Fairly Routine

I wake up somewhere between 9 and 10 in the morning. Our bed is the most comfortable bed in the world. My dear wife has been up for a few hours. I warm up a heating pad for my neck (arthritis), pour a 20-ounce mug of coffee, fix and eat breakfast, which is always a bowl of cereal and a banana, watch the news and weather, get another mug of coffee, go down to the basement to read forums, blogs and write a little.

Just about an hour and a half after waking up, I get dressed, go outside and attend to the birds. (Sometimes my dear wife does this. We switch off.) We have 12 ducks and one Guinea Fowl. We used to have 18 ducks and 4 Guineas, but death happens.

One of the ducks hurt her leg a week ago. We have no idea how it happened. My dear wife went to put them in the pasture for the day and one, an older chocolate Indian Runner, didn’t get up and run out of the coop with the others. Her left leg was splayed out. Leg injuries are common in domestic fowl. Usually, after a couple weeks of rest, they are good to go. Sometimes they are not. We put her in the “infirmary,” a small area in the coop that I built just for such situations. She’s not eating or drinking much on her own, so each morning and night we put a half-dozen night crawlers in her water bowl. She gobbles them up right away. These worms will determine whether or not she survives.

The last Guinea has broken each of his hips once. He spent a couple months in the infirmary. He now gallops when he runs, and his tail is at a 45 degree angle to the left. We call him Legs. He still manages to terrorize the ducks when out in the field by charging at them, Male Guineas do this to establish dominance. Yet, Legs wasn’t always the Alpha. Another male that died from a really bizarre leg injury was the big dog before, but when he kicked, Legs filled in right away.

So the birds that can walk go out to a back pasture for the day. They have 3 big bowls of water that they climb in to wash off, and 3 smaller buckets from which they drink. These all get cleaned and filled every morning. Then it’s back to the coop to collect eggs, and clean out the food bowl and watering trough.

We still have some veggies in the ground. I put in a couple rows of spuds this spring and some lettuce. There are a couple raised beds of mint, which we still sell, Then there’s the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers in the hoop house. We planted enough garlic to last us the year. The garlic is almost ready to harvest, so it doesn’t get watered any more; however, the irrigation for the other plants still needs to be managed. We had our first new potatoes for dinner last night, seasoned with some green garlic and peppers. Yummy.

There are a million things I could do outside at this point. Our 3 cords of firewood were delivered yesterday evening. It needs to be put away in the barn but the area where it is stored still needs to be cleaned up, irregular pieces of wood from last year put elsewhere in order to neatly stack the new wood. But I still have to cut down the Photinia, buck the wood and stack it with the green filbert logs I bucked up last week. All of that wood needs to go behind what we are going to burn this winter.

And then there’s the barn. It’s a mess. The stall where we put stuff that needs to go to the dump is overflowing. I have about six trips to the dump ahead of me. Tools are strewn everywhere; hoses, hose manifolds, ground cloth, plastic trellis and potting cans all dropped with a “I’ll deal with them later” from last season are waiting to be dealt with.

One of the paddocks still has tomato cages and soaker hoses from last year. They are overgrown with weeds, so getting them out of there will be a monstrously hard task now. I may have to wait until winter to deal with them.

The roof needs power washed, a window sill needs replaced, the paint on the house needs touched up, the deck needs to be treated, screens in the windows need repairs, and I need another cup of coffee.

I go inside and sit down to write.

Then it’s time to go into town for the mail and sundries. And before I know it, it’s late afternoon. Time for a little poker before evening chores.


Poker Academy Online #40,179,664
No Limit Texas Holdem ($0.5/$1 NL)
Table Emerald
July 30, 2008 - 15:58:12 (PDT)

1} ubu roi $164.75 6s 6d
2) gwpro $275.55 ?? ??
3) trubbel $85.15 ?? ??
5) ctrl $105.20 ?? ??
6) Papageorge * $188.20 ?? ??
7) Boomerang (sitting out)
8) TIRAMISU $91.10 ?? ??
9) Loki9 $204.50 4h 7d

TIRAMISU posts small blind $0.50
Loki9 posts big blind $1
ubu roi calls $1
gwpro folds
trubbel folds
ctrl calls $1
Papageorge folds
TIRAMISU calls $0.50
Loki9 checks

FLOP: 7h 6h 5d
TIRAMISU checks
Loki9 bets $4
ubu roi raises $12
ctrl folds
TIRAMISU calls $16
Loki9 raises $187.50 (all-in)
ubu roi calls $147.75 (all-in)
TIRAMISU folds
ubu roi shows 6s 6d
Loki9 shows 4h 7d

TURN: 7h 6h 5d Ad

RIVER: 7h 6h 5d Ad 8c

Loki9 wins $344.50 with an Eight High Straight
$3 raked.

Chores are going to start early tonight.