This morning on the drive into work a county animal control truck pulled out onto the road in front of us. The truck paused outside a house to speak with a woman waiting for the bus with her kid. The woman gestured up the road a bit…where a cow was hanging out in the woman’s neighbor’s yard munching grass by the mailbox.
Andy wanted to know how the animal control guy was gonna get the cow into the truck.
Andy finished the recycle bin today and brought it in and set it up. There are three spots on top where paper bags fit in to collect the newspaper, glossy paper, and regular paper. On the bottom is a spot for a copy box to hold cardboard and a spot for the shredder. The paper for shredding is in a plastic bin to the side. Perhaps not the perfect solution, but it works for now.
The seeds we planted last week are starting to sprout. We planted a flat of tomatoes, a flat of peppers (chili and bell), and a flat of herbs (mostly basil). There are lots of sprouts in the herb flat, a decent number in the tomato flat, and none in the pepper flat. A lot of the tomato and pepper seeds are several years old, so that will affect the germination rate, but I feel confident we’ll get a good number anyhow.
Here’s Andy learning how to plant seeds. He did a very good job.
We picked up our groovey lawnmower yesterday in the pouring-cats-and-dog rain. Maybe the grass will be dry enough tomorrow to try it out.
The last two weeks seem to have been all about the wood.
Wood Part One:
Remember that huge ice storm we had a bit ago? It brought down oodles of branches from the pine trees. I guess living out in the boonies no one would really complain or send the Tidy Neighborhood Brigade after us, but we still figured we should gather the branches up. We spent a couple hours dragging the branches out of the trees and loaded them up in the truck and stacked them up in a pile near the sheeps.
We made four trips and built a huge pile of branches. Andy’s been tossing a few into the sheep area every day or two, and the sheep love it. Soon all that will be left is branches. Then….you are all invited over for a huge bonfire!
Wood Part Two:
We have a wood stove. We haven’t used it yet because…well…we don’t really know how to use it. I also think it would be a good idea to have it cleaned out before we use it. Plus, the wood is sooooooooo far away. However, someday we’d like to use the wood stove to help heat the house in the winter, so we’ve been keeping our eyes open for free wood. A guy in Bburg had a huge walnut tree cut down, so we went and picked up a truckload of the wood. Our need for a chainsaw continues to grow.
Wood Part Three:
I got tired of having piles of paper forming Close Encounter mountains in the kitchen, so I drew up plans for a recycle bin and bid Andy make it. We bought some hinges, but the rest of the materials came from wood we got from freecycle a while ago. It’s painted with “oops” paint, and…oh, yeah, we did buy the polyurethane stuff. The center isn’t painted yet in this picture and the door isn’t on, but if you squint you can imagine it in all it’s crayola yellow and electric green glory. (There’re slots in the top to put the paper in. One slot for glossy paper, one for newspaper, and one for regular paper. The bottom slots are for cardboard and the paper shredder.)
Since we’re pretty much done with wood for a while, we’ll be switching to grass projects this weekend. Anyone wanna come help us mow 3+ acres with a push mower? It’s orange!
Shortly after I got my laptop, Sana decided the powercord would be fun to chew. She didn’t get all the way through the cord, and we continued to use it. We were (sorta) careful not to leave the computer/cord plugged in unattended or to let the cord get covered with a blanket or other flammable-type materials. Things were good for about a year. Sure, occasionally someone would get a small shock or see a leetle blue spark, but there was no damage. Also, sometimes the cord would get finnicky and have to be wiggled or unplugged/replugged to work. About a week and a half ago the cord stopped working and the usual measures didn’t bring it back to life. Andy seemed sure he could get the cord to work with just the right wiggle and kept messing with the cord. Until he got one dooze of a shock and I saw a huge blue spark.
We ordered a new cord and shelled out the extra $10 for fast delivery, and we waited for Friday when the cord should have arrived. We came home from work and there was a friendly little note hanging on the door from Fedex saying, “Sorry Charlie. No signature, no power cord.” Back in AA this would not have been a problem. We could have just bopped over to the Fedex place and picked the cord up. Here, we’d have to make an-almost-two-hour round trip to get the cord, and our weekend errands were in the other direction. So, no cord until Monday.
And that is the saga that led to no posts for a long, long time.
Okay, yeah, we do have another computer. So…I guess we could have posted from that computer, but…umm…it’s so far away you know? Like, all the way in the other room behind a door and everything. Plus, one time I tried to use that computer and Andy went “AIEIEIEIEIE!” I think he was scared I’d find his secret stash of llama porn. So why didn’t Andy post? Good question. Probably because he’s a big poopy head.
And, well, yes, we did get the cord on Monday and it’s Wednesday. So…I guess we could have posted from this computer sooner. But, um, there were pictures to upload and that takes time! And, the recycle center isn’t finished yet and why post about an unfinished recycle center when soon it will be finished? And then there was that whole daylight savings time thing that really messed everything up.
Stupid daylight savings time.
I never really got over Andy cutting his hair off, so I made him grow it back. He found this great tonic online and has been drinking it for the last few days. Here he is chugging his last dose; though, I think you would agree he doesn’t really need it.
Either that, or he’s modeling a hat I made for my hair-challenged grandma.
Who says nothing exciting ever happens out in the boonies? Yesterday was the grand opening of the Cburg Habitat ReStore!
We planned to wake up bright and early to get there when the doors opened, but … come on… it was Saturday. We got there around 11:00 and the place was still hopping. The parking lot was packed, and there was a radio station bus and a soda company truck-type thing out front. The soda truck was bumping and bouncing to some tunes, and inside the radio station had set up more music. There were people EVERYWHERE.
The store had a lot of really nice outdoor furniture and some building stuff (and a racecar bed that I could tell Andy really wanted!)…but the place was getting close to bare even though I’m pretty sure it was packed full o’ stuff when it opened that morning. We talked to the volunteer who checked us out, and she said when she got there at 8:30 (store opened at 9:00) people were lined up to get in. They were just emptying those shelves like crazy. Fantastic!
We weren’t looking for anything in particular, but we did find a really nice faucet to go with the vanity and tiles we bought at the Roanoke Habitat ReStore a few months ago. Our bathroom is gonna be a Habitat-furnished room!
We saw the same faucet at HD for almost twice what we paid, so YAY! We also bought a pair of rubbery gloves because they were pretty…and rubbery.
After we paid and headed outside, we saw a line forming and we smelled food! There were free burgers, chips, and drinks! WHEE! And who was cooking up the burgers but none other than Mr. Kenney! (Admittedly, before that moment we didn’t know who Mr. Kenney was.) He was having a blast cooking up burgers with a speed to be envied by any barbecuer. Flames shot up as he flipped and turned burgers left and right. Yum yum!
We had a few more errands to run before heading home, but it was all pretty anticlimatic after the Habitat opening.
We have a signed contract for the purchase of our old house!!!! Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly.
As long as I can remember my parents have had one of those domed popcorn poppers where you add the oil and kernels and the little thingy spins around and mixes it all up. After the corn is popped, my Dad dumps the corn into a paper grocery bag, adds some salt, folds over the top of the bag, and shakes. This way, the salt gets all over and well…that’s just how you do it, ya know?
I had an air popper for a while, but it met an untimely death at the bladders of the cats. Or maybe Andy killed it because he does not like air popped corn. Either way, we’ve been without a popper for at least a year, and lately I’ve really been wanting popcorn. Andy likes the microwave stuff, which is nice, but it’s not the same. And it’s expensive. And I’m cheap.
We were in walmart the other day and I saw a popper there and almost bought it but decided to wait. A few weeks later, Andy was browsing around on Amazon (he likes to web window shop) and saw a popper for a decent price. He ordered it and we waited. For some reason they wouldn’t ship it. And we waited. And waited. ARG. WHERE IS MY POPPER??
Finally, one day we came home from work and there was a nice happy box on the porch. YAY! We’d bought a bag of corn on our last shopping trip so we’d be ready. What a very good idea because if that popper arrived and we hadn’t had corn, I probably would have tried to pop something else. Like sunflower seeds. Or pepper corns. Or cotton balls.
After digging the popper out of its box and setting it up on the counter and adding the oil and the kernels and putting the top on and plugging it in, I waited patiently. (Okay, there may have been some bouncing involved.) This is what I saw:
Did you know, they’ve made innovations in popcorn poppers in the last ten years or so? It seems like such a basic device to me that I never thought there’d be popper engineers sitting around trying to make a better popper. But, I guess there have been.
As the little spinner thing spun, I started to get hypnotized. Then it happened. the spinner thing stopped.
“Aie! It’s broken! Annnddddddddy!”
Andy came in and we stared at the popper and the spinner thing. The spinner thing spun some more. Then stopped again. Then it spun in the other direction!! Whoa. Popcorn popper evolution.
A few minutes later…light, fluffy success. And a cat.
Now all we need are a few paper grocery bags, and we’ll be set.
When I woke up this morning, I looked out the window into the semidarkness and said sleepily, “It’s foggy.” Then I went to take a shower. Woo. Fog. A few minutes later Andy knocked on the door and said, “It’s not fog.” For a moment I thought, “Smoke?” But then Andy said, “Snow.”
We went ahead and got ready for work and headed out. The driveway was pretty okay, but the road we take to work hadn’t been salted or plowed. We did some slipping and sliding and found a place to turn around, and we headed home. It feels kind of lame to call in because the roads are bad here when in the cities where we work there wasn’t even a flake of snow, but that’s life in the boonies for you. It’s a tough call to make, but the idea of getting stuck in a ditch is really unappealing, ya know?
We both seemed a bit lost as to what to do with this day, so we did a little cleaning. I felt the need to knit something, but my yarn cave has been such a mess I can’t find anything. I open it up and see just bags and bags of stuff and who knows where that peaches and cream yarn is or those size 7 needles. So, I decided today was a great opportunity to neaten it up. Too bad I didn’t take a real “before” picture, but here’s what all the stuff looked like out of the cave and on the floor. At this point I had already taken a bunch of the unknitted yarn out of grocery bags and put them in the two, big, clear bags.
Andy hiked up the hill and found some unused bins for me and washed them out. I’d like to say everything is now in a logical place, but there are a few bags of things I tossed back in because I didn’t know where else to put them. But, for the most part the stuff I use the most is where I can get to it.
Of course the one project I wanted to start working on…the one I kept seeing the pattern for floating around…now that everything is tidied up, I can’t find the pattern for it. *sigh* Oh well. Instead I started work on a cotton burp cloth from the Mason Dixon Knitting book. I figure if it doesn’t work for a burp cloth it will make a nice kitchen towel.
It looks like the second round of storms is headed our way. Here’s hoping it doesn’t leave a layer of ice on the driveway and roads.
The bunnies are shedding again. Maybe the weather is confusing them? I can’t think of any other good reason to shed in the middle of winter. Every morning for the last week or two, I’ve been spending five minutes or so brushing Hop and Wibble. In the morning, when they are totally distracted by their kibble, is the only time I can get these two to stand still to be brushed. Carla, however, lets me brush her much more easily, so I usually go after her in the evening. Right now, Wibble is the worst. If you blow a puff of air at him, a cloud floats up off his back and flies away. Hop seems to have started her shedding up by her shoulders and is working her way back. It looks like she is wearing an inverted saddle because she is shorter where the fur has already left.
Carla is still definitely the most friendly of our bunnies, and when it’s her turn to be out and about she often hops up on the couch for a snuggle. Recently she got to snuggle with Larry, who seemed a bit confused.
In other furry creature news, Buddy and Little Kitty seem to be doing better since we moved to the new place. They don’t fight nearly as much, LK doesn’t hide anymore, and the pee presents have slowed down. (Alas, they still do arrive.) Here’s a picture of Buddy snuggling in a box of paper recycling.
It’s so much harder to recycle here without ye old curbside recycling pick up. Glass (clear only!), plastic, and metal go a few miles over to Smith’s but paper has to go to work with me. There is a place in Floyd that collects cardboard, and Smith’s will take newspaper, but what about all that junk mail? Well, I guess there is the recycle drop off place in Floyd, but it never seems to be open when we aren’t at work or asleep. I guess most folks out here either just trash the paper or burn it.