Happy 27th Birthday Cathy!

Hurricane Sandy

This is out the back door this morning as we get more Hurricane Sandy winds.  It's slowly been getting worse throughout the night.  I'm still waiting for the water to rise.

Hard Boiled

I'm just sitting here listening to the rain and wind and worrying about whether the water is going to rise as far as the chicken coop.  We are having sustained winds of 30 - 40mpg out of the north right now from Hurricane Sandy and it is supposed to increase and last through the night and tomorrow.  North winds pile water up into the end of the bay where we are so I will be watching closely.  I'm not worrying about the house flooding like last year but it could easily get up into the chicken coop.

What do you do when you can't eat all the eggs that your chickens are giving you?  You hard boil them, chop them up, then feed them back to the chickens.  They love them.

New Old Jeep

This is my 8 year old Jeep.  I just put a 2 inch lift kit on, some new shocks and larger, more aggressive tires.  Finished it off with a new stereo system and some new headlight assemblies to replace the old hazy ones.  That made a huge difference in the way it looks from the front.  I love this vehicle.  160,000 miles on the odometer and it has never required anything but some new tires and oil.  I had much rather spend a little every so often to fix it up rather than get back into making payments on anything.  I used to pay $450.00 a month in payments.  It only took the equivalent of 3 of those payments to pay for all of these upgrades.

 

Last Harvest

Wow.  I finally finished my five 60 hour weeks and have been decompressing.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous which is helping to chill out.  Today I changed the blades on my riding lawn mower (bent them last time I mowed riding over a root), mowed the yard and harvested the last of my veggies (mostly peppers).  I then cut all the vegetation out of the vegetable planters and put it all in the compost pile to make compost for next year.  This years experiment of growing vegetables in the Earth Box planters was a complete success.  Next year I will install an automatic watering system with the boxes to save the daily watering chores.  Below is a picture of the vegetables I pulled today just before putting them into freezer bags and freezing.  The front center are cherry tomatoes.  Left to right around the tomatoes are bell peppers, anaheim and banana peppers, jalapeno peppers then carribean red hot peppers.  I won't be lacking for peppers this winter.

Vote!

Guess what I did today?  Today was the first day of early voting here in North Carolina.  The courthouse was PACKED.

4 More Days

Just four more days and I will be back posting.  Work and sleep have been my life (and a sad life that is) for weeks now. 

A Brilliant Mind

I have used my superior human intellect to outwit my hens which have refused to lay eggs in my special, custom built egg laying box.  I purchased some wooden eggs then placed a couple in each of the egg laying bays.  Voila!  The next day each bay had eggs in it and the corner of the coop where the chickens had been laying was bare.  If my employer could see how brilliant I am I would surely be CEO by now!

Neuse River Ferry

Just riding the Cherry Branch to Minnesott Beach ferry.

Make it a Double

One of my eggs was a double yolker today!

Pantry

This is a picture of my pantry.  I like to keep a little extra in case of emergency.

All Work and No Play

I am in the middle of a 4 week work stretch of 60 hour weeks.  12 hour shifts plus a 1 1/2 drive each way is leaving little time for anything other than work and sleep.  I feel bad as my daily posts are dwindling down to nothing.  When my posts dwindle down that tells me that I am not living life as I should.  In a couple of weeks things get back to normal thank God.

Today's pic is my micro 4/3's stable.  I started out with the Panasonic G1, then along came the Olympus E-PL1, E-PL2 and finally the OM-D.  The OM-D has completely filled my 'wish list of desires' in a camera and I no longer have any urge for something better.  The original Panasonic was a great camera but I had to have in body stabilization so that prompted my switch to Olympus.  All of the Olympus cameras have been great and I am totally satisfied with the Olympus line.  My lenses are a mishmash consisting of the Panasonic 14/2.5, 20/1.8, 25/1.4, 45-200 zoom, the Olympus 45/1.8 and 14-45 kit lens with wide angle adapter, Nikkor 55/1.8 macro, Minolta 50/1.4 with bellows and last but not least, the Pinwide pinhole lens.   The ability to use just about any lens on the Micro 4/3 cameras, plus the wide quality selection of lenses, is one of the big reasons I switched to the m4/3 world and I don't regret it for a second.

Pray

A pic for my Democrat friends out there.  This is where the 30 Democrats that live in this county go to church. 

Easter Eggs in September

I am averaging 4 eggs per day now.  The Easter Eggers are starting to lay.  Their eggs are a beautiful blue/green color.

CSN

Crosby, Stills and Nash live in Reno Saturday night.  Picture courtesy of Mongo.  I wish I had been there.

Parathyroid

This is my stepson just before going in for Parathyroid surgery today.  I worked all night last night then spent all day at the surgical center so I am whipped.  He went in about 10am and got out at 6pm.  Everything went fine and he is complaining of neck pain right now.  I am going to bed.

Karma

Work has taken over my life for three days which caused a little delay in my story.

Once upon a time there was a prince named Sir Patrick.  Sir Patrick was due to take a long voyage to far away lands (England) in less than a fortnight.  He had all of his papers in line for said voyage.  Before leaving on this voyage Sir Patrick decided to visit Sir Thomas, brave night of the Southern Lands.  Sir Thomas was going to introduce Sir Patrick to a new weapons system that uses iron rods with holes through them and small cylinders encasing a grey powder and a lead ball.

While visiting Sir Thomas, and after practicing with the new weapons which made a terrible roar when a small lever was pulled, the two brave Knights decided to return to the castle of Sir Thomas.  While riding down the road Sir Patrick suddenly slapped his thigh saying, "Thou'st mosquitos are very aggressive.  Slapping this one left a huge blood spot on my leggings."  Back at the castle Sir Patrick put his leggings in the washing tub.  After some time he pulled his leggings out of the wash.  Sir Thomas was then met with a terrible lamentation from Sir Patrick.  It seems that Sir Patrick was carrying his travel papers (passport) in his leggings and that the papers were completely ruined by the wash.  Sir Patrick then sent riders to all ends of the kingdom to ascertain if it would be possible to replace the papers before the upcoming voyage.  The riders returned.  Yea, they said, it can be done but only at great expense.  Rush replacement service will be over 500 gold pieces and will require an inordinate amount of substantiating paperwork.  Sir Patrick then sent messengers to his parents, the King and Queen of York, to ask that they supply some of this paperwork.  The riders returned saying that the King and Queen were displeased at the Knight's careless actions but that they would help out.  Sir Patrick returned home and today is at the head of the governmental offices attempting to get replacement travel papers from the bureaucratic quagmire of the Capital.

Wish brave Sir Patrick the Best of Luck.

The moral of the story.  Don't forget Karma.  The killing of the mosquito sent negative reverberations through Patrick's world which resulted in the destruction of his passport and the cost of many dollars.

The first picture is Sir Patrick at his Castle in York
The second picture is the mosquito that started it all
The third picture is Sir Patrick and his messengers trying to figure out how to replace his papers

Mosquito

Because of one mosquito, this man (not me) is having to spend $500 to get a rush replacement Passport.  More to this story tomorrow.

Breakfast

My first meal from my new influx of eggs.  Yum, yum!  I got three eggs today so three of the eight chickens are now laying.  I can definitively answer the question, 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?'.  The answer for me is the chicken.  No more chicken or egg posts for a while I promise.  I have been so excited that I am actually getting eggs that aren't from the store, I have been overdoing it.

Prayer

My Granddaughter, Elizabeth Carson, who was at 8 months gestation, was stillborn yesterday evening in Houston, Texas.  Please say a prayer for her.