Long, hot week. I took the week off from work, and planned on getting a bunch of outdoor projects done. Yeah, right. End of June? I think NOT!
Anybody with dental implants knows how expensive they are. I had one (only about a year old) break and fall out, the my dentist was kind enough to fix and reinstall the tooth ‘under warranty’ for $39 out of pocket. Things like that don’t happen enough in life! I don’t mean the tooth failure … I mean the cheap-fix.
Looks like I need a few more months still to get my garden plot adequately soil conditioned … waiting on soil test results … so I decided to do some “bucket gardening.” In this heat, WHO wants to be lugging around a bunch of heavy 5-gallon buckets? So, I conceptualized and prototyped a custom pallet designed to carry 9 5-gallon buckets, each in individual recesses, so they won’t slide off the pallet when moved from point A to point B.
So glad June is about over. 2.5 more months of sweating, then on to an oh-so-can’t-wait-for-it Fall and (ahhhhhh) Winter.
Migrated ducklings from brooders (barn & house) into a dedicated duckling coop in the barn.
Powerful thunderstorm passed through and knocked power out for a few hours.
Then, the Deuce fiasco. He recently started running round with a 8-inch tire/wheel combination, and in about a week’s time managed to shred the tire. So, a few days ago, we rolled out of bed to a BEAUTIFUL day … cooler, clear skies, nice breeze. As we walked round the property after letting the barn animals out for the morning, I kicked another (larger) tractor tire that was just lying around after having been used to boost a bird feeder off the ground (or some such).
Deuce saw me kick the tire, and thought (I’m sure) … GAME ON! As you can see in this video, we basically started playing tractor tire soccer. Unfortunately, I kicked the tire at JUST the wrong moment (in hindsight) causing the rim of the tire to collide with Deuce’s teeth, which were sunk into the rubber tire. I will NEVER forget the sound. First … a loud crack, followed immediately by his yipe. While you (thankfully) can’t see it on the video, blood was pouring out of his mouth like a ‘stuck pig.’
I called the vet and let them know what happened, and that I was rolling their way Code-3. I was pleasantly surprised to see that in the 20 minutes it took me to drive to the vet, the bleeding had mostly stopped.
A quick check by the vet determined that he had sustained 2 or 3 fractured teeth, including his upper-right canine tooth, which I could see was sheared off at about the halfway point.
They immediately sedated him and prepared him for emergency surgery. I got a call about two hours later, once they got him “off the table” (I hate that term), saying he only lost two teeth, his canine incisor and a pre-molar two teeth away. The tooth between them was fine.
Needless to say … I feel just horrible for having caused his injury. We were roughhousing … playing … but that doesn’t change the fact that my pup got f**ked up.
Happy to report that he’s doing well after about 48 hours of recovery. He tends to be a VERY ORAL dog, always has something in his mouth (stick, toy, chicken, rocks, Hooey’s neck, whatever …) so it’s been a chore trying to keep him from tearing his stitches open … but so far, so good.
I learned this AM that Deuce ‘has a thing’ for freshly baked sourdough bread. I made 4 loaves this morning and he’s literally crawled over me a few times to get some. It’s soft on his palette, so WFT … he can have some. Makes him happy.
This video covers about 4 days during which I was working through technical issues that prevented me from moving photos and videos from my iPhone to my desktop … so it’s a bit longer than usual.
Topics Covered:
making sourdough starter and breads
love my new aluminum non-stick wok
scary story re: “green eyes” in the dark of night
incubating duck eggs (candling update)
homemade wood-fired pizza
Deuce working through a hanger-on-er
Quick note re: the “green eyes” story. In the beginning of the segment, I said I saw “two pairs of green eyes” but what I meant was I saw one pair, or two eyes, staring back at me. So, there was only one animal, which i strongly suspect was the red wolf I’ve seen here before. SPOOKED the crap out of me. It was like a Stephen King thing … scary. 😉
Howdy peeps … haven’t posted a video for a few days because my iOS (phone) to OSX (desktop) interface got screwy and I couldn’t move photos and videos from my phone to my workstation. Fixed!
No major new projects this week. Enjoyed a nice, long, quiet Memorial Day weekend … as everyone should. 😉
Kicked off a new sourdough starter so I can start making sourdough breads in the next week or so.
Picked up a new 12.6 inch My Grace Cooking (MGC) non-stick, aluminum wok and cranked out a nice hot & sour chicken dish first time out. VERY nice wok. Excellent chicken recipe.
The hot (and humid, and tick, and mosquito, and …) season is upon us, so I have a few more outdoor projects to wind up, then we’ll probably transition to a few indoor (read: COOLER) projects for the next few months. Stay tuned.
