Happy Birthday to Beatrice!

 

Happy Birthday to my sister Beatrice! While carefully considering all the ways to honor her and celebrate her name day, I decided the bestest way was to illustrate exactly where her present comes from. A true story of farm to table!

Here at our factory, our employees are skilled in the most efficient methods of converting feed to the raw stage of our product. Above, is Neko, your personal provider.

Freshly generated product is harvested several times a day and transported in our state-of-the-art conveyance to our modern processing department.

(Note: employee monitoring collection in the field). After arriving at our hygenic and scrupulously inspected facility, product is added to the ever-growing heap of compost in preparation..

Several months of patience is rewarded with the finished product, ready to be delivered right in time for Spring planting! Black gold! Happy Birthday Beatrice! May your garden grow green and be the envy of all your garden friends!!

Visitors!

Other people look out their windows and have lovely untouched expanses of pristine snow... not us! We had about an inch of snow the other day and it was quickly violated by our outdoor activities, which on this particular day included dragging 3/4 of a ton of steel down to Bob's studio on a cart. (They would deliver on a snowy day. Most of the time, the steel company is a day or two off in their projected delivery day).

Also, Robin and I do a fabulous job of running around and generally marking the snow up. It looks like a school-full of crazy kids has visited. But we did have visitors of another sort:

That's Robin the Good's paw print on the right, next to small pawprints that were left all through our back yard. I think they were foxes? And I think there were two of them as prints that worked their way to our terrace (nosy little buggers!) wove in and out of each other. They inspected Robin's cache of outdoor toys and probably looked in the back window to see what we were up to. 

Here's another shot of Robin's front foot print. She was very interested in the trail of the visitors! They're probably the same little individuals who left a small poop on the very southeast of the terrace a afew weeks back. Just letting us know they're here!

 

Gotta Love A Land Line!

 

Here it is! Thebest sort of technology. Take it out of the box, plug it inot the wall, pick up that hand set and make a call. Astonishing! Easy as 1-2-3 and no need to call for tech support. Yes, I realize there are individuals out that who will call me a Troglodyte or a Luddite but I like our land line.

And here are the two "other" sorts of phone. The one on the right is my old phone, being retired because (as stated in an earlier blog) it was possessed and devious and cranky. It still "works" but not really well and not on my terms. The phone on the left is the new model. I am just learning its ways...

(Sorry about the wonky lighting; that table is actually white!) Just to illustrate that they both still turn on. So the new phone seemed to start of auspiciously- after spending an hour and a half on tech support. The nice woman I dealt with tried to help me and I attempted to be my most self-deprecating self, saying, "Oh you must get so tired of dealing with peopel like me who can't figure anything out!"- but she was pretty patient but also seemed more than happy to dump me by saying, "Thanks so much for calling and enjoy you new phone" before hanging up on me. We did succeed in getting the phone partially set up (ie; I could acess the Internet and receive/send messages) but I hadn't been able to transfer my contacts or other info and I wasn't able to answer incoming calls. 

I will not bore you with my efforts the next day- suffice it to say the phone company in question was having a bad day and suffering from technical difficulties. (Was I supposed to help them?!?!) It took three attempts before I got connected to a less than pleasant guy did assist in getting the phone to work (I think) but then basically told me to "find an app" when I asked for help transferring contacts from my old phone! 

God helps those that help themselves, so I took Bob's suggestion that I watch a YouTube tutorial on how to transfer data and Hey Presto!! I did it! I am so inordinately proud of myself. Like magic, all 100+ phone contacts are now happily ensconced on my new device. I called it a day after that... still need to transfer some photos and still trying to figure out how to get home screen icons of thongs I use but there's always tomorrow!!

A Snowy Start

 

Well yes, a snowy start to 2024 but let's see how long that snow lasts! Not having had almost any for two years, it is interesting to contemplate a world of white. It's supposed to rain- like torrents!- tonight and probably turn all that snow into slush. Tomorrow is going to be almost 50 degrees so goodbye snow!

Januaury 3rd saw the anniversary of our having moved to the BauHaus Chicken Coop a full twelve years ago. As a friend remarked: time does fly! I have also posted over 800 (!!! Yikes!!) blogs describing our time here. I realize I haven't posted quite as diligently in the last year... but really? We've been really busy and soemtimes I just forget to document all the weird and wonderful things we've done.

And don't expect brilliance from me today. I haven't slept well in three (count 'em 3!!) days and am running on fumes. As the weather is supposed to disintegrate into nastiness soon, I may just crawl back to bed and hibernate. Wish me pleasant dreams!