Getting Better
There was a dead pullet in the coop at lunchtime yesterday when I went in to make sure everyone had fresh water and food. The rest of them look fine, so let’s hope that was an isolated incident. The big chickens seem to have recovered. Dave was outside most of yesterday, and Baby was walking around inside the coop. Dave started crowing again—after three days of being quiet—but he has laryngitis and sounds like a rusty gate.
We have a new rule: No more off-farm imports. Either we get chicks from the farm store or we hatch them out ourselves. I don’t care if someone wants to give us 25 laying hens for free; I am not going through this again.
******************************************
I was able to get the new toner cartridge to work—briefly—yesterday, but I think the drum is screwed up now. I ordered a replacement drum. If the new drum/toner combo does not work, this machine is getting trashed, much as I hate to do that. I will not spend the price of another printer attempting to get this one operational with no guarantees that I’ll be successful.
I did run into town yesterday to get an inkjet printer. I can’t run a business without a printer, and stuff was starting to pile up on my desk. I hand wrote this week’s payroll checks. Besides, a color printer would be useful for for class handouts. I bought a small Epson wireless printer and got it up and running in just a few minutes. My preference is a laser printer, but this will be a good backup to have, and the husband can keep it down in his office.
Death by a thousand paper cuts.
******************************************
After getting the printer up and running and clearing the logjam from my desk, I made this:
My sergers came with very cheap, very ill-fitting plastic covers. I ran across this tutorial for making a cover for the Brother 1034 serger—which has a similar profile to my Juki sergers—and thought I’d see how I liked it. It is a huge improvement over the plastic ones, and I love that print. The cover in the tutorial is interfaced but not lined. I interfaced the main print of mine with fusible fleece and made a lining out of a coordinating small print. I sewed them together, right sides facing and leaving an opening at the bottom for turning, then topstitched around the bottom edge. This took about two hours, start to finish, and I am very happy with it. I’ll make one for the other serger at some point.
Also, I made this entirely on my beloved 73-year-old Necchi sewing machine, which is a testament to how things used to be made.
******************************************
I was reminded this week that kids remember everything. Last summer, when I was helping to ferry WS back and forth to Kids’ College, I usually drove the BMW in Sport mode. The default mode is Comfort and I don’t always remember to change it when I get in, but Sport mode is way more fun for driving. As we were pulling in to the college parking lot on Tuesday, he said, “Are you driving in Sport mode?” (Well, that came out of nowhere.) I said no, but I could drive in Sport mode on the way home. Naturally, as we were walking out to the car after class, he said, “Don’t forget to put the car in Sport mode!” And then he wanted a detailed explanation of how Sport mode differed from the other modes. I don’t ever drive the car in Eco mode, because it feels like a lumbering 1970s Cadillac, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a BMW. The car also comes with Sport+ mode, but I told him that we could only drive Sport+ mode if we were on a closed course in Munich.
I am sure that me—a middle-aged woman with just enough knowledge about cars to be dangerous—trying to explain the difference in driving modes to a 7 year-old was hilarious. I am glad no one else was around. I told him that changing the mode changes the handling and acceleration. The husband says that changing the mode also changes the shift points in the transmission. WS likes to make noises like he’s shifting gears when I am driving, so I told him that sometime we would ride in the Acura. (The BMW has paddle shifters, but it’s just not the same.)