So I got a switchblade… A MicroTouch Switchblade

I am going to step out of the norm here and do something I don’t normally do and review a product. I get emails all the time recruiting bloggers to review their products and most of the time I pass because it isn’t my thing and that’s not what this blog is about, but I did see a couple of products that I would actually use and give an honest review so I decided what the hell I can review this, so here is the first of three reviews then its back to the basics of whatever the hell genre of blogging that I fall into. Anyway, here we go.

So I am a pretty hairy guy, my hair used to be thick when I let it grow on my head but now that I shave my head I notice how thick and quickly my hair grows on my goatee, ears and my grandiose caterpillar eyebrows so when I got a chance to review a personal groomer I thought that was right up my alley, so I signed up. A couple of weeks later this showed up.

The MicroTouch Switchblade All-in-One Groomer. Now I have to admit that I was a little put off by the bright orange “As seen on TV” label, it instantly brought images of late night infomercials with guys with bad hair hawking their lousy wares but once I unpacked it I was pleasantly surprised.

It unpacked into the 6 pieces it claims, the groomer/trimmer, 4 guides for eyebrows, mustaches/goatees, hair and of course that tiny little brush for sweeping out the trimmer of all your unwanted clipped hair… gross!

So now was the time to put it to the test. The small trimmer on the right in the picture above has a tiny light on it so it illuminates the hair you are trimming. It worked flawlessly on the hair on my ears and nose hair. I used one of the smaller guides and trimmed my eyebrows to the length I like. So far so good.

I switched the guide to a little longer length and moved to my goatee and nothing. BOOOO! I have a pretty thick and wiry goatee and the guide was just not going through it. After a few unsuccessful attempts I ended up having to switch back to the clippers with a short guide to get my goatee cut. I don’t know if it may work better for guys with thinner hair but using it on my goatee didn’t cut it for me.

Now on to some other “manscaping”, the “machismo” (chest hair) is strong with this one. My chest hair is fierce, bold and strong when unchallenged. It routinely advances its front line over the top of collar and will continue its march to a rocking neck beard if I don’t keep it in check. Here is where the larger trimmer comes into play. The orange section on the lower left of the trimmer picture above slides over to reveal a larger trimmer. The large trimmer worked fantastic at mowing down the unwanted curls that were threatening to overtake my neck.

Overall I think that this is a decent personal groomer, it has the two blades for intricate grooming as well as the larger trimmer for larger jobs like chests and backs. If I saw this in the store I would have no problem paying $15-20 bucks for it. It does what it is supposed to do and does a pretty decent job at it minus goatee grooming.

So what do you think? Would you buy one of these? Do you own one? Tell me your thoughts….

Meet The Ladies!

Well, a couple of times over the past two weeks I have come home to find one or two chickens out of the run. It really isn’t a huge deal because of their flock nature they won’t roam past the garden because they want to stay close to the rest of the girls, but I don’t want them out for stray dogs or cats or the occasional fox to happen upon them and leave me with less chickens. To find out if it is the same chicken that is the escape artist I wanted to band them with leg bands so I could easily identify them. I started to look for spiral leg bands which are safe and effective, but after two trips to Tractor Supply and Country Max I was still empty handed. After a little research on a few backyard chicken  websites I found that a lot of people were using the color velcro cable ties and that they were safe and easily adjustable as the chickens grew, so a quick trip to Walmart and BAM! I had homemade legbands. I just put them on all of my younger chickens as the three old hens are readily distinguishable. On with the introductions:

CHIRPY

She is A Bird’s hen and always has been. When I originally got my first 5 chickens, Chirpy was one of them. She is a Barred Rock and the friendliest of all the chickens, ever since she was a chick she would walk up to A Bird and hop on her legs to sit and  chat.  She is one of my favorites. Right now she is going through her yearly molt so she is looking a little rough with her feathers coming back in.

Betsy

Betsy is a year two hen that I traded our rooster Crazy Mack for since I can’t have a rooster in the village. She is another Barred Rock, she is more stand offish, and a bit bossy with the other girls. She is definitely Chirpy’s right hand girl, she is second in command and will only defer to Chirpy otherwise she is chasing the other hens away from treats.

Gossie

This is Gossie and poor Gossie is going through molt pretty bad. All of her head feathers have fallen out and new clean pin feathers are starting to come in but until all of her new feathers come in she is going to look a little worse for wear. She is a black Australorp and very friendly. She will routinely come up and stare at you to see if you are going to give her a treat. She is a very good layer (when she isn’t molting) and lays big brown eggs just about every day of the year.

Silver – Black Band

Silver is one of this year’s chicks, she was hatched out on June 1st. She is a Silver Laced Wyandotte and she is one mean, miserable big bad hen, just look at the face. For the first few weeks, I thought she might be a rooster because she would charge me and peck me anytime I got close to her. Needless to say she is my least favorite hen. She seems to be pecking her way to 3rd on the hierarchy of top hen. At least she is pretty to look at.

LACE – Blue Band

Lace is Silver’s hatch mate, she is slightly smaller than Silver and much nicer. She is actually a bit skittish, she will come up to you and stand at the back of the flock waiting her turn for a treat but if you move too quickly she takes off running in any direction as long as it is away from you.

Sophia – Purple Band

Sophia is one of four Buckeyes and named after The Golden Girls. I wanted to get a heritage or endangered breed of chicken, so I went with Buckeyes. Sophia and her sisters were hatched on May 30th and she is pretty mellow except if you are pestering her then she can get pretty vocal.

Dorothy – Yellow Band

Dorothy is the biggest of the Golden Girls and she is very mellow. She is friendly but tends to go off on her own and does her own thing.

Blanche – Blue Band

Blanche is the friendliest of the four and the most “treat hungry”. I normally feed all the girls layer crumble but when it gets cold, I feed them scratch grains as a treat. It has cracked corn, and oats so it takes them longer to digest it so it heats up their body temperature and keeps them warmer in the cooler weather. Blanche will follow me around and cluck until I spread some scratch out for them, then she pecks contently until she has had her fill.

Rose – Black Band

Rose is the last of the Golden Girls and the flightiest. She is friendly and a good chicken until anything catches her attention then she is off and running to find out if she can eat it. So she spends the majority of the time running back and forth from this to that, but overall she seems to be a pretty good hen.

So that’s it, those are the girls. Now I just need to wait to see who flies the coop, and then that lucky girl might be the winner of a wing clipping.

Wish me luck!

Sickness has struck…HARD

So everyone in my house is either sick or is just getting over being sick. It started with me, I had a stuffy nose and a cough so I turned to my old stand by:

OJ, Kleenex, and Dayquil

I don’t complain much about being sick because I have a pretty good immune system where I normally feel it coming and start downing OJ and Dayquil like it is going out of style then within a day or two I feel fine. That was the case this time except for this lingering cough I have.

Then Lauren got super “rashy” and “itchy” which turned into some sort of bacterial infection so she is on meds, then it comes down to my A Bird.

The Queen of Strep Throat

So A Bird comes down with a fever for two days, coughing, complaining about everything under the sun. Her throat hurts, her ears hurt, her tooth hurts, her arm hurts and on top of all that she is super whiny. I stayed home with her Tuesday and took her to the doctor. It’s always the same and this time it proved no different, she runs a fever, we make a dr.s appointment, we drive to the dr.s, she pukes in the parking lot (EVERY TIME!!), they swab her throat and BANG! Positive for strep.

This time we ran through all of those symptoms only this time she was NEGATIVE for strep so it appears to be viral. So another day out of school and a long, long, night of sleep and today she appears to be better and acting like her normal goofy self.

I am thinking great, we are in the free and clear then I pick of Nat. She is super rashy around her mouth, she has an epic double nostril snot flow rolling and she has a thick, wet nasty sounding cough. Great!!

So needless to say we are all a little stressed and on each other’s nerves around here, but 3 of th3 4 of us are on the mend, so hopefully a few warm baths, Vick’s Baby Rub (which by the way is awesome for little kids) and some sleep and Nat will be back to herself too.

I guess I am posting this because I have been sitting on a few posts but have not been able to get to them due to being sick, helping sickies, or just pure exhaustion from caring for the sick. I am not a Murse (what? you never heard of a man nurse or murse?).

Well, I got get my combat gear and ear plugs on to wipe Nat’s nose. Wish me luck!

A Bird discovered blogger

ava dad mom I love them . I had a great day.I am ava. I have lots of make up. you might of seen me before .I have blonde hair and I have blue eyes. written by ava s.

Uncle Bryan - Rest in Peace

So I have been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks now because I just can’t seem to find the right words. I have thought about what I want to say over and over in my head, but when I sit down to actually write it, it just never does justice to what I feel. I can’t stall anymore because the clock has run out, so here I go.


My family lost my Uncle Bryan to lung cancer this Monday. It all came as quite a shock, start to finish from diagnosis to his passing was roughly three weeks. He was having some trouble breathing and after some reluctance went to see the doctor who immediately sent him to Strong Memorial for blood clots in one lung and a large mass in the other. After a lot of scares with the blood clots and small strokes, the diagnosis came back and it was as bad as it could get, he had stage 4 lung cancer and there was nothing they could do at that point but make him comfortable. So my Aunt Sue received a crash course in hospice care and my Uncle Bryan came home and passed away with his family around him.

I have never been super close to any of my aunts or uncles, maybe it was because I didn’t see them regularly, I don’t know, but when they were around I made the most of hanging around them. Uncle Bryan was one of my favorites and I never took the time to tell him that which distresses me now more than ever. I don’t want to dwell on the sad, but I would like to tell you a few stories that could only happen to Bryan and what made him great.

Bryan had my family’s blue eyes, the strong majority of us have blue eyes but Bryan’s always seemed to shine the bluest of blues, it’s probably because they were always twinkling because he was full of piss and vinegar and quick with a dirty joke or comment. His voice set him apart too, it was great. He had this gravelly/scraggly voice that could have been a cross between Donald Duck and a muppet only deeper. He had a temper and when he got angry or was really animated telling a story his voice would go slightly higher and you could almost see Donald Duck fighting mad on a cartoon.

He was a great story teller and he had so many stories he could fill a library. Two of my favorites involve fishing, he loved to fish and routinely took his kids (my cousins) fishing. One day as they were fishing he caught a really small sunfish. He took it off the hook and because he was Bryan he stuck the whole fish in his mouth to make the kids laugh or to try and gross them out. Well, while the sunfish was in his mouth, it expanded its fins and the tiny spines in the fin embedded into Bryan’s cheeks and the fish got stuck. No amount of pulling or tugging would get this fish out of his mouth, so as his kids and my Aunt laughed their heads off at this fish stuck in his mouth, he had to go to hospital to have the fish cut out of his mouth. I can still see his face as he told the story of how the doctor began to cut the fish and how awful it tasted.

The other story, shockingly involves fishing and the hospital again. Bryan had the kids fishing and had to bait the one of their lines, so he set his pole down on a rock. He finishes baiting the hook and sits down on the rock where his pole was only to end up sitting straight down on a three pronged hook. He jumps up and starts yelling and cursing because this hook is set deep in his backside. Again, after many attempts of trying to remove the hook themselves, Bryan had to go to the ER to have a doctor pull out the hook prong by prong while Bryan was red faced and steaming on the gurney. It could only happen to him.

He would tell those stories and get so animated, you could practically see it as if you were there. Then he would just start laughing and you had to laugh with him and by the time you were finished laughing you would have tears in your eyes and your sides would hurt.

He was a great man and he will forever be missed. Rest in peace, Uncle Bryan.

The Colors and Feel of Fall…

The other day I went back to a spot I wanted to hike on lunch, the weather was beautiful, it was 70 degrees and sunny an all around perfect fall day. I set off into the woods and let the sounds, sights and smells of the season over take me. There was the smell of dried leaves and warm earth in the air, the colors of the leaves were eye popping and then the rustle of leaves when the wind blew or one of the thousands of chipmunks in the woods ran through them was warming. I am normally a summer type of guy, I love the hot weather and the blazing sun, but this day was amazing. Here are a few shots from my hike. Enjoy!

A place to sit and relax along the path.

A peek of Canandaigua Lake from the overlook

A hot mess of sap and parasite and microbiological awesomeness on a tree.

One hell of a fly catcher.

Color!

Take a hike and enjoy!