When the Homily is about Immunology

Morning has broken...

And despite being well down in the 30's, it is amazingly beautiful. The time change has offered me a sunrise sailing. A mostly silhouetted Mt. Rainier towers out my window in front of an ever brightening southeast sky, while stars remain in the northwest which I can see even from the opposite side of the boat. What a great morning commute...but the cold is a precursor of what is to come.

Well, the chickens didn't arrive until Saturday, and thank goodness. We had our first power outage sometime Friday night - Saturday morning with no real explanation as to why. But, recognizing that the kids would freak out to awaken in utter darkness, meandered my way downstairs to find some flashlights - much to my amazement I did so without serious injury.

The chicks will, for around a month or so, require a heating lamp to keep them warm. I'm not sure how long our power was out, but it might have killed them had they been here. So we are taking precautions now that they are here, including a portable power supply unit that I expect will provide light for an hour or so while we prepare to evacuate them to the laundry room of our house.

The cold and power outages are a reminder of how important wood heat can be to us.

Friday evening I chopped wood (see previous post) and managed to just about double the size of my wood stack and I still have several more large rounds to work through. On Saturday I went and bought the windows to be replace din our house and I bought a couple of new power tools - including a chain saw. A recently downed tree across Totten road this morning reminded me of how handy a chainsaw can be...there is only one way in and out of our property, if a tree goes down on Diamond or Emerald roads, I am stuck.

I've yet to power it up, but I have one long round I pulled out of the woods that needs to be cut down to size and so I expect to fire the thing up this week if I can sneak out of work early one day. The trade off of a sunrise sailing into Seattle will be a sun already set sailing home (if not now, soon) - I guess I would prefer it the other way around.

I tinkered around with the molding around the windows, trying to figure out how they come out. I think I finally got it figured out and the Window guy seemed to know what he was talking about and confirmed my suspected methodology. This prompted the purchase of a new Makita circular saw since my old clunker was struggling to get the job doen for the chicken coop door.

We have thus far lost two of the 25 chicks. The girls - especially Charissa - have taken that kinda hard. They are going to have to get used to it though...frankly I don't care if they refuse to eat the roosters that will be set upon the table because that just means more for me.

Sunday was a washout day for me. Church was great, and picked up a portable power supply unit, but I began to feel sick. So I did nothing but bring firewood into the house (the cold was slowly coming), watched some TV, read the instructions for my cool new tools, and at one point burn some safely burnable garbage yard waste.

Never did get that tree pulled out. Maybe next weekend I can get the Fallin boys to help me.
:)