News and Updates

1. So the frantic period of the spring has now come to something of a close.  There are still way too many things to do – honestly, I don’t know anyone with free time anymore, and ain’t that just life in the New Gilded Age? – but none of them are the sorts of things that keep me up at night worrying about how exactly I’m going to finish them before the deadline.  So that’s a plus.

2. I have a backlog of things to post here, as you would expect from a week spent running around doing the sorts of things that I’d like to talk about.  Many of them come with pictures.  How many of them I will actually get around to posting is an interesting question, or at least it’s interesting to me.

3. The house is no longer full of chickens.  I spent most of my Sunday converting a dairy stall into a chicken coop, which is fairly high up on the list of Sentences I Never In My Life Thought Would Fall From My Lips.  Lauren’s chickens had gotten big enough that they were starting to smell like, well, a barn full of chickens, and even Sully and Rosey (the two bantams) were too big for their Rubbermaid bins anymore.  Our friend Lois said we could put them in her barn, so we sheathed a dairy stall in chicken wire to keep out the weasels and foxes and then left the two big Cochins and the biggest Australorp (seriously) there for a couple of days to make sure it all worked.  I came back from an event last night to find that the other six had made the trip as well.  You know, it does seem a bit strange not to have the living room full of clucking noises anymore.

4. It is time to mow the lawn.  It is also 40F and raining here in Our Little Town.  These two things may not be compatible.

5. Shouldn’t it be warmer in May?  I seem to recall something about it being spring.  Hell, it’s only five weeks from being officially summer.  Not that I am complaining too much – you can always add clothing but the reverse is not necessarily true, especially in this country.

6. I have gotten almost no reading done over the last week, and that feels very strange.  I am looking forward to having an open book in front me again.  I don’t know how the average American can stand not reading books.  Add that to the list of things that marks me as not really fitting in with my own culture.

7. My office is an explosion of paper.

8. One of the benefits of having your physician give you attitude about the general state of your health is that it does inspire you to try to fix that.  So far I’m down about 15 pounds from where I was in January, which is a good thing.  Soon I will be Ripped and Buff, or at least Less Lumpish, which I’ll take.

9. At some point Midgie will learn not to sleep on the landing at the top of the steps.  How many more boots to the head that will take is an open question.

10. We postponed Mother’s Day here because neither of us had time for it last Sunday.  The original plan was to move it to this Sunday, but that may not be feasible either.  Eventually we may merge it with Father’s Day and just have a general Parent Day.  Life is easier when the holidays move to accommodate your schedule.

11. Happy Horton Day!  Go out and be nice to someone.