Pot Roast for Dinner Tonight

I got up early this morning to cut up potatoes, onions, carrots and even a small zucchini from our garden (for color) and start a pot roast that will cook on a low temperature all day.  I added a handful of garlic cloves for good measure and when we get home from work and meetings and baseball practice, there will be a hot comfort meal waiting on us.  Just for good measure, I baked a loaf of bread to eat with the comfort food.  

Wish I could invite everyone to dinner but, it is a school / work night.   I hope you have a good day.  

Until next time...John

A Quick Update

This afternoon I decided, in spite of the heat, that it was time to do a little fence repair.   We have a small pasture that I haven't used since the horses escaped from it several months ago. The temperature was a very warm 94 degrees and the humidity in the woods made it feel like it was much hotter than that.  I didn't really know what to expect as far as the fence damage goes, so I took a bare minimum of supplies with me.  I carried a fencing tool, a machete to clear my way and a 22 cal. rifle in case I saw any venomous snakes.  

I was in the woods for approximately 3 hours and by the time I finished my clothes were soaking wet with perspiration and I had been bitten by about a hundred mosquitos, gnats, ants and a few other pests,  When I first  got in the woods where the fence runs among the small hardwoods and pine trees, I thought the fence was in pretty good shape. then I made the first 90 degree turn and I ran out of luck.  I had to stretch and tighten all of the strands as I moved my way along the fence line.  That is of course, to be expected.  What wasn't expected was that I had to remove scores of small dead trees and limbs from the fence. All of this debris had fallen across the fence in the numerous storms we have had through out the year.  There were even muscadine and cross vines growing among the strands that had to be removed.  

Our three corgis went with me to keep me company but Ponce and Bonnie headed back to the house when it started raining.  Belle on the other hand stayed with me, taking every step I took as I worked my way around the perimeter of the fence. Belle, the youngest of the three, is a real trouper and loyal to the end.  

After a couple of gallons of sweat and various nicks, scratches and bites, I finished my work and as a result will be able to move the horses tomorrow if I get home before dark.  

Even though it is late summer, soon I will have to be gathering firewood for the winter.  Right now it is still too hot, but there are a lot of downed trees that I can cut into firewood and that will keep me busy throughout the fall.  

Last week, I bottled a few bottles of white wheat beer I brewed and then I brewed about two gallons of stout that will be ready to bottle in about a week or so.  This is just a hobby of mine.  I have told Dre' that I think beer brewing is sort of like making jelly and jam.  It really feels good to see raw materials come together as a usable product.  

I have been keeping close watch on my mead and it is really pretty good.  The first batch has been bottled and the second and third batches will be ready to bottle any day now.  I did a little experiment during blackberry season and I added a few blackberries to one of the batches.  It is really good and the aroma is wonderful.  I can't wait until it ages enough to bottle and sample properly.  

It is time to go and spend some quality time with the family so that is about it for tonight.  I hope your summer is going well. To my friends in Australia I wish we could enjoy a little of your cooler weather here in the northern hemisphere.  

Until next time....John

A Rural Problem...And An Urban and Suburban Problem, Too

Let me start this by saying that though I live inside the city limits I am pretty isolated as far as services go.  Our house is a half mile from a public road and cable simply isn't an option where our house is.  If it were, it isn't any better than what we have now. We are trly lucky to live both in the country and in a city all at the same time. So, here it is...a rant from me.

I  got up early this morning to do a little writing and decided to see what was on TV.  We are Dish customers ...have been Direct TV customers and honestly we prefer Dish but even with that said I have some serious complaints about what we are getting for our money.  Everyone knows whether you are a cable or a satellite customer you are paying dearly for your service package. I want to tell you what I discovered this morning. 

Ok, I am speaking from memory but, we have what I think is the smallest package available from Dish.  We are supposed to receive approximately 120 channels for our viewing pleasure and entertainment. This is what I found this morning.  We receive the following types of channels: 

27 Paid (selling products) channels

12 Auction Channels (selling everything from jewelry to exercise equipment to hair removal systems.) 

9 News Channels (if you can call some of what they call news news channels)

8 religious channels (of some form or fashion and some of these should be considered nothing more than paid programming because they are simply fund raising with a small does of religion on the side...my editorial comment)

7 local channels ( I didn't know  if they were included in our 120)

52 Entertainment Channels 

This totals up to 115 channels. I am certain I missed some but it doesn't really matter I am certain that the ratio of real and not-so-real channels would remain pretty constant.  

Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous?  

I am paying for 120 channels and getting 52 channels to watch. There probably are two dozen that actually interest me and my children but I am being gracious and saying all 52 "entertainment channels are entertaining to me.  I never, ever, ever watch auction channels...the news is pretty much slanted one way or the other so I don't watch them and I wouldn't watch a paid product channel if they paid me.

  

Why can't we select the channels we want to pay for?  

I for one would be willing to pay a little more for the channels I want to watch and not have the others cluttering up my channel selection.  Is the only way the satellite and cable providers get these channels on the schedule to force customers to take them with a package of a few channels they actually want? What happened to give the customer what they want? Does it not apply here?

It is my opinion that the TV network providers are doing themselves a huge disservice, not to mention a huge disservice to us, their customers. As more and more television programming is available via internet transmission they are actually providing us with good solid reasons to leave their service for the options that are emerging through improved technology.  Once the legitimate networks understand and  decide they and their viewers are footing the bill for the rarely watched and pinpoint marketed channels and decide to deliver their channels to the general public via the internet, we will all be better off.  They will be getting more for their money and their advertisers will be getting more for their money, too.  The advertisers will not being paid for audiences they don't want , that don't matter and even worse the don't receive. 

I would have already made the switch except that the only channels I routinely watch are The Travel Channel, The  History Channel and Discover Channel and as of yet none of them are available (completely) on my computer or Internet WiFi delivery device yet.  Understand, if they were available I would buy a digital antenna for my house for the local channels  and quickly discontinue the Dish Network. They, in a word, would be HISTORY.  

I have been a subscriber to NetFlix for years and I am ready to subscribe to other services like HULU, Netfllix and others.  To see options click on this link http://lifehacker.com/5475091/how-can-i-ditch-cable-and-watch-my-tv-shows-and-movies-online 

 

I have successfully vented for a Saturday morning.  I just want to stop paying for things I don't want just because someone thinks I need it.  I am not looking to watch TV for free, though I do think that is still possible if the networks will wake up but, that is a topic for another rant.  What I want is simple.  I want to pay for the channels I watch at let someone else pay for those other channels if they want to watch them.  That really is not a difficult concept if you think about it.  

 

I hope you will pass this along to your friends so more TV customers will think about the bad deal they are getting from our cable and satellite providers. 

If you made it this far, thank you for reading my rant.  

Until next time....John

 

Time for Some Updates

Welcome back to me....I hope you have missed my blog  in my absence  I have really missed writing on it, that is for sure. I have said this before and, I was surely not the first to say it but sometimes life gets in the way of life.  That has been the way it has been around our place this summer.  We have been running from one family event to another.  First we had soccer then select soccer and then baseball and then high school baseball and all star baseball.  It has been an incredibly busy summer.   If that wasn't enough, it was an election year and I had to mount a campaign for re-election as alderman in our small city.  That campaign involved the whole family and tough we won, it took a lot of catching up on all the things we put off while it was going on.  

Mid-Summer & Summer Vacation is Over

Dre' and all of the other school teachers had to report to duty today. The students will start a week from today.  I think some normalcy will return now that school is about to start back.  Right now I am sitting at the baseball field watching Holden practice with his fall tournament team. They started at 6:30 and will practice until about 9:00.  I decided to use this time to do a little writing and see if I could get back into the swing of blogging.  

Garden Update

I want to fill you in on how my garden has been doing.  Veggies like potatoes tomatoes, onions, asparagus, peppers, etc. all did really well.  Even my zucchini did fairly well but my squash cucumbers didn't make at all.  At first I thought is was the late spring weather we had and the fact that the weather just didn't want to get warm.  Once it warmed up it was very evident of what the problem was.  We had no bees.  Not a few bees....NO bees.  I have decided to try and get one our friends that is a  beekeeper to place a hive at our place.  That will solve the problem, I am sure.  We have not had an over abundancy of rain this year but it seems like every time we have needed a rain we have gotten it.  I don't think I have watered my garden but twice this whole summer and that is saying something for a garden this far south.  I have cleared some of the small spaces and recently planted a couple of fall tomatoes a pumpkin and some more bell peppers that will hopefully all produce before the first  frost in early November.   I have mulched the whole garden and things are looking pretty good for the heat of the summer.  

Hens Not Laying Yet But They Are Fine Birds

The hens have not started laying yet but they are really happy in their fenced in area with Scooter the pig.  I know I often put human qualities on our animals but I really think the pig and the chickens enjoy each other's company.  They seem to be really happy animals.  

I have added to the hens coop and will take a photo of it in the next couple of days so you can see the work I have done.  If you are considering buying some chickens for your suburban or rural yard, I highly recommend it.  Those gals are funny and entertaining to have around.  They are great pets and when they start producing they will be even be better.  Some afternoons after work I pull up a lawn chair and just watch them for an hour or two. One of the hens, Emma, is a shoulder chicken.  Sometimes when I am outside she will fly up into my lap and then up on my shoulder she goes.  She will sit there watching over all of the other chickens until I make her get down.  When I am not there she will climb on Scooter's back and hitch a ride around their domain.  

I hope I will be writing much more regularly now I hope you will be reading my words more regularly, too. 

Until next time...John.

Quick Post

Yesterday I spent a lot of time working around the house and yard.  I did a little additional work on the chicken house and made it a little more "friendly" for them.  I found too extremely large wasp nest and got rid of them.  I moved some of their nesting boxes (buckets) upstairs so they will get used to getting up there when they start laying.  I groomed the horses and the pig and did some basic clean-up that has been neglected due to youth sports and work at the office.

It is summer in Mississippi now and though the temperature has not been excessive for this time of year, the heat index has been over 100 degrees numerous times already.  Our humidity has been fairly brutal.  I have taken the doors off of my jeep and they won't go back on until September or maybe even October.  I don't know if it was because we had a long cool spring but, my garden hasn't been doing as well as I would have liked for it to.  My squash, and cucumbers are almost not producing.  I have harvested a couple of sqaush and no cucumbers.  My tomatoes are doing pretty well.  Dre' and I had scrambled eggs, toast and fresh sliced tomatoes for breakfast this morning.  That is a good country breakfast.

I am about to go out and check on the chickens that are ranging free in the yard and look at the horses that are doing the same.  If all goes as I expect it to post a little more completely this afternoon.

Until next time...John

Late Spring & It Might As Well Be Summer

I drive to work in an old unairconditioned 1995 Jeep Wrangler so outside temperature doesn't mean  the same thing to me that it does to a lot of folks.  I take the doors off and drive through the warm months with nothing but the passing breeze to keep me cool.  Today, I was in the elevator with some of my fellow workers and made the comment that it was really a warm day out.  A small, no very petite lady looked up to me and said, "no, it is hot as hell outside."  There were at least three people that nodded in agreement and two that openly said "amen sister." So, I guess according to the elevator survey summer is definitely already here.

Meet Emma.  She rules the roost.  Some people have parrots
for their shoulder. I have Emma the Chicken.

The temperature in our hometown is supposed to hit 93 degrees today with a heat index of over 103 degrees.  Okay, I will agree. That is hot not warm. Right now we are dangerously close to the 93 degrees with very high humidity.  Unlike some parts of the United States, we are not in a drought.  In fact we have had a pretty wet spring which makes for a great growing season.  Our tomato plants are almost five feet tall and full of green tomatoes. Squash, garlic, peppers and everything else is growing like gangbusters but, unfortunately so is the grass.  I cannot keep it cut.  Tonight, the horses will be outside of their fences grazing and working on getting some of the overgrown grass into control.  I will also let the chickens out to graze around the yard a little. If you are not aware of it, they graze just like a cow.  They will eat grasses, seeds and everything a cow will eat.  Unlike the large four legged grazers, chicks will eat bugs, ants, ticks, fleas, worms, crickets and scores of other outdoor pest.  They are wonderful animals.

"I'm Baaaaack"

A thistle growing at the pasture's edge.

Those of you that live close by know that I am an alderman in our little city.  I have been remiss in my writing for the past few weeks because I was running for re-election and had to spend a good deal of time on my campaign.  Well, the election was yesterday and that is behind me.  I did win re-election but it was very close.  That is good news to me and hopefully the citizens of our city.  I hope it is good news that I will be able to spend some time with my fingers on this keyboard, typing out a blog or two every now and then.


Thank you for your patience during this busy time in my life and as Jack Nicholson said in the Shining. "I'm baaaaack."

John