We saw a couple of women walking two goats in Columbia City on our way to take LK to school. The goats seemed very amiable and well behaved.

A raccoon was ensconced on the roof above our front porch last night and stared intently at us for a long long time. She/he seemed very demonic as the light from inside sometimes made its eyes glow red. Ate and Armando were not pleased. I am fearful for our young chickens as I did not think the 0.5 hardware cloth was necessary, but I will have to retrofit the chicken run. Raccoons allegedly are prone to reach through normal chicken wire and strangle hapless chickens (they’re not too smart as just by staying away from the wire would keep them safe).

On the way to drop off Amanda at work, we almost got flattened by a garbage truck that ran the red light in front of the PacMed building and 12th Avenue. Slamming on the brakes with a slight evasive maneuver at the end worked though. Fortunately, as otherwise it would have been ugly. LK found the whole thing amusing and chortled.

Amanda old coworker at SIHB PM and her friend S came over for dinner tonight. I missed dinner, but they saved some for me. S actually cooked everything and it was quite divine; I don’t know what anything was called except for the samosas. Kai was still awake when I got home after 9pm due to the presence of our guests, so I could not hang out with them but instead sat in his room until he feel asleep.

Amanda ran into a chicken guy (?1?!) up in the University District and supposedly we have a Black Australorp and not a Black Orpington; the australorp is the Australian version of the orpington. I glad that’s cleared up.

2011 APR 03 : SUNDAY
Sunday Amanda was still on OB call, but she did not have to go in again. She delivered one baby Saturday night, but the other had to have a c-section. She came home late while I was dozing on the couch.

She and the Kai went to bfast at AC-MC’s place while I slept in. I did not get out of bed until 8:45am. Crazy. In the morning I did some cleaning, futzed around with the chicken run, and experimented with different locations for our four new composting containers. Amanda and the Kai had a big adventure after bfast with trips to Uwajimaya and Goodwill. Amanda was apparently traumatized when a fish met its end in the seafood section; I don’t know what the Kai thought. She got me some Ajinomoto which probably is not good for controlling my blood pressure.

She got lots of things at Goodwill: baskets for possible nesting boxes, various toys for the Kai, compost containers for the kitchen, and some random office stuff.

MC and CC came by before lunch to check out the chickens. They seem to be doing alright, although I would rather have them outside. It is still to cold for them, though.

During the Kai nap, Amanda went to town on the basement and bleached large swaths of floor. She was displeased that the Kai’s stroller got moldy, but there is not a lot we can do about that without expensive drainage repairs. Or we can run a dehumidifier; I dunno how much that would cost in electricity. I am slightly worried about some of my hiking stuff; I may move them upstairs in the summer, but we don’t really have the room for much upstairs.
I started carving up the doghouse for the chickens… putting ventilation holes and the like in. I think it will definitely be small for three full sized chickens, but I guess we will see.
We had a roasted red pepper soup for dinner. Tasty.

After the Kai went to bed, we watched a documentary on tsunamis. It was obviously made before the Japan one, but it was even made before the Indonesian one in 2004, so it seemed dated. As in they talked a lot about now really bad tsunamis can be when it is obvious to anyone living in the last decade.

2011 APR 04 : MONDAY
My card did not work at the Kai’s school. That’s always a bummer.
In the afternoon, I wanted to get some exercise by cycling up and down various parts of Beacon Hill (in spite of the continuous rain), so I worked on getting some new fenders on my bicycle. A section of my old ones broke off a couple of years ago and had been annoying me whenever I rode in the wet.

Getting the old hardware off took much longer than I anticipated as a lot of it was very rusty. I used to take my bicycle completely apart once a year in the spring and lube everything up to prevent such things; I was very liberal with the marine grease on most connectors. But I have not done such a complete breakdown in years, probably not since 2000. So, as it turned out, I did not go bicycling, nor did I get both fenders on. Maybe tomorrow.
I was going to check out my blood pressure at the grocery store, but I decided I did not want to be depressed. And also, since I had the Kai with me, I did not what him running off while I was trapped in the machine.

I made a white bean soup and baguettes for dinner. It is still soup weather. Amanda liked the baguettes. I don’t know about the soup.

Amanda is editing all of her camera photos now. I do need to revamp our online gallery, but there are many many things ahead of that on the task list. I don’t think she will put them online, but she is going to get a lot printed out.

I now believe I was wrong about our chickens. What I thought was a Black Sex-Link I now think is a Black Orpington (so we have the black and the buff color varieties). I also think we really do have a Rhode Island Red; the pullet definitely looks a lot redder now.

Actually, all the chickens look a lot bigger even after a couple of days. The Buff Orpington definitely. They have eaten a lot of food… much more than I would have thought.

Amanda is on OB call all weekend, and has been gone since noon. She had a least two laboring patients; I don’t know if any more showed up.

We picked up three pullets today at the Seattle Farm Cooperative warehouse in SODO. The people there (presumably all volunteer coop members) were very helpful. They sell a lot of bulk garden amendments, chicken and other livestock supplies, and seeds. Today they also had chicks and pullets and young roosters. I don’t know who is buying the roosters since they are illegal in the city. We got a brooder kit (plastic bin, chick feeders and waterers, and heat lamp), a couple of types of feed (one for chicks and one for later), wood shavings for bedding, and three young pullets.
Hopefully they are pullets, anyway. If any turn out to be roosters we can bring them back to be “placed” elsewhere, although there are no refunds.

The pullets are probably five weeks old. They were the leftover chicks from a previous sale last month. But I don’t mind not getting younger chicks. They were slightly more expensive (er, $3 more, but twice the price of chicks), but the sexing is more certain. Or at least that’s what they say.

We got three different breeds. I did not pay attention to what they were when we got them and later had to decipher the cryptic notations on the cardboard box they gave us to transport them. We have a Rhode Island Red, a Buff Orpington, and a Black Sex-Link. “Sex-Link” is a totally non-friendly name; they are hybrids between a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen.
One of the coop members thought she knew me; of course, I had no idea. I’ll remember her now, though.

We set them up in our spare bedroom. It isn’t warm enough outside for the youngsters, but hopefully it will be in a couple of weeks, because the brooder box is a little small for them and will have to be cleaned out every day probably. The cats have not seen them yet.

I believe Amanda was intending to get bantams, but all of these will be full-sized hens, so we will probably need a bigger coop. Well, perhaps we don’t really need one, but I think the chickens may foul up the nesting boxes (yet to be constructed) since the doghouse is on the smallish side for three full-sized hens.
Since we got the chickens, I needed to actually finish the coop. Fortunately after days of heavy rain, today was relatively dry. I did manage to put the door on the run and almost attach the rest of the wire, but the Kai woke up from his nap and did not wish to be outside (“I’m going back in the house!”). Leaving inside the house by himself is unwise (Amanda had left for UW at this point).

The Kai and I just amused ourselves inside. I made a dinner of broccoli and tofu stir-fry. The evening was like any other. Hopefully Amanda will make it back home sometime tonight.

I had been sucking down a lot of NSAIDS for the past couple of months (for legitimate reasons!) and apparently they also elevate blood pressure. Amanda has taken me off them cold turkey, but has not suggested any alternatives. “You’ll live” says she. Doctors do not feel your pain.