ErkkilaDotOrg

Another beautiful weekend. I’ve been walking with my mom every morning for a week now (around the property, about 45 minutes); normally during the week I then start work. Today instead I threw together a quiche and am waiting for it to be done now. Later it’ll be hanging out in the barn with the chickens and maybe a little bit of that Japanese candy (Pocky, Morinaga Hi-Chew, various gummies, Shigekix) I got from Asian Food Grocer, reading, enjoying the cooler weather. Yay! (Wish fall weekends were longer). Incidentally, that’s Red at left with his new, improved plumage (if only the Reds would stop picking at his neck…)

Parents were up weekend before last. We watched the birds and had mexican for dinner. Yummy!!. One of the new pullets made a mad dash for freedom while they were here, we chased it into the spruce out front, then up to the house, and then it bolted into the woods ;p. Once a chicken is spooked they tend to just shutdown and not move so we did the best thing and ignored it until dusk and sure enough it came out looking for her friends.

Chopped and burned a ton of wood and brush (damn ninja epe update).

Hung out with Willy!

Fortunately, this weekend has somewhat made up for the indignities of last week (see post of mammography)…

It must be fall:

• Honey crisp apples were available at The Apple Shed, along with fresh donuts, cider, and those dried bunches of indian corn to hang on your front door
• Red (rooster) is finally getting pretty feathers again after getting them all plucked out by our insane hens all last winter
• Lots of things to burn…especially after the clearing we’ve paid Mike Means to do. Rather alarmingly a lot, as Pee found out after lighting one huge pile on fire and having to tromp through the pine trees stomping on little smoldering spots started by floating leaf ash. But the wood smoke added tremendously to the general atmosphere of fall. Along with what must’ve been a large amount of carbon. :}
• Dark chocolate peppermint Starbucks Frappuccinos in bottles (whoot!), a seasonal flavor
• bright blue skies
• slight coloring on the trees, although they’re pretty crispy from the drought conditions this summer
• a new batch of easter pullets almost ready to start laying…just wish they’d hang out someplace other than the barn for now (poop machines)

We would’ve liked lower temperatures (60s F would have been nice), but otherwise, not bad.

Watched “Who Am I?” (Jacki Chan) yesterday was pretty good.

“Might have to buy it” good.

Last week I had my first mammogram (routine for age 35, if you had a family member with breast cancer–maternal grandFATHER for me, oddly enough). Now I know why women all over the world have to be encouraged so hard to get them done.

I’m not terrifically well endowed in that area to begin with. It’s the one part of me that hasn’t gained significant weight since high school. Then, apparently, I got scheduled for exactly the wrong time of the month. I avoided caffeine for the two weeks prior, but I don’t see how it could possibly have been that much more painful had I been taking it. I think it’s an old wives tale, personally, that caffeine makes mammograms more painful…I think it has far more to do with size and time of the month.

Now picture taking some soft part of your body and clamping it in a vice, tightening it down until the pain is such that, had you done such a thing accidentally, you probably would have headed straight for the emergency room. Which was ironic, since I was about two doors down from one. Now repeat three times. Good thing for guys they don’t use this method for testicular cancer (I hope, anyway. ;)

The one bit of good news, the booby prize, as it were, is that they can now release the machine remotely as soon as they’re done taking the image. Must have sucked when you had to stand there while they walked back and uncranked the machine.

I don’t want to discourage people from having mammograms, because prevention has saved a lot of lives. But damn! I wish some other method were as cheap and effective, but not as painful. I’m glad I’m not due for another one until age 40.

BTW, it was negative. Negative in the sense of lack of bad stuff, not in the sense of being sick. It’s almost like a double negative (I don’t got no cancer). I’m reading Guy Deutscher’s ” The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention”, which is making me more sensitive to why we say things certain ways.

Although I’m going to be cursing your name for a few years for not finishing before you kicked, just ignore that part ;).

Announced on his Blog .

-pee

OK, so back around Easter we wanted a chick to stick under broody Squeak, so we went to Country Max during chick week, only it turned out you can’t buy fewer than 6 chicks in New York state. So, we kept one and gave 5 to Jon (one of our hunting friends). Poor Bubble didn’t make it to summer; a fox got her. But Country Max chicken karma came back to haunt us; Jon decided to give away all his barnyard poultry and we took back the 5 pullets, all Rhode Island Reds. Hopefully we’ll have some pictures soon. We’re lucky he caught them! His other chickens roost WAYYYY up in pine trees, but these pullets don’t fly much. Jkk got lucky and caught three ducks for his flock; we talked our way out of taking any ducks or turkeys, although they’re pretty adorable.

With any luck they should be laying within a month, if they’re not already! And with more luck we won’t lose any more to foxes this year.

We stuck them in the pen and at first, all they did was eat wood chips until they found the plate with the pellets. First one, then two, then all of them began pecking furiously at the pile of food and making little happy noises. Chickens are so freakin’ cute. I’m finding it hard to prepare whole chickens even from the store these days (eating our own would be out of the question), although I can still eat it if it’s just chunks in something. No pigs or cows for us I think.

I was never nuts about birds, but now when I watch movies or TV shows with chickens we always have to go back and freeze frame and try to identify breeds.

Forgot to mention we finally got some rain yesterday, we needed it. Was a nice day long soaker too, barely any run off which is almost suprising considering how hard packed the ground was. Fields are greening up already, lawn will probably take a few days more to crawl out of the dormant state. Guess I’ll need to gas up the mowers.

We have a contractor (Mike Means) up doing some clearing work on the field north of the house, every time he finishes for the day we scurry out and review the damage to mother nature while cackling gleefully. He’s done a great job so far I’m anxious to see the results once we collect/burn off all the scrub and get some grasses planted. I’m looking to find some more or less native, deep rooted grasses to plan there under the remaining trees, then get mowing down to 2-3 times a year with a brush hog for the majority of it. Watching the big front shovel with a “thumb” attachment is mesmerizing.

The 5-6 grape vines we marginally take care of delivered a whopper of a crop this year, Erica and her mom spent the weekend making jelly (or grape sauce if it doesn’t set up!) and juice. The juice is incredibly tasty by itself, but my preference is to mix it 1/2 and 1/2 with some diet orange sunkist.

Found an old steal/iron cap on what looks like a well/spring head down in the western ravine this weekend, uncovered it while cutting a few cherries back so we could get the brush mower through it. I have no idea what it really is or what to make of it. I think it’s relatively new though, or at least repaired recently.

We kicked squeak off her golf ball about a week ago, 3 months being broody is quite enough. The other chickens are kicking the crap out of her, but other then the pecking order working it self out she’s looking much better. One sure sign is that here comb (the wiggly bit on the top of a chickens head) goes from a pale while/pink to a glowing red as she spends more time being active a chicken type things. I also claim that it grows bigger, but the jury is out on that.

Upgraded to apache 2.2 this morning, some damage still lingering here and there, i’ll fix as I find it.

A few weeks ago I submitted a contact lens invoice to BlueCross/BlueShield (Rochester area). On Friday I got it back in the mail with a letter that said ‘illegible attachment’, along with a copy of the form I submitted and the offending attachment.

It was illegible all right. It was also not my attachment. It was a form from Westfall Dental showing services for someone else.

Nice to know BC/BS could’ve sent my invoice to someone else, maybe Westfall Dental. Maybe they sent them the reason *my* form was being denied (as I know *my* invoice was not illegible).

-epe