Archives May 2014

Not feeling the inspiration today. In the meantime check out the cool white eggplants that are growing in the garden.

So my bid on the chicken coop on Ebay ran unchallenged, I received notification last night I was the winning bidder.  If things go as expected next week a couple big boxes should show up at the house.  Cindy was quite excited by the coop purchase and the prospect of it being occupied by a few chickens.

The coop is moveable, has a nesting box, two perches, a slide out tray for ez cleaning and an attached small run.  The coop itself is elevated so the birds can also hang out under it as well.  We liked that the run has a solid roof on it to give the birds both additional shade and some rain protection if needed.

We aren’t sure what route we want to go as far as the chickens themselves go.  Cindy thinks it would be cool to get small chicks so they grow up knowing us.  However small chicks are more fragile obviously so there is more risk of harm.

Older chickens would be able to hit the ground running (and laying), but might not be as friendly as we would like them to be.  We have some time to decide.

Last night Cindy and I watched my latest Netflix disc, Broken City.  It was a well done murder, mystery, corruption, cop flick starring Marky Mark and  Russell Crowe.  It was the type of movie Cindy and I don’t watch all that often but we both enjoyed it.  B+ from me.

Friday after work I stopped at Home Depot to load up the back of the Tacoma with 30 bags of mulch for the second day in a row.  I followed up with a quick stop at Costco where I somehow managed to lose a massive container of minced garlic that I paid for.

After dinner I told Cindy I wanted to see if I could quickly get the 30 bags dumped and spread since the cooler evening temps had arrived.  As usual she was happy to jump in and lend a hand.  We knocked out all 30 bags, finishing up just as sunset was going down.  We had pretty much everything mulched beside a short part of the pool border and the two islands that surround the palm trees up front.  I estimated that 10 bags would cover what was left.  As usual the landscape looked much nicer with it’s annual mulch replenishment.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed out pretty early for our day of fun.  After loading up with some DD coffee we headed to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, a place I have been quite a few times but a place Cindy had never seen.

It didn’t take her very long to appreciate the beauty of the place.  Since we are firmly in the midst of dry season there was precious little water to be found in the swamp.  It is always interesting to see the place during dry season and then to come back once the daily deluges start to compare the difference.

We still saw a lot of wildlife from the 2 mile boardwalk path, mostly birds, including owls, something I don’t recall seeing there before.  We also saw these two HUGE gators.  We assumed at least one of them had to be a pregnant female, it was so wide across the middle.

I am always impressed by the huge cypress trees that are in the swamp.  According to the information placards some of them are more than 500 years old.  The largest we saw had a trunk 23 feet around.  Old things always have been sources of fascination for me. (as long as they aren’t me)

One of the reasons I wanted to go to the swamp was to get a couple bird feeders to replace some of mine that are falling apart.  Several years ago I bought some made out of recycled materials from their gift shop and they have held up well.  I figured I would get more there to help support the place.  I was disappointed to see the only bird feeders they had for sale were the wooden variety that break down quickly in Florida conditions.  Too bad, I guess Amazon will have to fill the void.

After a great swamp visit we headed east to Immokalee, specifically Jack & Ann’s Feed store.  I became familiar with Jack & Ann’s when I fenced the back yard years ago, I got all of my posts, fencing and wire from them.  The store, like much of Immokalee is very old and rustic.  It’s also quite large, selling a large variety of things that would cover the needs of most farmers.

Cindy scored herself a set of white boots for outdoor work but the real reason we went there was to look at their chicken accessories.  I thought they might sell coops there.  Unfortunately they had no chicken housing but they do have feeders/waterers and feed for them.  Once chickens are a certainty I am sure we will hit J&A more often for supplies.

It was nearly noon by that time.  I asked Cindy if she wanted to try to find an authentic Mexican place to eat at which would be very easy to do in Immokalee.  She was excited by the idea.  We pulled into a small little place called Mi Ranchito.  When we sat down I am pretty sure we were the only people in there with English as our first language.  The decor was old, the tables were dirty but the food was authentic Mexican.  I had a huge veggie burrito and Cindy enjoyed a chimichanga.

During the meal I dared her to try the sauce labeled as XXX hot. As I expected she took up my dare.  The sauce did invoke a reaction from her but not the violent, my tongue is on fire, type that I expected.  She followed up by sampling the 2 or 3 other hot sauce varieties that were on the table.

After lunch we headed northward.  I took a route through Lehigh Acres, I figured it would be a good opportunity to check on the two 1/4 acres plots of land I own and lost my ass on.  I have not driven by them in several years.  They looked much as I remembered.  One of my lots is really in a decent location, literally less than a mile from a Winn Dixie and other retail.  Too bad despite that fact the lots currently are worth about 10-15% of what I paid for them back in 2003.

The next stop was the Germain Arena box office, I needed to pick up my free 2014 Florida Tarpons season tickets.  Since the 2013 season was such a cluster fck with a ton of rescheduled and/or cancelled games they offered to give all 2013 season ticket holders free tickets for this year.  They have totally shifted the schedule from previous years.  The season doesn’t open until this Friday.  Last year the season opened in early March and was pretty much wrapping up by this point.

I managed to score a big upgrade in seat position this year.  My season tickets last year had a face value of something like $15 each.  The tickets I got this year are in row 4 and have a face value of $45 each, nice.  I can only hope this season goes better than last.  I am really quite amazed that the team and the league has not folded yet.

On the trip back south we stopped at Home Depot to get the remaining 10 bags of mulch needed to finish the landscaping.  Cindy also snagged three plants to be used in her ongoing pool landscaping renovation.  We had two more stops yet on our very busy Saturday, one for gas and one at Wal-mart before we finally pulled back into the driveway.

We got the additional mulch spread and the plants in the ground.  I had wanted to set the sprinklers to run manually so I could check their operation, I suspected some of them were not sprinkling as they should be.  My sprinkler controller has been flaky for several years.  The buttons were not working as they should be some of the time.  If you applied pressure at the wrong spot the display would reset or a function different then what you wanted would show up.  A couple buttons didn’t work at all.  I still have been able to work around the glitches, until Saturday.

The entire right side of the box now was unresponsive, not even responding to Fonzie like smacks.  I also noticed the status screen was showing OFF despite the rotary knob being set at the AUTO position used during normal operation.  If the system thinks it is OFF that means no water is flowing which would explain why the garden has been looking drier than normal.  It was clear the sprinkler box had to be replaced.

When I started looking on Amazon at replacements I stumbled across something called the Rain Machine.  My eyes widened.  A SMART, Wi-Fi connected sprinkler controller, touch screen device???

The device uses NOAA forecasting to adjust it’s watering schedule  accordingly.  It compiles your watering history and uses that as well to better fine tune future sprinkling.  There is even a smartphone app that allows you to interact with your sprinkler system anywhere you are plugged into the net. This is cool….

So immediately my mind is racing, thinking about the possibility of adding a smart sprinkler system to my homestead tech collection.   Mounting the box outside would be risky and dumb since part of the coolness factor would be interacting with the keypad and checking out the info.  That means I would need to relocate the sprinkler controller indoors.

Relocating it would involve stringing wire through the hotter than a sauna attic and then down one of the bathroom walls.  It would need to be somewhere close to AC power as well.  Another factor was the cost.  The device costs $250 and by the time I bought the materials needed to extend it inside I could easily drop $300 bucks in total.  In contrast, a replacement digital controller similar to what I have now would be less than $60 with a very straightforward and much easier installation.  I eventually quieted the tech addict in my brain and decided to go the latter route.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to a surprise birthday party at South Street for one of our running club friends.  There were a TON of people there.  We hung for a couple hours before heading home.  We were both quite pooped from our very busy day.

Despite our busy Saturday we still wanted to get a brick in on Sunday.  We headed to the waterpark where we did 4 miles of running followed by laps in the pool.  I broke my swim segments into 400-600-600 to try to get ready for my 1/4 mile swim leg of the fast approaching Naples Fitness Challenge. Cindy, Randall and I are competing as a team this year.  Cindy will run, Randall will ride and I will finish it out with my awkward sidestroking swim in the gulf.  The 4 mile run on Sunday was way tougher for me than I would like.

When we got home I worked on replacing the sprinkler controller.  Unfortunately it is a different form factor than the 8 year old box it replaced, meaning some touch up painting will be required.  Once I got it hooked up I had Cindy help me do a sprinkler health check.  I ran each zone for 5 minutes to verify the heads were still covering what they were supposed to be watering.  The survey revealed I have 4 heads that need to replaced, yay, more work.

We had to hustle Sunday afternoon to get stuff done since we were picking up mom for a Mothers Day dinner at Watermark.  We were planning to meet Cindy’s mom there at 5PM.  I figured the very early time would mean the place wouldn’t be too full.  When I pulled in the parking lot and saw no parking spots for the party van I knew my theory was incorrect.

It was jammed, with no less than 20 people waiting to be seated. We got very lucky that Cindy’s mom is an early bird.  She had shown up closer to 4:30 and got our name in.  We wound up only having to wait a couple minutes instead of the 30 minutes or more we would have had to wait otherwise.

We all had a nice meal that was subsidized by a gift card my dad had sent me for Xmas.  I hadn’t been to Watermark with my mom in a loooong time.  We shuttled mom back to her place and dropped her off.  She had fun which always makes me happy.

Over the weekend Cindy and I finished up season seven of 24.  It seemed to be the most ridiculous storyline so far with no less than 5 different people (one twice) being the main bad guy in the span of 24 hours.  Despite the impossibility of so many things occurring in a 24 hour period the show still manages to provide suspense and excitement.  You just have to be able to suspend your sense of reality to fully enjoy it.

We now have embarked on season 8, the final season of the original show.  Once that is consumed we should be up to date and ready to start watching the reboot of the series which is being collected on my X1 box.

Oh I forgot to mention I have a bid on Ebay on a perspective housing structure for our yet to be acquired flock of 3 or 4 chickens.  If my bid is successful we will officially be on the path of chicken caretakers.

After work last night I decided to get a jump start on the weekend mulching project.  I swung into the nearby Home Depot and filled the back of the Tacoma with 30 bags of mulch.  While I was there I picked up some more garden items including a citronella plant to scare off mosquitoes, sweet onions and some more sweet potatoes, the first time I had EVER seen these at Home Depot.

When I got home I wasted no time and started dumping and spreading the mulch.  By the time   Cindy got home I had the truck bed half empty already.  30 bags of mulch was enough to cover the pond area and most of the orchard.  I’ll be stopping back at HD tonight for another 30 bags.  If my memory serves me correctly, it takes somewhere around 75-80 bags in total to cover all landscaped areas.

Cindy had another good pull from the garden in addition to helping me get the new stuff planted in there.  I actually have started to eat some of the banana peppers.  Cindy cleans them out, slices them open and broils them with cream cheese in them.  It turns out well.

Cindy and I are trying to get current with past seasons of 24 prior to watching the relaunch of the show which is sitting on my X1 box.  Progress hasn’t been as fast as I would like, we still have like 5 episodes to go in season 7. (9 seasons including this year)  The problem is we typically watch it in bed. Sleepy eyes mean quite often we don’t even get through a single episode before the tv gets flipped off.

As I mentioned yesterday I am hoping for a good weekend that will be clear of most of my normal chore efforts thanks to Cindy working on most of them today on her day off.  One of the things we will be doing is looking at chicken accessories at the feed store in Immokalee.  We have gotten a lot of feedback regarding the idea of getting our own chickens, all of it bad.

Nobody seems to think that getting a few chickens is worth the trouble.  Predictions of high maintenance, limited egg producing years and the birds just generally being a pain in the ass have been some of the most common themes.

However when I look at general chicken care guidelines like I found here, it is nothing that scares me or seems like a huge burden.  Plus we are only talking about 3 or 4 chickens (hens), not a dozen.  We don’t want them exclusively to be a back yard egg factory.  If they stop producing eggs I would be perfectly fine just letting them hang out for their golden chicken years. (can live 7 years or more)  It’s getting that I want to get the chickens just to prove a point, I can. 🙂

The NFL draft started last night. The Eagles traded down a few spots to pick up an extra 3rd round pick.  They always have been wheeler and dealers on draft day.  The Birds picked up Marcus Smith, a linebacker from Louisviille but I think they are thinking he could also play defensive end.  I have no real feelings pro or con about the pick, to me you just never know how a guy is going to translate to the NFL.  I have seen so many Eagle first rounders turn into flops that no selection is going to thrill me much.

Not much to talk about today.  I spent a good portion of my day yesterday getting tied in knots trying to get a new higher speed Comcast Business internet connection working in our environment.  Doing so was more challenging and involved than I anticipated.  The fat 75mb downlink and 15mb uplink makes the effort worth it.

Cindy and I are trying to set up an enjoyable weekend.  She is off tomorrow so she is hoping to get most of the routine maintenance I deal with out of the way, clearing the slate for the weekend.  I am planning to do the mulching this weekend. We also are planning to go to Corkscrew Sanctuary, Jack & Ann’s Feed Store in Immokalee to look at chicken housing/accessories,  Germain Arena to pick up my Tarpon season tickets and catch Godzilla Saturday night.

I also need to put in some more laps in the pool on Sunday since I am supposed to be doing the swim leg of the Naples triathlon in 3 weeks. Sunday evening Cindy and I are taking our mom’s to Watermark Grille for dinner which should be a nice way to wind up a weekend.

My issues where the sun doesn’t shine seem to be slowly improving.  I’m using a very gentle approach with anything involving that region.

Last night Cindy pulled another diverse harvest from the garden including green beans, two types of peppers, and some broccoli.  She also had her daily pull of roughly 20 blackberries.

I have had a rough stretch of bad luck lately with my health.  The officially undiagnosed GI problem and the ab strain/pain have put a definite crimp in my style.  The GI thing seems to have somehow altered my body’s plumbing as things still are not as they were before the ailment started.

I don’t react favorably to any illness or ailment I have but I am especially freaked out when that ailment involves anything south of the belly button and north of the thighs.  I want my reproductive and digestive plumbing to just work and not be heard from otherwise.  For the most part that has been the case my entire life, thankfully I haven’t had many problems in that regard.

Well two days ago I started feeling some odd discomfort in one of these regions.  Well the discomfort has continued and last night I confirmed I had developed my first ever case of hemorrhoids.  Of course I found this a combination of disgusting, disconcerting, and anxiety inducing.  I don’t have habits that are usually associated with this condition.  I don’t know if it is yet another side effect of the excessive use this area has seen since the GI problem started or perhaps just another one of the glorious side effects of aging.

I know there are various topical treatments available but to be honest I don’t want to even picture the process to apply them, let alone actually perform them.  Right now the treatment plan is to hope it just heals itself up.

You know you are getting old when a disproportionate part of your day is focused on bodily functions.

Over the past few years trick shot videos have become very popular.  One of the most popular are done by a group of guys that go by the name of Dude Perfect.  Their videos are really well done and some of the tricks they pull off are pretty damn amazing.

The one thing that I always wondered about was exactly how many attempts on average do they try to capture each miracle shot?

Well last night I decided to do my own little experiment.  I set up a trash can in the back yard and stood maybe 50 feet away from it with two cameras rolling.  I was curious how hard/easy it would be to throw a football, volleyball and a small green rubber dog toy ball into the can.

Well after 45 minutes of trying I got my answer.

So below is the end result of nearly endless attempts.

Five seconds of video from 45 minutes of attempts, wow.  Obviously this was way more challenging than I expected.  Granted, I am far removed from my youth where I was throwing/shooting/tossing balls on a daily basis so there is no doubt my accuracy has suffered.  Out of at least 50 attempts I only made two, once with the volleyball and once with the football.  Ironically the smallest ball gave me the most problems, I wasn’t able to hit the can with it at all.

The video containing all of the misses, although much longer is more entertaining if you ask me.

I later set the volleyball on top of the parallel bars and tried to utilize my pitching background to knock it down.  I managed to maintain my consistency of failure, missing all 10 or 11 throws.  I plan to keep adding to my trick shot library, I’m sure you are relieved.

Friday afternoon work was pretty quiet so I asked if I could head out a bit early.  I had a bunch of stops to make and I also stopped at Ali’s new place to get a few more things accomplished.  Even though she has a ton of stuff to unpack, her garage has enough room that she can actually park the Volt inside so she can recharge it nightly.  I got a good chunk of things done.

Friday night I was quite pissed off at myself when I knocked a Mexican Coke off the counter and had it explode all over the kitchen floor.  Somehow the exploding Coke bottle shrapnel managed to cut my left ankle as well.  Cindy handled the lionshare of the clean up duties.

On Saturday morning I was up and working outside early wanting to get a jump start on the day.  I knocked out at least a half dozen tasks before 10AM.  One of those tasks was especially disgusting.  I have an LG front loading wash machine that I like.  For a little while I have had an issue where the laundry sometimes had a bit of an unpleasant smell to it, despite my effort to always leave the front door of the unit open when not in use to make sure it drys out to prevent mildew. There is another maintenance task that I have not been doing, cleaning the pump screen.  I last did this 2-3 years ago at least.  Cleaning the pump screen is an easy task but one I have let slip, perhaps because when I checked it before it was fine and didn’t need any cleaning.

Well for whatever reason I finally decided to pull out the pump screen Saturday morning.  As I loosened the fixture a small amount of water started to spill out which is normal.  What wasn’t normal was the stench that hit my nostrils.  It was like I pulled the plug on a septic tank, the smell was that bad.  I threw a towel on the floor to catch the disgusting water.  When I pulled the filter from the body of the washer the true horror show began.

The plastic filter body was covered in some some of slimy substance that instantly turned me into a mouth breather to keep me from vomiting.  I had no idea what type of organic matter I was looking at, I just knew I was looking at the source of my stinky laundry.  I took the filter to the sink and blew off the slime with hot water and then sprayed both the filter and the the hole in the washer it resides with bleach.  I reinstalled the now disinfected filter into the washer with a new mental commitment to clean it monthly.  I noticed the laundry that was done over the weekend was missing that tinge of sewage stench.

Once I got all of my home chores done I was once again off to Ali’s new place to get her computer equipment back online.  Ali was told by Comcast that her service was all migrated to her new address and all she should have to do is plug stuff back in and it will work.  Well of course this was not the case.  A call to them was required to get Ali’s cable modem working again at it’s new location. Ali’s computer stuff is temporarily housed on top of a folding table until she is able to buy an Ikea computer desk to match the Ikea shelves she already has in her new office.

Almost everything is out of Ali’s old apartment at this point.  Sometime this week she should be handing in her keys and will be 100% moved.  It will be awhile until everything finds its place at the new townhouse.

After getting done at Ali’s I headed down to the running store to handle the race entries that came in that day.  I had the laptop with me so I could do it on the spot instead of having to do the data entry at home later.  I got there earlier than I needed to so I had more sit around with nothing to do time than I prefer.  Saturday night race prep ensued culminated with setting the alarm for 3:45 AM Sunday morning.

So Cindy and I were the first ones on the race site Sunday, a little after 5AM.  We immediately spotted a big problem, there were no port-o-potties on site.  Port-o-potties are a pretty crucial part of any race as most runners want to make sure the tank is empty before hitting the road.  A text to the race director indicated this responsibility was not supervised as it should have been and instead was assumed to be handled.  You can not make assumptions in this role.

So now we had to come up with some sort of alternative.  Cindy scouted the area and identified a 7-11 two blocks away and the public bathrooms at the Naples Pier three blocks away that could be used.  Yes it was incredibly inconvenient for runners but it was the only solution we had.  To try to head off a million “Where are the bathrooms?” questions we printed out a bunch of signs that indicated the two options and posted them around the registration area.  I was surprised that the signs actually did seem to work for the most part.  I didn’t hear much public griping about the huge hole of no on site restroom facilities although I am sure nobody was happy about it.

This was the first race that I was utilizing the new equipment I bought, three laptops and a new printer.  I had set up everything at home but did not totally simulate race day conditions which was dumb.  As a result I had a couple issues on site that I had to work around unexpectedly.  A lot of them turned out to be related to the way Windows 7 will automatically restrict communication when you don’t define an  IP address as non-public.

After overcoming those early issues the race timing went smoothly. We once again used the race bibs with an integrated timing device  and once again they performed very well.  Utilizing this type of timing device adds cost to every race but it streamlines the process greatly for both us and the runners, making it an overall win.

Cindy ran the race in addition to volunteering beforehand.  Despite her predictions of a poor performance ahead of time due to her lack of consistent running lately, she got third place in her age group. She was only 10 seconds behind the second place finisher and only a couple seconds off her personal 5K best.  I told her ahead of time she would do well, her competitive nature really helps her in a race environment.

When we got back to the house I had an hour or two of work doing post race processing and figuring out the issues I had on site with the laptops.  After I got that handled Cindy and I headed outside for some tandem gardening.  I had picked up some stuff for the garden at Lowes on Saturday, some basil, spearmint and two red peppers.  In addition we had the mail order sweet potatoes to get in the ground and a couple climbing plants that Cindy bought a couple weeks ago.

It was very relaxing and enjoyable to work together getting stuff in the ground.  For the sweet potatoes I dug a trench through the middle of two raised beds to create two raised mounds along either side.  I put 6 or 7 plants in each bed.  I have grown regular potatoes before with varying success but never sweet potatoes.  I am hoping they do well.  One thing that is doing well are the Cubanelle peppers, we have harvested at least a couple dozen so far and there are a bunch more in the pipeline.

Cindy and I went to a late afternoon showing of Spiderman 2.  Well it’s actually Spiderman 2 2 since this is the second iteration of the rebooted Spiderman series.  It was funny that as we were getting our tickets. our friend Deb from the running club walked up behind us with her daughter to see the same movie.  They wound up sitting with us to watch the movie.

I liked the first Spiderman reboot movie(which I saw by myself), more than I expected.  From the previews of Spiderman 2 I was worried the series was fast forwarding to the original Spiderman 3 which jumped the shark for me.  Spiderman 3 had just too much shit going on.  Too many enemies, too much ridiculous heroics and not enough story.  Well unfortunately I think Spiderman 2/2 has already reached Spidey 3 status.

The movie had several things that bugged me, too campy, too far outside the boundaries of remote possibility , and too predictable.  The efforts to log jam in a second arch enemy followed by an oh by the way third just didn’t work for me.  The main villain’s hatred of Spiderman didn’t hold any water either to be honest.  The movie was entertaining but not great.  For instance I think the recent Captain America was a lot better.  I’d give Spidey 2 a B+ rating.  I would be fine if they phased the current iteration of the franchise out.   After seeing all 5 Spiderman movies I am quite positive I prefer the Toby McGuire version of my favorite childhood superhero.

After the movie Cindy and I grabbed dinner at a nearby restaurant.  As we enjoyed our meal I witnessed a phenomena that was depicted brilliantly here in this video. The subject was how the world now spends a ridiculous amount of time looking down, at their smart phones.  It is something I notice all the time and something I find myself doing more often that I like.  At dinner there were two women and a young boy eating outside.  The two women spent the vast majority of their time at the table with their faces buried in their smart phones.  The little boy was standing behind the one woman, who I assume was his mother, looking somewhat sad that his mother was ignoring his existence, preferring to scroll through endless status updates of people she rarely if ever sees in real life.

The developed world really has become a slave to their phones.  It is morphing adults into iZombies and inflicting a permanent disability  on today’s youth who will be void of the ability to communicate conventionally, relegating them to communicating in electronic acronyms, incomplete sentences and “likes”.   Children are being turned into “screen addicts”, not being able to go on a 10 minute car ride without having a video screen of some type in front of them to pacify their raging ADD.  Simply looking out the window at the passing scenery is treated like minor child abuse.

If you step back, put down the phone and think about the path this is leading to it is easy to see what is so wrong about it.  Yet we all continue down this path, not thinking about the eventual outcome of it all which can be nothing but bad.

So the next time you exit the movie theater, are stopped at a red light, or sitting at the dinner table, suppress the urge to check in with your connected device that disconnects you from the world immediately around you.

So last night I went right from work to help Ali do phase 2 of her move.  Getting the stuff off the truck didn’t take terribly long.  We got the bigger/heavier furniture items in their designated room but for the most part we just dumped most things into the two car garage.  After emptying the truck we went back to Ali’s apartment to throw the large amount of odds and ends that were still there.  It was enough to fill the floor of the truck completely.

Ali’s new place is really nice.  Evidently it was built as the model home for the community.  It has a lot of nice furnishings and has some other cool upgrades like a whole house music/intercom system and ethernet wiring through out the place.  The place was actually being sold as furnished, Ali negotiated an unfurnished sale however the prior owners left a ton of stuff in the place anyway.  End tables, shelving, a desk, office chairs, king size bed, wall art, lamps, mirrors are only some of what was left behind.  Some of it can be used by Ali, some will either be given away or dumped on Craigslist.

Ali was quite relieved to have the lionshare of her stuff inside the walls of her new place.  Of course there is still a mountain of work to do but at least it won’t require heavy lifting or moving trucks to address. I congratulated her on her new home.  It will be great for her to have a place she can truly call her own.

Cindy has had to rely heavily on reading glasses the last couple years.  She was at the eye doctor yesterday looking to do something about it.  The solution they have proposed is something called monovision. Monovision is when you perform a correction on one eye allowing it to see well for reading while the other eye is used primarily for distance.  However not everyone is a good candidate for this, it can cause some people nasty headaches and be disorienting.  The way they find out if you are a good candidate is fitting you with one contact lens for a few days to see how you react.

Well evidently Cindy is a good candidate.  So far the single contact has not bothered her and she can read without cheaters.  She is thrilled.  If she gets through the weekend without problems then the next step is to surgically alter the reading eye to make the change permanent.  I’m happy for her.

This weekend will be full.  I have a race to time Sunday, plenty of work to keep me busy Saturday and we are going to wedge in a trip to the theater to see the new Spiderman movie as well. Fun.

So Cindy and I have been seriously considering getting a couple chickens for the homestead, yes chickens.  The idea first floated through our heads when we were looking at chickens at the county fair.  Recently the idea came up again and we have been actually investigating various housing options for the birds.

So why in the world would we want chickens you may ask?  Well having chickens means eggs, something that I use for breakfast every morning and something Cindy uses quite regularly with her baking projects.  Plus you can’t get any more organic or free range than harvesting eggs from your backyard.

Chickens love to eat bugs.  My backyard has an infinite supply.  The chickens could be great natural pest control.  The chicken droppings also would be great to throw in the compost bins to eventually be mixed into the garden soil.

Finally, Cindy and I both love animals, taking care of chickens sounds like fun, at least from this vantage point.

My neighbors across the street had chickens and they do not recommend it, saying it was a lot of work.  However I really don’t think it is the type of labor that would seem like much to us.  Plus we are only talking about getting 2-3 chickens, not a dozen. Another potential issue is noise, I have personal experience with how loud and annoying (and mean) a roster can be.  There will be no rosters in our collection to address the noise issue and to make sure there aren’t additional chicks joining the flock.

As far as housing goes, there is a surprising collection of chicken coops out there suitable for a small collection of chickens.  Ideally we would have a main coop with an attached, enclosed run area, larger than what is pictured above.  The structure would need to be light enough that Cindy and I could periodically move it around the yard.  When we are home I would let the chickens roam around freely in the back yard during the day but we would need to make sure they are safely back in the coop at night.

Predators are a concern.  The neighbors had a bobcat kill a couple of their chickens.  We also have hawks that frequent my yard on a pretty regular basis.  Hopefully the chickens are smart enough to utilize their coop as a safe house if need be.  I’m also worried about bastard fire ants attacking the chickens.

My life as a chicken farmer is not etched in stone yet but I think there is a pretty solid chance it will happen.

Ali finally got the final approval on her mortgage and will be closing today.  She will be wasting no time and is moving her stuff which has been residing in the back of a moving truck for the last 6 days, into her new place tonight.  I will be heading over right after work to help get the big stuff safely off the truck and in place.