Category Pets

So yesterday was move out day for the 11 chicks.  Cindy spent a lot of time yesterday using various building materials to segment off half off the garden as chicken area.  I appreciated all of her work but I don’t know how workable/ durable the set up will be long term.

When I got home Cindy was still in the process of getting stuff ready for the big move.  The chicks were having fun running around the garden, little did they know that they were about to become full time outdoor residents.

Lucy and Lola’s reaction to the chicks were different.  Lucy didn’t seem to care much. Lola was over by the garden for a long time face to face with the chicks, occasionally trying to peck through the fencing. Lola didn’t seem very happy about sharing her grand chicken estate with others.

So we had to figure out what we wanted to do for the first night accommodations for the chickens.  We decided the safest option was to have all the chicks in the chicken tractor, up top, with the ramp closed which basically turns the coop into a bomb shelter, immune to all predators.  The big concern was having all 11 chicks that still clearly break into their respective family of 5 and 6, coexist in relatively cramped quarters up top. Eventually we want to come up with a connector between the chicken tractor and the new small coop we bought, giving the chicks a large L area that they can live in until they are old enough to move into the big house.

So shortly before dark we went out and got all the chicks up top.  As we were getting the last couple up top a thunderstorm was rolling in.  When we went inside all hell broke loose with torrential rain, booming thunder, and dangerously close lightning.  Cindy and I were very concerned for the chicks and felt terrible their first night in the yard was in the middle of a bad storm.  I imagined them being terrified.

Once the rain slowed down Cindy and I went out with the flashlight to check on the chicks to make sure they were ok.  When we cracked one of the side doors we saw a bunch of chicks huddled together like they normally do.  They didn’t seem freaked out, despite the commotion from the storm which made us feel better. This morning as soon as there was a hint of light in the sky Cindy went out and lowered the ramp.  Slowly all 11 chicks came down.  They all seemed fine and immediately started running around and eating breakfast.

I am sure there will be some challenges with this next phase of chicken wrangling but we will work through them like we always do.  My biggest concern is how Cindy and I feel so attached to the birds, knowing ahead of time that a chickens life can be fragile and dangerous.

So we are coming up on the point where the baby chicks will be living outside full time.  We have been waiting the 10 days after their Mareks vaccination before sticking them outside behind the fence line as the vaccinated chicks could potentially pass Mareks to the adult hens inside that quarantine range.  For the last couple weeks Cindy has been putting the chicks outside in the front yard for good chunks of time to start the transition.  The chicks seem to love the change.

Of course one of the concerns for them once they are outdoors full time is safety. Once they move to the backyard they will have another wall of defense since it is fenced in, protecting them from things like stray dogs but because of their size they still will have lots of potential predators.   The chicken tractor should be sufficient protection for them but we both will feel better when the babies move into the fortress we built. Cindy and I look forward to having all 13 chickens coexisting happily soon.

I wonder how many blog entries over the last 6 months have had the word “chickens” in them?

So on Friday after work I was pretty sure I was going to wind up driving home with a new TV.  I brought the truck to work so I would have the hauling capacity needed for a 75 inch tv.  In total I went to three different retailers, Best Buy, Costco, and Sam’s.  I went to Best Buy first as they obviously had the biggest selection.  The 75 inch tv’s are on display in the “Magnolia” area of Best Buy, the high end room where there are sofa’s and lot’s of big screens.

I wound up talking to a couple of the sales guys there.  They all pushed 4K tv’s hard, saying there was really no choice to be made, 4K is the future.  I discussed with them some of the info I had read regarding 4K like how after you are more than a half dozen feet away from the screen, your eye can no longer discern the difference in resolution.  I told them with my layout at home my couch is approximately 12 feet from the tv.  They did not agree with my statement and wanted me to see for myself.

In front of one of the couches was 70 inch Sony 4K tv that was currently playing Avengers in 1080p via an attached Blu-Ray player, it looked good.  I estimated my distance from the set as about 10 feet.  The sales guy then popped in a USB drive that had native 4K video on it and asked me if I saw a difference, even at 10 feet back.  The 1080P Avengers video looked great, the native 4K content looked amazing.  The detail and visuals almost seemed better than real life if I was standing there.  Ok they made their point.

My other counter 4K argument was the lack of 4K content currently.  3D tv originally was touted to be available everywhere eventually and instead the exact opposite happened, it dried up and went away.  I think the odds of that happening with 4K is less but still possible.  The sales guys pointed out that Netflix already has streaming 4K content with others reportedly ready to hop on board in the near future.

I then mentioned to them that my current intention was to buy a 75 inch 1080P set, specifically a certain Samsung model.  They immediately tossed mud at that idea, first because it was ONLY 1080P and that it was Samsung’s low end model which only has a real refresh rate of 60HZ, despite it being advertised on the box as 120hz through some fuzzy math.  Hearing that the tv I was close to pulling the trigger on was a low end set sort of let the air out of my balloon.  Thinking about dropping a good chunk of money for a non 4K set that has now been flagged as “low end” did not excite me.  I thanked them for the info and headed out with much less tv buying spring in my step.

I swung into Costco which was a few doors down to see my options there, which was the same Samsung 75 incher Best Buy staff just looked down their noses at.  I then headed to Sam’s where I was buying some groceries and looked again there.  By the time I was walking in from the parking lot I had already had an internal dialogue with the impulsive, illogical portion of my brain that was obsessing about a new tv.  I realized that for what I would spend on a new tv I could basically pay for an entire western road trip, which I value more.

The bottom line is my current 73 inch set has a few annoying holes in it’s capabilities due to it’s age, (lack of enough HDMI ports, no digital audio port, no internet connectivity) but it still works and looks fine.  Until that is no longer the case I need to just sit on the sidelines and reap the rewards as the prices of 4K tv’s drop as is always the case the longer a technology is on the market.  When I get a tv I will likely hold onto it for a good 7-8 years so I want to make sure I invest wisely.

On Saturday while Cindy was doing some of the seemingly endless baby chicken maintenance, she picked up Jaina, the cornish hen and took her inside.  Jaina is huge, something common for the breed as they are primarily raised for meat.  Cindy wanted to see just how huge she was.  So she weighed herself while holding the bird and solo.  The number was a pretty amazing 4 pounds.  For her to weigh that much this quickly was incredible.  For reference you may recall that when the vet weighed Lola she came in at scarce one pounds and three ounces.  We can only imagine how large Jaina will be as a true adult chicken.  Unfortunately cornish hens do not typically have a long life span, if allowed to they will literally eat themselves to death.  Cindy is hoping that her being allowed to free range will help stave off morbid obesity.

Before we were ready to head out to run some errands I was in the driveway.  I spun around and all of sudden had a male pit bull looking at me.  He seemed friendly so I called him over.  After letting him give me the sniff test I started petting him.  Cindy was startled by the dog and her first thought was keeping him away from the garage since the door was open with the 11 chicks inside the coop.  Pit Bulls and chickens are not going to mix well.

Cindy got the door closed and came over to the dog as well.  He had a collar but no tags.  He had a few small open wounds, one on his ear and a couple other places.  Of course my first assumption was the dog was from one of the idiots that unfortunately live in our area that think nothing of leaving their dogs outside full time.  These same people also often don’t put much priority on making sure their animals are safely contained.

We filled a container with water which the dog drank from several times.  I wanted to give him some treats/food but Cindy didn’t think it was a good idea unless we wanted him to stick around.  If I didn’t have a long list of things I wanted to get done on Saturday, the best option would be to load up the dog in the truck and take him to domestic animal services where his owner could hopefully find him although for the dog’s sake, he may better off being re-homed. Instead we let the pit bull head off with us hoping he knew where home was and was heading that way.  I felt guilty and somewhat irresponsible as we drove off.

So as I mentioned, Cindy has been finding that very large portions of her days are being consumed by chicken maintenance, specifically trying to keep ahead of the baby chicks and the mess they create.  In retrospect, getting 11 chicks was probably a bit more of a bite than we should be chewing.  Part of the problem is space.  In order to clean the chicken tractor properly the chicks can not be in it.  For the last couple weeks we have been using the run portion of the chicken tractor for that purpose, flipped upside down in the yard so we can grab the chickens easier.

Well the unannounced arrival of the pit bull put a scare into Cindy.  She imagined if the baby chickens were outside in the run when the dog showed up.  It could have been potentially disastrous.  Well when we got to Rural King a viable solution was in front of me.  They had a small, put together yourself chicken coop and run on sale.  It was constructed in much the same manner as the original coop I bought off Ebay which I quickly unloaded due to it’s lack of long term viability.  This coop cost less than half of what I paid for the first one and after unboxing and assembling it at home, seemed to actually be built a little better.

At first our thought was to just let the chickens hang in the new secondary coop in the front yard during the day, giving Cindy free access to clean the main coop.  After putting the chicks in there they looked cramped.  Even though the coop is elevated with space underneath, 11 chicks add up quickly.  I then came up with a secondary idea, mating the run from the chicken tractor with the new coop via one of the doors.  When I first mentioned the idea to Cindy she was skeptical but once we worked out a few logistics it actually was pretty cool.  Adding the run into the equation gave the chicks a lot of real estate to run around in and they took advantage of it.  It seems like this will be a good stop gap measure until we are able to do a full merging of the babies with the two adult hens in the backyard.

Saturday night we attended the final home game for the Tarpons which was morphed into a championship game as I described last week due to one of the teams being suspended.  The Tarpons were scheduled to play the Rio Grande Valley Sol, a team from Texas that had the second best record in the league.  For this reason I was very confused when we stepped into the arena and saw RAIDERS listed on the scoreboard as the away team.  When I saw the players from the other team on the field it confirmed that actually the Florida Marine Raiders were here.  What the fck??

So I looked online for some explanation of why the conjured up championship game was changed once again, with no prior notice.  No explanation was available online.  The following morning I saw a post that stated that on Friday the Sol pulled out of the game, citing transportation issues as the problem, probably meaning they had no money to pay for the trip to south Florida.  Since the Raiders are just across Alligator Alley I guess they were the best fit, regardless of their actual placement in the standings.  It was just another comical twist in this season.  The past few years have just been one lol moment after another as the league tries to prop itself up as legitimate where the reality is the entire thing is a house of cards.

The game itself was pretty good in the first half with only one point separating the teams on the scoreboard.  The second half however was all Tarpons with them pulling away for a 30+ point victory.  I drank a lot of beer, four large Budweiser drafts.  As they took affect I found myself less interested in the game and more interested in the man I referred to as “the seat nazi”.  This was the same guy that a couple games ago asked to see our tickets, despite us not being in his assigned section, to make sure we weren’t seat jumpers.

He is older, has a big belly and a scraggly looking goatee.  He peers out thorough his glasses at the sparsely filled seats, looking incessantly for people not following the rules and or sitting in a seat not assigned to them.  Don’t get me wrong, generally speaking I am a fan of rules and in an event where seating is at a premium, people jumping down to better seats is annoying.  But this is a Tarpons football game, 65-75% of the seats were unoccupied.  To me common sense needs to be applied in a balanced manner with the rules.  The seat nazi did not share this belief, repeatedly Cindy and I watched him walk up into the seating area to reprimand seat offenders for no good reason outside of stroking his personal need to wield power upon others.  It just was stupid.

Cindy and I stayed to the very end to watch the Tarpons nail down their “championship” but it sort of rung hollow.  Despite the Tarpons best efforts it didn’t prevent me feeling like it was a fake accomplishment from a league that makes up the rules as they go to compensate for the very shaky financial footer it is built upon.   My post to the Taarpons FB page asking if they planned to be back for 2016 has gone unanswered.  I suspect the silence means Cindy and I have watched the last game in franchise history.  At least it ended on a positive note, sort of.

Sunday morning Cindy and I slept in a bit.  The four beers and getting to bed after midnight lent itself to the late departure from bed.  Sunday was the Naples Fitness Challenge, an event I participated in a few times, including last year as a team effort with Randall and Cindy.   Not even being on site made me feel a bit like a loser and for a period of time made me feel like I should get my ass on the bike or something, despite my still present knee/IT band pain, just to prove a point to noone but myself.  I did not act on that feeling and instead distracted myself with more chores/projects around the house.

I did some work getting the four MyLaps timing boxes configured for real world use.  Before they are put into real world testing I need to set up a practice 5K in the back yard where I totally simulate the steps I will go through on race day.  It’s very important I have that blueprint laid out ahead of time, backed up with real testing of that blueprint to identify flaws before they matter.

I had an unexpected task laid on me when my neighbor asked if I could take a look at her laptop which was not connecting to the internet.  I expected the fix to be easy, instead I was working on it on and off for several hours as I watched Spiderman on tv.  It’s still not fixed. This is the very reason that I avoid working on people’s computers as a favor.  Those favors more often than not translate into hours of frustration for me.

Sunday evening we watched 3 Days to a Kill, what I thought was a Liam Neeson, Taken style of flick, except with the lead role played by Kevin Costner.  It was an odd film.  It did have aspects of a regular action movie but then it also had a slapsticky side with a side order of chick flick.  As a whole the movie was ok but the weird mix kept it from getting higher than a B rating in my book.

Cindy was worn out by the time I got home by chicken chores.  She said she spent roughly two and a half hours cleaning the baby chickens coop, trying to get it as clean as possible.  Of course this is like an egg timer with no bottom, in no time at all the chicks will make their coop a big mess again, it’s just what they do.  Once we are able to at least get the chicken tractor moved outside with them in it the daily cleaning will get a little easier since we can simply pick it up and move it to a clean patch of grass daily.

I told Cindy I would go out and let SOME of the baby chicks out to roam freely under my supervision, something we have done before, mostly with the 5 younger birds.  Well I decided all 11 would appreciate a few minutes of total freedom so I opened the end of the chicken run, giving them an opportunity to stretch their wings, which is exactly what most of them did.  They took turns running, jumping and flapping around the yard.  It was contagious, once one chick started running another 4 or 5 had to join in.

Now of course I was conscious of keeping all the chicks somewhat together and close enough that if there were any predators around I could cut them off.  For the most part they just buzzed around maybe a 50 square foot area and loved every minute of it.  Cindy was not very happy with me for letting all 11 out at once because of safety reasons.  She was afraid some of the chicks, especially the older black ones would try to run away.  None of them did and collecting all 11 to put them back into the main coop wasn’t nearly as challenging as we feared.

This weekend I have a lot to do, as usual.  The list includes the usual suspects but also includes some unusual projects like working on the new timing gear, working on a worm composter, and a few other oddball items.   The main entertainment for the weekend will be catching the Tarpons in their exciting championship game (sarcasm mode).  It very well may be the last time we see them take the field based on the financial realities of minor league arena football.  If so hopefully they can go out with a bang.

Yesterday the 3000 timing chips from MyLaps arrived which meant I could do some more realistic testing of the system last night.  I have the timing box and mat in the dining room.  I had the box of chips on the dining room table when I opened it.  When I turned on the timing box it started making an ear piercing noise, very similar to a smoke detector.  I didn’t know what the f was going on so I turned the timing box off.

At first I wondered if there was some sort of malfunction with the new timing hardware.  Then I realized what I was hearing was the sound of all of the chips in the box being read, which causes the system to emit the tone.  When I moved the box to the far side of the office the noise stopped.  I quickly found the setting to change the volume of the detection tone from the default, ear bleeding high setting, to low.

In my testing I was pretty impressed with the read range of the system.  I had the detection mat in the middle of the dining room.  I had a timing chip on the left side of my desk, some 20 feet away.  All I had to do was wave the chip over my head and it was read by the system, wow.

I had a few hurdles to clear but eventually I was able to get chip reads to go into my results software.  There is a bunch more testing to do.  I will have to rethink the way I do much pretty everything prior to the start of the race.  In the long run I think it will actually be simpler than what I currently have to do.

On the chicken front things have been odd, yet positive.  Yesterday Cindy said Lucy was crowing like rooster for a short period of time which is bizarre.  Obviously we know Lucy is a hen as we have been collecting her eggs for several weeks, yet Cindy said it sounded exactly like a rooster crowing.  The first thought in my head was I hope we did not mistakenly cast off Nona, Kathy, and Curly for rooster crowing.  Perhaps one of them was simply gender confused as well?

The baby chicks hardly look like babies anymore, they are growing so fast.  I never knew that chickens could be so entertaining.  I really enjoy watching them, especially when we allow them to roam around for short periods of time.  They are just funny.  I can only imagine what it will be like to have 13 chickens roaming the backyard on a daily basis.

Lola appears to slowly be acting better.  She is once again holding her wings in a more normal way and whatever growth that was one her eyelid has mysteriously disappeared.  Cindy and I are hoping that her malady was all parasite related instead of an avian STD.

I had a lot of things I wanted to get done on Saturday, so much that I pulled out one of my infamous lists to keep me on track.  One of the first things I wanted to get done was giving the 11 chicks the Marek’s vaccine we bought online.  Both Cindy and I were nervous about the process since we never did it before but I had a step by step guide I printed off a website to help us out.  The process of preparing a vaccine was not what I expected, where you are injecting stuff between two vials, the actual vaccine and a jar of dilutant to make the finished product.

We set up a table in the garage along with the chicken run to put the chicks into after we vaccinated each one.  Cindy did most of the dirty work, my primary responsibility was to try to hold the chicks still while Cindy injected .2 ML of the vaccine into the pinched skin on the back of their necks.  Of course the chicks were not big fans of the process but for the most part it went well.  We had all 11 chicks done in around 20 minutes.  We now can only hope the vaccine does it’s job and helps the birds live a Mareks-free life.

To be more efficient we had Cindy do a Rural King run while I walked around and weed whacked the property.  She also did a thorough cleaning of the chicken tractor while we had the chicks in the front yard in the chicken run.  As the chicks get older and older, clean up of their living quarters is a more and more steady requirement.  I do not think once we move them outside to live in the chicken tractor in a week or so that all 11 birds will be able to live in there for very long. It’s just going to be too little space for too many birds.

We pulled the 5 younger chicks out for a short period of time and let them run around free under our close supervision.  The older birds bully the younger ones so it was nice for them to be able to do their own thing without the black chicks pecking them on the rear end.

Lola still has been pretty static in her condition, not acting significantly better or worse over the weekend.  Lucy still is acting just fine.  She wowed Cindy and I on Saturday when she managed to get all the way to the top perch in the chicken run, right below the roof.

I feel bad for Lucy.  Because Lola’s energy level is not good we have been leaving both of them inside the coop/run for longer periods of the day instead of letting them free range all day long.  I feel bad restricting Lucy but I would feel equally bad for Lola if she was stuck in the coop while Lucy ran around unencumbered.

On Saturday evening Cindy and I went to see San Andreas.  As we approached the theater we drove into a torrential downpour.  I dropped Cindy off closer to the ticket window and then parked the Prius in the back.  Despite the rain still falling at a downpour rate, I walked the couple hundred yards to the theater without even a hint of a slight jog.  I just don’t care much about getting wet.  By the time I met up with Cindy my white long sleeve shirt was drenched.  I surely would have won a wet t-shirt contest.

Cindy bought the tickets while I was walking up.  She told me that the staff warned her ahead of time that the AC was malfunctioning in the theater the movie was playing in.  Well I figured it was a good thing that I was soaked, perhaps it would help me stay more comfortable during the two hours.  It was warm in there but not unbearable.  It’s the second time we have had the AC in a theater at Coconut Pointe go out, the first time was REALLY noticeable.

The movie was full of absolutely A+ level visuals.  The level and detail of destruction depicted in the movie was perhaps worth the price of admission just to see in large screen, 3D, immersive format.  Of course the rest of the movie could not be all A+, disaster movies usually put so much emphasis on how things look that how things feel often gets secondary attention.  The movie is filled with situation after situation with outcomes that are just not unlikely, they are absolutely beyond the realm of the remotest of possibilities.  Sure, it’s a movie so you expect that to a degree but this seemed sort of ridiculous at times.  Despite the plot’s deviation into crazy town overall the movie was entertaining enough overall to earn a B+ rating.  If you are up in the air over a desire to move to California anytime soon I would suggest you don’t go see this movie. 🙂

Sunday morning we picked up the dogs early for a one night stay over.  After we got back Cindy and I did a very different type of exercise, something that used to be a 3-4 times a week thing for me, practice volleyball.  The reason this idea came to us was an email I got late in the week about the the beach vb series I used to play in making a stop in Fort Myers next weekend.  I mentioned the idea to Cindy of her and I playing co-ed doubles, despite Cindy having no beach volleyball experience and me not touching a volleyball for well over two years.  If I was going to consider this I would need to try to give Cindy a crash course in the sport.

On our runs through the nearby gated development I had noticed they had a basic beach volleyball court.  We drove down to convenience store, parked and then walked the roughly half mile to the court.  Not only was Cindy’s lack of vb experience a concern, my general poor condition of my joints was another issue.  My right knee has been feeling generally poor for a couple months, running, jumping and diving in sand is definitely not going to help matters.  But regardless of these issues it didn’t hurt to get out there and see how it goes.

Cindy is athletic, has good hand eye coordination and is a hustler by nature, three attributes that would give her a headstart.  We went through a number of drills including passing, setting, serving and hitting.  Although her technique needs work, for it being the first time on a beach court I thought she did very well.  My volleyball skills needed a bunch of WD 40 as well.  Towards the end of our practice I was feeling a little better but I have no doubt in a game situation I would be making a lot of unforced errors.

Cindy was surprised how hard she was working.  She was soaked with sweat and breathing heavy early on, aided by the fact that she insisted on running after most balls that went rolling off the court.  We finished up the workout with pass, set hit, drills.  We actually had a handfull of them that went like the should, with the ball getting driven relatively hard to the other side of the court.

Cindy’s body was not used to the impact of a relatively heavy beach volleyball on her forearms and hands.  She had clear bruises all over the place.  In addition she was hurting in various other places.  Even if you are in great shape, volleyball makes you utilize your joints and muscles in ways that are normally foreign.  I was feeling it as well although not quite as severely as Cindy was.  At this point I don’t know that jumping headfirst into a tournament would be a wise move without a more gradual practice curve leading to game conditions.

Early Sunday afternoon I tasked myself with giving Nicki a haircut with the clippers. Ali said she was shedding like crazy and her coat was looking very shaggy so I figured it made sense.  In the past Cindy has been the one trimming Nicki, this was my first time doing it solo.  I was out there buzzing away for close to 45 minutes I bet and could have spent another 30 probably.  Nicki was unwilling to stand for the process so I had to do the best I could with her laying down on each side.  When I was done there was a massive halo of black fur surrounding us.

Ever since Friday when I stopped at Sam’s Club for a few things I have been fighting an impulse buy for a 4K tv.  They had a Vizio 70″ UHDTV set there that I was interested in.  Although not cheap by any means, it was a good value for the money.  I had only a couple reservations.  The idea of losing 3 inches of diagonal size (current Mitsu DLP is 73 inches), seemed like a compromise, even though a 70″ tv is still quite huge in most people’s eyes.

My other concern was buying it at a place like Sam’s versus through my preferred retailer, Amazon.  Buying it through Amazon would allow me to both using my accumulated points to knock down my out of pocket cost AND collect triple points on the purchase to be used in the future.  These two things add up to over $350 in savings.  On the downside, it doesn’t allow me to scratch that impulse itch where you have the item RIGHT NOW.  I would have to wait until June 8th for it to show up.

I got close enough to pulling the trigger that I texted Cindy, asking her if I should do it or not.  After all I certainly don’t need to do it.  My old DLP Mitsubishi tv still works fine, the Vizio would just work/look better.  I didn’t hear back from Cindy before I checked out with my grocery items so the impulse was derailed for now.

Well I still had the idea rolling around in my head most of the weekend.  I texted Ali and asked her if she would want the 73 inch tv for her place since she has more than enough room to accommodate it.  She hasn’t let me know yet if she wants it.  I am basically letting her decision dictate what I am going to do.  If she wants the Mitsubishi I will pull the trigger, if not I will look at as a reason to just stay with what I have.

Here is the TV I am considering in case you are curious.

Yesterday I was out at our annual tax certificate sale where people can “buy” certificates for taxes that have gone unpaid.  It is a way to make a quick 5% on your money at a minimum and a way to potentially get a leg up on buying a delinquent property down the road if the taxes remain unpaid.  The event is held auction style with bidders holding up their bidder number plates.  It works in the opposite direction of a conventional auction however.  The numbers, which are the interest rate the bidder will get, start at 18 and work their way down, all the way to .25%

My role there was just to ensure the hardware/networking portion of the sale went smoothly which it did outside a few brief wifi hiccups.  The rest of the time was just sitting around basically, watching bidder cards flash up and down.  If the boredom wasn’t bad enough, the deep freeze temps they had the AC set at in the auditorium left me chilled to the bone.  Thankfully it is only a once a year event.

I am already emotionally attached to all 11 of the new chicks we have been raising for the past month and a half but I definitely have a favorite, Pumpkin.  Pumpkin is the runt of all of the chicks but she also is one of the most docile/friendly.  When we open the door to the coop she will come right over, hoping Cindy or I will pick her up.  The other day we almost had a baby chick mutiny on our hands when I took Pumpkin out and allowed her to eat exclusive of the other 10.  She seemed so content. It really is interesting just how diverse the personalities of the birds are, something the average, non-chicken owning person would never realize.

The baby chicks are becoming more and more adult in their habits.  Last night was the first time all 11 of them headed up top to roost for the evening together.  A few of them had been doing it for a few days but now it apparently is a total group effort.  Of course they are all growing rapidly, we have to come up with a time line as to when we can move them out of the garage and into the back yard.

There are further complications to that timeline because of Lola’s ailment.  Even though the vet said she has parasites, I am not 100% sure that she doesn’t also have Mareks disease.  My reading about the virus makes it seem it is EXTREMELY easy for bird to get the disease.  A common practice at hatcheries is to immunize baby chicks as soon as they are hatched against Mareks.

We have been trying to find out if the chicks Rural King sells are immunized.  The staff there has proven to be pretty clueless for the most part regarding background of their chicks however last night Cindy was able to get the name of the hatchery in Michigan they get them from.  She is calling them today to find out definitively if the chicks are immunized or not.  If they are not, we have 1000 doses of Mareks vaccine in the fridge that we will be administering to the chicks this weekend.  Unfortunately, the longer you wait to immunize them, the more susceptible they are to getting the disease but it’s still worth doing obviously.  It takes 10 days after the vaccine for the immunity to be developed so that means we should keep them garage bound at least until that amount of time passes.  Of course the logistics of vaccinating 11 high energy, squirmy, baby chickens will be quite challenging and surely require two people.

This weekend has a lot of little to do’s in it which will be peppered with lots of chicken care I am sure.  It almost feels like cheating having another weekend after only three days of work but it’s a situation I could certainly get accustomed to.

Despite recently passing 150k miles on the odometer Cindy’s Prius is still rolling along at a very economical pace.  The car still drives like new, looks great and can still average 50mpg with hybrid sensitive driving habits.  It’s a seriously awesome vehicle.

If you aren’t a Stern fan the next few paragraphs will mean nothing to you, feel free to jump ahead.

So I have been a Stern show listener since the late 90’s.  I jumped right on board and started paying my monthly fee to Sirius when he left terrestrial radio back in 2006, I enjoyed the show that much.  The first few years on satellite were awesome.  Being freed from the constraints of regular radio resulted in some incredibly different, creative and entertaining content.

The start of the decline was when Stern announced he was no longer doing 5 days a week, the show would now only run Mondays-Thursdays plus the nearly two months of vacation they take on top of that.  When that first reduction in content was announced I recall ranting about it pretty hard.  However upon reflection the reality was Howard was approaching 60 years old and he certainly has earned the right to work as much or as little as he wants.

Well the last 3-4 years have seen a further reduction in the content being provided by the two Stern channels on Sirius.  The list of cuts is pretty staggering.  Almost all of the one off shows that used to run on 101 are gone.  Instead they have filled 101 with almost nothing but reruns, except for the occasional Riley Martin show or Jay Thomas (whom I find un-listenable)

Howard TV, the video part of the show that provided the visual portion of the entertainment experience was shut down with little to no explanation on air from Howard.  The departure of the tv content meant the departure of a number of people whose on air personalities were entertaining and interesting as well.  Despite my dislike of his political views, I really miss hearing Scott DePace on air among others.

The Howard News team has been slowly pruned back as well, their staff and on air minutes have dwindled down to next to nothing.  John Leiberman, who is extremely good, had his own short daily show that also vanished for some unknown reason.  Lisa G, another long time news crew member departed recently, again with little to no on air discussion about the reasons.

Finally, Howard trimmed yet another day off his broadcasting schedule, now only doing live shows Monday-Wednesday.  Having only 3 days has had some additional side effects besides the obvious shortage of live content.  The shows have become overly interview-centric.  Howard is a good interviewer and for the most part the interviews are interesting but they take up way too much show time now that there are only 60% of the broadcast hours there used to be.  The best part of the show was the unscripted interactions between Howard and the staff.  There just is not much time to allow those type of interactions to develop when you have two or three celebrity interviews lined up every show.

Speaking of celebrity interviews, they made another recent change that made no sense.  In an effort to offer fans at least a little more live content the channels put on The Wrap Up Show where topics from that day’s show are discussed.  The Wrap Up Show used to be a round table of various Stern staffers discussing/arguing various points.  It was funny and entertaining to hear the staff be able to expand on their points of view while not being under the ADD arm of Howard who runs out of patience quickly when anyone other than himself is talking.

Some genius totally scrapped that format.  Now the Wrap Up Show consists of Gary and John talking to random “celebrities”, most of which the audience knows little about, each day about the show.  It totally removed any enjoyment I got from TWUS.  I have no interest in hearing some 3rd party I know little to nothing about who happens to like the show talk about it.  Give me more Sal, Ronnie, Richard, JD, and the rest of the back office crew.  Even on their worst day they are funnier than what TWUS has been putting on air nowadays.

There are many more examples of subtractions from the show (why no discussion of Tim Sabean leaving, interns, Jackie, Bubba) I could lay out but you get the drift.

Howard is approaching the end of his second 5 year Sirius contract and as he usually does, he has been waffling about his intentions to sign back up.  He is now something like 61 years old so it would seem to most that would be a good time to call it quits.  I am starting to come to that same conclusion but not because I don’t think Howard still has “it”.  He still has all the tools/staff at his disposal to make great content.  But if his intentions are to become more and more like a dirtier version of Barbara Walters while pulling back on all the other parts of the show that brought us all so many laughs in the past I am just not that interested.  It’s frustrating to me that despite his clear intent to produce less live content personally, Howard seems unwilling to let other members of his staff step in to fill the void.  Man I would love to see/hear a Sal and Richard show.

One much shorter show related rant has to do with Survivor, a show I still enjoy and had it’s 30th season finale on Wednesday.  I don’t understand why they decided to make the finals of the show three players instead of two several years ago.  It dilutes the ending of the show and pretty much everytime, one of the three people in the finals gets zero votes.  I would love to know how the producers of the show think 3>2 in this scenario.  I can’t imagine any explanation that makes sense.

Last night we did the big integration of the two sets of chicks.  When I got home Cindy was inside the chicken run that has been in the garage.  She was trying to attach some plastic netting to allow us to flip the run upside down and use the netting as a retractable roof.  She had been working hard in cramped spaces and was not having fun.

Perhaps that is why she did not immediately warm up to my alternative suggestion of carting the main chicken tractor up to the garage and letting all 11 chicks hang out there.  After all they will be living in the tractor for around another month yet outdoors so I figured it would be good to get them used to it.  Like I said Cindy at first was skeptical since it was not quite as long as the chicken run.  I told her I was positive it would be enough space for the chicks plus it has the deluxe second level coop accommodations they can hang in as well.

I carted the coop up to the garage from the back yard and we worked on getting it ready.  Once it was set up we first let the older chicks in.  They have been in the chicken tractor outside a few times so it wasn’t a big deal to them.  When we added the younger chicks in things got interesting.  At first we were very surprised, a couple of the younger chicks were actually acting aggressively towards the older, bigger ones.  Later on some of the older chicks were picking on the younger birds.   Despite the squabbles I thought it actually could be more dramatic.  All of the chicks shared food/water side by side at one point or another so long term I think they will be fine.  At this point there seems to be a clear light chick/dark chick segregation going on.  The five youngsters and six older chicks mostly group up with their own flock.  Cindy and I can’t wait till it’s one big happy feathered family.

I am looking forward to my four day long Memorial Day weekend.  Having 4 days off gives me time to get stuff done and still be able to stretch out and smell the roses, or play WoW.

For years the sliding door that leads out to the pool area has been a sticky pain in the ass.  Pulling it open requires full engagement of your arm and back muscles.  Now of course the cause of this are worn out rollers.  In the past I never was motivated enough to do a proper fix, which would be roller replacement.  Instead I would just shoot the rollers with WD-40 which offered some short term relief but long term just added to the problem as the WD40 gave dirt and sand more opportunity to adhere to the rollers.

Well I have finally decided I want to fix the problem the correct way by replacing the rollers.  I looked online and found there are several different designs of sliding doors and the rollers they utilize.  I popped one of my sliders out last night with the hope of pulling one roller out so we could take it to Lowes to match it up.  Well I was unsuccessful in my initial attempt to extract a roller.  The design of my slider door requires me to pop the lower frame where the roller is housed off to gain access.  Despite having both frame bolts out I could not get the frame to pop loose despite using some considerable impact.  I decided to take a timeout and attempt extraction again tonight after I do some more research.

Cindy spent a good portion of yesterday giving Lola the chicken equivalent to a spa day, trying to address her health issues.  When I got home Cindy went out with me to check on Lola again.  It was amazing just how much Lola allows Cindy to handle her now.  It’s literally like she was a dog or a cat.  Lola actually appears to want to be held and petted at this point.

Seeing this sort of connection with an animal that the majority of the population sees as little more than a food source was touching.  It also reminded me why I no longer partake in the cruel business of mass meat production where animals like this are routinely treated to an existence of nothing but suffering.

Tonight we will be deviating from our normal pizza and dvr Friday night ritual that Cindy and I enjoy.  Our next door neighbors daughter is doing a vow renewal ceremony at the beach followed by a reception at our neighbors house.  Since we now have a total of 16 animals currently under our care we likely won’t be partying late into the night.

Speaking of the animals, Lola has become quite the sweetheart.  When we got our second set of chickens, which included Lola, she was the most skittish of them all, scurrying away whenever we made even the slightest move in her direction.

Cindy has had to do some crop massaging on Lola the last week or so which required Cindy to catch and hold her.  It seems like since this has occurred Lola now fully trusts both of us and makes little to no fuss when we pick her up and hold her.  This morning I opened the run to let them out and Lola almost immediately walked over and placed herself right between my feet.  I reached down and picked her up.  She seemed perfectly content as I rubbed her head and neck.

It’s a bit startling just how light she is.  When you pick Lola up she almost feels like she is hollow despite her average size.  She is literally all feathers.

Cindy has been very busy maintaining the two sets of baby chicks.  It’s a lot of work that there is no way we could have handled if Cindy was still working an 8-5 job.  Despite the labor Cindy is very content caring for the chicks, she just loves them. The week older chicks seem very happy living in the garage for now inside the chicken tractor run which gives them tons of space to run around and act crazy.  Hopefully soon we can let the younger chicks mingle with the older ones once the size difference is smaller.

This weekend we have things to do, a Tarpons game to attend and chickens/dogs to care for.  It should make for a full slate.