Here's What's Been Going On

It's been an incredibly busy few months. Of course it's always busy at the end of the semester, with finals and grades to be turned in. This spring, I also served on the search committee for an important administrative position at my university, and that took up quite a bit of time, especially during April. But now, school is over, I'm not teaching summer school, and it's time for some updates on the projects from the previous posts.

First, some unhappy news. Broody Judy's attempt at hatching chicks failed. I believe the first blow was my own fault. After one nice spring day, I left the hen house door open so the hens could enjoy the lovely evening air (silly, I know). The next day, six of the nine eggs were gone, and one of them was moved to a different nest. It was the fact that the egg was moved that made us believe a raccoon must have crawled up the wire to the spot at the top of the coop where the wire is drooping a bit. I guess he had a big feast that night. I stuck the remaining eggs under Judy and she kept sitting on them, but the eggs eventually disappeared one at a time. I found one of them broken in the nest, and I believe one of the other hens was eating them. So Judy gave up. That's sad enough, but I think that same hen is still picking on Judy, who doesn't look very good (she's lost a lot of feathers). I guess I need to institute a "no bullying" policy in the hen house.

The other projects went better. We completed the shower project in our home (I'll write about that later in the week), and the town house is coming along nicely. We finished all the demolition early in April, and we are the same as finished with reframing (I'll also write about that later). Last Friday, we put up electrical boxes; the next stage is electrical and plumbing. That may take a while, however, because the city requires that kind of work to be done by licensed professionals, and the licensed professionals tend to be pretty busy.


We have to completely rewire the house because we found the knob and tube wiring made famous by HGTV. Plumbing is also going to be a major undertaking because we are relocating everything in the house that uses water except the toilet. This is because we are reworking the floor plan so the front door doesn't open into a bedroom. It's going to be really much better, but getting there may take a while AND a significant part of the budget...