I was away last weekend. While I was away I left the roosters out (on purpose, because they can perfectly well fend for themselves) and left the hens (with one rooster) in the the chicken house with access to the enclosed chicken yard.
It rained at least a little bit and sometimes a lot every day that I was gone, so the roosters got wet (sorry, boys), but that's the way it is sometimes.
When I'm here, I gather eggs every day. I have six hens and get six eggs almost every day. Every once in a while one of the girls takes a day off, but only rarely. Sometimes one of the red hens, and I suspect it's the same one, lays an egg on the floor of the hen house or on the ground out in the pen, just right out in the middle of everything. Maybe she gets distracted, doesn't know it's coming, doesn't want to be bothered, I don't know. I don't bring those in the house. Don't be offended - the chickens have no idea what they're eating.
A way back when we built that chicken house, we got hold of some nice galvanized nest boxes, a set of ten. I fill them with either wood shavings like I put on the floor of the chicken house, or shredded paper from my office (Reduce, Re-use, Recycle!). Most days when I go to gather eggs there will be one here, one or two there, and so on. I collect them and bring them in.
While I was gone, the girls laid most of their eggs in two specific next boxes, so these two boxes were full of eggs, as if they someone was thinking about going broody, as if chickens think. Oh, sure, they're smarter than they look, they're trainable - I wish I could train one to go broody and set a clutch of eggs, but that is an instinctual behavior. These girls are about a year and a half old, now. I'm pretty sure if anyone was going to set a clutch of eggs, she would have started by now. They always did before.
I haven't dealt with those two nest boxes of eggs yet, but I'm going to have to soon, or they'll start to go bad. Do you know how nasty a rotten egg is?
Meanwhile, I did gather two perfectly good eggs that I will have for breakfast (or brunch, now, as it's already after 10:30AM). On the way in the house Steely Dan's Tomorrow's Girls tuned up in my head. So I'm gonna go turn on some music, cook some eggs, and thank my hens for breakfast (or brunch), and hope that "Tomorrow's Girls" refers to the chicks that the broody hen of my dreams will hatch soon, even though I know that is not what that song is about!
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Fireflies
Ran some errands earlier this evening, returning home just after dark, and was delighted to see my woods just sparkling with fireflies!
Friday, July 12, 2013
I Will Not
Went out of town to take a class, which takes place on Friday evening, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. After class on Friday I went up to my room, turned on the TV, put on my night gown, and got under the covers.
I had just found some local news to watch when, at straight up 10:00 PM a siren went off. Oh, brother. In a few seconds it stopped and a voice came over a speaker I hadn't noticed before, saying, "Attention, attention! An emergency has been reported in the building. Please leave your room, do not run, proceed to the exit, and leave the building," and then the alarm came on again, followed by the announcement and so on.
I looked at the red speaker on the wall and said, "I will not," and I sat right in that bed.
I heard my neighbors up and down the fourth floor of the hotel evacuating as directed. I wondered what the emergency was. I checked in with Intuition and got that it didn't feel like fire. The hotel was chock-full of families with children who had been running up and down the halls all afternoon, going to each others rooms and back and forth to the pool and whatnot. Could one of those little yahoos have thrown a fire alarm, maybe to see what would happen? No, it didn't feel like kids. I thought of that movie where the character throws the fire alarm in a hotel to prompt an evacuation so he can get somebody, and Intuition said, interesting, but not tonight. It said, look, go or don't go, it's up to you. I was already in my nightgown, cocooned in the bed. I wondered if they would search the rooms, find me there, scold me for not leaving as directed. I decided I would take my chances. The alarm continued on for about ten minutes.
In about thirty minutes I heard activity on the floor. I thought, well, either it's the room by room search, or they've let people back in. When no one pounded on my door, I knew it was my neighbors returning to their rooms. Everybody got all settled in, I had just drifted off to sleep, and about an hour later the alarm went off again, second verse, same as the first. I stayed put, just like before. When that alarm shut off I went back to sleep and son-of-a-gun if another alarm didn't go off about an hour later!
I had just found some local news to watch when, at straight up 10:00 PM a siren went off. Oh, brother. In a few seconds it stopped and a voice came over a speaker I hadn't noticed before, saying, "Attention, attention! An emergency has been reported in the building. Please leave your room, do not run, proceed to the exit, and leave the building," and then the alarm came on again, followed by the announcement and so on.
I looked at the red speaker on the wall and said, "I will not," and I sat right in that bed.
I heard my neighbors up and down the fourth floor of the hotel evacuating as directed. I wondered what the emergency was. I checked in with Intuition and got that it didn't feel like fire. The hotel was chock-full of families with children who had been running up and down the halls all afternoon, going to each others rooms and back and forth to the pool and whatnot. Could one of those little yahoos have thrown a fire alarm, maybe to see what would happen? No, it didn't feel like kids. I thought of that movie where the character throws the fire alarm in a hotel to prompt an evacuation so he can get somebody, and Intuition said, interesting, but not tonight. It said, look, go or don't go, it's up to you. I was already in my nightgown, cocooned in the bed. I wondered if they would search the rooms, find me there, scold me for not leaving as directed. I decided I would take my chances. The alarm continued on for about ten minutes.
In about thirty minutes I heard activity on the floor. I thought, well, either it's the room by room search, or they've let people back in. When no one pounded on my door, I knew it was my neighbors returning to their rooms. Everybody got all settled in, I had just drifted off to sleep, and about an hour later the alarm went off again, second verse, same as the first. I stayed put, just like before. When that alarm shut off I went back to sleep and son-of-a-gun if another alarm didn't go off about an hour later!
The next morning I learned several things:
1. The good news is you definitely wont sleep through one of those alarms.
2. Indeed, it wasn't any of the kids, nor a fire. It was some defect in the alarm system.
3. The manager on duty that night promised that night would be complimentary, but the manager the next morning didn't know anything about it (interesting).
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Surprise Tomato
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| Surprise Tomato |
A surprise tomato. It’s a small thing to be happy about, but I’m happy about it.
I'd seen on the news that Friday would be a day of meteorological instability, with probability of dangerous tornadoes, and that the storms would likely spark from just west of where I live (and head east). They predicted that the storms would likely begin to boil up about three to three thirty in the afternoon, the weather would really take off in the 5:30 to 6 pm drive-time, and probably last until nine or so.
About three PM I turned on my 4WarnMe App and clicked the [Watch Live] button. It showed a map like the one I had seen on the morning news. In a few minutes, here came Mike Morgan, saying that the cap was about to break and, oh, when it did, Katie bar the door! Then he went to some of his storm chasers, who said nothing had broken yet, but it looked like it would any minute.
The live broadcast ended and they went back to the map.
Probably about 3:30 - 3:45, Mike Morgan came back on live, and now the cap had broken and a huge anvil cloud was forming out near or just west of El Reno, which is about ten miles west of me. I knew this would develop quickly, and I did not want to be stuck in traffic on the highway when it rolled into town. I headed home about 4:30. Son Michael had already gotten the chickens in for me, so I just made a cursory walk-about and came inside to get ready.
I follow the progress and track of storms on an app called WeaterRadio with iMap Radar, which displays an interactive weather radar. I have a pin in mine to indicate where my house is, and I can display my current location, too. I have been following the progress and track of storms in this way for a few years, now, and have noticed a phenomenon. I have noticed that typically when weather (of any kind) is headed toward my place, it either veers off to one side or the other, goes around, weakens, or breaks up and goes around on each side sometimes reconvening once it passes. As bad as weather can be and often is, the full force of the worst of it simply doesn't bear down on my place.
This is not something to take for granted, though. Acknowledge, respectfully observe, but don't take for granted. And given the devastation of the Moore tornadoes just a week and a half earlier, and that the weatherman was saying weather conditions on this day were highly conducive to even more intense weather, I was certainly wary.
So I'm watching the radar on the WeatherRadio iMap, seeing where it is, where I am, hearing what the weatherman is saying, and talking to a friend on the phone. My friend said, "Oh, it's going to go north of you. It's not going to hit you at all. You'll be lucky to get rain out of this." I didn't argue with her, but it looked like she might be mistaken. Then the sirens went off. She offered to keep talking to me, but I have a plan and needed both hands to pull everything together and get tucked into my safe place, so I got off the phone.
About as soon as I got off the phone from my friend, my son Michael called. He said "Mom, you need to leave, you need to get out of there." While he's saying that, I can hear Mike Morgan on the TV saying, "People, get underground or get out of the way." I took another look at the iMap radar and started packing. Threw together a bag, put Cookie the Cat in her carrier, picked up Annie's leash, and headed to the car.
A right angle is the best way to travel away from a storm, and for this one, South was the way to go. Traffic was already thick but moving along pretty well, and I joined an exodus of cars headed south on Sara Road, south out of Mustang. I got about ten miles from home, checked the radar and pulled over to wait the storm out. My thinking was that the storm would play out, move on, and I could go back home. Silly me.
That storm just kept growing - continued to fire from its original location and growing to the east and the south. Pretty soon I had to move along to keep from being overtaken by the weather.
As I headed south again, I realized this was going to take longer than I had originally thought. I thought maybe I should go to my Dad's in Norman. I called to make sure someone was there, and thought about how I could route my trip. You can get to Dad's from where I was, but it's not the most efficient trip. There's a river to cross once or twice, and I-44, and Moore, and I-35, all on surface roads from where I was. Surface roads and heavy traffic, with an ever encroaching storm on this particular night. I tried to weave my way over. The storm was so heavy and so large that under the storm it was as dark as the darkest night you'd ever dread. Hard to see where you were, and hard to see how to get to where you wanted to go. Soon the storm was bearing down on Moore again, and then Norman, with me still miles away from Dad's, and in danger of getting caught in the weather. I could see I wasn't going to be able to get to Dad's.
I called to let them know I wasn't going to make it and found the first road I could, to go south. My evolving plan was to go far enough south to stay out of the storm, then circle back to the west, come up on the back side of the storm and follow it back home as it dissipated or moved on.
In this screen shot of the storm radar the point of the red pin is my house and the blue dot is where I was, about thirty miles from home. Thirty miles from home, and the storm was still freaking coming!
At about Blanchard I thought it might be good to top off the gas tank so I pulled into a gas station and reached for my purse. Couldn't find it! I have a cat and a dog and a bag ... no purse. I got out and looked through everything in the car. Apparently in my excitement to make sure I got Annie the Dog and Cookie the Cat to safety, I plum forgot to pick up my purse! Well, I still had well over 200 miles on that tank of gas, so I was pretty sure I could make it home. Hoped so, anyway.
I continued south to Lindsay, checking the radar along the way. When I got there it looked like I could circle back over to Chickasha; from there I would take Highway 81 back up to 152, to Clear Springs Road, and home. I anticipated that I might have to drive into some rain, but by the time I got back, the rain had moved on.
Bizarre were the lines of traffic, first heading south out of Mustang, then north on 81. As far as you could see, red tail lights in front of you, white headlights behind you. I'd been listening to the KFOR simulcast on the radio all evening so I'd heard plenty about impassable routes due to downed lines and local flooding. I saw areas dark from power outages, poles and signs knocked down and out of place, lots of broken trees, and water running across the road in several places. I saw water and heard water running in places you don't ordinarily see water. I saw a random fire hydrant laying in a drainage ditch, no idea where it came from or where it belonged. When I got home there was a line of traffic up my road as far as I could see, and water running over my driveway. I wasn't sure the gate would open, but it did, and I got home between ten and eleven.
Wow. My first choice is always to shelter in place, but if I ever have to evacuate again, I've had a practice run, and have an idea how to do it better next time.
Glad to be home, now, I can tell you that.
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| 5-31-2013 5:02 PM |
The live broadcast ended and they went back to the map.
Probably about 3:30 - 3:45, Mike Morgan came back on live, and now the cap had broken and a huge anvil cloud was forming out near or just west of El Reno, which is about ten miles west of me. I knew this would develop quickly, and I did not want to be stuck in traffic on the highway when it rolled into town. I headed home about 4:30. Son Michael had already gotten the chickens in for me, so I just made a cursory walk-about and came inside to get ready.
This is not something to take for granted, though. Acknowledge, respectfully observe, but don't take for granted. And given the devastation of the Moore tornadoes just a week and a half earlier, and that the weatherman was saying weather conditions on this day were highly conducive to even more intense weather, I was certainly wary.
So I'm watching the radar on the WeatherRadio iMap, seeing where it is, where I am, hearing what the weatherman is saying, and talking to a friend on the phone. My friend said, "Oh, it's going to go north of you. It's not going to hit you at all. You'll be lucky to get rain out of this." I didn't argue with her, but it looked like she might be mistaken. Then the sirens went off. She offered to keep talking to me, but I have a plan and needed both hands to pull everything together and get tucked into my safe place, so I got off the phone.
About as soon as I got off the phone from my friend, my son Michael called. He said "Mom, you need to leave, you need to get out of there." While he's saying that, I can hear Mike Morgan on the TV saying, "People, get underground or get out of the way." I took another look at the iMap radar and started packing. Threw together a bag, put Cookie the Cat in her carrier, picked up Annie's leash, and headed to the car.
 | |
| 5-31-2013 About 7:00 PM |
That storm just kept growing - continued to fire from its original location and growing to the east and the south. Pretty soon I had to move along to keep from being overtaken by the weather.
As I headed south again, I realized this was going to take longer than I had originally thought. I thought maybe I should go to my Dad's in Norman. I called to make sure someone was there, and thought about how I could route my trip. You can get to Dad's from where I was, but it's not the most efficient trip. There's a river to cross once or twice, and I-44, and Moore, and I-35, all on surface roads from where I was. Surface roads and heavy traffic, with an ever encroaching storm on this particular night. I tried to weave my way over. The storm was so heavy and so large that under the storm it was as dark as the darkest night you'd ever dread. Hard to see where you were, and hard to see how to get to where you wanted to go. Soon the storm was bearing down on Moore again, and then Norman, with me still miles away from Dad's, and in danger of getting caught in the weather. I could see I wasn't going to be able to get to Dad's.
In this screen shot of the storm radar the point of the red pin is my house and the blue dot is where I was, about thirty miles from home. Thirty miles from home, and the storm was still freaking coming!
At about Blanchard I thought it might be good to top off the gas tank so I pulled into a gas station and reached for my purse. Couldn't find it! I have a cat and a dog and a bag ... no purse. I got out and looked through everything in the car. Apparently in my excitement to make sure I got Annie the Dog and Cookie the Cat to safety, I plum forgot to pick up my purse! Well, I still had well over 200 miles on that tank of gas, so I was pretty sure I could make it home. Hoped so, anyway.
I continued south to Lindsay, checking the radar along the way. When I got there it looked like I could circle back over to Chickasha; from there I would take Highway 81 back up to 152, to Clear Springs Road, and home. I anticipated that I might have to drive into some rain, but by the time I got back, the rain had moved on.
Bizarre were the lines of traffic, first heading south out of Mustang, then north on 81. As far as you could see, red tail lights in front of you, white headlights behind you. I'd been listening to the KFOR simulcast on the radio all evening so I'd heard plenty about impassable routes due to downed lines and local flooding. I saw areas dark from power outages, poles and signs knocked down and out of place, lots of broken trees, and water running across the road in several places. I saw water and heard water running in places you don't ordinarily see water. I saw a random fire hydrant laying in a drainage ditch, no idea where it came from or where it belonged. When I got home there was a line of traffic up my road as far as I could see, and water running over my driveway. I wasn't sure the gate would open, but it did, and I got home between ten and eleven.
Wow. My first choice is always to shelter in place, but if I ever have to evacuate again, I've had a practice run, and have an idea how to do it better next time.
Glad to be home, now, I can tell you that.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
The Tornadoes of May 19-20, 2013
I was in downtown Oklahoma City on the third floor of the Dean A. McGee Eye Institute when the sirens went off. Everyone in the building was directed to the basement. There was a young woman of about 20 or so, checking her smart phone, saying, "My cousin says it's in Newcastle. My cousin says it's in Moore. That's so far from here. Why do we have to go to the basement?" She was born and raised Las Vegas, Nevada, with a surprisingly sheltered upbringing, and had certainly never experienced anything like this before. She really didn't understand what the big deal was all about. I just said, "Tornadoes travel, sometimes pretty quickly. Better safe than sorry."
The next morning when I saw her I said, "Did you watch any TV last night?" Tears in her eyes, she said "Oh my God, yes! How awful!" She was clearly shaken. I said, "So you understand, now, why everyone gets so excited when the sirens go off?" She certainly does.
South Oklahoma City is my old stomping grounds, and I went to high school in Moore. The storm tracked less than a mile from my first husband's house, and even closer to the homes of some of my other extended family. I am personally acquainted with at least two families who lost their homes and everything but their lives and whatever they could grab and carry to safety as they fled the storm. There's a few folks I haven't been able to speak with yet, but I haven't seen them in the obituaries, and I have news of some of them via Facebook.
(Deep sigh) I'm going to go check on the chickens now.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Down for the Weekend
We have a little metal oscillating fan in my office at work, and I think something is a little out of round because it makes quite a racket when we use it. The other day when we had a little splash of warm weather and wanted to use the fan, I set it on the carpeted floor in hopes it would be less noisy.
It was slightly less noisy. We used it a couple of days, and then the weather cooled off. I didn't trouble myself to move the fan, because we knew it would warm up again in a few days.
We're always thinking a few days ahead at work. The first thing we have to do is make sure "tomorrow's" charts are done, and we work on the next day's charts, and so on. Every day is busy, but certain days are extra busy clinic days, with a heavier load of charts to do. Any given Tuesday, for example, might have twice as many appointments as, say a Friday. It was Thursday and we were working on the last of Friday's charts, looking forward to getting those done so we could start on Monday's and hopefully get enough ahead to start on charts for Tuesday.
Jimmy John's delivers, and we'd ordered lunch in so we could work through. I had just finished a hefty stack of charts and I got up to band that giant stack of charts together and
move them to the "finished" place. When I got up, though, somehow I got tangled up in
that fan. In the process of trying to get untangled I lost my
balance, and in the process of trying to regain my balance, became
more unbalanced, almost fell, caught myself on a chart cart, and twisted the heck out of my left knee. If the chart cart hadn't been there for me to grab I would've ended up all the way down on the floor. If it, being a wheeled conveyance, hadn't been in the corner like it was, the whole story might've had a much worse outcome than it did.
Knee hurting like all get-out, standing on one leg, I somehow found my chair and plopped back into it. Scared a good ten years off my co-worker. She went for help and people started piling into our little office, including one of the doctors. He asked some questions about does this hurt, does that hurt, and if I had an Orthopedic surgeon of choice. I do, but I don't know if he's still practicing, or if he's even still alive. I told Dr. H. that all my favorite doctors are old now. He said he's old too, and we laughed about that. Someone appeared with a wheelchair and I got a ride in the wheelchair to the hospital across the street. We must have looked like quite a crew, two women pushing another woman in a wheelchair across the street like that.
We entered through the Outpatient entrance on the south side of the building and threaded our way through the building to the Emergency Room on the north side of the building. ER Waiting was full of folks I suspect may not have come in if it hadn't been so cold outside. I wouldn't say they weren't ill, but I got the feeling that several of them might have tolerated their dis-ease without spending the day in ER if the weather had been better.
Fortunately I didn't have to wait as long as I thought I would, and the good news is that nothing is torn or broken as far as
they could tell. The knee "looks" perfectly normal from
the outside, with little to no pain as long as I
keep still and don't stress or twist it at all.
Mike
and Monica came to drive me home and help me get my car
home, and then they brought my recliner and twin bed
downstairs so I can stay on one floor. I can walk well
enough with a cane (Thank you Steve for the nice cane),
but I don't dare try to go up and down the stairs right now. I
already feel tons better than this time yesterday, but I
can sure tell when I've moved around "too much" (like
now). And while driving wouldn't
be at all difficult, getting into and out of my rather
tall Honda Pilot seems a little daunting yet. I can't even
think about that today. I'm hoping to enjoy enough
recovery to go back to work on Monday.
So, there you have it. Twisted knee, down for the weekend.
The oscillating fan, by the way, is back on the windowsill, off the floor. We'll just deal with the noise when we're hot.
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