ErkkilaDotOrg

We’ve had 2 interesting failures with our new dvd player, and recent dvd releases.

Sony DVP-CX995V + “Stranger Than Fiction” == “Reading -> power off”

Sony DVP-CX895V + “Stranger Than Fiction” == “Plays”

(for 2 different disks, one from amazon, one from netflix, a Sony pictures release…)

Sony DVP -CX995V + “The Holiday” == “Reading ->power off”

Sony DVP-CX895V + “The Holiday” == “Plays”

(Also a sony pictures release…)

The DVP-CX995V also has this annoying quirk, whereby if you turn it on, it turns it self off every other time ;). It didn’t bother me at first, but now… it’s irritating.

Debt free, baby.

We could only show 90 days tops, but we went from $81k to 0 in about a year (stock sale, annual bonus, more than half our income, plus some proceeds from the sale of a relative’s house).

Now we can buy another truck. And alternative electric sources. And finish the barn’s 2nd floor. And a chicken cam. And a new coop. And new siding. And a monolithic dome. And our outrageous property taxes. Er…

We never intended to try hatching eggs, mostly because excess roosters means culling, if you can’t find a home for them. :( But then a number of things happened:

• Squeak gets picked on by all the other birds and looks terrible, and always ends up injured if we keep her in the coop. She is living in a cage in the kitchen until the chickens can be outside more (giving her escape room)
• She has been broody for about a week, not laying eggs and not budging from the nestbox (except to eat once and to lay down a gigantic barn-burner)
• One of the guinea hens started laying last week, unexpectedly (we didn’t expect any til summer)
• You can’t get guineas sexed, so even if we were to buy from a hatchery we’d get a straight run
• We had hoped to get a few more guineas, but the minimum hatchery order is usually 30 keets and we don’t want that many; neither does anyone we know

We waited until there were 5 eggs (after eating the first 2), storing them on a shelf in the TV room, then stuck them under Squeak tonight. She seemed surprised but delighted by this turn of events, clucking and looking underneath herself, then shifting them around as we slipped each egg under her chest.

We have low expectations of getting keets or maybe guins. Red enthusiastically mates with the guineas, but hybrids have a low hatching or survival rate. Meanwhile, Handlebah (the guinea cock) is enthusiastic yet ineffective with the hens, usually running at them full speed and then stopping just short, and nothing else. Not apparently a hen’s idea of romance.

Assuming any do hatch, they’re due right around Easter. Even if nothing hatches, we hope not to get rotten eggs breaking open before them. Guinea eggshells are incredibly thick, making them hard to candle but hopefully less likely to break prematurely. Even if we get no keets, at least Squeaky gets to sit on some eggs for awhile.

From Phoenix:

• Red Raptor from RockBottom: Good
• Seeing long lost cow-orkers: Awesome
• Asian restaurants that smell like zoo: bad
• Food from Roys Hawaiian: Over priced crap
• Flying: so damn boring =/
• $10 for a bagel and a drink in CHI: lol crap!

From Home:

• Marie Antoinette: Crap
• Hell Boy Sword of Storms:weird/ok
• Comrade Criminal: good
• Paying off the Mortgage 20+ years early: excellent
• Guinea fowl eggs: unexpected