Snow and Illustrations!

As some of you may have heard, a couple days before the new year we got a fair dumping of snow on Portland. It was beautiful because it fell so rapidly that it didn't have time to melt until it was done. And then just as quickly as it came, it melted away. But we won't dwell on the latter but the former, where it actually looked lovely.

This is our neighbors house after a two hours.



Our chickens were very weirded out about the snow and huddled into a corner of their pen.



My chicken ventured out into the snow, I think because I'm usually the bringer of food. This time I just wanted to take pictures. This is less than an hour into it.



This is about two hours after it started. You can tell just how pink the fence is.




By this time the chickens had all gotten back into the coop. They usually only go in at dusk, they don't even mind rain, snow however is a different matter, "The sky is falling!"



The next day they stayed in the coop until I made tracks in the snow where they could peck at the ground.



I think these tracks belong to a robin, who was not a big wiener about the snow.



Joel had to walk home because it was too slick to ride. Luckily fresh snow is pure joy, so it didn't bother him. The only people we saw biking were folks who have massive bike tires. I tried to take a picture of one guy but it didn't come out in the photo.



And as of late we've been having some odd eggs. This one happens to be flat on one side.



This one happens to have no shell... I think we have a new layer and not all her equipment is up to speed yet. I can't wait til we have all five laying!



In other animal news, Orson has been particularly snuggly with me and Joel and its been a lot of fun to have him hang out with us. He's generally a very independent cat and not all that cuddly. The whole reason we got him was that he's a mouser and we had a mouse/rat problem which he efficiently dealt with (thanks pal!). Here's how it works. Orson gets snuggled up to Joel while Joel is reading a magazine. Then Orson gets moved and sits on the magazine, then Joel pulls said magazine from under Orson and uses the cat as a magazine stand.





A couple days ago Joel had the day off so I taught him how to use my sewing machine. He converted a too-short Woodcrafter's athletic jacket (with the quilted insides) into a pillow. He did a really good job and learned quickly.



That night Clara made dinner for all of us, Huevos Ranchero! It was very delicious and we got to use the eggs from our lady chickens.





And lastly, I've been having fun putting together music packages for my friends across the country. I've been illustrating the covers for the CDs and have had a blast.







And that's about all for now. Its been a fairly quiet new year for us in general but its been nice.