Happy Moments

In the last 24 hours I have had two happy moments.

I have recently bought a Mac Mini for the house so David can do homework on something that I am not waiting for (Powerbook) or that is my work computer (iMac). He is getting to grips with it and is even giving me a list of the games he wants installed and the films he wants to watch on it. It doesn't seem to bother him that it is in the dining room rather than his room which is good as it is supposed to be for the whole family.

Last night I stayed with him to demonstrate how iTunes works and to delete some songs from his Nano to make room for new material. When I set up the Nano last year for him I lumbered him with MY favourite songs without even asking him if he liked them. Some needed to come off. So last night I explained Smart Playlists to him which he thought were magical and then ordinary Playlists. He caught on very quickly. I showed him how to select multiple songs in a row holding down the shift key and also how to select many individual songs by holding down the Windows key. I'm sorry. You read that correctly. It is an old Windows keyboard. We wont be able to afford a new Apple keyboard for a wee while. Much as I hate the thought of my fingers having to touch a Windows key rather than an Apple / Command key. Look. I did my best by insisting on a Mac Mini - he could have been using his brand new Tesco PC Laptop at half the price of the Mini - I think I did well side stepping that one. . . .

So. Back to the Playlist. I showed him how to rearrange the songs alphabetically by song or by artist. I went straight to Chris de Burgh, highlighted them and said "You can get rid of a whole artist if you like," right clicked and went to Delete.

"NoooOOOOoo what are you DOING???"

"Deleting all the Chris de Burgh songs. You don't like them do you?"

"YESSSS I LOVE HIM!"

Ahhhhh. My work here is done. *beams madly*

Then this morning I was cleaning out the chickens when I noticed Izzie doing the "I'm about to lay" dance around the shed. I have seen her doing this before but you may remember that Izzie was the girl we got at the Poultry Fair and quickly decided we had been sold a pig in a poke - she seemed to not want to lay, probably because she was too old but I loved her anyway and made her my favourite girl - she IS gorgeous looking. Then all of a sudden she pushed an egg out! Just like that! And by the looks of the colouring and size of the egg it would seem she has been producing for us for the past couple of weeks and we didn't even know it! I thought it the other ones were Buffy's!

YAY to Izzie. YAY to Smart Playlists and YAY to Chris.

Quick Update

I know it has been absolutely ages since the last one but there hasn't been an awful lot to update you with really.

We hit moulting, no-laying, dark nights, the end of the apples and the start of the rats all at once. It has been a pretty bleak time all round.

We went from four-a-day egg activity quite quickly to none-a-day with no inbetween. It was quite a shock to me really to have a good couple of weeks with no eggs at all. There was one point where I thought we were going to have to BUY EGGS! How rude would THAT have been? Sydney is still moulting but Summer has filled out again and is looking quite handsome again after looking decidedly scrawny for some weeks. Buffy lost the equivalent of a pillow's worth of really downy feathers but is starting to look fairly respectable again. In the past fortnight we have managed to average two-a-day and although not at the point of having enough to give away yet, we are once more eating egg as often as we like.

I loved the apple season. We had various apple tarts and cakes and crumbles during the windfall and managed to freeze enough so we can have one dessert at Christmas to cheer us up. I would very much love to have another apple tree in the garden but we would need to clear out one section to plant it in first. . . I'd love to have enough apples that we wouldn't know what to do with them and might be forced into buying an apple press

And now, on to the rats. Hateful creatures. They have decided they prefer to live under the chicken shed and tunnel their way in to the run at night to eat their fill. I have three traps down and have bait in various places but so far the tunnelling continues despite us catching two of the beggars. One, we found with his legs in the air and the other we found on Sunday, hidden away behind the shed and covered in maggots. It must have been there for a good couple of weeks. I have had to empty the compost bin closest to the shed which annoyed me majorly. Part of the reason I got chickens in the first place was so I could improve the garden with my own compost. To find they have built tunnels in the bin and sprayed it all around (mostly in to next door's drive way) made me very cross.

On Sunday we spent most of the morning and afternoon rat-i-fying the shed. We have made it impossible for them to get under the shed now with a combination of wooden posts and concrete slabs on three of the sides. The only side open for them is the one on the run side and it really needs custom cut blocks put in place. Iain is ordering an angle-grinder for that job and I hope to have it all sorted soon. At one point I even held the hose under the shed almost until it floated away in the hope it would make them move on but NO! that very night there was another fresh tunnel. Why don't they just take the hint?

So far I haven't seen any alive (thankfully) but have seen the odd wee mouse scurrying around but the fact that I know they are there just annoys the happiness out of me. Fingers crossed this may do the trick. Funnily enough, when out at the chickens, I think I am rat-safe if I have my wellies on! Somehow I think they will save me from . . . shhh ..  . too much information