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We had in-laws in this weekend. By which I mean, we had one set Thursday and Friday and another set on Saturday. I bagged the limit you might say. Of course, the original plan was that in-law group #1 was supposed to leave on Sunday with in-law group #2. The change in plans means my freezer is stuffed with unused in-law chow. No worries. I understand they’re back in season in just a few weeks.

In the meantime, I spent Sunday afternoon cobbling together a “chicken door” on the refurbed horse stall. I also cobbled together a plexiglass “chicken window” although its mostly for my benefit as it’s too high for the chickens to see out of. Actually, the rotting piece of plywood wedged into the existing opening served its purpose quite well, but chickens lay eggs longer into the winter if you trick their simple little minds by giving them more light. I need to finish building a roost for them after soccer practice tonight and I can bring the birds indoors. Of course, I’ll still need to do a ton of work with chicken wire and plywood to keep the cats out, but it’s a problem that I can solve a bit later – after I get the chickens out of the increasinginly nasty “portable” coop. Yes, I admit defeat. The portable coop has proved much less portable than I thought it would. If I use it all next year, it will be after I’ve taken a sawzall and lopped it in half to cut weight.

I’d do that next weekend, but apparently, I have to ride the fence line again. Yaro, she of the split personality, found a section with a broken bottom wire and squeezed under it. Luckily, she merely wandered around the fence and into our former training arena, which has some nice grass growing in it. She did this, of course, after I spent 2 hours Saturday fixing 3 parts of fence where the wire had gotten corroded and was arcing audibly. By audibly, I mean you could hear it on my computer speakers as well as when you were outside. It sounds a lot better now and you don’t get that eerie blue spark at night, but now I have to wonder whether its on or not…

So…welcome to the new server. Hopefully, you don’t notice all the behind the scenes changes. My good friend Ben Levine and I have long maintained our own web/email server to dink about with and host our stuff. As we have gotten older, busier, and possibly wiser, we’ve decided that we just want our personal web/email equipment to just shut up and work. Thus, when it blew up last week, we decided it was time to change.

So, we’re now hosted on godaddy.com’s massive server farm and not in my basement or a server farm in Australia. (Honestly, I think that’s where the last one was). I’m still trying to get email back in order as well as deal with in-laws this weekend, so no new posts until next week.

Darn blog. I can pound out a few words a day no problem, you say to yourself when you start. We’re coming up on our 6 month anniversary in the country, so it’ll be a good time to post some “Deep Thoughts” on the whole experiment to date.

Until then -

• I’ve been to the fair for a rodeo, 2 country music concerts, a quick dinner and gawk at the tractors, and will be there again tomorrow for the Demolition Derby. That’s 5 times in one week. I’m a little tired of chicken on a stick though.
• In a sign that the end is near, Cath attended the Big & Rich concert with me. She actually enjoyed it, even when I pointed out that the last concert I attended with her was the Lyric Opera’s rendition of the entire Wagner Ring Cycle. Frankly, I’ll take Big and Rich.
• We named a chicken! Our sole surviving black Java rooster is now “Kona”. He’s a bad mofo…in his own mind.
• Soccer started for Max. Cub scouts is next week. Savannah starts “Kindermusic” soon. I have no idea what Kindermusic is, but I’ll bet it doesn’t involve Wagner.
• The Dems want to draft me for some sort of 2 year mission. I am worried. Still, you don’t meet anyone if you don’t leave the house…do I dare eat a peach???

Sorry for the long delay in posts. It took us most of the week to recover/clean after Farm Retribution and then the County Fair was upon us! We had a rodeo on Friday, a parade Saturday morning, a Brad Paisley concert Saturday night and more on the way. Of course, the weather turned cold and dreary for the fair, but everyone has had a good time so far.

I didn’t see any Javas in the Poultry exhibit hall. We’ll need to work on that next year. Lots of bantams though. Dang. Hardly any meat at all on those tiny things. There weren’t any Highlands on exhibit either. I wonder if Blossom would put up with being tethered to a wall for a week? Probably not. Of course, I’d have to catch her first.

It’s been interesting philosophically this week. We started out with our Community of Choice – Notre Dame Classics profs, liberals from Crystal Lake, IL (a rare bird, indeed!), movie sound guys, etc.- on Labor Day and ended the week with our Community of Geography, attending the rodeo with folks from work, me helping out at the Jaycees beer booth on Saturday, and Cath visiting the Paw Paw Wine Festival on Sunday with friends from work. In the words of Buckaroo Banzai, “Whereever you go, there you are.” You take you with you. Short version: home is where you make it.

On deck this week is some half serious fall prep – brush clearing, weed whacking, chicken coop building – while also enjoying the fair – chicken on a stick, demolition derby and Big & Rich.