If none of these pictures get even a single tear out of you, it’s possible that you’re human only by biological designation.
Author: Marko
them chickens is organized.
I’m a little surprised at how much I enjoy having chickens around. Our ten chicks have turned into ten pullets that are almost fully grown adult hens now. We still have all ten of them—no accidents, predators, or other attrition, although one of them had a run-in with a dachshund that luckily only ended in some missing feathers.
They’re entertaining to watch. We have a routine in place where they get let out of their coop first thing in the morning, and they’ll wander around the property in a flock all day and eat bugs. When it starts to get dark, they’ll all come back to the coop and head upstairs to roost for the night, and all I have to do is to lock them up. I never realized how smart chickens actually are, or that they’re social birds with a flock hierarchy. I’m also amused by the way they all come running when I set foot outside—I know they have learned to associate me with food, but it still makes me feel a bit like the Chicken Whisperer.
We bought a large garden shed, eight by ten feet, to use as a chicken house. Right now they’re still in their coop, but this weekend I’ll place the coop inside the new chicken house to get them used to the new digs. They’ll weather the winter better in the shed, and they’ll be safer from predators at night.
Of course, they’ll have to lay about three thousand eggs for us to save enough in grocery store egg purchases to make up for all the chicken swag we’ve bought to get the little cluckers situated.
Owning ten laying hens is definitely something that we couldn’t have done at the old place in suburban Knoxville. Ten acres out in the country leave one some room for agricultural experiments.
The ameraucanas have distinct plumage patterns, so they’re easy to tell apart. We’ve named all of them. The barred rocks all look the same, so they’re just about impossible to tell apart. Those are Clucky One through Clucky Five.
pen-modding.
A fountain pen works via capillary action. It has a roughly leaf-shaped nib that sits on a feed which is connected via channels to the ink supply. Ink will flow out of the supply, through the channels, and then to the tip of the nib, all without the user having to put any pressure on the pen to write.
On most fountain pens, the tip of the nib is a little ball that’s welded onto the nib itself and then split along with the nib. The finer the little ball, the finer the line the pen will leave on the paper. Super-fine nibs will make your ink supply last a lot longer and allow for writing in small spaces such as graph paper and book margins, but the finer the nib, the less smooth it feels because of the smaller amount of ink for the nib to glide on.
There’s a type of nib called an italic or “stub” nib that isn’t a ball, but rather just a chisel shape with rounded edges. It’s mostly used for calligraphy and expressive writing because the chisel tip produces different line widths on horizontal and vertical strokes.
Here’s an example of the difference between a ball-shaped “regular” fountain pen nib and one with an italic nib:
As you can see, the lower pen with the chisel-shaped nib makes thinner lines on the horizontal strokes, while the ball-shaped nib tip of the upper pen produces a line that does not vary in width.
Italic nibs are a little harder to master because they favor a certain stroke direction and sort of force your writing that way, but the output sure looks nice.
The bottom pen is a Pilot Knight fountain pen. I bought it with a medium nib of the regular variety, and it was just a ho-hum nib that didn’t write remarkably in any way. I also had two cheaper Pilots around with different nibs, one of which was a Pilot Plumix with an italic nib. The nibs and feeds on the Pilot pens looked identical, and I had read that the feeds are just friction-fit inside the sections, so I emptied both pens and tried my hand at some modding. I pulled the feeds and nibs out of both pens and swapped them to find that they were, in fact, completely interchangeable. Now I have a nice metal-bodied Pilot Knight with an italic nib, and two spare nibs to use if I want to switch to a medium or extra-fine line.
Once you get used to the peculiarities of the italic nib, it’s a lot of fun to write with. It gives the line a sort of character you can’t get from any other pen. The Knight is no longer in production, although you can usually find some new-in-box examples on fleaBay. The Plumix with the italic nib is widely available, for example here, and it’s very inexpensive as quality fountain pens go.
the new summertime desk.
At my request, our very handy handyman used some of the old floorboards from the renovation project to make this neat little bar-type shelf on the covered porch area. It’s just the right height for use as a standing desk, and the windows overlook the backyard where the kids and dogs are frolicking. That means I now have an alternate work desk out on the porch from where I can supervise playtime.
(As an added bonus, that shelf will serve very handily as a dachshund-proof staging table for the propane grill that is out of frame on the right side.)
As you can see, that wall now sits on a concrete ledge that’s about a foot thick. This was the trouble corner of the project—the logs of the outside wall had rotted away to the point that the floor had a lean of several degrees. Now there’s concrete holding up the logs on the outside, and that ledge is not very likely to rot away like the wood did. I’d sure love a word with the people who put this place together, though. The phrase “drunken monkeys with delusions of competence” has been used more than once around here when discussing the construction skills of the builders.
many paychecks died to bring you these images.
Here are some before & after shots of Castle Frostbite’s entryway.
Before:
After:
The walls still need to be stained, and there’s some minor trim work to be done, but overall it’s pretty much done. Between those two pictures are three weeks, a bunch of poured concrete, and several very large checks written out to our handyman. But now you can walk through the new front door and stand on level floor that’s not likely to do a trapdoor impression.
I like my soda in “fuck you” sized bottles.
When did we reach the point when we considered it acceptable for people to run around and try to tell other adults what size soda they may or may not buy?
Of course, the people supporting this kind of paternalistic nonsense will argue that we’re all footing the bill for the health care costs that come with obesity and diabetes. To me, that’s actually a big reason to oppose a single payer health care system. When the government pays for everyone’s boo-boo strips and insulin shots, then there’s nothing you do with your body that isn’t the government’s business. It’s a universal adapter for the Nanny State.
that little french car I used to drive.
I had a Citroen 2CV when I was in my early Twenties, and I remember it very fondly.
On paper, it looks like a genuine POS. It had a 27HP two-cylinder engine and a top speed of 70MPH with a tail wind, and the sheet metal of the body was so thin you could push it in with your hand, but the little thing was fun to drive, and surprisingly utilitarian. The engine was stone axe simple and very easy to work on without having to take it to a shop. The canvas top rolled all the way down to the top of the rear window and turned the 2CV into a quasi-convertible capable of hauling oversized loads. Overall, the 2CV is one of those cars that’s more than just paper specs or the sum of its parts. The two BMWs I owned have been vastly superior in technology and performance, but I enjoyed the 2CV just as much. It was the difference between flying a Piper Cub and a well-appointed Beech Baron 58. The Baron will get you there much faster and in greater luxury, but that doesn’t make the trip in the Cub any less enjoyable.
What’s the car you remember most fondly from your early driving years?
unreachable poultry.
The chain link fence is the impenetrable boundary between Dogland (the backyard) and the Poultry Realm (the front yard.)
This will go well until the first chicken gets too cocky, flies on top of the fence, and then hops down on the wrong side.
Right now, however, the denizens of Dogland are having a collective aneurysm whenever the chickens come close to the fence. As you can see, the chickens are completely unimpressed with all the noise.
gifts from your neck of the woods.
When we went on our trip to visit the Southern relatives a few weeks ago, we brought with us a large plastic tub full of gifts for the in-laws and all the nieces and nephews. Because we didn’t want to bring stuff that’s readily available in the South, I shopped around for some local things.
The adults all got half-gallon bottles of pure New Hampshire maple syrup and Vermont maple candy. The kids all got some New Hampshire gourmet “granite” chocolate in rock-colored shells. I suppose we could have brought a cooler full of lobsters too, but it would have been a bit of a challenge to keep them alive that long.
If you had to do the same sort of family visit to relatives in Far Off Other Region of the Country, what kind of uniquely local gifts from your area would you bring along?
those old-timey writing tools.
There’s an interesting article up on the BBC’s website on the rise of fountain pen sales, an unlikely trend in a time where handwriting is on the decline.
The article includes an explanation by that Neil Gaiman fellow why he writes with those old-fashioned things these days, and some of it echoes my own reasons for having gone back to longhand:
I found myself enjoying writing more slowly and liked the way I had to think through sentences differently. I discovered I loved the fact that handwriting forces you to do a second draft, rather than just tidying up and deleting bits on a computer. I also discovered I enjoy the tactile buzz of the ritual involved in filling the pens with ink.
Of course, I don’t have the rather nice problem of being famous and receiving gifts of fountain pens from adoring fans all the time, so I only have about half a dozen of them. But it’s nice to see that other, rather more successful individuals in the field have come to the same conclusions regarding the merits of the fountain pen for first drafts.