Archives 2015

So getting the two roosters, Curly and Kathy (yes I still call him Kathy) re-homed has been something I have been working on this week.  The longer we have the roosters the more difficult it is going to be when we have to give them away.

In addition to leaving a message for the chicken lady I also was in contact with a big chicken farm in North Fort Myers, asking them if they would want a couple roosters to just live instead of becoming a meal.  They said they can’t guarantee anything as it depends on how the roosters act.  If they become overly aggressive they are a problem, and problems need to be “corrected”.

I even called Jack and Ann’s feed store in Immokalee, asking if they knew of anyone that would adopt roosters without the intention of eating them.  The guy on the phone chuckled a little bit.  He said he can pretty much guarantee me that if we would give the roosters to anyone that lives in Immokalee the roosters would either be involved in chicken fighting or chicken stew, neither of which were viable options.

I was getting depressed about our options and was thinking our best choice was to take them to the chicken farm, letting the chickens roll the dice that they integrate well into the flock.  Well late yesterday afternoon the chicken lady finally called me back.  She said somehow she missed the message I left earlier in the week.  I talked to her about the birds.  She said she definitely could use one more buff orpington rooster to help service her 30 hens.  The other one she doesn’t necessarily need but she could take it as well to hang in the flock with the possibility of adopting it back out to someone else since she does a lot of chicken transactions.  Obviously she has a lot more opportunity to re-home a chicken than we do.

So the new plan is to try to meet up with Anna after work tonight so we can give her the two roosters and she was going to give us one more hen.  Curly and Kathy are quite content with their current living conditions and both Cindy and I are fond of them as well. Both birds are the first two to come charging across the yard to see if Cindy or I have a treat for them.  Trying to catch both roosters to get them in the cat carriers is going to be quite the chore as well.  I just want it to be behind us so we can have a total female chicken population from here on out.

This weekend there is going to be a lot of work on phase 2 of the the chicken coop project.  I am hoping to get the automatic chicken door installed as well as a good portion of the attached chicken run finished up as well.  It shouldn’t be quite as grueling as the original platform/shed build but I am sure it will offer up it’s own set of hurdles to overcome.

We need to try to get as much done coop-wise as possible this weekend since starting next weekend we will have almost two weeks of flooring project to fill our days.

This may be the most exciting blog post in history.  Last night after work I mowed the grass.  I shit you not.

Now that your pulse has been elevated, let’s see what else I can come up with…… um yea, that’s what I thought…. nothing.

Yesterday I finished up wiring the back side of the shed/platform to prevent predators from digging under it.  This weekend I am hoping to get a lot more done including installing the automatic chicken door and work on the chicken run area.  It’s going to add up to a lot of work which will just be a warm up for the following weekend where we get to rip the interior of the house apart moving furniture and ripping up carpet.

We still have both roosters.  The chicken lady has been slow to respond about swapping out the birds.  I called and left a message for her Monday asking if she was going to be able to keep the roosters for breeding or if she would wind up using them for meat.  I said if it was for the latter she should let us know as we will try to find a home where they would be allowed to continue their natural rooster lives. I have not heard back. I also placed an ad on the the Collier yard sale page on FB  yesterday which only generated one call which was from someone who mistakenly thought Curly and Kathy were hens not roosters.

When we were at Rural King over the weekend one of the employees said he knew somebody that needed roosters for breeding.  Cindy wrote down her number and supposedly the guy was supposed to call us.  So far that hasn’t panned out either.  It’s really frustrating and sad having to re-home the roosters as they both obviously love the arrangements they have in our backyard.  It’s hard to imagine they are going to wind up in better accommodations.

Easter is sneaking up on me, a holiday that always has been very stealth on my radar.  Of course this year it will be different as the traditional meal get together I would always have with mom on Easter is no more.  It will be another little sting of reality that still seems like it can’t be true.

Last night after work I tried to get some more work done on the shed/coop.  On the way home I grabbed some hardware cloth with smaller, 1/2″ squares, instead of the 1 inch stuff we got at Rural King.  The 1/2″ stuff is more secure and actually easier to bend to fit.

I stapled the top of the wire to the platform.  I pushed the bottom of the fencing into the trench in such a way that it folded with the excess extending forward.  This layout makes digging under the fencing next to impossible for predators that can dig. Cindy and I then back filled the trench, giving the chickens what will be a secure safe haven under the coop.  I had enough fencing to do two of the three sides.

Yesterday my automatic chicken door showed up.  Getting the door assembly mounted into the side wall of the shed will require some of my construction improvisation skills since it is designed to be mounted in conventional wood construction.  I already have a rough outline of how I can do it in my head.  I shot a quick video demonstrating the coolness of the robo-chicken door.

Last night we watched the Walking Dead season finale.  The 90 minutes passed by very quickly.  The people we wanted to die were not on the hit list unfortunately.  As any good season finale, it left Cindy and I wishing the next episodes weren’t going to be 6 months away.

Saturday Cindy and I were up at 4AM for the race.  We set the alarm around 15 minutes earlier because we didn’t load the truck the night before.  We got on site a little after 5:15 and got busy.

This race has the nicest registration area accommodations of any of our events as it takes place inside of Artis-Naples, the home of Naples Philharmonic orchestra.  The area that we normally use for registration had some other stuff stuck there so Cindy and I had to do quite a bit of rearranging.

As I mentioned last week, this was the first race where I had Cindy run a split timing point for me.  She handled the task well, we captured a split time for everyone we had chip finish time for.  She added a nice touch by writing some words of encouragement for the runners on the street ahead of the split in sidewalk chalk.  The winner of the race crushed the field, finishing almost four full minutes ahead of the second place runner.

Cindy and I got home between 10 and 10:30 and got busy.  I worked on the post race processing and Cindy started on some of the chores.  Mid-afternoon we had some errands to run, at the tail end of them we picked up Nicki and Sadie for a two night visit.  Originally we had loose ideas about going to the movies Saturday night but those plans were abandoned later in the day when we both admitted that sitting in a theater would surely result in both of us dozing off, regardless of the quality of the movie. Instead we watched The Game Stands Tall, my latest Netflix rental, a movie about a high school football team that held an incredible 150 game win streak.  The movie was solid and inspiring, a good B+ rental.

Sunday was a really good day.  The weather was beautiful with cool temps and low humidity.  It was almost perfect conditions for a run so that is what Cindy and I did, logging the 5.5 mile track and back course.  The last mile and a half was pretty grueling as it was right into the face of a strong headwind.  I can only imagine how it would have felt to ride bike into it.

We decided we would do something we always do at a time we never do it, go to a 1:05 matinee, making up for our missed Saturday movie.  We took the SSR with the top down, taking advantage of what may be the last of the truly awesome weather of the spring.  We went to see Insurgent, the second part of the Divergent series.  I wasn’t all that thrilled with the first film.  I found Insurgent more entertaining for sure but still nothing that would approach A quality.  I will give this one a solid B+.

It was odd and a bit disorienting getting out of a movie at 3:15 in the afternoon.  We got home and had plenty of time to get more stuff done.  I was outside for awhile, first burying the extension cord that will provide power to the new shed/chicken coop.  I then grabbed a shovel and dug a trench around three sides of the shed platform.  The reason for doing so is to bury the fencing which will be used to keep digging predators out of the area.  The chickens seem to really like hanging out under the platform so we are leaving the chicken run side open so they can do so if they want to. Cindy was cooking/baking like mad in the kitchen making an awesome dinner and cake.  I was the lucky benefactor of her efforts.

I wound down my Sunday playing a couple hours of WoW which was a nice way to decompress.  It was the end to a Sunday that had almost the perfect balance of exercise, work, and play.

We still have not addressed our rooster situation.  Both of us feel very guilty about the prospect of removing the birds from our backyard which they have certainly come to enjoy.  We need to make sure that they are going to a new home where they will be free to breed and live their lives instead of becoming chicken nuggets.

Last night after work I got home a little late since I needed to drop off race materials at the running store for early packet pick up today.  After getting changed I immediately let the chickens out so they could get in an hour or two of free ranging time which they have come to love.

My task at hand was getting power to the new shed.  It will be needed for the automatic chicken door I have en route to my house.  In addition power in the shed will be helpful if we want to throw things like a fan or even a web cam inside the structure.

To accomplish this my plan was to tap into the power line I already have buried and run to the small shed.  My low tech method of cutting the ends off of buried extension cord surely is not up to code but has held up fine for the 6 or 7 years it has been in place.

I dug up the connection point at the small shed and wired in the cut end of the new 100 foot cord I bought after work.  A quick test confirmed juice was now flowing to the new shed.  I drilled a small hole in the corner of the floor to get the power inside.  I still need to get the new cord buried which will require a hand edger tool to accomplish.  Basically I make a slit in the ground, rock the tool back and forth and stuff the cord into it.  The grass quickly will create a green stitch over the line I cut.

Before I get to start enjoying my weekend we have a 10K race to time tomorrow morning.  Cindy always helps me out with both pre-race prep as well as whatever I need her to do on race day.  Tomorrow I am having her do something new, set up and run the half way split timing point.  Basically she will be taking one of the timing boxes to the halfway point and set up the equipment. After the last runner crosses the mats she captures the data to a USB drive and brings it back to me.  We aren’t advertising the split as part of the race so if something goes wrong it isn’t the end of the world.

After the race is out of the way we have lots of stuff to keep us busy, lots….

The past few days I have noticed that right around dusk a small rabbit has been hanging out right around the large shed.  I am pretty sure there is a rabbit hole under there.  Well last night the chickens were still walking around as the sun was setting.  We had their coop open.  The rabbit saw that as an opportunity to go into the coop and start chowing down on pellet food we give the chicks.  Two of the chickens saw this and came running up to the coop, watching the rabbit eat their food with what I assume is a chicken “WTF” expression on their face.

I got an email from the company that processed the party van donation on behalf of the Humane Society stating that it was sold for $1100, meaning the HS will get a nice little chunk of dough.  I am sure it was wholesaled.  I am curious if it will be back on Florida roads soon.  If so I hope the new owner wears their seat belt.

This weekend is one of the club’s bigger races, a 10K that is held at Artis-Naples.  I am having to get creative with the disposable timing bibs we use to time races.  I only have around 540 of our normal timing bibs left and we currently have a little over 500 10K runners registered, meaning I will run out of bibs by race day.  To get by I am going to have to redeploy timing bibs that were left over from last year’s Thanksgiving race.  It’s not an ideal scenario but one that came about because a new race was added to the club schedule after we made the last bib order, throwing our usage number estimates out of whack.  Using the leftover bibs turns into a lot of extra work for me since they are not sequential.  I need to do a lot of manual tracking and assigning of bibs to make sure all the numbers jive at the end.

In a couple weeks Cindy will be breaking away from the chains of a normal 9-5 job.  The big goal is for her to get her trainer certification complete which she has been working on for a month or so.  The timing of the change will actually work out well for the house flooring project. She will be able to be home while the installers are there, meaning I won’t have to burn tons of PTO to get the project done.  Cindy also has a list of home improvement/chores that she wants to work on while she has the time.

She will of course be working at least part time down the road but hopefully it will be something that offers flexibility and is more in line with Cindy’s strengths and abilities.  Personally I would be ok with her being my full time house slave.

I forgot to mention that we watched Dumb and Dumber To over the weekend.  Of course it could not live up to the original which was one of the funnier movies I have ever seen.  Still I thought they did a decent job although Cindy would probably not agree with the overall B rating I am giving it.

Yesterday marked two years since Cindy went to a Tarpons game with me which evolved unexpectedly into something much more.  It seems bizarre that two years have already passed since that night.

Cindy’s devotion, support, and love she shows for me everyday has changed the way I bump along in life for the better, the much better.  As I have said before, our symbiotic relationship just works for each of us.  We don’t need a lot of outside distractions to keep us happy.  We are content together pretty much anywhere, whether that place is driving across the country, working in the yard, or just sitting on the couch. In two years we have already accumulated an overflowing basket of great memories.  I am looking forward to filling many more baskets in the years to come.

Last night was not a good one from a sleep perspective.  I woke up at 1:15 to take a leak.  As I laid down I recall thinking to myself, “wow it would suck if I couldn’t fall back asleep”  Well of course this is often a self fulfilling prophecy.  I wound up laying there for at least two hours trying to fall back asleep.  Several times I was on the verge of rolling out of bed to go do some middle of the night WoW’ing.  The two things that stopped me were the repercussions if I only got three hours of sleep and my desire to not penalize Cindy for my restlessness.  She is a very light sleeper and it is nearly impossible for me to get out of bed and close the door without her waking up.  I will more than likely be grabbing some coffee for the drive home so I don’t doze off.

Speaking of coffee I have a little rant about the Dunkin Donuts near my office, which is the location I typically hit if I need coffee after work.  I have had issues with the staff that works at this time of day for awhile, they are slow, inept and weird.  Well the other day they annoyed me enough to fire off a complaint about the location on the DD website.

I was the only person at the drive thru and placed my simple order for a single large coffee.  I pull up to the window and after a short delay I pay for the coffee.  The clerk then steps away from the window for a minute or two and then comes back without coffee in hand.  He tells me I should pull forward to the white line, 20 feet ahead of me and they would bring the coffee out to me. (they did this once before).

This act made no sense to me.  My pulling up does nothing to increase efficiency as my vehicle was still blocking the drive thru lane.  All this did was allow the one car behind me to pay for their coffee and wait at the window instead of behind me waiting at the window.  Plus it obviously takes longer to walk the coffee out of the store than to just hand it to me through the window,  I waited at least 5 minutes to have my coffee brought out.  When I took a sip and it tasted like hot water with coffee flavor I mentally committed to sharing my experience with someone that could influence future staffing decisions at the location.

So I spent my vacation day trying to finish up the shed build.  The first portion of the morning was spent trying out to figure out a way to make the two front doors close securely.  Because of the misalignment of the floor layout the right door was a fraction of an inch high, causing it to get hung up on the frame.

My remediation involved several modifications. I did a lot of hacking and cutting at the mount for the right door hinge.  I cut out the floor to allow it to slide more to the right which in turn would cause the top edge of the door to drop down slightly.  I also inserted a shim in the right side of the front gable to give me another few fractions of an inch of clearance. At the end of my hacking, slashing, shimming and wedging I was able to completely close the right door and utilize the slide latch.  Doing so takes a little extra effort but it’s functional.

The remainder of the build was straight forward where I installed the windows and translucent skylights that are on the eave of the roof.  I finished up the shed build late in the morning.  All that was left to do was to secure the shed floor to the wood platform with lag screws.

Yesterday I also worked on finishing up Cindy’s pull up bar.  The 4″ x 6″ post was cemented in place on Saturday, it felt quit solidly secured to the ground by yesterday.   Since I have built a number of bar structures at this point, adding a 7 foot high bar to the collection was not all that difficult. I had to buy a long bolt for the pull up bar as well as the lag screws for the shed at the local hardware store.  I was surprised how expensive lag screws were at nearly $3 a pop.

I finished up the bar install.  The 7 foot bar is too low for me to do pull ups comfortably but should work out great for Cindy.  I recorded the install on video.

I then drove the 8 lag screws into the shed floor, locking it in place with the wood platform.  I would like to do some additional bracing to lock the walls to the floor although the shed supposedly has a wind load rating of 65 mph as is which should hold up to most storms short of hurricane strength.

Cleaning up the scattered tools and supplies from the two projects took a loooong time.  I bet in total I spent close to two hours.  30 minutes alone was spent cutting up the huge shed boxes with a utility knife so they could fit in the recycle bins.  By the time I officially called my outdoor work as done it was 5PM.

I did get a chance to check out the shed for leaks when a pretty strong afternoon storm blew in.  I got inside the shed as the wind and rain banged off the walls, windows and roof.  The roof looked 100% dry which I was quite relieved about, especially with the two large skylights up there.  Despite some gusty winds the shed walls appeared rock solid.  I felt no movement whatsoever.

When Cindy got home she was quite happy with the fruits of my labor. She was relieved that my hacks were able to compensate for the floor layout problem and she loved her new pull up bar.  It felt good to be done with what was three of the hardest days of labor in recent history.  I can hardly wait to get back to the gym today so I can rest.

I also made a video documenting the platform and shed install if you find that sort of thing interesting.

This is going to be brief because I still have many hurdles to clear this fine Monday.

Sunday morning a second member of our flock of four started crowing, Curly, indicating we had yet another rooster.  Unfortunately we are all but sure that Kathy, the biggest  of all of the chickens is a rooster as well based on her huge feet and feather layout.  Cindy and I are both very frustrated as we have grown attached to all the chickens  at this point.  We don’t enjoy swapping them out like they are a bad light bulb.  We both want to get our next birds, preferably chicks from a place that actually sexes the birds scientifically.

So both Saturday and Sunday were just overflowing with work.  I knew building a raised 8×10 platform and shed was going to be time consuming and hard work.  I didn’t think it was going to be quite this hard however.

The platform build went relatively smoothly.  The construction process started out in the driveway where I hoped to find an 8′ x 10′ flat piece of concrete to build the frame on upside down.  That proved to be more challenging than I expected.

Once I had the outer frame together and four of the legs attached it was already getting heavy, we figured we needed to move it to the back yard while Cindy was still able to lift it.  The way we got it to the back yard would have made for a funny video clip.  We lifted one side of it onto the back of the Tacoma.  The frame was far too big to fit on there so I got behind and became the human trailer.  As Cindy drove slowly around the back of the house I walked behind holding the other half of the frame.

Once we were in the back yard we got busy.  I built the entire platform using my mental plan which was modified several times on the go.  After digging the holes and putting the frame two feet deep into the ground we used the two bags of concrete we had which was not enough to fill everything.  That was ok since we could pick up more when we went to Home Depot to get the plywood for the top of the platform.

We filled up the truck with three more bags of cement and a bunch of wood.  In addition to the three sheets of plywood we bought additional lumber for cross supports as well as a big 4″ x 6″ post to be used as an addition to my bar park.  Since I had all the stuff already out to sink posts I figured I would add another bar to my set up which is lower and more accessible for Cindy.  The Tacoma sunk as all of the heavy construction supplies were dumped into it.

We spent the rest of the day, almost until dark getting the platform finished up as well as the pull up bar post in the ground.  It was bust ass work but the platform felt strong and flat, the two most important things.  Cindy and I were quite tired, sun burned and sore.  The great news was we got to do it all over again on Sunday.

We started Sunday with a trip to Home Depot to get the pipe and flange that would be used to make Cindy’s pull up bar.  It also gave us a chance to fuel up with some Dunkin Donuts coffee for what was sure to be another hard day.  When we returned we jumped right into construction.  Just getting the two big shed boxes to the back yard was hard work, their size and weight required a lot of grunting and straining to get them into and back out of the Tacoma.

When we opened the boxes it was a bit intimidating, there were just endless amounts of parts.  it didn’t take long until I recognized why online reviews of the shed were critical of the instructions that are included, they just were not as clear as you would like.  Certain things that were potentially very important were included in small print as a note that was easy to miss or overlook.  This bit us in the ass more than once during the project.

We utilized my race timing canopy for as long as we could to provide us some shade to work.  The sun felt ridiculously hot for March.  The chickens were out free ranging with us the entire time and loving it.  They especially loved walking under the truck for some reason.  The two big birds have grease streaks down the middle of their backs to prove it.

So Cindy and I plodded along making slow and steady progress on the build.  With the shed, I took the exact opposite approach that I did with the platform, I wanted to make sure we followed the instructions exactly.  A few times Cindy made assumptions about how certain things went together that turned out to be incorrect.  None of them were major deals until we were in the home stretch of the shed build.

We were trying to install the right door of the shed but noticed there was no hole in the floor for the hinge to rest in like there was for the left door.  I immediately knew something was wrong.  Well after re-reading the floor layout instructions there was another one of those small little notes that point out that there was a certain way the floor panels had to be oriented which Cindy missed.

Of course I was very frustrated and Cindy felt very bad for the error.  At this point we had the shed built out even further than the picture you see on the left.  If I wanted to floor to be oriented correctly we would have to literally undo 4-5 hours of work by taking it all down.  I started to do just that until Cindy stopped me, crying.  She said there had to be a way we could make it work without dismantling everything.  She reminded me that I am McGyver after all, adept at making things work even when they don’t want to at first.  So I stopped unscrewing and started to formulate a plan to make what we have in front of us work.

The plan involved cutting out a piece of the floor to accommodate the hinge pin in a less than perfect fashion.  I tried to get the mounting hardware the same distance as the left door was from the sidewall which had the proper floor cut out under it.  The end result was us being able to get the right door in in a less than ideal manner.  That door is one of the hurdles I still need to clear today as it does not close correctly, yet.

So after the floor problem Cindy exclusively let me be the direction reader.  Even so, there were still a lot of struggles getting the roof in place.  There was a lot of banging, pulling, smacking and swearing involved.  Part of the problem was a cross support that we later found out we had mounted incorrectly.  It was mis-aligning the center truss.

Cindy and I slammed down some food we had delivered and headed right back to shed work even though the sun was setting.  We wanted to try to at least get the roof done.  We took out a bunch of my race lanterns to light up the inside of the shed quite well.  We managed to get the roof completed, sans a few skylights in pitch darkness as the mosquitoes swarmed us endlessly.  We did not step back inside the house until almost 9PM.

Both Cindy and I were just beat up physically.  We were sore everywhere and sunburned.  Our hands took quite the beating from screwing in literally hundreds of screws during the build.  My hands feel swollen and arthritic today.  I will be popping some aspirin before continuing on.

Today’s agenda is to complete the shed as much as I can with one person.  The big focus will be to somehow tweak the right door so it closes without using a screw driver to wedge it in place.  Hopefully I will have some time left over to get Cindy’s pull up bar up and running too.

I could have paid $300 to have the shed built for me by a crew that does it full time.  In retrospect it would have been money well spent.