Oh it’s getting warm around here (May 24th)

The weather is getting more and more beautiful by the day. The sun is shining the birds are chirping, buds are coming out and it is getting warmer. The garden is coming along. We got the fence up and some of the beds tilled.

The lilacs are almost in full bloom. You can smell them everywhere mixed in with the scent of apple blossoms. Last night Jeter was sitting in the window near the lilac bush and when he came in to sit with us on the couch he smelled like lilacs.

And of course every May, Sugar decides she wants to have babies (or bo bos as we call them around here). So we let her sit on some golf balls for about 3 weeks and we bought 4 Rhode Island Red chicks at Agway. We got them yesterday morning and they spent the day in the office with me, much to the chagrin of Jeter who was not allowed in.

We went out around 8 last night when the big chicks went to bed and tossed the babies under Sugar. Just like last year, she thought she hatched them. She took to them right away. One of the babies kept poking her in the eye and pulling her comb. These chicks are about a day or 2 older than her first batch so they were a little more rambunctious and didn’t want to go to bed so Jimmy had to reach in and lift Sugar a little and shove them under so they would go to sleep. We checked on them a couple of times before bed and they seemed just fine. This morning I went to check and I had 5 faces staring at me from the nest box. I had to get them all moved to the brooding area so I had to fast-grab Sugar before she could attack me and get her moved. Of course I knocked one of the chicks out and to the floor. I scooped up all the babies and moved them to Sugar’s new brooding area. She will stay with them there until they are a bit older so the big chicks don’t kill and eat them. Which they will do. Chickens are mean little animals. So the babies names are Titleist, Hogan, Butterfly and Noodle. Everyone asks me about the big kids too so here are their pictures. They posed the other day for the first time. If you think it is hard to take pictures of children, try taking pictures of chickens.

Spencer, the King Daddy Rooster at 3 feet tall. He's my biggest baby.

Billie, the Head Chicken

Nana G, the Enforcer


Blondie and Velvet, the Flunkies


Goober, the Lackey


And poor Rita, the lowman on the totem pole. She was adopted when we moved to NY.


Sugar and Velvet kvetching about babies in the Puddiecomb Coop

Red Alert, Crisis Ahead

Ugh! What a week. We are working on a project with I Love All Access. This company sells VIP packages to concerts like Christina Aguilera, Def Leppard, Sammy Hagar and Godsmack. It’s a great idea for fans. You get a goodie bag, sound check party, great tickets, sometimes a backstage tour, depending on the band. Anyway, the goodie bags are where we come in. Scott from Lil Gary’s office calls and we source out some different bags and get them samples. They choose a bag and place the order. I’ve been dealing with the factory (US Box) for a couple weeks on this. Pricing had been confirmed a multitude of times. I talk to my contact (Dominic) at US Box on a Friday and he reconfirms the pricing and inventory. Ok, all good, call and place the order on Monday. They are supposed to open at 8AM on Monday. I call for the first 45 minutes and no answer. Finally they arrive. I tell Dominic that I need to order the bags. He gives me a price $.06 more than quoted. There is nothing I can do, I need the bags. I argue back and forth with Dominic, the supervisor, the owner and they won’t work with me on the price. The philosophy here at our company is that if I mis-quote, too bad for me, I have to eat the difference. That is how we pay for our mistakes. I’m glad I don’t make that many. ;-) So then they invoice me another penny higher than the $.06. Now I want to rip their heads off. I vow never to work with them again and to place a comment in the back end system of our online search tool (as other people have). I don’t want anyone else to have to go through this. But it gets even better. They wait until 4:55PM EST to tell me “oh by the way, we don’t have any of those bags”. These are the same bags I ordered before 9AM and it takes them all day to figure this out. The bags are supposed to be in Kentucky on Thursday. After I recover from my stroke I call Jimmy upstairs and we start another search to find the bags. We find the manufacturer, but they are closed because it is after 5 now. Jimmy finds another source in California. Similar bag, just a little bigger. The company is AB Packaging. I talk to Richard who happens to be a life saver. He assures me that if I have an order in by Tuesday morning he can ship same day for arrival on Thursday. I have to pay just a little more and I have to buy more bags than I intended but the final result is a happy client (I Love All Access). As long as my clients are happy that is all that really matters. I hear from Scott today and he said the bags arrived on schedule and they worked out just fine. Thank you everyone that helped on this project.