A Weekend Miscellany

Today was kind of a crazy day.

First, as mentioned, a woman I met over the internet came over to train the chickens. She got Björk and Amy to come to their names, which is better than about 90 percent of my interactions with the chickens.

Some people asked whether I'd lost my ever-loving mind and hired a chicken trainer, but in fact this was not a for-pay situation. Just a behaviouralist who wanted to stay in practise and a bunch of ill-mannered chickens who were willing (well, not really) to be trained.

After she left, I spent some time cleaning the shed out. I actually had a dream about our messy shed with a rat king and a ballet and everything last week. The neighborhood has a bit of a rat problem right now because one of our neighbors has an enormous pile of garbage in their back yard that the rats are living in. So I gave the shed a good cleaning so there would be no rat king living there.

Most of that was putting up more hooks in the pegboard and hanging up tools that had been on the floor.

(Those white hoses are providing water to the chickens.)

I went off to do social things and Noel worked on stripping the beadboard in the bathroom. We're going to move this beadboard to the hallway; the bathroom will have a wainscoating of tile. But before we move it the paint needs to come off.

The pickiest part is the pair of grooves at the joint.

In the comments recently, there was a question about the heat gun Noel uses. This is it: nothing special, just a hardware store heat gun. This one has variable heat which is nice. It comes with a handful of nozzles for directing the heat which Noel uses occasionally (he has the narrow tip on here for getting those grooves). Ours is a Wagner. We spent maybe $40 on it eight or so years ago.

Cat not included.

posted by ayse on 10/28/12