Holiday Hello!

Hello blog,

How ya been? I must admit, I miss you. Though it is all my fault we have been so out of touch. Sorry I have neglected you for briefer posts on facebook.

I am looking forward to Christmas. Though our grand travel plans fell through, I'm still taking the whole week off and we are planning a fantastic staycation. Portland- like we've never seen it before! we're going to pretend we're tourists, take more mass transit and do more walking and exploring. I have heard there is a Wells Fargo museum in the downtown Wells Fargo building, I plan to go find out.

Now, I must go deliver some cookies to the neighbors.


Snuggie'd up for the Holiday's!

My letter to Craigslist

Hi there Craigslist,

I have had an interesting experience using craigslist. I posted an ad over a year ago, I believe it was September 2nd, '08. (http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/zip/824617471.html) The ad was for free meal worms, and I was sort of panicked by this mass of meal worms in my worm bin and I posted the ad quite quickly and didn't use my craigslist account. Shortly after I had my neighbor come and take care of my meal worm issue, so I went in and deleted the ad. or so I thought..... Then I also deleted the posting emails. My mistake! I am STILL regularly getting phone calls and responses from this ad. I was under the impression that ads get deleted after 30 days. Mine seems to be out there in some craigslist vortex full of people desperate for meal worms.... who knew? I had no idea so many people would want meal worms.

In conclusion, could you please delete this ad that won't die? I don't have any more meal worms.

Thank you,

-Cori

Those disappearing chickens

Here is a double yolker from Giles next to a store bought egg. Giles' eggs are stil smaller, but they sure are a lot more orange and really really tasty!



My mom was here today, and again a chicken goes missing. What is up with that? Buffy was completely disappeared, I couldn't find her. until I finally spotted her, on a little nest tucked away next to the deck! i pushed her right off to see what she was hiding, and she had laid 6 eggs! I took them all, and she sat back down and laid another one.



All from our chickens!

Small World Stories

I was working on a bit of a real estate transaction, doing some late night work from home. I wanted to make sure I had the correct email address for a certain agent, so I looked up her company's website. While looking at her personal info profile I scrolled to the bottom of the page where there were three photos. The middle photo being a picture that I took of this woman playing guitar at John Henry's in Eugene, oh say, 9 or 10 years ago. I thought she looked familiar when I had met her before, but I figured it was from seeing her at open houses and such.

Today I was at a Listing Appt with my boss. Towards the end the client tells us that she has also interviewed another agent who she was referred to by a painter she knows. Turns out this agent is someone from our office who we've closed 2 or 3 transactions with recently. So maybe we'll co-list it.

I would like to get an exact number for how many realtors there are in Portland. It has got to be many thousands. I heard someone say 6,000, but not sure where they got that number. There are probably fewer now than there were a few years ago, but there are still many many Realtors out there in the Portland metro area.

Eggs!

The other morning I couldn't find Giles. I went out to let the other chickens out of the coop, and seh was already gone! So I totally panicked. She has gotten out of the coop before, but usually she comes running as soon as she hears the back door open. So my Mom and jeff and I wandered around the neighborhood a bit, peeking in backyards, looking for Giles. I even set up a ladder in the backyard to look over the neighbors fence. My mom and I were in the backyard and all of a sudden she appeared, in front of the bees. My mom peeked around the bees to see if she had come out of a hole in the fence or what, and there was a nest of 5 eggs!

She also recently started doing this thing when you go to pet her, she hunkers down and sticks her wings up. It's hilarious. My mom said it's a breeding thing, that's what they do to the rosters before the rooster stomps all over them!

I wonder if the other chickens will do that too before they start laying their eggs.

Caption Contest?

We've been Baxter sitting. He's nice to the chickens, he seems to really like their house because he keeps busting in there and then he can't get out. Sometimes they stay and hang out, other times they do not.

Chicken's Free Rangin'!

Rosie loves her chicken babies.

Chickens

They'll be 7 weeks old on Sunday. It's totally amazing how entertaining they are. and that they all have different personalities.








I feel like I haven't been around much on the ol' internet. Facebook took over for blogging a little for me. I've been super busy, as always, only now also working lots and lots. Loving my new job! and we're still dealing with the stressful life stuff that seems like it's never going to be resolved. seems to me the court system really sucks.

Pie

Having my sis around totally rocks. This is what I came home to last night:

Happy Easter Zombie Jesus Day

Our chicks are one week old today! and they are getting tail feathers! They grow so fast, they look bigger every day.

Chicks!

We got our new babies! Everybody, meet Willow, Buffy, Xander and Giles.



Buffy is a Buff Orpington, Willow is a Rhode Island Red, Xander is a Black Australorp, and Giles is a Plymouth Barred Rock.



They are 3 days old, and are just the tiniest cutest balls of fluff.



We got them today from Livingscape.









They have nap attacks, where they just fall asleep instantly on their feet. Sometimes they wobble.







Then, they wake up and peck around, and sometimes run really fast for no apparent reason.

Bees Last Week

I got into the hive last week to feed the bees. Evidently, they're making honey! They built a bunch of comb inside their feeder, so I had to bust it out in order to fill the feeder.

The comb on the right side there is the stuff built in the feeder.



Lots of bees. This was the first time that I have had a panicky sensation when getting in the hive. Very instinctual, "oh no lots of buzzing, stinging insects spilling out everywhere....." But I got over it. This pic is the bees before getting smoked.



The smoker really does work.



I put on the queen excluder under the honey super to keep her from laying eggs in the honey.



This is the comb I pulled out of the feeder. Some of it had honey in it already. It's quite tasty! It's actually totally amazing, it tastes green. Like flowers smell..... That may sound crazy but it's the only way I can think of describing it.





I also had a couple of helpful assistants.

not SO dumb

Well Pocketmac sorta worked, I've got my blackberry syncing with ical, and ical syncing with google cal, so it''s doing what I wanted it to do there. Yay! I'm a little annoyed that I have to plug it in to sync, I was really hoping it would sync automatically with bluetooth. Since I finally got it connecting with bluetooth, now for apparently no reason whatsoever. Still haven't figured out the photos thing, but I feel I made some major progress.

technology and me

I usually consider myself kind of ok when it comes to technology things. I'm no fancy hacker or anything, but I can set up a wireless network and generally get things to work. But it doesn't seem to be so with the case of blackberry/mac compatibility. I finally got the bluetooth to find each other. But it still keeps clicking off to disconnected. I try to "browse the devise" and it says its not browsable. But why? I just want two things: I want to get my calendars on my phone and computer to sync, and I want to be able to retrieve any photos taken with my phone. ISync isn't compatible, and the "Missing Sync for Blackberry" is like $40 that I don't want to spend. I can plug my phone in to my computer with the little cord thing, but that doesn't seem to do anything but make my phone angry about not having enough power to properly charge or something. So now I'm attempting to download pocketmac for blackberry. I don't know how I'll get it to install from the computer to the phone...... since all this bluetooth and plugging in doesn't seem to be doing much. I have had my stupid phone for ages now, like a year and a half or something, and never just taken the time to figure all this crap out. THIS is why! It's SO frustrating! and it makes me feel stupid and inept. It would probably be a whole lot easier if I paid for the internet service and had that to do all this with, and it's probably the major feature of the whole damn blackberry anyway, but that's just too rich for my blood. Sure makes the iphone and g1 tempting.... I would assume the iphone would gladly syn with ical, and i bet the g1 syncs nicely with google cal.
ARGH!

Crankytastic

I am so cranky..... so so cranky. Just can't shake the cranky.

obsessing over chicken coops

this is the artistic egg shaped chicken tractor from the yard and garden show. It was pretty dang cute, but totally impractical.



I've been looking at lots of different coops and I think jeff and I have decided on a chicken ark or tractor style coop. An A-frame one that we can move around the yard. I'm so excited to get chickens!

Needle Roll!

I made myself a needle roll for my knitting needles. Much better than the black plastic box I had them all jumbled up in.
I found this pattern/tutorial by lupinbunny.
I made a few mistakes, and a few modifications. I'm still a little confused about what I did differently than the pattern, but somehow it seems different. Though all in all it turned out well. I added the fourth pocket with velcro closures. and I taught myself a little crochet so I could make the strap closure. I made the big white button out of sculpey. It was a pretty fun project, I haven't had a real sewing project in a long time.
A few things I would do differently if I was going to do it again: make it wider, make more wide pockets, make the two lower pockets shorter, make the velcro pockets deeper, make the fold over flap longer. Oh, and I would NOT use cheap pink chalk to mark lines with. I really had to scrub to get it to come off, and then my needle roll took FOREVER to dry!

yeah yeah

I know, it's been awhile. I've no excuse, except I'm lazy.

This morning I got up at 3 am to take my sis and pulpshopgirl to the airport. They're going to mexico, and yes, I'm kinda jealous, but it's ok.
This morning I took Emme to school and then ran off to a home inspection for some clients. There were many cooks in the kitchen, cooks being inspectors of various types, the buyers themselves, buyers family members, and myself; the kitchen being less than 600 sq. ft. of house.
Afterwards I went home to arrange a few more inspections. One being a plumber who said he could come right away, another being an electrician who will come out same time as the plumber but tomorrow.
So I get to the house to let the plumber in, but forgot he was the plumber and took him to the electrical box, saying "I don't know much about electricity but I think the whole panel has to be replaced." He looks at it and says, "You think you need a whole new panel?" I say, "Yeah thats what the home inspector said." He said, "Well that's great, but I'm a plumber."
Yay for not enough sleep!

Best Date Ever

Jeff and I went out last night, down to 21st St. We had dinner at a sushi place where we ordered a boat of sushi. It was hilarious, our sushi came on a boat! I didn't have my camera with me but I did take pictures with my phone, unfortunately I seem to be blackberry disabled. I can't get mobile blogger to work anymore and I can't get my computer and blackberry to communicate..... alas. I don't know the numeric password to my macbook because my password has letters in it! WTF?

After the sushi on a boat we snuck into the premiere of The Auteur at Cinema 21. We had to sneak in see, because it was sold out. It was really fun, the director and the actors were there and a ton of people who worked on the film. We skipped out on the after party though, didn't really feel like going. The movie is really good, it's really funny, as long as you're not offended by naked people or making fun of porn. It's filmed in Portland and is fun, not just because of all the familiar places but I do enjoy that aspect of it.

New glasses!

A little while back I very tragically stepped on my glasses. I loved those glasses. I bought those frames at Puttin' On the Ritz in Eugene for $8, and got the lenses put in them for $15. That was like 9 or 10 years ago! Then the other day I put them on my night table to take a nap, somehow knocked them off, and when I got up I stepped right on them. Tragedy!



Boo! Broken glasses! Tape totally does not work, I tried it.



So I had to wait until I was on Jeff's insurance, then I went and got some new glasses. I got these at Erstwhile Optical downtown. They have "vintage stock", which have never been worn. They're new old glasses.





I like the fancy little side things.



They were only supposed to take 2 weeks, and into the third week I got a call saying I could come pick them up the next day, but that was tuesday and we were leaving town that evening for Turkey day. So I went in on Saturday, and they weren't ready! I was not pleased, but to assuage my annoyance the guy gave me a free pair of glasses! So I got some more normal-ish frames. They're really comfortable.



and here's a gratuitous cute Rosie picture.