Happy Birthday

My Dad would have been 71 years old today.

Happy Birthday Dad - I miss you.

Monster!

My two Red Stars have been faithfully laying an egg a day each for the past few weeks. The Red Stars are the ones that look like this:




I think one of my New Hampshire Reds is getting ready to start laying too - I've been getting a third shell-less egg every once in a while lately, which is always quite interesting. Today however, I came home to find a behemoth of an egg in the nesting box. One regular egg and one egg which is the biggest egg I have ever seen (not counting goose eggs or ostrich eggs - you know what I mean). The first thing that popped into my head when I saw it was: "Wow! That must have hurt coming out!". I tried taking pictures to show the enormousness of the egg, but it is really hard to convey how big this egg is in a photograph...


This is a side-by-side comparison of the ginormous egg next to a normal size egg...



And to give another reference, here is a side-by-side comparison of me holding each of the above eggs...


I weighed the two eggs. The normal size egg weighed 1.8 oz. The gargantuan egg weighed 2.4 oz. That's a big difference when it comes to an egg! I want to crack it open and see if it has a double or triple yolk in it, but I can't bring myself to do it quite yet... Usually I use two eggs when making myself an egg sandwich - I'm betting that Monster Egg will be a sandwich all by itself :)

And to go along with some eggs - how about some fruit...





... and then after squishing your fruit, I'm sure you'll need a napkin :)





I love these things!

Snowliage

Plans had already been made a month-and-a-half ago to go down to Allegany State Park and spend the day enjoying the fall foliage... Little did we know we would also be enjoying the first snow of the season! Yeah - October 17th and we are playing in the snow already.

Snow + foliage = Snowliage

The whole park wasn't covered in snow, but the parts that were, *really* were :) We embraced the cold and snow and had a really fun time.

And speaking of snow... The New York State Golden Snowball Contest blog is open for business for the 2009-2010 season! Will Buffalo be able to beat Syracuse and win the trophy this year? I'm sure there are a ton of people who want Buffalo to win and a ton more that want Buffalo to come in last place :)

The further south we drove, the more the tree branches were bent over from the weight of the snow - visions of Buffalo's October Storm flashed before my eyes...

No one shoveled yet :)

My sister demonstrating the Perfect Snowball

We still got to see a lot of nice fall colors...

There are more pictures on my Flickr, if anyone is interested...

Downtown Lockport

Al over at his blog has been posting what he calls 'Walking Pictures' from around Lockport. On his walks, he's been taking random pictures and putting them up for us to guess exactly where it was taken. I've been having a lot of fun with it. It's also made me look around a lot closer when I visit downtown Lockport - I make frequent trips to the post office on Main Street (let's just say that EBay is helping me pay my heating bill this winter...).

I've been noticing a lot of little things that I've never paid attention to before - and I can say that I really like the way that Main Street has been fixed up. I like the brick/cobblestone accents. I like the center island with all the pretty flowers along with the other landscaping along the street. I like the way the building fronts are getting fixed up. I hope that they keep going in the direction that they are... they are doing a good job. I'm looking forward (a little bit anyway) to the snowy days - in previous years they had lights on the trees lining the street and they look so pretty when they are lit up and there is snow around.

I just found out that there is a Lockport webcam! I added it to my links above...

~~~

I enjoy Uncle Jay Explains the News, but this week was especially good. If you have 3 minutes and 8 seconds to spare, watch the video - Wow That's Fantastic - LOL!

Bullet Monday

• Last week the Jillmobile hit 145,000. I wonder how many more miles I'll be able to get out of her.

• Coming home from work Friday, I saw a raccoon walking around on someone's lawn. It was weird because it was still light outside - I'm not used to seeing raccoons out before dark.

• I started getting ready for winter... the lawn got all cut, probably for the last time this year, I got the snowblower running and my generator is all set to go.

• Getting a two-year-old to cooperate for a picture at a pumpkin farm is impossible.

• I like watching Flipping Out - last week's episode was the funniest ever. I need a Deb in my life. And I need to go to Colorada to see the potato bugs.

• I hate stupid people. A lot.

• I love potato skins. I recently learned how to make my own - which may sound weird to a lot of you, but remember... I'm not a cook - and I can't get enough of them.

• I tried a new project for my chickens - the Cabbage Pinata...

Once they figured it out, they loved it!

• I also got a super-great deal on an outdoor webcam. I was so excited when I got it. Except I can't get it to work. The camera itself works fine, but I can't get it to broadcast. I've tried everything I know how to do... it's so frustrating having the Chicken Cam so near, and yet so far ~sigh~

Blue

I can't believe my nephew is two years old this weekend. It seems like he's been in the family forever :) Happy Birthday JJ!

Do you see all the blue frosting? The blue doesn't come off. What are the cake-making people thinking when they use that stuff? Is there no blue frosting around that doesn't stain? I don't even want to think about what all of our insides looked like after eating that cake - I was never a fan of the Smurfs. I'm betting next year he's getting a white cake :)

Friday I hit a dozen eggs from my chickens. I was getting two a day for a couple of days, but then production went back down to one a day. Today I got two eggs again...


My sister has ten chickens from the batch we ordered, and she just got her first egg yesterday. Unfortunately it wasn't laid in a safe place and it was trampled - she wasn't too happy about that :(

On another bird-related note, the Blues Brothers is one of my most favorite movies. No matter how bad a day I've had or how crappy things are, this movie can never fail to have me bouncing and singing to it's music. Evidently I'm not the only one - this video is great!