"No, Jim, I use a bad apiarist."

"I say we fill Michael's office with bees. My apiarist owes me a favor."
Thanks, Dwight Schrute. That was a highlight in our week. However, you may not extract our queen and place her on a flushable wipe. She's too valuable for such petty things.

Ah, Bees! We have had our bees for a little over a week. Check out how awesomely unaware and inexperienced we are at keeping them. We checked on them for the first time this Saturday and they haven't all flown off and ditched us yet.
In fact to our delight and surprise they had already started making honey! Apparently, they need to work their bee magic on it longer before it can be applied to toast. Thankfully, we knew this or we'd be having an unpleasant week of restroom familiarization.
Our little workers even started making their own comb. See the honey inside? The comb was so light and fragile. We stuck some in the freezer for show-n-tell for our friends. Thank you all for humoring us. You've been great. If we get a little too excited go ahead and tell us so. Then we'll proceed to tell you how awesome it to have bees and that everyone should jump on the band wagon. When they fly off into the setting sun shouting insults and we cry on your shoulder then you can proceed to tell us how awesome it is not having bees mess up your emotional stability.

It would appear that dogs like honey. As well as honey comb. Who knew? Yeah, probably not the best idea to get them addicted to it. At least we have this kick-butt pest control fence. The dogs are actually part of the pest control management. Hopefully this doesn't turn into a case of the fox guarding the hen house.
Instructions were relied on heavily from our trusty Beekeeping for Dummies during the installation process. We each hived a nuc and made Harrell modifications when needed. Good times!

Our bees did not arrive in the mail, as is the usual manner of delivery. We'll have to try it someday to see the reaction at the post office. Bet that delivery guy won't skip us for having a motorcycle parked within 10 ft. of the mailbox that day. Our lucky bees were picked up from the supplier in Alabama and drove overnight to arrive in our hands by 8:30 the next morning. See all those boxes of bees! We were last on the list. This guy had already stopped at three other towns before he got to us.

The Harrell's are bee owners! With a lot of first timers luck by next year we shall be official beekeepers.

Take Notes

...or rather don't. Take change instead!

Yesterday we bug-bombed our ant-infested car and needed something to do while the fumes worked their magic. We decided to go see a flick but didn't want use our week's date money on a Monday. I raided my change cup instead.

The change cup has been hit pretty hard recently so all it had left was dimes and under. Anyway- we had enough dimes and nickles to pay for a pair of movie tickets. To make things easier for the ticket guy we separated all the change in little baggies and added up the totals. But when we paid, he said he had to count it all out by hand. Super-lame!

He didn't count out our 100 dimes and our 60 nickles. Instead, he just stood there holding the baggies- looking at them. Then he'd move a few coins around and sigh, then he'd look at us, then look and the coins and sigh again. Eventually he must have decided that counting up all our change wasn't worth his time. Since he couldn't print us a ticket without counting the coins, he let us keep them, and told us to go see the show without paying.

What the what!? Go without paying? How awesome is that! There is such thing as a free lunch, and it's at the Great Escape Mega-Plex. So now we'll never have to pay for a movie again. We'll just keep breaking out the coin baggies over and over.

I highly recommend everyone do this, just don't do it at the same place I do, because then I will have to cut you.

Guess What!

It's 87 degree's. Yay!

Room For One More?

Sully graduated obedience school and got to wear this snazzy cap. How awesome is that? He did really good at all his commands and didn't try to eat any of the other dogs until after he passed all his tests. After that he was kind of an embarrassment but oh well, dogs will be dogs. The next day our little graduate amused himself by yanking the DSL box off the back of the house by the phone line wires. Way to go, kid.

Thankfully our internet subscription covers those kinds of things. We had to call the repair man back for the next two days as well. Once because I shot a staple through the internet cable while securing it to the house, and again the next day when I cut through the buried part with a shovel planting a bush. But this post isn't about me.

We've been thinking that we aren't meeting Sully's intellectual needs. He does have a diploma and everything. Even though we walk him every day, he still seems really bored and lonely. I can't spend more time with him outside, and he isn't allowed to come inside (by virtue of the sacred pact I made with Valli when I got him, except in the laundry room when it's stormy).
Recently we were laying in bed talking about what to do about our dog when Valli gave the most best suggestion ever- Get another dog!

So after thinking about it over for a little while we came to these conclusions-

Another dog would double our dog expenses and create a 100% increase in the production of poop.

Another dog would possibly curb Sully's boredom induced destruction sprees.

Another dog would possibly double the amount of destruction sprees.

Sully is fun. Two dogs = Twice the fun!

By the end of the conversation we were agreed that we wanted to find another dog. A grown dog that someone else has already trained, vaccinated, fixed, etc. The next day we found a listing on petfinder.com for Sam.
Meet Sam! Sam is a one-year-old 75 lb German Shepherd Dog. When his daddy deployed, Sam decided that he was the boss of the house and everyone in it. His Mommy decided that to bring peace back into the house, Sam would have to go. I found him listed as free to a good home.
We went to his house the next morning. It was just a couple minutes from our our place. He was nervous and timid and fearful when we first went into the house. We learned that his owner had hired trainers and professionals to help her get Sam under control but she couldn't handle him. She had to keep her other extremely submissive dog separated from him at all times or he would bully her constantly. We decided to give him a trial run and she brought him to our place. Sully was so happy to have company I thought he would explode. Once Sam was out of his comfort zone he became submissive and relaxed almost immediately.

The only problem was Sully. He just wanted to roughhouse with Sam non-stop. We had to separate them for periods so Sam could take a break from getting beat up on. That was when we realized that Sully didn't just like other dogs, he was a bit unstable with other dogs. Even so, we went on ahead and kept Sam. If after a few days they were not getting along well, Sam had a second offer on adoption from the county sheriffs office. But we needn't have worried. By nighttime the two were best buddies. In the week or so we've had Sam, both dogs have had pretty big transformations. Sam is much more docile and easy-going. Sully barks less, tears up stuff less, and never pulls on walks to get at other dogs anymore. I run them in the morning on the same leash and they are well-behaved. So well behaved in fact they've gotten compliments on not only their handsome looks but also on how great they do while leashed together. Then they spend the rest of the day sleeping, stealing each others toys, and beating up on each other. They are two happy dogs, and we don't feel guilty that Sully isn't getting stimulated enough.

I feel like turkey tonight!

I missed the fall turkey hunt this winter by 2 days. I really wanted to try to shoot something when I got home. Not the “post traumatic stress disorder want to shoot something”, just the normal want to shoot something that I’ve had since I was 5. So a week ago I asked a friend with a really big yard if I could try to take a turkey. He said that was great but only if I shot some of his horses while I was at it. Sadly we just didn’t have the freezer space. Maybe next year though.

I’ve never been hunting before. Everything I know about hunting I learned from the advertisements in Field and Stream magazines. I didn’t have very high expectations, but by golly that wasn’t going to stop me from trying. Long story short: I didn’t get one. After 6 hours and being chased out of my first hide by dogs I sat up to leave. That was when I discovered that I had unknowingly called in a hen. She was standing just outside my field of vision about 20 feet away watching me. When I sat up she started moving off and then I missed my shot. Oh well. At least I knew I was doing some things right. The next day I went back and found a spot where I could see more. After 2 hours I called in another hen and nailed her. It would have been cool to hold out for a big old tom but I was excited and didn’t really care what I brought home, so long as I wasn’t empty-handed. So here is my turkey.

Something else I learned. Plucking and cleaning a turkey sucks and smells tremendously bad. I brought it home pre-cleaned because I wanted a picture. Next time I’ll make sure I bring the camera and leave all the guts out in the woods. Anyway- Yay for me and being a mighty hunter.

What's Cookin?

Gosh. Is it April already?

I have so much stuff to blog about! The biggest news is that Valli is pregnant. And what is even better is that it's mine! We are at about 15 weeks now. For all of you who don't know what that means (like me), we don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet. We find out in week 20. It had better be a boy, that's all I'm saying. From what Valli has tried to explain, it seems our baby is a 4 inch long turd-shaped, wriggling, thumb-sucking, meat-wad with a discernible neck.

Valli is doing great. She wasn't ever super-ill so we are grateful for that. In case you wanted to know, I handled the first trimester like a champ. I was never sick and the energy levels were through the roof. I think I even lost a couple pounds.

Meat-wad's suspected birthday going to be some time in early October. These are some of the things I want our baby to have for its birthday: a Nintendo Wii, a Remington 300 Ultra Magnum, the 3rd season of My Name Is Earl, and numchucks. Valli wouldn't ask for anything unless it was life and death. Not even for her first baby. But you can trust me that she agrees with everything I've written

Deuces, y'all.