Guess Who's Coming For Breakfast? Maybe Lunch and Dinner, Too.

The phone usually doesn't ring at 6:30 am with good news. And since I'd taken not one but two Vicodin overnight and had a pretty disturbing talk with my older brother about our dad's health, I wasn't overly eager to grab it. Turned out it was the post office, though. They had something in a box for me, and wanted me to come get it, as soon as possible.

When a postal worker starts talking to you, and his voice is maybe just a tiny bit edgy, and it's very early in the morning, I think you need to listen. I crunched through the snow and ice and picked up my package:


Fifty, count 'em, 50 live Arucanas and New Hampshire Reds. OK, one of the Reds was dead on arrival, but they'd thrown in an extra peep, so it's an even 50. I put them in the brooder and introduced them one by one to their water and food. After about an hour, I had what amounts to the Grand Central Terminal for chickens:


It's all pretty amazing. One day old, and they're already going to town over who gets dinner first.

The dogs were pretty happy, particularly Stink, who redefines the phrase "egg-sucking dog." We had chickens a few years ago, and he became rather skilled at finding stray eggs.

The cat, not so happy. She'll want to wait until they're old enough to be sport before she kills them.

But I digress. After getting the peeps arranged in the downstairs bathroom -- small enough to heat well, a little out-of-the-way, and a built-in ventilation fan -- I did a bunch of work for the day job.

Should've done more, but I was still pretty zonked from the previous night's Vicodin. Took a break around 2:30 pm to go by the post office (my usual post office; the one that didn't have my chickens) and went by the gym.

Ran into Our Friend Jimmy there. Jimmy's your typical Long Island Irish guy, except he's now a househusband who spends most of his free time working out at the gym. Jimmy's a big guy. We had him and his wife Patti over for brunch a few months back, and I was deeply concerned because we only had two pounds of sausage and 18 eggs. I might mention that Jimmy used to be a pro body builder and looks better at 51 than I've ever looked in my entire life. Anyway, I pedaled away on the bike while we chatted. He was just down around the Gulf Coast with his church, helping rebuild.

"I'm not an educated guy," Jimmy said.

This generally is Long Island Irish for: "Someone's ass is gonna get kicked."

"But we're building cottages. Cottages."

"Like, um, cottages in the Hamptons?"

"We send $12 billion on pallets to Iraq. We lose it, right?"

I wouldn't say we lost it, exactly ... I think it just wasn't spent in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures. But given that Jimmy's about six inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and has about, oh, 15 percent less body fat, I listen. And it's a pretty entertaining conversational thread. Cottages? Iraq?

"Could we have fucked things up any less in either country if we'd just given that money to people after Katrina?"

A good point, even if Jimmy were six inches shorter, 50 pounds lighter and had 15 percent more body fat. But since he's not, I think we need to turn him loose in Washington. Only problem is Jimmy's a really nice guy, so there probably wouldn't be much (or enough) in the way of mayhem.

I finished 25 miles on the bike, then went to swim. I got about a quarter-mile done before some 7-year-old's birthday party commenced, so I abandoned the pool a bit early today. Went home and checked my peeps. Opened the door and had my little moment:

"All hail J! All hail J!"

The peeps are doing pretty well. I think I'm going to lose one more, but that's still not too bad. And they sound busy as all hell. Haven't seen a lot of pecking and poor behavior just yet.

Lot more work to do in the morning. Hoping the peeps don't run into any overnight issues.