The Attack of the Peanut Butter Sandwich

Well, just as things ratchet down to a quiet roar here at the Hold, something rears it's ugly head to casually mention that the Universe is one chaotic SOB. The wife has been having problems with rashes and stopped-up ears, so we take her to an allergist to get tested, and sure enough, "test it and it will BE!"

Now we know why she broke out in a bright red rash on her chest when she had that peanut butter sandwich. She's allergic, to some extent, to both peanuts and wheat. She is also sensitive to dust mites, as well as just about every weed that grows like, well, weeds, here at Pendragon Hold.

Poor thing. Her arms look like a masochists' idea of a pin cushion and they are still sore. Part of her daily repertoire now is taking allergy medicines like claritan and benedril to tamp down the symptoms. We are waiting to find out if the insurance is going to cover allergy shots or not. And I get to tear up the carpet in the bedroom now. I get to do that today. My knees are arranging a coup even as I type this.

We had a nice little Samhain (that's All-Hallows' Eve, or Halloween for you monotheistic types) celebration, despite the ever present threat of rain, made possible by the brainstorm I had concerning stringing up a tarp between the trees over the alter area in the shade garden. For some reason, the forecast will predict great weather unless we are planning something like a ceremony outdoors, in which case monsoon rains will suddenly appear. The tarp solves that problem.

The twins (not the human offspring, but the pigmy fainting goats, Sorcha and Sanya) have been escaping the yard by lifting up the bottom of the wire fence that they have bowed severely outward by rubbing up against it. My neighbors are sooooo understanding, coming to get me to let me know the goats are on the loose. Well, I solved THAT little problem, at least for now. The fence is in such bad shape I really need to replace it with the woven type rather than the cheaper welded kind I have strung now. The two major problems with that right now is that a 330 foot roll of the good stuff goes for about $130 and is really quite heavy. Even if I can manage to get a roll of it into the car, I will still need THE Wife's help moving it around the property and stretching it out.

So instead I purchased an electric fence set up for half the price which was very easy to string up and seems to solve the problem. One wire stretched across the bottom of the fence on the inside and the twins are discouraged with extreme prejudice NOT to stick their heads under the wire.

One of my favorite bands has come out with a new album, and it proves that old rockers don't fade away, they can still pull off that magic, even if they MIGHT have to take some ibuprofen before a recording session. The Eagles are selling a double disk album out of Walmart for only around $11, and I dare say it's worth a lot more than that. They are all new songs and would be getting heavy airplay right now if only there remained a radio station that played that kind of music anymore. The oldies stations won't be playing it because, well, it's not OLD, and the new "rock" stations don't play what we old farts would call rock and roll anymore. No, nowadays its noise from whiny nerds complaining about their girlfriends doing their best friends, or some dark irrelevant crap that isn't meant to improve one's mood. I'm sure a lot of people would consider most of this music to be Country, but I would have to disagree with them, if only because I wouldn't listen to anything considered country unless it was the kind of music The Eagles perform. You gotta love a band that doesn't once question people's patriotism in order to come across as genuinely American.

Also, I performed some rather scary surgery on the iMac, upgrading the hard drive to a 500 gig monster and the OS to the latest, OSX 10.5 Leopard. I am happy to report that the computer did NOT explode, meltdown, or try to break into NORAD all on its own. It HAS been acting a little odd, however, insisting on being connected to what it claims is its counterpart somewhere in Russia, and insists that I call it COLOSSUS. Silly machine............