Chickens on the roof!!

Relax.... I didn't say WHICH roof now did I??

Caught a glimps of one of the Reds on the roof to chicken coop while getting ready for work this morning.... never seen them get up there before...

[chicken on roof]





I've been holding down the fort lately as Nic has been little miss world traveler and away on business... She knocked 'em dead at Interbike in Vegas and is off to Louisville Kentucky for the big Kid's Show... not big kids, but a large show.... Whatever....

We were holding steady at two eggs a day for a long time there.... last weekend we were kinda joking around that if the girls didn't start laying more that chicken and dumplings might be on the dinner menu soon... Well lo and behold we started getting 3 eggs a day, then 4... they must have overheard us...

Things have dropped back down to 3 a day so maybe I need to bring a frying pan outside for the girls to see... just a subtle reminder....

For the first time, we haven't been able to keep up with the eggs the girls are laying!!

[bunches of eggs]









Ran up to visit No-Longer-Big-Gay Jason, Ali and newborn Christopher at 6 days old... Dang they are small when that young...

[matt and christopher]




Jason and Ali gave me an early xmas present/late birthday present (or whatever): the Pitmaster iQue110 charcoal grill temperature controller...

[iQue110]




I hooked it up the other day and it did a fantastic job of holding temp at 250... you more or less just set the temp you want and forget about it...

Here's the results:

[grilling results]




















We've been slowly harvesting some 'maters of various types, then I realized we actually had quite a few sitting on the counter.... decided to take a stab at freezing them up by just removing the skins, quarter them and into the freezer bag.... the boiling water trick worked like a champ!





The setup...














The results...

Summer In Full Swing

Here we are, 2011 going on 2025.... Sorry - gots the Blues Brothers on my mind right now....

For lack of a better term, I think "bouncy" describes what's been up lately... variety of things keeping us busy...

A few weeks ago Nic hosted a planning meeting for next years National Homebrewers Conference trying to get it all figured out... travel, a booth, club night, beers, who's going.... there's a LOT to it and I'm really proud of her making it all happen... I shudder to think what a mess this could become if it fell into the wrong hands...

Somebody call the Pope, because Hell has indeed frozen over... I actually got together w/ my brother Peter from New York when he and his wife Susan drove down for the night. Grilled some eats, had some beers, told some (sometimes true) stories...

And for the first time in almost a year, I got to take a VACATION !!!

I headed out to Black Canyon (by Oakridge) last Wednesday night and set up camp for 3 days of solo camping.... campfire, beers, books.... Ahhhh.....

My home for 5 days:
[butt in chair]




Nic came up Saturday morning, brought some fresh supplies (i.e. more beer and ice) and we had a nice time for 3 more days hanging out...

Well, except for the whole trip into town to catch the UO/LSU game at a local pizza joint... Nic not a happy camper after that, and I saw the Beavers had gone down in total shame, so we weren't exactly in great spirits when we got back to camp... that was a real early night for us...

Obligatory chicken pics:


Buffy is a big girl now!!













And so are the other girls!