First Sunday in February

I posted on the last Sunday of January, so I might as well post on the first Sunday of February.
Yesterday we watched two basketball games of our son's highschool tournament. It was at his school, so at least we didn't have to travel. They play very well together as a team and won both games.  Yesterday was also groundhog day here. Wiarton Willy predicted an early spring, so take that for what it is, a weather prediction from a 'domesticated' albino rodent. Yesterday was also my brother's birthday. I guessed his age wrong by one year. I'm quite terrible at birthdays. I texted him. As a whole, our family doesn't really do frequent big birthday celebrations (among the cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.). We don't all live within close proximity to each other. Many of the cousins would only see each other at Christmas, maybe Easter, maybe Thanksgiving, or some other special occasion. Myself and my siblings are spread quite far apart in age. I wasn't even at highschool with my sister who is closest to me in age, as we are five years apart (and didn't even attend the same highschool). We seem to carry on separate lives. It is what I am used to. I'm also a terrible phone caller. I really don't even like to talk on the phone. It's just who I am.

Today is much, much more mild than the past week with the polar vortex and skin freezing temperatures. It is actually above freezing! I took the opportunity to do some 'farm work'. I shoveled enough out of the chicken run so I could open the gate a bit more and provide some even ground for my flock. I opened up their little door and out they came, happy with the old grapes and ends of romaine lettuce I laid out for them. I then closed off their door and started a decent clean out. They got fresh water, their various places where they roost were scraped clean, manure was dumped on the compost and over the snow under which is my vegetable garden. Fresh shavings in the nesting box and  a topping up of food, and it's practically the Taj Mahal. However, I was almost dying slogging through the very deep and now heavy, wet snow to the garden and the composter carrying full loads of chicken manure, and then back and forth with full buckets of water. Ahhh, good exercise.

I've been enjoying Ann Cleeves as an author. I had watched the entire Shetland series on Netflix and loved it. Then I was on somebody's blog (sorry, can't remember which one because there are a few that recommend books) and her name came up and I made the connection that she is the author of the Shetland series. I read a couple of those and then picked up another Ann Cleeves only to discover it wasn't a Jimmy Perez mystery (Shetland), but one featuring a detective named Vera. I liked it just as much and then discovered it had been made into a television series. This morning before anyone else was up (as usual), I went looking for it and found I could watch full episodes on You Tube (which I can view on my tv). I've watched one from season one and am eager to work my way through other episodes. They're very good, but sometimes I really have to strain to catch what some of the characters are saying. I do love a mystery series, whether I'm reading it, or watching it.

One last thought... how long do most of you have a properly functioning computer? I am working on my Asus laptop which I bought somewhere around four years ago. It is certainly not top of the line, but it should suffice. Recently, my cursor has been freezing up, so I do what one does, I turn it off and turn it back one again, I get booted off my wifi (which may or may not have to do with the laptop), when I pick it up in an open position and I've just been working on it, it goes into sleep mode... and the list continues. I really, really don't want to buy something new, nor is it in my budget right now. I google how to deal with some of these problems, or I just sigh and put up with them and do a whole lot of  'hard restarts'. Anyone else experience limited life spans of their computers? We also have an old computer with the separate hard drive and monitor and keyboard, etc. that is as slow as molasses and doesn't have all the upgrades so some things aren't compatible with the windows 10 that we were convinced we should install on it. I can't actually load photos into blogger on it. I can make comments, read blogs, etc., but can't write a blog that involves any images or pictures. So, this laptop is the one I use for work things if I'm not on my work computer, and for any other things I wish to do like watch a video, write on my blog, look things up, save items into favourites, etc. I suppose I could take it to someone to have it gone over, but I'm not sure what they even charge these days. Good lord, I've rambled enough about that...

I'm off to get caught up on your blogs now - no doubt with posts of far greater interest! Have a good Sunday.