Eggscellent

Posted: Sat 17 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals | 1 Comment »

Happy Day – we’ve had our first egg laid by the Girls.

Working Practices

Posted: Thu 15 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

While working from home yesterday, and getting a fair amount done, I also caught up on a lot of the viewing on the BBC iPlayer. It’s one of the things where I find it easy to multi-task, writing web pages and the like while ‘watching’ TV – and it’s even easier when both things are on the same screen, rather than different ones.

It’s odd really – I used to be quite happy to work in silence, with no distractions or accompaniments. (It depends whether or not I like the programme in the background as to whether it’s distracting or accompanying) But as the years have gone on, I now find I’m far happier working when there’s something else going on as well – usually either music or TV. For some reason my brain works better when processing multiple inputs than it does when it’s just focussed on the one thing.

However, I still have to admit that I find working from home to be a bad thing in one particular area : Hound. A lot of the time she just doesn’t get the entire “I’m working” thing – which is understandable. After all, she’s just a dog. But to her, me being at home means I’m available to be at her beck and call for feeding, letting in and out, and playing. The number of times I’e had a tennis ball dropped at my feet as a “subtle” hint from the dog is just beyond belief. And if I don’t play, she barks. And barks. And barks.

Still, that’s part of the “joy” of working from home, I guess.

Madness

Posted: Wed 14 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Weirdness | 1 Comment »

This story on the BBC has improved my mood considerably – it’s always good to know that we’re not the maddest people in the country.

In this case, well, despite Psycho Cat’s greatest idiosyncracies at least we don’t end up going in the car to collect him from his latest wanderings.

Bird Progress

Posted: Tue 13 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic | 3 Comments »

We’ve had the chickens for a week now (and it looks like our timing may have been as piss-poor as ever – of which I’ll write more later. Turns out that for the moment we’re OK, well outside the 10km ‘surveillance zone’) and they seem to be settling in fairly well. They’re slowly learning to use their perch to sleep overnight, rather than the bloody nesting box, and we’ve (probably) still got a week before they start laying – that’s according to the people we bought them from, who should know rather more than we do on this subject at the moment.

All three seem to be OK though, and have been trotting about the run throughout the day, eating and drinking with no problem. I’ve got some odds and ends to do with them tomorrow when I’m actually at home during daylight hours (for the first time in nearly two weeks) including putting a cover over at least part of the run, so that food doesn’t get wet. And yes, take some photos of them as well.

Oh, and the names? Gladys, Flo, and Elsie. Or collectively “The Girls”. No particular reason – other than that all three are the names of our grandmothers. (One of mine shares the same name as Herself, so we’re not using that one, for obvious reasons) It seemed somehow apt.

Away Again

Posted: Sat 10 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment »

This weekend I’m down seeing the parents, and also taking them to see Kew Gardens, and the Henry Moore sculptures that’ve been put there ’til March ’08. It’s quite a happy confluence (for my parents, anyway) as my dad loves sculpture, and mum loves gardens.

Because of buying the chickens last weekend, it means we’ve had to replan things a bit at home, so that it’s just me going down this time, and Herself will deal with The Girls, and I’ll be back on Sunday. In fairness, she was away earlier this week and I looked after all the animals, so it all works out fine in the end. It means I’m going to be leaving home at about my normal week-day time (i.e. around 6.15-6.30) to drive down to Oxfordshire, pick up the parents, and go to Kew. By the end of the day it’s fairly likely that I’m going to be knackered.

I’m actually quite looking forward to seeing the Henry Moore stuff – I’ve never been an epic fan of his work, but the combination of the work and the setting should be pretty impressive. And, of course, I’ll be taking the camera too – it’ll be good to be able to add some more stuff to the ‘Sculpture’ section of the online portfolio…

So anyway, posts are likely to be a bit thin on the ground this weekend, for the reasons above. There’ll still be a couple, I’m sure, but not loads.

Dry

Posted: Fri 9 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic | 1 Comment »

Just in case anybody cares, No, we’re not in the areas of East Anglia expected to be hit by heavy flooding this morning.

We’re well inland, actually, and all should be fine. Mind you, it was feckin’ windy last night and this morning, although again no harm has been done to the place. We’d probably have lost the tarpaulin covering the front of the wood-store if I hadn’t had to go and check the chickens this morning, but other than that all’s well.

Mind you, I also think that I’ve left Psycho Cat outside this morning – I’m pretty sure he went outside, and I didn’t see him come back in – so we’ll have a very grumpy/cold cat when I get home this evening. Hey Ho, it’s his choice to go outside and not come back when called.

White Deer

Posted: Thu 8 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Cynicism, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

There are some sick people in the world.

Oddly enough, this hasn’t just been in the Forest of Dean. A couple of weeks ago there was a similar occurrence down in Cornwall.

Personally, I don’t understand it at all – it’s just, well, why? What’s the point? People are weird.

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