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On the street where you live...

We've had an awful lot of rain lately. Our neighbour, Mike, woke us up at 4:30 this morning to let us know that water was flooding into our crawl space. He's the last cottage on the lane and we're the second last cottage. He said he was woken by the sound of water gurgling in his furnace. His place was completely surrounded by water and he was also letting us know that he was evacuating to his parents place. He's got an SUV that sits higher than the water so he can make it down the lane.

Lise and I grabbed flashlights, put our rubber boots on and took a walk around our place to see how bad things were. Yes, water was all the way up to our well. Looking along the north side of the house we could see that water was flowing into our crawl space but while the ground was soggy right around the other sides of the house, the chickens were dry. We also checked the shed because that's where our furnace and hot water tank are stored and everything was dry there too.

The water had risen halfway up our driveway and all the way down the lane. From the way the wind is blowing it looks like the lake is blowing water right towards our house.

Now that it's light, I went out to see if the water had receded enough for me to get into the city this morning and took this video.


Mike's back now and I can hear he's running a pump to pump out his crawl space. We don't have any mechanicals down there but I wonder if I should go rent a pump too? I'm going to make some calls.

Welcome Mr. President

Early Christmas present

Look what I found when I went out to the coop this morning:



Here it is in a cereal bowl next to a store-bought large egg to give you the scale:

Don't make me keep my bra on...

Let me tell ya, the first thing I do when I get home is pop that bra strap and free the hostages. I get out of my work clothes and basically put my pajamas on. All my close friends and family know that they are welcome to drop by anytime but don't expect me to be dressed. I only stay dressed if I'm expecting company.

That's why I've been particularly irked these past couple of days.

I need to have a telephone jack rewired and have had Bell Canada scheduled to come out and do the job three times this week. The first day I got stood up they told me that they had scheduled me for the next day. The second time they said they needed a senior technician to do the work and they didn't have one available. The third time the excuse was that the technician ran out of time and couldn't come until the next day.

These scheduling snafus, while irritating are not as irksome as having to wait around all evening wearing my damned bra until 9pm.

Stuff

Lots of stuff has been happening with me. I was in a car accident and haven't been able to work or sit at a computer for awhile. My 49th birthday just occurred and the only thing I wanted to do I was physically unable to do so that sucked.

We finally got our chickens and I'll post some photos at a later date.

Speaking of stuff, I came across this site the other day. Please take a moment to click the banner below and have a look at the 20 minute film. It's pretty cool stuff.

Coop construction - day one

Today we started building the home for our chickens. We decided to go with the Catawba ConvertiCoop plans I had purchased online.

Our friend Vita came over to give us a hand and our friends Patty & Deb loaned us their miter saw - thanks to you gals we don't have to pick our noses with our elbows. Of course we'll be sending eggs home to them as soon as we get our hens settled and laying.

Here's a few pics of the construction process. There was only one tricky cut and that was the 60 degree cuts needed to make the peak of the coop. Fortunately the plans showed a little trick for making that cut.

We found the plans we not quite as easy as the designer says. While his cutting list is great, he describes the pieces as "trapezoids" and "parallelograms" which, geometrically are correct but for Lise and Vita who have forgotten their grade 3 geometry, this presented a small problem. Fortunately, being the visual learner that I am, I remembered my lessons and the difference between those two shapes. I know all my shapes AND colours! lol

My one suggestion to the plan's designer is that in the future, he include more pictures of each step and maybe a little drawing of a trapezoid and parallelogram to do his bit to decrease the rate of arguments and potential divorce amongst couples tackling little construction projects.

Today we got all of the major bits built, including the doors. Tomorrow I'm going to go buy some stain (now that we've agreed on a colour), and stain the exterior. Then we'll put the chicken wire in place and attach the hardware. The only remaining steps are putting together a wheel assembly I've been working on (but I have to find a pair of old lawn mower wheels for that), and buy/install water and feed holders.

We'll be getting the birds after next weekend. We're going out of town for a few days so we'll wait until we get back to get the birds.