Happy Easter!

This ‘n That Thursday

• So Tuesday evening I sent an email to my antivirus company, AVG, asking for help figuring out why it was blocking my blog…  When I got home Wednesday, I was very happy to see a reply from them (sent at noon!) informing me that they had fixed the problem.  How great is that?  That was the first time I ever had a problem with my AVG Antivirus and Internet Security software and I couldn’t be happier with how quickly it was handled and resolved.  What a difference from Norton or McAfee – I always had issues when I was using either of those programs.  I’ve been using AVG for over five years now and plan to keep on using it – way to go guys! 

 

• Also on the subject of blogs, Becky from Clarence Grad 72 found out that both our blogs will be safe from whatever services that Blogger will be ending as of tomorrow.  What a relief!  Thanks Becky 

 

• Looking at the calendar, the second-most expensive time of year (after Christmas, of course) is coming up…   Over the next bunch of weeks I have three birthdays coming along with a Communion party.  I really need to find a decent paying job 

 

• I found another use for my eggs 

 

Wordless Wednesday

Teeny

My chickens are messing with me for sure…

Remember Super Ginormous Egg?

Well this week I got it’s counterpart:  Teeny Egg

The egg on the left is a normal size egg for contrast…

   

 

 

It’s so cute, I really don’t want to break it open 

…And Then There Were Four

I think Pumpkin finally figured it out 

 

The lighter egg is from Pumpkin.  I’ve noticed that when the chickens are new to laying, the first few eggs are a lot lighter in color before they go to the nice rich brown color.

So the only two chickens that aren’t laying yet are Banana and Nugget.  I’ve read that cochins take longer to mature, so I expect that they will probably start up in the spring.

I should now be getting two dozen eggs a week, which is a lot more than my family or I can reasonable go through.  I would love to sell the extra, but I have no idea how to go about it.  I’ve seen people sell them in stands in front of their house, but to me that doesn’t seem very practical for only a couple dozen eggs.  The same goes for putting an ad in the Metro paper like I’ve seen.  I’ll have to figure something out before I get buried in eggs 

Anyway, the Ladies have become One with winter and the cold and snow don’t seem to be a big deal to them anymore.  They do like when I shovel the snow all the way down to the grass for them tho’… I guess cold, frozen grass and clover must still taste good…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For some reason, the Ladies seem to be fascinated with my shoes.  They always have to see if they are good to eat or not – they seem to forget every time they see them 

Three

I have been faithfully getting two eggs a day from my Red Star chickens, Granola and Pumpkin.  I know that one of my New Hampshires has been trying to lay for a while a now, but hasn’t been quite there yet – there have been quite a few shell-less eggs on the roost.  Well today I think everything fell into place for Cocoa – there were three perfect eggs in the nesting box this morning    I guess we’ll see this week if she really figured it out… 

I love the color of the eggs my Ladies lay…

I had to bribe The Ladies with some scratch to be relatively still for some pictures today…

Pumpkin – one of my faithful layers – with some snow on her face 

Banana will talk your ear off if you let her

  I will never worry about these guys getting cold

Cocoa is the one on the left – hopefully she will keep laying! 

As a side note, check out the video at Mike’s Pub – If you’ve never seen Silent Monks sing, you’re really missing something!

 

Adjustment

A couple bloggers I follow have recommended using Windows Live Writer, so I am finally giving it  try.  This should be a good post to try it out on because I have a lot to catch up on…

I guess the biggest news is that I am now amongst the ranks of the unemployed.  You’d think that not working would free up all kinds of time to get stuff done, but being laid up with Whatever-It-Is-That’s-Going-Around coupled with previously made plans and of course job hunting, I haven’t had any real time to work on much extra.  Go figure…

I’m feeling better than I did last week, but my stomach and ribs hurt from all the coughing.

I dream a lot of weird things when I am sick, and I had some pretty interesting dreams last week.  I haven’t had any fever-induced dreams in a lot of years.  It’s amazing the concoctions your brain can come up with when you’re asleep.  And yay - I’m finally getting my appetite back.

Halloween was fun this year.  I haven’t really done anything for Halloween in years, but now with my niece and nephew around, I enjoyed getting back into the holiday spirit.  This was my nephew’s first year trick-or-treating and of course he had a bit of a meltdown, but what can you expect from a two-year old?  He and his sister were soooo cute!

 

Before I got sick, I was able to enjoy a return trip to Letchworth State Park while the leaves were still in color.   We were there past peak, but there was still plenty of color…  And it wasn’t raining!

 

Remember the Monster Egg?  A couple days later, I found an even bigger one in the nesting box, if you can believe it.  I cracked them open and found them both to be double-yolkers  :)  They made a mighty fine and tasty omelet, courtesy of my sister.

      

I have to say that Windows Live Writer is definitely cool – it offers a lot of options that writing from the Blogger dashboard does not… at least not with tinkering with the html.  It’s really easy to use and best of all free!  I like this a lot – I’m glad I tried it out.

Hopefully things in real life will fall into place as nicely.  I still have a bit of adjusting to do - Cross your fingers for me!

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!