Ooooooh

Big ole thunderstorm flashing and rumbling it's way into town right now. Very cool.

And, before I forget: happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me... :)

Too bad I had bothersome hot flashes all day. Must have been my body making a point about the whole aging thing.

The battery system for my solar panels arrives tomorrow. That means the installation will begin in earnest on Wednesday. So exciting!

So, a very nice start to the week and another (hopefully good) year of my life.

Peep peep

The kids are growing well. Now 1.5 weeks old, they've just started 'roosting' on the top of the feeder. I really expected some problems with the cats, but they've completely ignored them.

It's a good thing we don't need the garden to survive! The only produce I've harvested enough to preserve this year were green beans. Maybe next year will be better.

I've listed my big fish tank on craigslist; only a couple nibbles so far, no serious buyers. I'd mostly like to sell it to open up the floor space but the cash would be nice too.

The solar install will get started in the next couple days. I'm looking forward to posting lots of pictures!

PS: lovely to see you online again Tanya. :)

Groan again

I spent today putting together the new shelves in the basement. There was a translation problem in the instructions; it used terms like 'tap gently into place' when it was supposed to read 'hit as hard as you can repeatedly'. My arm is very sore tonight.

There are now three cute little fluffballs in the chick cage. We're still waiting to see if the last two eggs will hatch.

Last night it RAINED! And rained. And rained some more. It was badly needed so...Yay!

Early birds

This was a surprise; I wasn't expecting a hatching until Friday but two of the chicks were in a hurry.




Which means they get first go at the cushy digs while waiting on their siblings. It's going to be fun to see how they develop. While all five eggs have the same rooster I have no idea which hens laid that day.

Dehydrating

I tried out my dehydrator for the first time. It's a Nesco FD-75PR. My son was given a large bag of free sweet corn which I blanched in boiling water and filled the trays. All five trays held about 17 ears of corn.


In the second batch I ran I broke the sections up into smaller pieces to speed the drying process.

This is what those 17 ears dried down to:
Definitely less labor intensive than pressure canning and takes up much less space also. Freezing would have been faster but then all those bags of corn would have had to stay in the freezer.

I'll be using this again.

Contagious

A microbiologist friend once told me that if everybody just stayed home for a few days at the same time all these viruses that we pass on to one another would die off. I wish I knew who went out carrying the contagion that I picked up...I'd give them a few choice words!

My entire weekend has been spent in the toilet or in bed. It's been pure misery especially with the list of must-do-now projects that I had ready. How many did I do? Zero! The green beans are still waiting to be harvested and canned. The sweet corn needs to be processed. Everything needs watering, weeding or trimming.

My fever is down, but I still can't eat and am easily exhausted by walking from one room to another. There's a battle going on inside my body and I'm not sure which side is winning yet.

The Midas Touch

Have you ever had a golden day when everything goes right and you find yourself wanting to bottle some of it up for those days when it all goes pear shaped?

I just finished a major project at work so took today off as a reward. My weigh in showed a loss of 3.5 lbs bringing my total so far to 34.5. The contractor boys came to blow in attic insulation in the section where it was lost when they were working on the ceiling and topped off any other low spots they found up there (saving me from paying someone else to do it). The insurance adjuster came to sign off on the job and agreed to pay me for having to do the clean up to the tune of $500...the cost of my deductible! Finally, I got the email confirming a refund on shoes I returned weeks ago.

All around, this has been a brilliant day. :)

Scorcher

Today was so brutally hot that my boss let me come home early so the dog wouldn't have to be outside in the worst of it. Tomorrow is supposed to be about 10 degrees cooler which sounds wonderful.

Can you imagine trying to sleep in this hot, humid weather without air conditioners? It would be miserable.

The other big news tomorrow is I'll be putting in the order for my solar panels!!!