Is less really more?

Let’s be honest: I haven’t really been ripping it up with posts in the last couple months: two in August and none (so far) in September. So, what gives? Have I lost the love? Have I had nothing going on? Am I too entrenched in other details to lift my head and shout out a bit on the happenings here in SeaTac, WA?

To be honest, it’s been busy time and every spare minute behind the computer seems to be spent on “maintenance” of a digital lifestyle. I am uploading photos to Flickr, working on the Cat Cartoon blog, and staying caught up on mail. And, while I’ve normally been doing those things, life outside of the Internet has been a bit busier than usual. So let’s start there in an attempt to catch up on the happenings here in my little corner of Seattle.

After “the raccoon attacks”, (mentioned here … a second bird was chomped that I didn’t document; the raccoon attacked between 11 and 2 PM!!) we decided to only let our birds out when we could be around to watch them. And, considering we’ve enjoyed having “free range” birds in the yard, this was a hard decision, both from the sense that we were having animals on the property but keeping them cooped up (hee hee … pun intended!), but also considering that “watching chickens” can get darned old after a while. And, yes, I’ve been making great strides on reading my paper materials: the daily newspaper, our monthly issue of Smithsonian, any of assorted novels I pick up on the cheap from Costco, or the rare missive that comes through the parcel post.

So, it’s good time and reasonably high quality, but there’s a part of me looking forward to coming home at the end of the day and not being able to sit outside! I have lots going on that I enjoy doing that the forced couple hours of sitting outside feels just that: forced.

Next, work was tough for a while there. Quite tough. Or, to be more exact, just demanding in terms of overall time spent in the office and catching up while not in the office. It was a long three weeks or so. But, enough about that.

Then came some fun: my annual trip with “the boys”. Once a year I get out with some old co-workers from my Boeing days and we find the quieter places left in Washington state. This year, just to shake things up, we chose to sea kayak for five days. I’ll definitely post more about that here as it was a great trip. While it wasn’t remote or “quiet”, it was different, and I liked that a lot. My 750+ MB of pictures are now loading to Flickr while I type this, but the story will have to wait another day or so.

And we’re back to “chickens”. As a result of our flock being small and pent up daily, we argued two things:

1) If it’s beyond our control that “things” will happen to our chickens and it’s hard when you have a small flock; why not get a bigger flock?
2) Caring for a few more chickens isn’t that much tougher than caring for the few we have now.

So, while Suzy prepared for our expanded family by buying a few extra chicken coop accoutrements, I built a new “temporary” shelter.

It’s temporary in that the top is just a tarp stapled down, the sides are all panels of the same dimensions and screwed together using thin metal plates, and we have no intention of leaving it up beyond the few weeks it takes for the new birds to get a bit stronger, have them weather a quarantine period, and so each group of chickens (our new ones and the few we have from our earlier flock) get used to seeing each other. We’re in for a “pecking order readjustment” as soon as we do mix the flocks, but that shelter will only be around for a while.

And that’s it. Just a few things but demanding in time. Today Suzy and I will attend the annual Puyallup Fair for a bit of a feeding frenzy paired with a lot of walking, a bit of gawking, and maybe some purchasing! :-) 

As always: more later!

Advertisements