One fish, two fish...

Dog Fish!
How to teach dogs to swim.

1. Ask them nicely to swim.
2. Throw something dog likes into the water.
3. Wade into the water so dog can swim to you.
4. Finally admit to yourself that none of these things work, chase down dog, hold by collar, drag into deep water.
5. Pat yourself on the back. Your dog can now swim.

6. Check yourself for leeches.

Our Hunter Gatherer

Ahh! Some time on the lake.













Dave decided that my back-up-in-case-we-tip-clothes made a good covering. We're both fried anyway. Though our head gear did do some good. The skin is still attached to our noses. Hopefully it will remain that way.

The one he kept.


The one he didn't.

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Babys First Picture

We saw our kid earlier this week. The tech said she thinks its a girl. So there it is, we're having a girl. Or possibly a boy with no penis. But since there is a loving supreme being that watches over stuff like that, our child will be the former and not the later. Our precious little meat-wad had come a long way from being a gooey blood-filled jellybean. We watched her hopping around like a little frog during the ultrasound. She's feisty, and modest. It took a while for us to catch a glimpse of the goodies because she is already so pure and chaste. She got that from me.

Tired of Rock and Roll

... but only because what goes for 'rock and roll' these days is crapangrywhiteboynoise. I've been threatening to switch brands for a while if things didn't get better and they haven't. I can't believe I'm writing this- I listen to country. At first I only did it when I couldn't find anything on all the rock stations, but now I have half the pre-sets on country station and I have it on about 70% of the time.

Looking back I'm not really surprised. There were signs. Like the hunting, camping, and fishing. The gardening and the beekeeping. And most of my friends are red-necks. My life's ambitions are to work with animals, have a ton of kids and live on a ranch out in the boonies. Those are all fairly rednecktastic themes so it only makes sense that eventually I'd pick up on redneck music.

I still love good rock though. And if someone ever starts making good rock and roll I'll definitely listen to it.

"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!