A little bit of this and that

It's the week before finals and I'm absolutely buried under the workload of two graduate classes: one take home final, three thought papers, three essays and 1 journal entry. That's not even counting the in class final a week from Thursday. I've already registered for the next two classes: Advanced Psychopathology & Sexual Dysfunctions and Treatments. Oh joy. Now, I just need to order the books - $300 worth.

I'm co-teaching a class tonight on chickens with our local Chicken Expert, a guy named Stinger. Mostly he's building confidence, so my being there is just a backup. I'll bring Scarlett, Opal and probably the Hamburg (who still doesn't have a name!) as well as books and magazines for folks to look through.

Spike was neutered yesterday, much to his dismay. That's a once in a lifetime kind of experience, according to Josh & Kevin who were stuck assisting the vet in the procedure. Josh and I have made the difficult decision not to keep Spike. We're very fond of him but he's not happy without other pigs to be with. This unhappiness takes the form of destructive boredom and periodic aggression toward our dogs. We've managed to find him a great home in Gig Harbor with two female pigs, thankfully. We're still working out the details so I don't have specifics just yet. More to come on this.

The Chicken Class - huge success!

The Penn Cove Grange has been holding agricultural classes as a fundraiser and networking opportunity. Tonight was my turn to co-teach with Stinger a class on chickens. Since the north Whidbey crowd is decidedly more egg business/chicken fancier than the south island folks (who are interested in meat production, typically), our class focused on Chicken Keeping 101. Stinger is pretty big in the chicken production industry here and supervises the Poultry Barn at the Island County Fair - to which I've signed up to help coordinate, so this was a great opportunity for he and I to work together.

To make things more interesting, Josh and I hauled three of our girls to the class: Scarlett (our Alpha Rhodie), Opal (Blue Cochin) and Polly (Silver Spangled Hamburg). They were a huge hit and helped as demonstrators for Stinger. Scarlett is a professional chicken - anyone can pick her up, rub her comb and neck, flip her over to inspect her vent and even judge the width of her pelvis. Stinger had a ball with her, he'd never seen such a laid back chicken!

I made a few contacts here for chicken sales and may have a buyer for Opal. From the sounds of it, I may be able to sell off the Spring Chicks entirely. If those pan out, I'm well on my way to another chick and duckling order.

The chickens are exhausted, having been tucked nicely into their coop for the night. I'm exhausted too and will be tucking myself into bed soon as soon as I can get Josh away from looking at pickup truck ads. Men. *shakes head*