Monday Mornings

I've tried to make Monday mornings be late start days at work (it just means I schedule clients later into the evening, not that I get to have a short day). Monday mornings at home usually mean finishing up everything I didn't get around to doing over the weekend. So for example this morning; I did all the dishes in the overflowing kitchen sink, folded laundry that I did over the weekend, came up with a hay manger plan that I can make out of scraps that we have laying around for a feeder in the babies stall, did some reading on baby beef as we're probably going to get two calves to raise over the summer, and I've tracked down the phone number to the dairy inspector and need to give him a call to see if the plan I've come up with in my head is going to work. Further info will follow on that plan, but I think it's pretty solid, realistic, and financially doable. It's a two year plan, slow and steady.

Resolutions

I never made any official resolutions on New Year's Day, but a couple weeks ago I made a few commitments to myself for this year.
First of all, I've decided to read more classic literature this year. I read a lot, most of it tends to be off the best seller list or random stuff I pick up at the bookstore or library while I'm meandering through their shelves. I haven't forbidden myself from still doing that kind of reading, I'm just going to intersperse it with classics. I started with Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, since it was sitting on my bookshelf in the office from this summer's library sale. I must admit so far, I'm not impressed. Anyone else out there read it? If so, what did you think? Maybe I just haven't got far enough into the book.


Second, my French is rapidly deteriorating, which I knew and had already made a commitment to at least keeping it from going any further down hill, but then it was further emphasized when I bumped into a guy from France today and stood there stumbling for my words. It's so frustrating not to have them (words) right there when you need them. For the time being my remedy for that is to do more reading in French. Currently I'm reading L'attentat by Yasmina Khadra, so far so good with that. I'm making myself read it with a dictionary and looking up any words that I don't know. After four nights of reading, my dictionary use has gone way down. I'm also trying to do some online lessons when I have time.

The Match Game

We're going to play The Match Game.

"It was so cold... How cold was it?...when Kim went outside __________.

Right now it's 14F/-10C, and it's supposed to go down to 8F tonight with -3F wind chill. Yesterday it was 5F with a -11F wind chill, at one point it was -19F wind chill.

Happy New Year!

Today is the Chinese or Lunar New Year. I always think of my friend who first introduced me to this holiday. She invited me to her place for it and I had lots of fun learning about what it means to her and her family.

This year is the year of the Rat. Each Zodiac sign has positive and negative traits, so if you're a Rat, or know some one expecting this year, here's some characteristics they might be expected to display, as a Rat.

Positive: Meticulous, intelligent, shrewd, compassionate, charismatic, charming, ambitious, practical, industrious, honest, eloquent, versatile, familial, creative, hard-working, neat, organized, lovers of music, loving.

Negative: Controlling, obstinate, resentful, lacks-a-sense-of-humor, manipulative, cruel, vengeful, power-driven, critical, possessive, stingy, bossy, fickle, defensive.

For those that are interested, here's where you can find out what sign you are on the chinese zodiac calendar.

Myself, I'm a Horse.
Positive: Lovable, enthusiastic, independent, intellectual, creative, optimistic, strong, warm-hearted, social, playful, whimsical, free-spirited, fun-loving, and happy.
Negative: Anxious, fickle, stubborn, tactless, selfish, gullible, inconsistent, quick-tempered, rebellious, careless, annoying, illogical, nosy, lack stability, and impatient.

Cayuga County Fair

A friend of ours mentioned to us that we should get involved with the county fair planning committee/board. She told us when it meets and we crashed it tonight, well that's how it felt. I hate walking into rooms where I know no one, especially since we were semi-uninvited. We introduced ourselves and everyone was very friendly and nice. So the plan is to continue to attend their monthly meetings and get more involved. The fair was on a hiatus for a couple years and this will only be it's third year back up and running. It's still a little small, but they have some really good plans on making it bigger and better every year (that's where we come in, I think we're going to end up coordinating a few new shows, at least that is where it seemed like it was heading by the end of the night). For some of my regular readers to put it into perspective: it's smaller than Ayer's Cliff Fair but bigger than Grayling Fair. Here's the link to last years website, it still needs to be updated for this year, but you'll get the idea.

The guy that coordinates the dairy cow show looked really familiar. Andrew finally realized that he was the guy we had gotten to transport Charlie from Ithaca when we adopted him. BLM rules say that you have to transport in a stock trailer, which ours isn't, and we'd somehow gotten his name and number. That's all that's new here.

Charlie