlic bologna sandwiches, and just lazing about. I still plan on walking my dogs every day, of course, it's not as though I'm going to lay about and eat bonbons all day long.

Perhaps I should get into the spirit of the season and hunt some squirrels while he's gone? Brunswick Stew, yum!

Romance Novels?

This is an odd topic for me to bring up since this site is mostly about chickens, dogs, ducks, guineas, kayaking and the occasional hobby, but really, how much can one say about these animals all the time? While I love my dogs and lots of time want to strangle the guineas they just don't lead exciting lives. I also am not one who can pretend my dogs are talking. I have never referred to them as furbabies, that's just too weird for me. I'm weird enough.

So lets talk about something different that I've been toying with all summer (at least since July) and that is romance novels. Hal's sister loaned me a bunch (at my request, I must admit). In fact she'd loaned me 3 in the past, one I had returned years ago. I did read it, the plot was set in medieval times and the hero was some guy named "wolf" or some such thing. It was amusing and the hero was 'hot". I had not read the 2 others that she'd left me, however, because if memory serves they just didn't interest me, and the one I had started left me thinking "how silly"! and I gave up for 2-3 years.

Generally my reading runs to the occasional mystery (I have read quite a few historical ones at my mom's, she loves mysteries), police dramas, the odd Grisham, Jane Austen, etc, but science fiction is my first love, starting way back as a teenager reading my dad's Analogs, galaxy, and F&SF magazines and his small collection of books from Asimov's Foundation to E.E. Smith's Grey Lensmen. Dune by Frank Herbert, of course, goes without saying.

The past few years have seen me reading Dan Simmons (Hyperion, et al are great!), Neal Stephenson, The Killer B's, Vernor Vinge. Currently, I'm reading "In the Courts of the Sun" by Brian D'Amato. It's all about the Mayan calender end of the world thing in Dec 2012. Lots of descriptions on how the Maya may have lived and a little time travel with a twist. Interesting. Much more interesting than my attempt at reading "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. God how verbose! I valiantly kept slogging and got to around page 120 but his descriptions of minor things went on and on ad nauseum! (And the premise is so interesting!) Yes he writes well but get to the point damn it I have things to do in this lifetime! Hal is trying to read it now, he's been reading it for weeks. I take pity on him. Only one other book have I never finished (as far as I remember) and that was "Gone with the Wind."I tried to read it in high school for a book report. The movie was better.

I think it was Pynchon that drove me into the historical romance thing. Now there's an excuse! I needed some light reading. So I acquired several books from my SIL by Stephanie Laurens, some random samplings of the Bastion Club (spies) and the Cynsters, (cousins who look like Greek gods). These all take place in England shortly after Waterloo in the Regency period of the early 1800s for those who are clueless.

These books are laced with sex. Oft times I found myself wishing the sex scenes would just find themselves a quiet room and let me get on with the story, which was usually some mystery that put the heroine in danger by the end of the book. VERY formulaic and once you read the first 2 Cynster novels the rest are pretty much the same. The Bastion club's are a little more interesting as there is this sinister traitor hiding just out of reach of the heroes. But my gosh, why are these guys always so tall and drop dead gorgeous? The women get to be all different heights but they are even more gorgeous! (Still, at least the heroines don't go on and on and on about how handsome their men are as did Bella in those insipid "Twilight" books.)

But I digress. Thinking that there must be better written romance novels out there (you'd think I would have discovered these long ago since I so like old B&W movies with Bette Davis, Kate Hepburn, etc), I googled and found some fun websites. One in particular I loved so much I joined this morning and I don't join many things on line. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. These ladies are hilarious. They and their minions review romance novels and there have been some doozies! My particular favorite review is the "playboy sheik" novel. Just follow the Greatest Hits link under the "Who are We?" section. I can assure you I'll Never read the actual book.

I don't expect that I'll delve any deeper into romance novel discussions on this board, it is a family blog after all, but I thought it important that I update my blog with what's been going on lately and that's pretty much been it.

Time to walk my dogs.

Meet the New Boss....

Same as..... me actually.

I finally figured out how to transfer my blog to my other gmail account (bet you didn't know I wanted to). In actuality I merely added my other gmail account so it now looks like this blog has 2 authors. All this so I no longer have to log out of one gmail account and open the other over and over in order to post. Till now it's been annoying enough to keep me from blogging for days at a time.

Still a bit chilly here, -15F the past 2 nights. One of my ducks got its butt frozen to the ground. Found a pile of downy butt feathers frozen to the cement outside the garage door. Stupid ducks. Had to chase them into their house last night, probably have to do it tonight, as well.

Hal had his dad's plow truck towed out of our driveway today. He's spent the last week trying to fix the clutch which got stuck in reverse while he was plowing us out after the last storm. But he just doesn't have the equipment or expertise (even though he did replace the master and slave cylinders) or a nice warm garage. Laying on the snow packed driveway in sub-freezing temps could not have been fun. But after fixing the hydraulics it seems everything else in the clutch system fused/welded itself together and makes a nasty grinding noise anyway. It's going to be one heck of a bill.

My sister emailed me some new photos of Lyra. She is getting tall and has reached 30 pounds in weight. She looks a lot more like Luna, too. She likes to chase leaves.

I've been reading a lot. Right now I'm working on the latest Neal Stephenson, "Anathem". Very interesting, sort of a secular monastery system with the religious types on the outside and the monks being the scientist and philosopher types. Scientific advancement is slow because the monasteries can't communicate with each other for 10 year intervals (and longer), apparently due to some sort of law set down by the outside "powers that be" many centuries earlier. Very strange. The book takes a little longer to get into because a lot of the words are almost but not quite what we're used to seeing. Once you get past that, you can't put it down. And now that I've run out of blogging stuff I think I'll go read some more.

Christmas, Calories, Cameras, and Cinema

It's a Saturday night and I'm sitting in my husband's creaky, slowly disintegrating la-z-boy rocker watching the Empire Strikes Back on commercial TV though I have it on VHS tape (the original version, not the enhanced one). I've consumed a multitude of m&ms and a few pretzels and 2 or 3 glasses of milk. I did stop eating before 9 pm, it's my first attempt at getting back to more "normal" eating after the insanity of the holiday season.

Luna lays at my feet (under one in fact) while Rocket has retired to his twin mattress on the floor in the loft. I am using Hal's laptop which he inadvertently left at home when he left for his camp today. It's possible he left it on purpose as he has 4 new books to read, one of them by Neal Stephenson (Anathem) and rather large. I'm currently reading another of his books, The Diamond Age, a bit of cyber punk SF I'd say, very interesting.

I took the Christmas tree down a few days ago, I still have some odds and ends that need putting away as well. I do a little bit every day but I also have some housework to catch up on. Nothing like holiday chaos to slow one down.

I weighed myself on Wednesday, something I've been avoiding. I was pleased to find I'd only gained back 3 of the 6 pounds I had lost last fall. Perhaps trudging through the deep snow helped fight against the extra calories I've been consuming. I'm not going to lose them too quickly as long as I keep eating m&ms though.

I did have a wonderful time this Christmas. With my mom and younger sister here and 3 dogs, one of them being a puppy, there was plenty to do. The weather was messy so we didn't get out much, one day of shopping before Christmas and one day a few says later we went to Harmony Acres in Mikado. (The guys spent they're time hunting, we hardly saw them at all.)

Christmas dinner we had roast duck and chicken, baked potatoes, green beans, creamed corn (homemade by me and my MIL last summer), home baked bread, the ubiquitous Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, gravy, an orange/raspberry sauce for the duck, and of course, a white wine. Or was it a pinot noir? I can't remember. My sister made chocolate cream pie for dessert. Oh, and there were cookies, too.

The photos I'll be posting from now on will be from my new camera DH gave me (with a little help from me, I did all the research and bought it so I got exactly what I wanted). It's a Panasonic Lumix LZ-8 and it's been fun learning how to use it. It has no viewfinder which is a minor disappointment, but the viewfinders on other cameras, the Canons for instance, are nearly impossible to see through anyway. Since I bought rechargeable NiMH batteries I also don't have to worry about ripping through AA batteries dozens at a time per month. My old Fuji used 4 AAs at a time instead of merely 2 and they weren't rechargeable but as I almost never used the the LCD screen (it has a decent viewfinder) they lasted a pretty long time. But after 5 or more years that camera became inadequate and a little less reliable (kayaking is not a good thing necessarily for electronics). There simply were too many negatives. I wanted an optical zoom, more manual control of things like shutter speed and aperture, things I used when I still used a film camera. It only had 1.3 mega pixels, 8 is much more impressive though I'm only using 5 of them regularly as 8 is overkill for what I do.

Star Wars #5 is almost over now, Han is a carbon cube and Luke is about to have a family reunion. I should wind this up so I can go to bed at midnight. I've got lots of things to do tomorrow.

More Poultry Stuff

Yesterday morning I mucked out the Cornish chickens' pen. Six weeks of endless pooping by 20 chickens made for a nasty bit of work. The smell was and is atrocious, it's all been dumped in a pile at the edge of the swamp. I keep hoping rain will knock the smell down but, of course, suddenly it's sunny for days on end! I'm not sure the chickens even appreciate it. They also got a brand new 4 gallon water fount so I no longer have to refill the 1 gallon founts 3-4 times a day.

Once that was done, I cut a hole in the side of brooder box the Muscovy ducks are in and spread newspaper and straw over part of the garage floor, the rest of the garage Hal and I partitioned off. No more duck poop everywhere in the garage. The little muscovies took all day but they finally came out for a few hours, even spending some time in the makeshift outdoor pen just off the garage door. Today they seem to prefer the inside of their box. The momma duck and her 3 kids are still sleeping in the garage at night also, but from what I could tell yesterday the 8 ducks all got along. I suppose it will take a few days for the very skittish muscovies to get used to things. Hopefully, seeing my cordial interaction with the other ducks will make them less scared.

The coop needs a second coat of paint, after it dried there are obvious thin spots. It does look good from a distance though. I did take some photos today, I just have to get them off the camera.

Took Rocket and Luna on a slightly longer walk through the dry part of the woods today. The weather was beautiful, 69 degrees, blue sky, low humidity, even the mosquitoes and deer flies seemed to be less abundant. Afterwards I sat on the deck on my new chaise lounge and finished reading my book, The Terror, by Dan Simmons.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. I may watch the parade (I've seen it every year since I moved here) and of course, I'll watch the fireworks. They are very well done. Otherwise, it's just me and the pups, Hal went back to his camp today for some well deserved rest after finishing building the coop and fixing an old incubator of his dad's.

Time to post this before it is tomorrow. (edited 7/6 to add photo)

Random Thoughts

I'll bet there are a lot of blogs out there with "random thoughts" as a title. Bloggers, thy names are "Repetition".

I am tired, I ought to go to bed and fall asleep reading.

I felt fairly refreshed today. It was almost as though spring was just around the corner. No matter that it's dropping back into the low 20's (f) for the next 3 days and into the single digits at night. I preferred the sunny 34f we had today. Forty would be better though.

My seed/potato order has not arrived yet, I'm not sure if it's even been shipped.

Both my ankles feel as though they have shin splints. My ankle boots did not have enough support for the mushy snow encountered on my 1/4 mile long driveway. And/or perhaps I'm not ready for two 45 minute fast walks in 3 days.

I still have not ordered any chickens. I have almost 2 months before the feed store sends out its order. I did contact a local farm about acquiring Muscovy ducklings. They should have some available in May.

Luna and I played with the Frisbee this afternoon. She had a wonderful time. Rocket laid around and watched.

Hal and I (Hal is my husband's pseudonym in case anyone wonders) are eating too many Paczkis (Polish donuts). But they are soooooo good!!

I am reading "Proven Guilty" by Jim Butcher. His Dresden Files books are very fun to read.

Tonight's dinner was pork loin chops baked with rice and mushrooms in cream of chicken soup. Salad and steamed broccoli on the side. Gingerale for beverage. Paczkis for dessert. (I did mention those before, right?)

I'm sure there are more thoughts randomly wandering about my head but as they're too hard to pin down they'll just have to wait for some other day to be exposed.