Less Hectic Week

I know its strangely out of character for me to be so quiet for so long... its been a strange sort of week.... the weather started out really warm at the beginning of the week... warm enough I should've had the AC on, but didn't. So there were a few nights I didn't sleep well and then felt zombie like all day.

My wrist has been bugging me also, which is not that usual anymore... I think I'm doing something weird with it at night, like trying to curl it... last night I wrapped it in vet wrap to keep it straighter and it wasn't near so horrible this morning.... I'll try that again tonight.

We've not been near so productive this week... Shawn did a bit of weed whacking one night... I started to cut some grass and then my mower stopped mowing... it was almost dark and hard to see what was going on. I figured I hit something, like rope or something that wrapped around the blades and bound it, being as the giant belt that makes it all go seemed to still be turning when engaged. We left it for that night, too hard to try to fix that when its almost dark.

Last night, we set aside the whole evening to fix the mower... I figured we'd have to take the deck off, flip the mower over and see what was caught up in it. We set up a table under the tarped building... gathered all the tools and owner's manual and brought the lawn tractor under since it was raining a bit. That worked out great... a nice place to work on stuff out of the rain! Yay :)

Anyhow, we did a few steps towards removing the deck and then the giant belt was supposed to come off the engine sheave and that's when Shawn noticed that the belt was above the pulley thing... so the belt HAD slipped, but instead of slipping down (like our last mower did once) it slipped up and made it almost impossible to see until we'd done all the other steps. Shawn worked his magic and put the belt back on the pulley and we decided to try it... we could always still remove the deck, if needed. Voila! It worked fine again.

So I assume on our ultra smooth and well groomed lawn that as I bumped over a bump the conditions were right for it to slip up. It was too wet last night to give it a really good test, but it worked again, so we cleaned up and put everything away.

That whole process took us less than 30 minutes!! So much for reserving a whole night! :)

I had put a whole chicken in the oven to be ready around 7 - 730 (when its getting too dark to work) and it was only 6pm! We hemmed and hawed for a short while about what we might do... but with the rain, it was kinda limited.

We decided we'd go inside and play Rampage on the Wii. Its a good game... an old game... some of you might remember playing it at Nick's in Balm Beach at the arcade. You play a genetically altered animal... George the monkey, for instance.... then you climb buildings and smash them up. That's pretty much the whole game.... destroy cities by smashing :) Its really remarkable though, for an older game like that (the graphics of course are new, etc) it has great game play. We've already had hours of entertainment from that one game!

While waiting for the chicken to be done, Shawn also told me today was potluck lunch day at work... you pay a couple bucks, bring some food and the proceeds go to the United Way. Of course, this was the first I had heard about the lunch and hadn't planned to make anything. Shawn just assumed he wouldn't have anything to bring. I had done grocery shopping earlier in the day and had bought a cake mix and can of frosting, so I offered to make that up for him to bring.

The chicken was very good... very tender, moist and juicy (those words always remind me of a dog food commercial! Blech!) and we ate almost half of the little chicken. I pulled the rest of the meat off the carcass and put in the freezer to add to soup or something at some point.

Then we cleaned up from dinner, did the dishes and then starting baking the cake. I'm not sure how it came about now, but somehow we decided that making a cake in the shape of an "E" (for the name of the company) would be fun. We made 2 small square cakes, one for us and one for work... the work one we cut out 2 slivers out of one side to make the letter "E"... we let it cool and then right before bed, we frosted it.

I wanted to cover it with foil to protect it on its journey into work.... then I realized I didn't have any toothpicks to stick in to keep the foil from sticking. Improvisation time.... I found some tootsie pops and we stuck those in to protect it. In the end, it kinda looked like something your early pre teen kid with no baking experience would make... but really, that's mostly who we are... early pre teen kids with no baking experience in 30+ year old bodies ;)

We'll see how the "E" cake went over... I'm sure it will just confirm suspicions about us being "odd folk", but that's ok... we've both been called much worse :)

Tomorrow evening is the dinner party... that should be fun... we'll have to some how remember to be on our best behaviour and all that... so I don't know how THAT will work out!! :) It sounds like there will be awesome food.. and awesome food is something we really like.

Sunday morning, we're going to head out to just outside Carleton Place and look at 2 baby goats that are for sale. They are almost 3 month old neutered male Nubian goats. Nubians are generally a dairy breed. Some consider them a "dual purpose" breed (dairy and meat) and I've read them described as a "fleshier dairy breed". They are the "down eared" or "lop eared" goats and generally have a pronounced roman nose.

I don't know what these two look like yet... no idea what colour they are or anything.... the seller has / had some pics, but has somehow lost them. I'll take some pics on Sunday and post them.

I'm still not sure if this will all work out or not and whether we'll actually get them or not... if we do, it wont be til the end of October or early November, as the seller is only just now starting to wean them and start them on grain. Some people wean as early as 8 weeks, but like everything else, there's great debate about whether that's good or not... this particular seller likes to leave them with mom a bit longer, assuming she's producing enough milk and is in good condition.

These 2 goats are brothers... 2/3 of triplets... the other is a girl, which the seller is keeping. Having two boy goats seems good to me.. .though I would NOT, if they weren't neutered... unneutered bucks do not make good pets, which of course, is the purpose of us buying these two.

So obviously the rush to get fencing up is starting to get under way... we spent one evening this week figuring out the first phase of fencing and I think its good to go... I need to get some posts and then fence building can commence. Hopefully we can have their fence up in a month... shouldn't be a big problem unless the weather doesn't cooperate! *knocks wood*

Worst case scenario, the goats can live in the dog's enclosure for a while and the dogs can just go out on leashes... I may put the goats up at night in the dog fence anyhow, for a while, to keep them safe from coyotes until a guard donkey can be found. I don't really like the idea of putting the two little meatballs out as coyote bait, while I'm trying to sleep... that's just the sort of thing I do NOT want to come out in the morning to!!

Even if these two particular goats don't work out for some reason... we'll still move forward on the fencing... because... if you build it... they will come :) There's always more goats / horses / donkeys / etc available and needing a good home.

I think we're going to build them a shelter, instead of trying to have the goat house done and ready in a month... I think the goat house wouldn't take much work to get it ready to store some hay and straw though, so that's the current and ever changing plan.

I'm kinda hoping to get the machine shed door installed tomorrow (before our dinner party) but I don't know if that's overly ambitious... hopefully we'll at least get a good start... then hay/straw could also be stored in the white building.

So that's where we're at right now... many people I talk to think we're nuts for getting goats... and maybe we are... maybe we'll regret it... hard to say... but I've always wanted goats and I'm willing to give it a good try! If nothing else, they should make for some interesting blog posts! ;)