New Episodes in Fall !!!

I have truly fallen down on the job in publishing to the blog. I *know* my loyal fans are weeping in their beers.... so sad.

I'm posting to recommend you get another round because spring is here and I'll be out riding my bike, fixing the house, or working with my collegues in India at midnight or 4am. The *last* thing on my mind is sending out long flowery prose to the blog-O-sphere.

Think of it like summer re-runs, you'll have to wait until next season before the new content arrives. Sure I'll post if my boys do something super cool and expect perhaps a report or two related to the Creampuff race.

I could talk about paint colors and what vegetables we're putting in the garden but I think anyone reading needs to instead go outside and play.

I will, in the spirit of sharing, provide an excellent tip for those who are fixing homes and patching walls. Throw away your traditional wall joint compound and use a product called Silverset. The stuff goes on way smoother *and* you can pick from the 20 minute, 45 minute and 90 minute versions. Why do you care? Because if you are doing this work, you're patching and painting same day. In fact, one beauty of this is that the wait times are so short that you change the nature of the patch.

The old school approach? Make the patch go above the surface, wait a day or until the next opportunity (can be weeks for me) thenlaboriously sand it until flush.

The new school, run the 20 minute stuff, do 3 coats inside of 90 minutes, never touch sandpaper and get the paint rolled on. If your project is big enough, you're not waiting for anything. By the time you've stirred the paint, piled the brushes, rollers and tray and set out the tarp, it's all ready to go. Then... you can get back outside and play... that's what this time of year is for! The best thing is that you've knocked one of the millions of tasks off the list... for good.

You'll thank me

New Residents

Chi and Kai (our chickens) have been enjoying Portland's finest organic food scraps for well over a year. Chi recently met an untimely demise as a result of some predator. We suspect it was a raccoon but will never be sure. The best part was when I had to go visit my neighbor who shares our back fence. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi I'm your neighbor who lives behind you" - Charlie
"Hi, nice to meet you." - neighbor
"Um, so I was wondering if I could retrieve our dead chicken from your backyard?" - Charlie
"Sure, that'd be fine." - neighbor
"Sure is a nice day. It's the kind of day when you want to be outside, collecting a dead chicken with a shovel." - Charlie
"Yeah." - neighbor

Anyway... so now Kai is lonely so we've picked up some tiny new residents who will join her in a few weeks. We now have a Barred Rock and a Polish along with our Araucana who lays the blue eggs. Google the Polish in particular because they are wild looking birds. More eggs by fall.... woo!