Not Too Many "Firsts" After 17 years.....

We are looking at some more "weather" coming in. If you lived in the Portland a year ago, you know we got socked in for two weeks. Luckily, I had done a mad dash to the store ahead of time that helped Santa when he did arrive. We also live within walking distance of a grocery store.

So the hubbie calls tonight. He is headed to the store to stock us up for the iced in weekend that will probably not happen since we are actually prepared for it. He asks me what things I might need. Yes, you guessed it, I asked him for those things. Those things I have had a lot of pride in saying I have never given him the embarrassment of going through the checkout line to purchase.

Seventeen years of bragging....gone.

To his credit, I asked him, gave him the particulars, and he said "okay". Next item on the list.

Found It!

Okay, I have been looking for this article for a long time. I was sitting in the public library right up the street from my home last summer. While the kids were finding books, I found crinkled up on a table the local extremely liberal rag. You have to read it with caution. The Willamette Week.

However, this is the same rag that interviewed me last summer and brought about the scandal that brought SB 767 to it's knees and turned around the course of that forsaken bill. As a result, our school is still open. I am ever so thankful for their willingness to publish when no one else would listen to us. So, I thumbed through it, after all, let's read the paper that had just interviewed me.

I have become a fan. I know, moderately conservative me actually appreciates this rag. Why? Because they tell the truth! They aren't paid off by a union representative that is asking/paying them to be quiet.

Now, as we went through and scrutinized ORCA to the nth degree in the legislative session, especially "where the money goes", funny how I came across this article at the library during that time. Seriously, I know more about the financial books of our virtual school than I think anyone should know, just by listening to public testimony. It is ridiculous! Why do I think it is ridiculous? I have contended the entire time, and said so, if we are going to scrutinize our virtual schools, then we need to be fair. Let's scrutinize and audit the regular schools. Where they have waste, there needs to be sanctions. When I would say that, what response did I get? Crickets......

Check out the awful waste my local public school system is engaged in. Click here.

I go back just now to try and find it for the millionth time, and actually found it. But I also found this more slightly older (last spring) listing of waste. Click here.

I guarantee you as good as I am sitting here typing, if any of Oregon's virtual schools showed up that kind of waste in any of the three audits they receive weekly, monthly and annually.....there wouldn't be a SB 767. Why? Because the school would have been shut down way before the legislative session. And you know what? I would have agreed wholeheartedly. My taxpayer dollars shouldn't be paying for expensive conference rooms and Blackberry's. My education tax dollars should be paying for reading, writing and arithmetic!

Nothing like knowing, again, 40% of my tax dollars go to public education in my state. So glad to know I can arm administrators with Blackberry's.

Good grief.

Second Verse, Same as the First

The place where the coon put its arms through the fencing, but didn't get in.
Obviously, it got some feathers off of her.

Here she is. Her back leg has that brown around it. That isn't normal, that is dirt and broken feathers. She also has her leg tucked up to her chest, favoring it. I can't get close enough to get a pic of her face to show you those abrasions. Yep, time to go to the infirmary.

Remember my freak out last year when one of our chickens was beaten up by a raccoon? Check my label "coop news" for that horrifying history.

Here we go again!

Five thirty this morning. I could hear squawking. Now chickens generally squawk at weird times, but this was insistent squawking. I was listening......then the squawking started to fade. Like the chicken was losing it's ability to squawk or it was dying.....not good. Hubbie jumped up and took the dog outside.

Sure enough, I heard two barks and something hitting our chain link fencing. I got up and met the hubbie at the back door with the question, "Did we just lose another chicken?" He said no, that he didn't see the critter but he was pretty sure it was a coon. It didn't get in the coop but got a hold of Henrietta by putting it's arms through the fencing and grabbing her. He said she seemed okay.

Later this morning I went to take a full sunshine, daylight close exam of her. My first observation, she has some very slight blood around her cockles and waddles (the red globs of flesh around chickens faces). Second observation, she has a slight limp. Third observation, the leg she is favoring has some messed up feathers. Conclusion, she got roughed up and I need to look at the leg.

Well, for a chicken with a gimpy leg, she sure made me chase her around the yard to get ahold of her. I turned her over, and moved some feathers around, which she did not like at all. That is unusual. Normally when examining a chicken, they kind of just go limp and let you do whatever to them. I think she is in enough pain that she didn't want me messing with her. Her right "elbow" has some cuts and abrasions on it. I think the coon got ahold of her by the leg and was trying to take her down (let's put it out there....it was trying to disembowel her to eat her.....there I said it).

I am ever grateful that the coon was not able to infiltrate the coop. I am glad none of us were in a dead sleep and heard her cries. I am glad her injuries were nothing like last year's.

The plan? Henrietta is in the household pet infirmary (pet carrier in the basement) resting. When I get home later and she has calmed down, I will put some peroxide on her leg and clean her up. We are also rethinking how to lock the girls up at night. It seems this happens when it's extremely cold and food sources for coons boil down to my ladies!

So, we feel lucky to have dodged a tragedy. We'll keep you posted....

Just Remembering a Great Man

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

–Ronald Reagan, President 1980-1988

Huh.....Just Has Me Intrigued

This whole Tiger woods thing has me intrigued. Of course when celebrity junk captures my attention, it is because I usually have a personal history with the story that just makes me think, "Huh...."

Quick summation. In 1990 or 1991, my father was in a very serious car accident while driving a van (like a regular sized van, minivans weren't around then). He broadsided another vehicle at about 40 to 50 mph. He smashed into another van full of a family that did not have their seatbelts on, and my dad did. People were tossed out of the other car and found wandering around when rescue arrived. They sustained some major injuries. Of course my father was sued, and because he had top notch insurance coverage, the insurance company fought that battle.

Anyway, my dad was wearing his seatbelt, so when rescuers arrived, what did they find? An unconscious man strapped into the front seat of his buckled van. They smashed through the back door of the van and lifted him out the back door of the van on a board. He was home by the end of the day with lacerations to his face and arms. Yes, quite the testimonial on seatbelts considering how the passengers in the other vehicle fared. No one was killed, but they did sustain some pretty hefty injuries that took quite some time to heal from.

I saw his van after the accident. Of course, the rescuers came in the back door. The front end was so buckled, the doors wouldn't open. However, the rescuers tried. You could see crow bar damage from where they tried to open both the front driver door and the front passenger door. No avail. Back door.

Okay, so when I hear about this little fender bender with a hydrant that Tiger had. I see the pics from the scene, and I see the most gargantuan vehicle with a very dented bumper. Tiger keeps saying to the media his wife whacked the windows out to get to him.....yet the photos I see of this barely damaged body shows the doors wide open......it just makes me go "huh......." Especially that middle pic I posted.....there is absolutely no reason anyone needed to take a golf club to the car.....I am no accident investigator.....I am no dummy either. He is darn lucky that when she took the swing at the window behind the driver, she didn't make contact with his noggin.

Tiger has no obligation to give anyone an explanation. But it still makes me go "huh....."

Doors seem to work fine in this pic. No crowbar damage to get it open.

Only damage I see here is the window.....huh......interesting.....

OH! I see the damage is on the right front of the car.....the driver side's damage is only a putter through the window.....interesting......

Don't mess with a ticked off wife. Let's leave it at that.