Category Archives: Hobbies

birdhouses, birds, children, DIY, Family, Hobbies, Uncategorized

For the Birds

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It started as a little quiver, a passing thought that somehow nose dived into an idea, then exploded on the runway into all kind of notions. 

I don’t mean for them to, but some ideas just keep growing. A simple idea takes on the persona of a cute, tiny green yard lizard, which promptly blows up into a huge heap of ideas that look like an angry T-Rex on a Jurassic Park rampage.  

It’s happened before.

Happened again. 

I was just going to make a few plain bluebird houses to go with the standard design half dozen already out on trees.

Then there was the little lizard idea to make a birdhouse like the church where Janet I got married.

That’s when Jurassic Park started. The little green lizard metamorphosed into big, cumbersome dinosaurs.

Before I knew it, I’d sketched twelve different birdhouse ideas! Soon I was adding cutouts, individualized painting, and attaching unique perches.

It ended up being the one for Janet, plus eleven more, one for each of our eleven kids and their respective family units. 

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Blogging, Collections, Family, Hobbies, life

Too Many Hobbies

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I have too many hobbies! Seriously.

Some people I know have no hobbies, zero, zilch.  They eat, work, sleep, then rewash, repeat, day, after day, after day.

That’s seems boring!

Yet others are so interested in one thing, it’s all they can do.  That’d drive me straight over the crazy cliff!

Still others, like me, (clear my throat and look side to side in case someone is staring), have so many interests, collections, activities, and hobbies, that they neither have, nor take, the time to do any of them really well.

Is that an existential hobby crisis?

I need counseling, at least a support group.

“Hi. My name is Jeff, and I’m a hobbyolic.”

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Faith, Family, Hobbies, Humor, Pets

City Chickens

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A quiet young man at work calls himself a “city boy” by birth, but is becoming more “countrified” every day.  He bought a small chicken coop and put it in his backyard several months ago so he could have “fresh eggs”.

He lives slap dab in the middle of town and the four Rhode Island Red chicks he bought turned out to be roosters.  Roosters don’t lay eggs, so in quiet frustration, he told me he was starting over this weekend with four pullet chicks from another distributor.

The roosters?

“Well”, sounding more like a tired old farmer than a young city guy learning the basics, “I think I’m gonna have some fresh grilled chicken.”

Have you slaughtered chickens before?

“Well, no. But I went dove hunting once, and it’s probably about the same.”

He hadn’t decided if he was going to chop off their heads or wring their necks.  I smiled at his conundrum, and a brain wrinkled memory flashed back.

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