Ash

Volcanic ash from Mount Redoubt fell on Eagle River Saturday night during Vespers. Very little of it. Here is a picture of our yard looking out towards the chicken coop.

The snow just has a light dusting of grey to it. It is really only noticable where the paths are. Joachim thinks it looks like pepper on the ground.

Another Busy Saturday

We had another busy, productive Saturday. Kari went with Dn Pat and Peter Lamb to get more wood. They were able to get two loads for our house and two loads for Peter's. Here is our wood pile now:

While Kari was gathering wood, I finished painting the unfinished bedroom. There are two colors. A dark blue and a burnt orange. They look pretty good. Next we need some more plywood to make the entire floor level, then then we will put on laminate flooring. Here is the room:

After that was all finished we took a long walk in the 50 acres and are now making dinner and getting ready for Vespers.

Busy Day

I had a very busy day yesterday. It started with cooking a great breakfast of Pancakes, Eggs (fresh from our chickens), Veggie Sausages, and Stawberries and Tangerines. We had Joachim's Godfather, Peter Lamb over to eat. Peter and I then took advantage of our Church clearing some land and collected a bunch of wood. Peter heats his house with wood, I use wood to decrease our heating bills. The product of our labour:

After that, I worked a little on the house, I spent about 20 Minuts sanding some mud in the our extra bedroom in preperation for texturing and painting. After that I went to the range with Peter Johnson and Subdeacon John Phelps. I brought my .357 and fired 38 Special from it. Peter brought his 12 gauge with a compression stock so I could feel the difference from my 12 gauge and his. I shot 5 rounds of buck shot and 1 slug through that. No brusies on my shoulder, I should get that compression stock! I also fired Peter's Mini 14, it shoots .223. After coming back I had to butcher one of the chickens. We had a rooster which was harrasing the hens and eating food, so was basically useless. Here is me outside getting the skin and feathers off and guts out:

After that I brought it inside, did the final cleaning and cut the legs/thighs and the breasts off. The wings were so small they were not worth keeping. I then vacumn sealed it in our new vacumn sealer. And the finished product:

I'm very proud of myself for cleaning the chicken all by myself. This is only the 3rd time I have butcherd a chicken, the other times I had someone looking over by shoulder who actually knew what they were doing. Can't wait to have some chicken and dumplings after Lent!

Some Interesting Math

So I was thinking about the biggest budget ever submitted to Congress (and believe me I was not happy about the spending under Bush) of $3.5 Trillion. Thats 3,500,000,000,000.00! So I thought lets see how much we are spending per day in this budget since Jesus was born. For simplicity we will say Jesus was born 2000 years ago, and there were only 365 days in each of those 2000 years. 2000 Years x 365 Days = 730,000 Days. $3,500,000,000,000.00 / 730,000 Days = $4,794,530.55 per day since Jesus was born! This is on top of TARP, on top of the Omnibus Spending Bill, on top of the nearly $1 Trillion 'Stimulus' Bill need I go on. Kind of interesting in a scary sort of way.