Constant, evil laughter. The kind of laughter that possessed toys in horror movies have, when they come to life and try to kill you.
Category Archives: Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters
Beginnings and ends
I still cannot figure out why, with London only five hours ahead of us, NBC couldn’t show the opening ceremonies live. Tape delayed wasn’t terrible, but the talking heads talked way too much, and the ad-fest was annoying. Still, there were some rather amusing moments (the Queen and James Bond), some rather geeky moments (Sir Tim Berners-Lee), and some great visuals (young athletes lighting the cauldron, which itself formed from 200 individual petals, and the shot of the Olympic rings from the ISS). So begin the Games. In this day and age, almost every sport will get television time, even if those times are rather weird and on the oddball channels. How often do we get to see archery or fencing or competitive shooting here? The fact that these will be on at all will make hunting them down worthwhile.
Ends: one of the chickens needs to be dispatched, so mom tells me. She – the chicken, not mom – is laying about under the palmetto bushes, not going for treats, and it appears she’s on her way out. The last time one got this way, it was somewhat prolonged, since we didn’t know what the hell was going on with it. Now that we’ve seen it before, we know it’s unlikely she’ll recover from whatever it is – old age, perhaps – and it’s better to take care of her now instead of allowing her to slowly starve to death, or suffocate because she gets crop-bound. Later this morning, I’ll go dig a hole, then take up the ailing girl, talk to her a bit, and make it as quick as possible. Then I’ll return her to the soil to join the girls who preceded her. It’s a bit sad, but it is truly the cycle of life on the ranch.
A scan a day keeps the doctor away
Maybe not every day. That could get tedious very quickly. This morning, two CT scans, with contrast – the contrast courtesy of iodine they shoot through an IV into you, which rapidly spreads and makes you feel like you’re about to piss yourself. While that’s coursing through you, they slide you back into the CT for more pictures. Lucky me, I got toe do the contrast twice: once for the chest, and once for the head and neck. Fun stuff. Even more fun is that they didn’t put the IV into the crook of my arm, but slightly below it. I now have quite the knot there, it’s already started to bruise, and it hurts. A lot. The price of going through tests to make sure no growths are lurking about anyway, I suppose.
Today was spasm day, thanks to the combination of bouncing around on the tractor yesterday, and the raising of my arms above my head while lying on the table for the CT scans. As soon as I pulled my left arm up above my head, I could feel them starting, and they haven’t let up. That, as they say, is what the drugs are for, and I gave in and took some to calm this down so I could move. No workout today, alas.
My sister arrived from Illinois in a sneak attack visit with her dogs. She’ll be staying with my other sister, so there won’t be as much worry about Einstein and his distaste for other dogs invading my space, although I have to say he was better behaved this time, and didn’t actually attack either of the visiting dogs when my sister got to the house. Maybe he’s realized that those two dogs both outweigh him by a lot and that they’re much larger than he is. Or maybe he just didn’t fee as threatened by them this time. Whatever the reason, things were just fine. I made lime and cilantro chicken for dinner, and we had fresh corn on the cob and squash baked with parm-reg. Not a bad little summer meal. Next up: seafood feast, since my sister now lives in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t get seafood as much as she would like up there.
Random note to the people who made the ourtime.com commercials that appear from time to time on my tv while I’m watching rugby or shows about stupid people (“World’s Dumbest…”): if you’re going to have people giving testimonials about meeting people through your service, it would be best if they didn’t sound like they were standing and talking in a gigantic cavern. The sound on those needs a ton of work.
Insanity: Holding Pattern
Another day without a workout. One good thing: a visit with the ENT today, who gave an all clear: everything looks good, feels good (no lumps or anything in my tongue, mouth, or neck that he could feel). I have two CT scans on the 2nd, and I’m hopeful those will come back clear as well. We’re still on a 6-month rotation for visits to the various doctors and for scans, and maybe next year we can get back to yearly.
Today, though, more pain from the dental work and a couple of teeth that will be the next two to be pulled. The jarring from the jumping is a killer. So, new plan: restart on Sunday to give it a couple more days to calm down.
In the meantime, we’re still watching the floodwaters recede, slowly but surely, from the two feet or so that dropped in when Debby did Jacksonville. The bees survived high and dry, thanks to good placement of the hive. The chickens…well, chickens are not that bright, so they looked like drowned rats for a few days since they were not always smart enough to get in the coop and out of the rain.
The garden: the garlic has had it. After the fast, high heat, then a lot of rain at the beginning of the month, and now this rain, a lot of it is rotted. There may be some that can be salvaged, but for the most part, I’m counting it as a loss. Next season, I won’t be planting nearly as much, and only ordered a total of 20 pounds from Big John’s. This will give us a lot more room for tomatoes, once the frames are reworked. The remaining tomatoes out front are likely dead now, and the cukes were pulled two weeks ago after the first rounds of rain killed them off.
Looking forward to a reboot of the garden!
RIP Henrietta
Once upon a time we had three chicks that grew into happy, fat chickens. One flew the coop, never to be seen again. One was killed by an unknown four-legged assailant. The last one, Henrietta, chattered and ran around the yard, living her carefree life, happy enough to peck and scratch and eat treats we brought out for her. Over the past few days, we noticed a change in her: she wasn’t running for treats, and mostly she was sitting under the palmettos or under the rack in the coop, not wandering the yard. Yesterday, she was panting and not moving much at all. Mom and I were out looking at the girls (since we added more chickens to keep her company the past two years) and a storm blew up. I gathered her up from under the palmettos since she wasn’t moving to get out of the storm and took her into the coop, then out of there to the back porch into a box lined with a towel. We knew she was on the way out, so we made her comfortable and kept an eye on her. Last night, she finally stopped breathing and this morning I buried her out on the edge of the property where I’ve buried two other chickens.
So long, Henrietta. You were definitely the favored one amongst the girls.
Cute overload
The bulk of my day has been spent sitting with my laptop, working away, watching various shows on Animal Planet involving cute baby animals. Not a terrible way to spend the day, even with the occasional interruption from someone who wants to know why a brand spanking new domain isn’t visible everywhere on the web, or someone who wants to know why we’re still charging her for a hosting account (that’s still active on the servers) instead of magically knowing that she allowed her domain to lapse so it’s no longer visible. Yes, lady, we always know which of the bazillion domains in the network are active or not at any given moment.
Nailed the landing
The pool? Just the top of the outside trash can, covered in pollen and dirt. What’s odd is that there are no marks of a reposition to jump off – apparently he (she?) just took off from this position.
I heard
you had treats.
Office help
From time to time, you just have to have some help in the office. This is especially important when doing something as essential as setting up new servers. When that happens, I know just who to call on for assistance.
Did that hurt?
Sometimes I wonder about these things, especially when we get an egg that is huge compared to normal eggs. The five normal eggs weigh about 2 3/8 ounces each. The whopper weighs in at 3 5/8 ounces. We’ve gotten several double yolkers since we’ve had chickens, and this one will likely be another – or perhaps a triple. That would be something to see.
