The Front Porch Swing

[LeslieDJoyce]

"Age" related question. As I said in my last post, I was Skype type chatting with my daughter. I answered a question with:
OK

She asked "why the caps". I said OK is always caps, otherwise you can type it out Okay (first word in sentence or okay otherwise).
She said the caps make it "sound" angry and I should just type "ok".
So I told her I am OLD and OK is always in caps (then used it later, in caps without thinking about it because it is ALWAYS caps

)
She said I'm not old, just middle aged.

So, am *I* nuts and OK is mad as in OKAY, OKAY!!!!! or is there some age "break" where OK in caps is just a generational thing??

For reference I am 58, merely middle age assuming I live to 88 or longer. My wife's definition of middle age is the middle third of your life which, by any measure, means I AM close to OLD(!) if not there already having no idea how long I will actually live. My mother died a few months shy of 75 (due to complications from an RA drug and the flu, before her time), her sister died last year at 92, my Dad turned 85 last year, his dad died a few weeks shy of 96. I have quite a range to "choose" from, unfortunate interactions with buses not included.

I think there is some way to make a poll but I don't know how.

Bruce

I type in complete sentences. With punctuation. Even in texts and Instant Messages. Except when I don't for artistic reasons.

It creeps me out when my father (77 years old), messages me with "ur" for "your," etc. Creeps me right out.

Of course it was Dad who taught me to text.

I always use "okay."

 

[Beekissed]

"Age" related question. As I said in my last post, I was Skype type chatting with my daughter. I answered a question with:
OK

She asked "why the caps". I said OK is always caps, otherwise you can type it out Okay (first word in sentence or okay otherwise).
She said the caps make it "sound" angry and I should just type "ok".
So I told her I am OLD and OK is always in caps (then used it later, in caps without thinking about it because it is ALWAYS caps

)
She said I'm not old, just middle aged.

So, am *I* nuts and OK is mad as in OKAY, OKAY!!!!! or is there some age "break" where OK in caps is just a generational thing??

For reference I am 58, merely middle age assuming I live to 88 or longer. My wife's definition of middle age is the middle third of your life which, by any measure, means I AM close to OLD(!) if not there already having no idea how long I will actually live. My mother died a few months shy of 75 (due to complications from an RA drug and the flu, before her time), her sister died last year at 92, my Dad turned 85 last year, his dad died a few weeks shy of 96. I have quite a range to "choose" from, unfortunate interactions with buses not included.

I think there is some way to make a poll but I don't know how.

Bruce

You have to have a different kind of membership to start a poll. But, no, you are not too old and OK is always OK unless you spell it out....but this is a whole new texting generation and nothing is capitalized or punctuated~even when they come to these forums. No indentation, no caps, and one is lucky if they even use spacing between the end of one sentence and the beginning of another.

It's not that you are middle-aged, you and I~ and anyone else who remembers a cursive writing class in school~ are all just dinosaurs. We are very quickly going extinct and are even now considered obsolete.

 

[chickenboy190]

You could sell toofpics' on E-Bay and fill your freezer up with meat! lol "Waste not want not..."

Yes I could!

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

It's a beautiful day that the Lord has made, folks! I hope everyone has a blessed and beautiful day out there!

The sun is shining and I hope to get more of the garden planted, more tilled and hilled, and a bachelor pen built for this magnificent rooster. If I can get that done, maybe I'll still feel like raking some of the yard...but maybe not. The old Arthur is really kicking my buttocks this spring..I'm just too young to feel this old.

Still have a last straggler in the egg...but a defiant little claw is sticking out! I hope he can manage to open that door today and we can be done with this experiment once and for all. So hard to resist helping her....

How many chicks did you get to hatch, total, from your Natural Nest experiments?

None of my first clutch of Delawares hatched.

I have two other clutches going now, and will start two more tomorrow.

As I'm not seeing well these days (I see okay-ish at a distance, but once something is within a few feet of me I pretty much have to put my eyeball on it to see it unless I'm laying down, and even then I don't seem to be seeing in 3D so have a hard time figuring out what it is I'm looking at so I have to take a GOOD long look, and I don't really want my eyeball in a plate of eggs that have been sat upon for a month ... or to take the eggs to bed with me so my eyes are working a little bit better), I'm going to try to train Dad today about how to open & examine the eggs we will be removing from the unsuccessful nest. Then he can either open them himself or train someone else to do it. But ... I don't have the best of luck training Dad to do new stuff, nor any way to verify that he actually does what I need done how I need it done. I'll try anyway as I'd love to have some info about what might have been wrong. Maybe my roo isn't fertile.

I'd been checking the eggs for a while, and saw bulls eyes (ummm, yeah ... seeing).

Just had an idea ... I'll find one of those day-by-day egg incubation info graphics, print one out for each egg in the clutch, and have him indicate what "day" each egg was at.

 

[Beekissed]

How many chicks did you get to hatch, total, from your Natural Nest experiments?

None of my first clutch of Delawares hatched.

I have two other clutches going now, and will start two more tomorrow.

As I'm not seeing well these days (I see okay-ish at a distance, but once something is within a few feet of me I pretty much have to put my eyeball on it to see it unless I'm laying down, and even then I don't seem to be seeing in 3D so have a hard time figuring out what it is I'm looking at so I have to take a GOOD long look, and I don't really want my eyeball in a plate of eggs that have been sat upon for a month ... or to take the eggs to bed with me so my eyes are working a little bit better), I'm going to try to train Dad today about how to open & examine the eggs we will be removing from the unsuccessful nest. Then he can either open them himself or train someone else to do it. But ... I don't have the best of luck training Dad to do new stuff, nor any way to verify that he actually does what I need done how I need it done. I'll try anyway as I'd love to have some info about what might have been wrong. Maybe my roo isn't fertile.

I'd been checking the eggs for a while, and saw bulls eyes (ummm, yeah ... seeing).

Just had an idea ... I'll find one of those day-by-day egg incubation info graphics, print one out for each egg in the clutch, and have him indicate what "day" each egg was at.

Total hatched chicks for the entire experiment was 9, one from last nest and 8 from this one.

I'm sorry about your Dels.

I've decided I will no longer be doing egg-topsies on quitter eggs....there's really nothing to learn there if you don't know what you are looking at or for and there is nothing you can do to prevent it from happening again anyway. And it's a huge heartache to open an egg and see those dead chicks. My heart cannot stand it. The next hatch will get candled at Day 10 to remove any clears and then no more candling. Any egg that doesn't hatch at the end will be floated after 24 hrs and, if not moving, tossed without being opened.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

It is what is inside that counts

I hope that something is found to "fix" you up because I know you are NOT a sedentary person by choice and it is very frustrating for you.

Lack of the ability to be active can be self perpetuating. Janet (my wife) decided to get a part time job last fall. She was laid off from her half time engineering job in 2006 and has stayed home since, partly because that is the same time frame when Rebekah's disabling headache started. The "5 hours a day, one day a week" job at the P.O. became a "2 to 6 days a week, 2 to 9 hours a day" job at 3 different POs in short time. Between yesterday and this coming Thursday she's working five 6:45 to 5 days plus her usual 6:45 to noon today. First time the Post Master at that PO has had a vacation in a year because there was no one to cover.

She came down the stairs pretty briskly last night. Given she has had RA for 13 years and can walk only because of Enbrel, it was pretty surprising. Her comment: "I feel better than I have in years". Seems the activity (*) plus walks when the PO is closed at lunch time and NO time to snack vs being mostly parked in front of the computer following ice skating forums, doing the skating club's treasurer job and playing on Neopets, with too easy access to the M&Ms, for the last 7+ years has helped her lose 30 pounds and get a lot of range of motion back in her shoulders. Her biggest "problem" is the pants and belts have had to be replaced and the new ones are almost the wrong size already. And that is NOT a problem!

(*) if any of you have "chicken arms" sorting mail and filling PO boxes is REALLY good for the biceps and triceps muscles.

Bruce

That's super cool about your wife! She must feel so proud of herself.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: LOL>... Picking my teeth with WHAT!!?? Aint sticking THAT in my mouth.

Actually the lead in pencils is not really lead its graphite.

deb

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Total hatched chicks for the entire experiment was 9, one from last nest and 8 from this one.

I'm sorry about your Dels.

I've decided I will no longer be doing egg-topsies on quitter eggs....there's really nothing to learn there if you don't know what you are looking at or for and there is nothing you can do to prevent it from happening again anyway. And it's a huge heartache to open an egg and see those dead chicks. My heart cannot stand it. The next hatch will get candled at Day 10 to remove any clears and then no more candling. Any egg that doesn't hatch at the end will be floated after 24 hrs and, if not moving, tossed without being opened.

Cool! Nine chicks isn't too bad! You've proved it works, and that artificial incubation can be done without a lot of fuss and expense. I'd say it was a very worthwhile experiment.

That stuff in bold is for sure part of the issue with me. And with Dad. He got a sick look on his face when I tried to talk to him about it. Then he suggested we could possibly have one of the guys do it. That seems kind of cruel, so I might just buck up and do it myself.

Dad can be a pretty big softie about random things. We had a broody duck. We do NOT need more ducks at the moment. And this duck gets super mean when she's broody so Dad didn't want to reach under her to take the eggs away. And this duck is a terrible broody (she eventually starts eating her eggs, which means I find partially incubated but dead ducklings around the duck yard ... so sad). But this time she got confused about where her nest was so we couldn't even let her sit on a couple eggs. I wear long, thick rubber gloves when I'm out at the coop, so after we saw she had switched nests I reached under her and pulled out the new eggs (also gathered up the "old" eggs as we don't need to be selling those) ... Dad was there ... that poor duck watched her eggs go away in my hand, laid her head down in the hay nest, all stretched out, and made a quiet and pitiful sound, just laying there flat. Dad got all choked up. He keeps telling me "I never saw anything like that," all tearful. Me either, but it did break her of being broody for now, which seems less cruel in the long run.

I need to investigate the float thing ... I've read snippets about it, but never got the full story on what that's about.

I do think we need to know if there was any development at all in those Delaware eggs ...

 

[Blooie]

Actually the lead in pencils is not really lead its graphite.

deb

Yeah, that's what makes it funny!

We had to take our son to the ER one evening after a bicycle accident. Obviously his arm needed casting - really needed casting - as it was sorta hanging the way it shouldn't have been hanging. We got him signed in, and took a seat among all of the other people waiting there. This was a Navy Hospital ER, and it was always really busy. Kenny was crying, cradling his arm and we were trying to ease both his discomfort and his fear. I guess he was about 9 at the time.

One woman, probably in her mid-20's, came running in the door practically dragging her little boy by the arm. As she hurried through the waiting room to the check-in desk she was frantically looking at how many people were ahead of her. She got to the desk and demanded to be seen right away, without waiting! We were seated fairly close to the desk, so it was impossible not to overhear her demands.

The corpsman behind the desk tried to calm her down by leading her through the paperwork process as gently as he could. He asked her what she needed her son seen for, and she practically screamed at him, "He's been poisoned!" That got the corpsman's attention, as well as the attention of everyone in the room. The little boy looked fine - just puzzled.

"How did that happen? Can you identify what he may have gotten into and when?" As he asked his questions he was calling the Poison Control Center at Harbor General Hospital.

He put the phone down when she told him, "He was poked in the hand today at school by a lead pencil. I looked up 'lead poisoning' in the encyclopedia and it said that it was a true emergency. And the ******* school didn't even call me so he's been sitting with lead poison in him all day."

"Madam," said the corpman patiently. "There is no lead in a 'lead pencil.'"

About that time they came out for Kenny, so we didn't hear the rest of the conversation. But I often wondered, if she had to PAY for that ER visit instead of it being available to military dependents, would she have taken him in?

 

[jmoeller]

Happy Happy Easter to everyone.
I thought I'd share some pictures of a few of my new peeps. I think they are suppose to be austrolops and possible 1 or 2 ameraucanas. I never expected to be this successful. I had 13 eggs and hatched 9 chicks, in a homemade incubator. I have never had chickens before. Well my parents raised chickens when I was a kid but I didn't pay attention to what they were doing. Beginners luck for sure.
I see that there are some mud slides in Wyoming. I know some of you live in that neck of the woods. I hope everyone is safe and can spend this Easter with family and friends.
Speaking of racoons. When I was younger I coon hunted and helped with some trapping. Coon is pretty good done in a slow cooker with some cream of whatever soup and onions. Yep it tastes like chicken.
My mom types everything in caps in emails and on facebook. She is 77, we have told her many times that writing in caps means your yelling at someone. She says she can't see what she's saying unless it's in caps.

We all just cut her a break, I figure it's pretty good that she's on facebook at all seeing as she still can't figure out how to work her dvd player. Some day I hope my kids have patience and understanding when dealing with me. Jen