Is it okay to be stupidly happy that I own a waterfall?

( Shameless glee about the house under the cut. Plus two pics. )

For the first time, my family's Thanksgiving was not held at my parents' house. Kate and I hosted this year at Sundog House (which is what we're now calling our new place). It was Kate and me, my parents, my nephew (Mat), and a friend, Helen Jordan, who recently lost her partner. So, it was a small group, but fun. The food was great (Kate made an awesome pumpkin cheesecake), and the weather was beautiful... very warm and sunny.

Mat took pictures:

This is Doormat the Cat. We've tried to find someone to take him but haven't had any luck so far. He is such a cool cat, though, that we've decided to hang onto him until someone we know and trust can give him a good home. He deserves it.

( More of Mat's pics and a few of mine under the cut... )

So, I just spent 40 minutes on a post, then hit the backspace button on my keyboard to erase a misspelled word, and the entire browser jumped back a window, erasing my entire entry. I don't know if LJ is to blame, or Google Chrome, but this is the third time it has happened this week, and I'm incredibly pissed about it.

Ten years ago over Halloween weekend, a group of gals got together to spend a cold, rainy weekend camping at Greenleaf State Park. The saying was, "no guys or wimps allowed," which translated nicely to a "no-weenie" weekend. I don't actually remember why we decided to not invite husbands, but I suspect my friend Andrea wanted to escape her family for a change, and we all agreed that we would go regardless of weather, thus eliminating any wimps from the equation. The latter was good, because, as I recall, it rained the entire weekend. My strongest memory is of making omelettes over a grill in a chilly rain. And Andrea got cranky about something, but I don't remember what about. Oh, and Kate and I made out in our tent, but I won't provide details about that.

Anyhow...

Last weekend, the original no-weenie campers returned to Greenleaf State Park to celebrate our 10-yr anniversary. This time we camped up the hill on Gobbler's Ridge which had beautiful views overlooking the lake and the Arkansas River. We didn't see any gobblers, but there were lots of vultures to keep things interesting. The weather was gorgeous... sunny and warm. We were a little late to see the fall colors, but the ball cypress trees were beautiful.


The view from Gobbler's Ridge.

The drains have been a bit slow in the house ever since we moved in. Over the weekend they finally clogged up entirely. The guy we bought the house from didn't know where the septic system was, but we tracked it down when Rotorooter came out this morning to snake things out. Mr Rotorooter man put the snake in the system through the vent in the roof, and then Kate and I walked around listening for the sound of the snake until we could hear it leaving the house into the yard.

So, now we know that the septic tank is about 4 feet from the house on the north side, right next to two young oak trees. The oak trees, of course, are probably the root of our drain problems (literally, in that their roots are probably clogging the entrance into the septic tank). The guy couldn't get the snake all the way into the tank, but did clear things enough for the water to start flowing again.

Life is always better when the plumbing works.

I remember the day when I could sleep until noon on a Saturday morning. I guess that is gone along with my ability to read fine print without glasses.

The trip to D.C. went smoothly; no delays or hiccups. My hotel room looks out on an IKEA store parkinglot, though. Not very exciting. At the hotel bar for dinner, I had to listen to a guy ragging on the local Maryland fire departments. Dude! Read my body language. I'm not interested in talking about how "stupid" and "idiotic" the fire service is. This guy really pissed me off, and he never even noticed.

I know several of my flisters are traveling to London this week for AT4. I hope you all have good and safe trips.

Wow, Avatar looks amazing.

Cindy asked for chicken pictures, so here we go...


This handsome fellow is Pretty-Boy Floyd, the shadow rooster who lurks around the edges of the flock, but roosts somewhere in the gully behind the house rather than the cedar tree with everyone else. Isn't he a good-looking chicken?  I can understand why Anthony is afraid of his competition.

( More chicken pics under the cut. )

The chickens still aren't roosting in the hen house, but one of our banty's laid an egg in it!  This gives me hope that eventually they'll start using it. Some of them have taken to sleeping in one of our oak trees instead of the cedar, so they can change their habits.

I am so entertained by the chickens and our two guineas; they just make me laugh. The young roosters are starting to fight, but the guineas don't like them fighting, so they break them up. Tonight, two cockerels started going after it. One of the guineas ran full speed across the back yard at them and goosed one of the cockerels in the butt, causing him to squawk and leap into the air, wings flapping. Both chickens took off running from the guinea hen, who then proceeded to chase the one she hadn't goosed.  Who knew that guineas were such peacekeepers?

Pretty Boy Floyd is a beautiful rooster who Anthony must have driven off before we moved into the house. As best we can tell, Floyd lives in the ravine, or across the ravine. But he keeps coming into our back yard when Anthony isn't around to drive him away. He and Anthony have crowing duels in the morning; Floyd is like an echo from the ravine; a shadow rooster lurking back in the woods. Floyd has been bolder recently, probably driven by hunger caused by cooler weather; but he'll slip up to the house whenever the other chickens are on the other side of the house. He is a very handsome fellow, but I feel a bit sorry for him, since he can't be part of the flock, and he has no hens.

No luck getting the chickens into the hen house today. They ate all the grain around the house as well as the sprinkles leading up the little ladder into the house, but the grain we put inside is still there. And they're back in the tree tonight. One issue may be that it's not in an ideal location, so we may have to move it into a better spot to facilitate occupancy. We'll need extra hands to do that because it weighs more than Kate and I can handle...

I've started working four 10-hour days during the week, taking Mondays off. This gives me an extra day over the weekend to work in the yard and around the house, which has been a blessing getting settled in. I thought I would eventually want to go back to five 8-hour days (because, well, ten-hour days are really long), but I actually like it a lot more than I thought I would. I was in the habit of working 9 hour days often anyway, so Kate is actually seeing more of me than before. Plus, since the chickens wake us up at dawn anyway, it's not like I'm losing a lot of sleep getting up early. So, I may stick with this. It's nice that my workplace allows this flexibility.

I had more to talk about and pics of last weekend's SCA event to share, but I'm yawning so hard I think I should head to bed...

We now have a hen house. This is a good thing, especially seeing as something attacked the chickens while they were roosting in their tree last night.  It was probably an owl, but in the quiet of the night, there was a sudden explosion of twelve terrified chickens falling out of the tree, feathers flying, squawking at the top of their lungs. They set off all the other animals in the near vicinity, too... cows, horses, dogs, the donkey. Quite the racket. Anyway, we'd ordered a hen house a couple weeks ago, and it finally arrived today.  Now we just have to convince the chickens to use it. Actually, we just have to convince our handsome boy, Anthony (our big red rooster) to use it. The rest of the flock will follow him wherever he goes and whatever he does... except the guineas, perhaps.

We just hope everyone survives the night in the tree tonight, with no more chicken explosions at midnight. 

My eldest brother applied for a job position at my office. It was an interesting and somewhat surreal experience watching him go through the process all the way to the interview. People kept asking me if it would bother me working with my brother. It's a good question, and I suppose a lot of people might have had issues with it, but I really didn't. Despite that we didn't get along very well as kids, I really like and admire my brother, and I know he is someone that I could trust and rely upon. So... why wouldn't I want those qualities in a co-worker? I honestly think I would have enjoyed working with him. 

The floor guys came and installed the hardwood floor in the bedroom Monday.

( Before and after pics under the cut.  )

Plus a couple pics of the cedar massacre:

( Dead trees under here... )
 

It rained most of the weekend. Not a heavy rain, rather more of a misty drizzle interspersed with periods of heavier showers.  It was perfect for burning cedars. Kate declined using the chainsaw, and we've already established that I won't touch the thing, so I went after the trees with a bow saw. I think we processed another four trees or so. We only have another 15-20 left. Unfortunately, we're getting into the really big stuff now, so it's much slower. At this rate, we might have them all gone by next summer. And I will have arms of steel. Still, it was fun having a massive bonfire in the rain.

I also unpacked boxes and pulled up tiles in the bedroom prior to getting the new flooring installed.

Since the ground is so soft from the rain, I went out yesterday to plant a crabapple tree that I got on discount at Lowes last week. That led me into digging up sandburs in the side yard for a couple of hours... two big, black, plastic garbage bags full, and I admit it was enormously satisfying work. Sandburs are noxious weeds that must die. Unfortunately, all the digging caused the back of my right knee to stiffen up overnight, and I can barely straighten it this morning. This has happend to me once before, and it's a weird place to hurt, making walking difficult. But, anyway, I'm at home now with my leg propped up, and I'll be alternating ice packs and heating pads for a while. It doesn't help that I'm working on a nice headache, too.

The house is progressing, slowly but surely. We've found homes for some of the cats/kittens, but not all. We're trying to catch the semi-feral calico (who has a home to go to) but she's a wiley beast, and won't let us get near her. We finally broke down and bought a live trap, so we'll see if we have any luck with that. We think she may be pregnant again, so it's imperative that we catch her quickly.

We finally, FINALLY, have phone service, internet, and cable, all at the same time.

The chandeliers in the bedroom have been replaced with a ceiling fan and frosted-glass fixture.

Another one stolen from arden_ranger

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Kate and I had a bonfire yesterday, burning some of our cedar limbs. Sitting around the fire last night, we saw the space station fly overhead. Cool.

Kate and I were busy bees yesterday, but we had a bad day with all kinds of equipment. We thought we had the riding lawn mower fixed (finally! thanks to the gracious help from a couple of friends), but, alas, it runs fine, but the blades aren't spinning. So, once again, Kate went after the yard with a push mower. Which died half an hour into it. So we moved on to cutting up cedar trees. We've been working on these with hand saws, but we were saving the trunks and the big stuff for our chain saw, which we got back from the shop on Friday. I'm scared of the chainsaw (no snarky comments, please), so Kate was wielding it while I de-limbed with the hand saw. After about two hours of this, the chainsaw slipped its chain, and now we can't get the chain tightened up again.

The topper was running my cell phone through the laundry last night. And, since Suddenlink still hasn't managed to get us interenet and phone service hooked up at the same time (and that's another long rant altogether), if anyone needs to get in touch with me by phone, you need to do it through Kate's cell.

*sigh*

I never, ever thought I'd say this, but I almost wish we had a man in our life who was good at fixing things... I used to be pretty good at such things, but my hands are so sore at this point that's it's difficult holding tools. Hammers and hand saws are okay, but tools with small handles requiring fine-tuned movements... not so much.

Things are moving along, though.  We've found homes for all but one of the kittens and cats. The ugly basketball goal left behind by the previous owner was dragged away yesterday.  We unpack a few more boxes everyday. The yard is a mess, what with the dead cedars everywhere and being unable to mow, but eventually we'll get it worked out. I hope.