Tennessee's Basketball Program

On January 22nd Bruce Pearl shocked many by painting his chest to support the University of Tennessee's Lady Vols team. To me, that was awesome! It's not often enough that you see a NCAA men's team support the women's team. So last night Pat Summitt returned the support by doing a little cheerleading. This is quite a change from her icy stare on the sidelines. Let's hope all colleges learn something from these two great coaches.

Head Cold

First off I want to say a much belated Happy Birthday to Missy and Sam. Because of the head cold I caught, I wasn't able to get the post up when I had planned. Hope you both had a wonderful day!

Head colds...what good are they? It started off with just a sore throat, then it moved to my ear and now it's stuffing me all up. Left work early on Friday and slept from ~9 a.m. until 11 a.m. on Saturday. Luckily the Molly dog was stuck right to me the whole time. I'm sure that's what helped me recover. I'm still not great now, but much better than I was then.

The Oscars were last night. It lasted a long, long, long time. I thought Ellen did a great job. I haven't seen any of the movies, so I don't know if I agreed with the results or not. I usually see the movies after the awards shows.

Become an M&M

You'll notice the green m&m over to the right...That's how I see myself as an m&m. It's kinda hard to picture without a nose, since my nose takes up a lot of real estate on my face. You may have seen the commercials on TV. One guy is break dancing, one's walking his dog, there's a couple taking a picture in one of those mall thingies...

A Good Birthday

I had a really nice birthday. There weren't any problems at work, my dog got a haircut, I got a perm, and Jerry took me out to eat. We didn't have any lambs born in the cold. The three lambs are moving out of the nursery in the morning. I'm calling the little boy "Mr. Freeze". His ear is still floppy. The ewe that's been out by herself all this time will be very happy to have company.

Thanks to everyone for your birthday wishes. Another year in the books.

There's Nothing Like A Hot Shower

I got to take a hot shower tonight. It was wonderful! Made even more so by the fact that I was frozen from mistakenly waiting on a ewe to have another lamb when she was only having the one. But that one was up and eating when I left, so it was worth the wait. We lost two this morning. Why the sheep wait until the coldest days of the year to have them, I'll never know. But we're still above 50%. The poor lamb tonight is the only boy so far, and poor boy he was. She had him out in the pasture and when I got to him, his ear was stiff. I rushed him into the nursery and put four heat lamps on him and dried him with a towel, then laid that towel over him. Eventually he got warm enough to attempt standing. His ear became flexible again, so I don't think it was damaged. The two lambs I was worried about yesterday are running and hopping in their pen. I think they are going to be okay. Dad's named one of them "Spock" because one of her ears is lazy. Now I just have to teach her to do the Vulcan sign with her hooves...

I got some early birthday cards today. My sis sent me one with a sticker I'm gonna wear tomorrow. Right now I'm feeling all 29 years.

What A Day

You know that old saying "mama said there'd be days like this"? Well, I don't ever remember my mama saying that, but if she did today would be one of those days. It started first thing this morning. I got out of bed and went to brush my teeth. Turned on the hot water and...nothing. It froze up last night. But my morning routine wasn't all that interrupted without hot water. I sit down at my computer to make sure things are going okay at work and I get a message that something's messed up. Great, well, I'll have to get to it a little later because I'm supposed to go check on the lambs this morning. I put my Michelin man suit on and drive to Dad's.

I knew it was a bad sign when I walk into the nursery and the lambs are shivering. They hadn't eaten all night. Some mom's have a thicker teat plug (it is exactly what it sounds like) than others. That it is a good thing because it prevents mastitis, which is what the first ewe had on one side. Back to the story at hand; Apparently the enzymes in the lambs mouth and/or the sucking strength wasn't enough to break it loose. I got it un-plugged and tried to get the lambs to eat. It always seems like if a lamb goes more than a few hours without that first shot of milk, it is almost impossible to get them to going after that. So Dad and I milk a bit out and feed the lambs with a bottle. Dad then decided that we might try mixing some vitamin D milk and honey to get something in them and might make them hungry to try eating on their own again. We decide to leave them for a while.

So it's back to home and the problem at work. I decided that it would take too long to try and fix it from home so I drive into work. Let's just say I made good time. Once I get to looking, it's not a problem really, just a matter of timing.

So it's back to home and check on the lambs once more. It didn't look like they had made any progress, so I tried to get them eating again. I was successful with one, but the other one didn't act very interested and it had a wet mouth. I think maybe it had already gotten a little bit on it's own. So my day is starting to look up.

Jerry and I make a quick trip to OKC, and then it's time to feed. While I was feeding I saw both lambs eat at least once. I don't think any more will be born tonight.

So that was my day. It started out pretty bad, but gradually got better. The lambs aren't out of the woods yet, but I'm beginning to see some daylight. And still no hot water. Cleaning up tonight might be a little interesting, but on the bright side...we do have cold water. I'm trying to look at the glass as half-full...of cold water. ;)

By the way, Happy Valentine's Day! I got beautiful roses from my Honey. I hope it was a good day for everybody.

More Lambs

Two more baby girls were born tonight; all legs and ears (a very good sign). We may have a rush of them this week. It'll be the first time in a few years to have one on my birthday if we get one Friday. Dad was telling me tonight that by this time last year, we had already had about 23 born. Oh well, better late than never. And they are coming out girls. Ewes is good!

Ashy in Action

Well, here she is. She's still the only lamb and she's getting a little lonely. Actually her mom is getting lonely. There's another
picture of her in my public gallery on Picasa.

I was going to post that Sunday, February 18th would be the series finale for "Reba", but when I went to find the link for it (and then decided I wouldn't give The CW the benefit of a link), they've changed "Series Finale" to "Season Finale". I can only hope that this means another station has picked it up. Tune in for updates...

I Like What I See

I can't believe it. I like my page now, and it didn't cost me a dime to make. I used a combination of tools. I used Evrsoft First Page to do a bit of html editing. To get that totally cool picture, I took advantage of Picasa2's collage feature (pictures of absolutely beautiful kids not included). It was all brought together here on Blogger after making a few modifications to a template I got from Beautiful Beta. It took me a few hours of trial and error, but I "got 'er done". I'm probably not totally finished with the modifications, but closer than I ever thought I would be.

New Look

As you can tell, I've totally revamped. At this point I'm not sure if I'll ever find something I'm satisfied with. It's like rearranging furniture.

I didn't like the fact that visitors couldn't leave comments and the feeds weren't working on my webpage. This may limit my creativity a bit until I figure out how to change it, but I wasn't all that creative anyway.

About the name change...An Australian station can be used to raise sheep. We aren't quite that large though. Also www.dictionary.com says that a station is "a place or position in which a person or thing is normally located.

Back to the regularly scheduled program...Still no more lambs. Ashy was quite rambunctious today though. She was running and hopping around the pen.

2/7/2007

No new lambs and it looks as if we are going to have to help the mom out with one of the first two. She has mastitis on one side and so one lamb is fat and sassy but the other is looking poor. I've named one Whiskers, because she has white hairs on her jaws that look like whiskers. She'll be the one to get the bottle. The other one is Ashy. She has white spots on her back. With the temperature change we might have more, but no phone calls from Dad yet...

Update: We lost Whiskers. She went downhill quickly overnight. It makes me very sad, but I've learned after raising them for 16+ years that it happens.

Update II: Sandy the Sheepdog died today. She had been chasing cars with more regularity and one got her. Not a good day really...

2/2/2007

Lambing season has officially begun...and on a high note! Numbers one and two came yesterday, both girls. I really think that lambs are the cutest animal babies there are. These two seem to be mouthy and I suspect they are going to be troublemakers like their older sister....wait for it....Trouble. I love seeing all the lambs at lambing season, but I hate the cold, late nights of waiting...and waiting...and waiting. Most everything to do with sheep is hurry up and wait. But then, a lot of things to do with life is hurry up and wait

I've never really had a favorite comic, but I have really started getting into Wally and Osborne by Tyler Martin. You might also see/hear it referred to as On the Rocks. I love the drawing style and the content is clean and funny. While reading through the archives, the artist wrote that it is featured at FunBrain, which is a family-friendly site. I took a quick look and it seemed to be a really cool place.

For those of you that aren't first time visitors (I know. I'm flattering myself here thinking there are any visitors), you might notice the major color change. I'm still searching for the look I want. I also made some tremendous behind the scene changes, but hopefully you won't notice. As always, feel free to give feedback using the email link at the left

Happy Groundhog Day! I'm not sure what the "official" results were this year, but after doing some research, it looks like the groundhogs can be contradictory anyway. I hope it's an early spring!