After the Storm

The clouds were thick and low-hanging today. It was cool and misty all day today–rainy enough to need windshield wipers on, but not rainy enough to drum on the roof of our house. Weather like today always reminds me of the old children’s poem, which begins:

“One misty, moisty morning,
when cloudy was the weather…”

When I walked down the driveway to get the mail this morning, I heard the sounds of chainsaws in the distance. EJ said later that our neighbor had a large tree get knocked down by the storm, and he saw other trees down on his way to work. I found a little storm damage on our property, but nothing major. It had rained so hard last night that there was a bit of erosion in the driveway. I also found the top half of a small tree in the driveway. I grabbed it and moved it out of the way. I also saw that a large dead pine tree had fallen. Fortunately it didn’t fall on any power lines. EJ really would like to cut down the dead trees but we don’t yet have a chainsaw. We have a list of things we want to do around here, but there is only so much we can do in a week, or month, or year.

Fallen dead pine tree

Erosion on driveway

Just before noon the computer repair shop called to tell me I could pick up my laptop. Yay! Apparently the WIFI driver had gotten turned off somehow. The guy said my laptop was running very slowly, and that it would need a new hard drive in the near future, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the  money just then. So I drove into the city to pick up my baby.

At the computer shop, I was greeted by a Weimaraner named Ruger.  He sniffed me–probably smelling Hannah, the cats, and the chickens–and I gave him some lovings. I thought that if I ever had a shop (which I don’t plan ever to have), I would definitely have a dog there to greet customers.

The repair guy discussed my computer in greater detail with me. Some things I think are easier to understand face-to-face. He turned on my computer and showed me that I had a program on my computer that would allow someone to steal my identity. Also, I have a lot of gig used up, and he asked me if I knew what was taking so much memory. I said, “Photos?” He said he knows many professional photographers who take thousands of photos every month and they don’t use so much memory. He strongly suggested that I let him do a reinstall to wipe the computer and get rid of the unwanted programs. He said I really didn’t need as many gigs as I had–and he rarely comes across a computer with so much–and he could put in a new hard drive with less gig (and less $$) and with an external drive to archive my photos and get them off the computer. I was kind of thinking of that already because if my computer dies, there goes my photos. And my computer has been running really slow and this would fix it. And I don’t want my identity stolen. So I told him to go ahead. He told me that he is expecting a shipment of drives this afternoon and my laptop will be the first he works on. So I should have it back this week. Tomorrow would be nice. I’m thinking that once my laptop is fixed up, we ought to take EJ’s in for maintenance.

Other than that, it was a relatively quiet day. Tonight I had no problem getting the chickens in their coop. All eight were already in the coop settling down for the night when I went out to shut them in.