No Doubt!!!

Fresh outa the oven!
 

baby goatses!

thought you already have one? btw, great prez!

Griff they're gorgeous.
Congratulations Goatpapa.

I am happy because I have filled the house with an intense smell of choc.
I'm doing a practice castle cake.
If all goes well I shall make another for the school May Fayre this Sunday.
I'll take pics as I progress. It's due in the staffroom tomorrow, but it'll be a hardy soul who tries any, given the scabby face I'm currently presenting.

Still, am hoping the chocoholics on the staff will dive in anyway.

Only issue so far - not sure if it will taste as good as it smells.
I tinkered with the recipe a little, hoping to get it to be quite dense. But the batter had a slightly funny taste to me. Hmmmmmn.

Anyway, currently cooling.
When completely cool I'll be making the circle into a square (I could not justify buying a square tin just for this cake. Monster would be proud) and at that point I'll get to taste.

After that the fun bit - decorating!
No doubt I'll rue that sentence when I'm posting at 21.00, chocolate in every nook and cranny, completely fed up of the brown stuff and unhappy with the result....

No! It's the happy thread! I am happy!
I'm certainly smelling happy smells anyway.

Aww, look at the little goats falling down! That video made my morning, Griff. Very nice.

The other one is zip's -now they have his 'n' hers

Diz is still alive.

Just had a £201 adventure with him.
Choking on some chicken. His tongue was turning blue.
Emergency vet fees, oxygen, a shot of antibiotics etc.

I am happy about the outcome of course - despite a finger punctured in 4 places, a completely wrecked acrylic and 4 months worth of debt to my Dad.

It's just the kind of happy where I am going off to cry in my room. I may be some time.
And someone furry is going to get a lot of loving, watery looks.

Was there a bone in it? Glad he's ok

Awww Poor Diz and poor you! Some things are worth more than money!

I'm so glad Diz is ok! and Nirvana is right on - some things are worth more than money and Diz is one of those things! :apaw:

I love that smiley. We need a goathoof one for griff

:apaw: :apaw:

Just got an offer to go from a contractor to a full time employee with the company....that means benefits!

I'm happy...but there is a part of me that is unsure, I have been very unhappy with my job lately.

More details after I get off work....

DA DA DUMMMM!

No bone, but it was a wing joint, with gristle.
He's been with me five years and has always chewed them up. This time he gobbled and it got stuck. The vet thought it was part of a chicken THIGH! Crikey, I'll take the blame but it wasn't that bloody big!

NO chicken for Diz. I have a lot of frozen chicken wings I might need a marinade for.
No, he's not. I have told him if he ever runs up a bill like that again I will simply bash him on the head with a shovel and bury him in the garden. This is more than I paid for him. I used to threaten both my boys with being shovel-killed and buried in Quuens Park when we all lived in Leicester. And that's when they weren't even costing me money, just keeping me awake!

This is why I have cats not children. They have no idea of the anger that comes from being really really scared about someone/ something you love...
He has no idea what I'm saying to him when I'm angry.

My parents got me a kindle for my birthday. I'm still one of those weird guys who likes to turn the pages on real books but now with the kindle I can read the self published and out of circulation books I've been wanting to read for some time now. So exciting.

cool. and belated happy birthday.

Thanks. just another day since I stopped aging at 29... but the kindle is sweet.

Ditto Monster.
I'm holding off on the Kindle (as I have far better things to spend the money on - SEE ABOVE!) but I get your point and it's a wondrous present.

Happy 29th babba.

Happy B'day!!

Sundae - thank you so much for listening to my problems when we talked today. I feel so guilty about hogging the conversation when you had a crisis with Diz. Next time let me know.

Griff,
'Fresh' is not a word that wold come to my mind when discussing goats, but Mazel Tov! anyway.

Oh no, crisis was in the future at that point.
It went from me hearing him choking to getting to the vet within 20 minutes - and I wouldn't have been talking coherently on the phone at that point.

You didn't hog the conversation and I was happy to listen.

I'm happy today because we have two new trainee teachers on placement in my class. This means there are 5 adults for a room of 30 children! and I have the potential for lots more time with Tiger. Because my role is partly to develop his independence, when we are not working one to one I take on general teaching assistant tasks, like taking a group (Phonics, Numeracy or Writing), working on the craft table or supervising outside. However with two extra bodies I can join the table at which he's working, as he is now used to my presence, and I don't work with him exclusively at these times.

For example this morning I joined him working on the concept of time. The children were cutting out black house shapes and sticking on yellow windows and doors, all the while discussing whether this was a house at night, during the day, why do you switch your lights on, when do you go to bed etc. Because he is both meticulous and doesn't have very good dexterity, he needed to stay behind to finish while the other children moved on. I was able to keep him on task (for example adapting the song 10 Green Bottles for the amount of windows he had left to stick on) without making him feel he was been punished.

But I also worked with K - again fine motor skills not his forte, but a rusher. And Z, whose house was an amorphous blob but his windows were perfect squares (?). And Tennant, one of Tiger's friends, who told me a complicated story about how to lock his back door, but came up with a perfectly standard house - the only one on the table that wouldn't need a thorough explanation :)

Just a good day at work, but I wanted to share it.

There's nothing like a good day at work, is there? Mine today consisted of polishing the translation of words for a Heavy Metal song from Russian to English (another of my efforts can be found here, track name "What eternity holds/be yourself"), and now I'm onto the niceties of the distinction between two accounting terms in relation to an insurance claim.

We don't use lanterns anymore. We've been using those LED UFO lights. They're awesome for camping. no fuss and no need to carry fuel. Just tie up in a tree or whatever and you have plenty of light to cook by. We also have one that we tie up in the tent.

I don't think we'll ever buy another lantern.

If you stop buying lanterns then lantern makers will go out of business then lanterns will eventually become unavailable then cows will not be able to kick over lanterns and set the barn on fire then sparks form the barn will not be able to burn the city of Chicago down.

Is that what you really want?

Well, maybe not exactly, but if it happens to be the end result of Bin Laden dying then that's the way it has to be!

Late last night
When we were all in bed
Old Lady Leary lit a lantern in the shed
And when the cow kicked it over
She winked her eye and said
"It'll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight."

(FIRE FIRE FIRE)

I just ordered take-out. It'll be here in *checks clock* about 15 mins.

Southern fried chicken: three pieces, three hotwings, some chicken bites, baked beans, onion rings, fries and two dips.

Oh God, i am soooooo hungry. I've eaten fuck all all day. I made myself have a complan meal drink about two hours ago. I have however had several beers. So, i am drunk and hungry. Mmmmmmm....chicken...mmmm.

NOTHING better than fried chicky and beer. NOTHING.

When y'all come to the states we'll go to the Wooden Shoe Inn. You'll LOVE it. :)

monster HUNGRY!

bacon and hash browns is weight-loss food, right?

Sure, a shot glass of each.

oops

percocet

The first layer of salt has been removed after 9 days. The skin looks good and does not stink. The next layer has been applied. I will rinse and repeat with salt for another few weeks with the hope the final product will be worthy. Pics to follow.

I took my last test this morning. Now I have a whole 2.5 weeks off before the summer semester begins!

I am happy to be the pied piper for a day..... follow me fools!

Six websites to build in the next six days and next week the second sales guy goes full-time.

:jig:

Awesome!

Good for the Toad!

Nice work Tone.

I just got back from my endoscopy and esophagus dilation and the anesthesia is wearing off. I've survived another one... My 43 beat per minute heart rate sort caused a buzz though.

Yahh UT !!!

what are you ... a whale? a hibernating bear?

I'm glad you're good to go though. And thanks for the context for the pic association thread.

Good stuff Toad. And Glad you got that bastard done and out the way Griff.

today the sun is shining. I am going to mow the grass, before the city condemns my yard and calls out the goats or something. I've already sharpened the mower blades. Time to get to work.

I took my mother and 3 sisters to a quaint Mother's Day brunch at a mansion built in the 1800's right next door to the Studebaker mansion. Not one squabble! YAY! :)

Baby chicks arrived today, 3 casualties but I assumed losses when I made the order. Survivors are 4 Royal Palm turkeys, 5 Americana chickens and 3 Blue Old English Game Fowl (chickens).:)

Did you still have to pay for the dead chicks? How does that sort of order work?

I probably should check on that. They did arrive here alive, but may have had a rough trip.

Family meal and no squabble... :thumb2:

Seriously? That's normal?

That surely isn't a good way to treat chicks then?

Most clutches of chicks have a fairly high mortality rate. I wouldn't think it'd be uncommon for a 20% death rate...on average. I know Dad's chickens certainly don't always survive, and when we had chickens the eggs didn't always hatch.

It's more the sending them by mail and expecting some not to survive the journey that worries me.

Mortality in the normal course of things is one thing. A deadly journey is quite another.

Hmmm...what are you views on abortion and what's a viable foetus and what's not? That being said, it'd be interesting to know what the expected mortality rates are for eggs to hatchlings and what sort of compromise there is in the pricing to compensate postal buyers as opposed to barn door buyers.

It's not really about the deaths, so much as what they've gone through on the way. It sounds like a cruel journey to send a living creature on.

Wow...that's way too left for me. lol

Do you eat eggs?

eta: A cruel journey is traveling on Virgin. ;)

yes I do. I buy them from the local farm.

I am not an animal liberationist. I eat meat. I engage in the same hypocrisy that many meat-eaters who also love animals engage in. But, I am surprised to hear that this is acceptable.

I am also against the treatment of veal calves and sending them on long and sometimes fatal journeys.

I have no objection to killing animals for meat. I do have an objection to subjecting them to pain and distress. Any of them.

But really, I was surprised by this that's all. I did not realise this was common practice.

Now Ali, you did not just bring abortion into the happy thread! :) careful careful...

Hatchlings do have a high mortality rate, but you can blame Darwin for that. Small defects that are fatal keep the flock healthy. I may have mismanaged their transition not keeping them quite warm enough but the culling of the weak improves over-all flock health. My birds have a nice life being free-range but they also are evolving to fit their environmental niche here. They are smarter around predators and more able to handle our climate than birds right out of the hatchery. Life and death are so intertwined that I can feel loss and joy over the same event.

Oh I understand that chicks are fragile. And I don't for one second think you are cruel or that your chicks have anything but the best life reasonably available to a chicken :p

It was really just the idea of them arriving by post.

We could buy chicks at the farm store but that could be the end of heritage breeds since they tend to stick with major breeds and then the farm store has the early losses...

I also read them Shakespeare at night so as chicken lives go...

hahahahahahaha.

Very good.

That made me laugh out loud.