a chicken and egg situation

The chickens came first and the egg just one day later. Unfortunately, the little chucks have been kept locked in as making their run has taken longer than expected.

Another brick in the wall...

...or out of the wall. We have knocked a 3' hole and can now see daylight from the kitchen. Well done to Chilean miners...

No Snow Now

Managed to miss all the snow. There was plenty of it around, with blue sky and sunshine too. Too busy moving house. Packing boxes, unpacking boxes. Where will we put the beehive and wood store - the garen is small and these things are big!

Great to have our own place finally and I have enjoyed deconstructing some of teh junk that was there. Rayburns are very heavy - had to get Dave to help with that! Thanks Dave.

Winter's Great

Make sure you wear Valenki boots made from wool felt and put on lots of woollen clothes. You need good thick gloves and protect your neck with a warm scarf. Long socks too. Above all, eat a good breakfast before you go out. I usually have fried potatoes cooked in lard and a mug of lemon tea with three sugars.
Glina Ivanovna, Novosibirsk, Siberia. (That's a cold bit up there, where James Bond baddies would hand out.)

December's gone...
Christmas was a good one. A massive family occasion with 22 people sitting down for dinner together and snow on the ground. No snowball fights though, maybe we're getting old.

On the very last day of 2009 we also had a Blue Moon - there's 46 of them every 100 years or so. Now you can be clever with people who say "once in a Blue Moon"; it's every few years. More details and the science behind it all at this link.

The house is coming on with carpets in, insulation laid and a loft hatch with ladder. Next challenge is to remove the Rayburn.

Baby E has managed to climb the stairs and is generall excited about the whole mobility potential. J & I are tired most of the time and enjoy it when E sleeps through the night. I hope everyone else's little ones are getting on OK!

Bins

It's very sad, but for the last six months I have been measuring what we throw away to landfill. Mostly small plastic items with no recogniseable recycling labels, or so manky it can't be reused.

We averaged 8lbs of waste to landfill every month. The heaviest week was 5lb. Not bad really, onsidering our neighbours seems to have a full black bin bag every week; I haven't the balls to confront them about it!

After all that we have realised that weight has little to do with it; volume is more of a problem because we are running out of space.

It has made us check everything before it goes in the landfill bin. DO YOU?

This is my wife

I'm working on another biro.