of mice and hen (revisited)

If you've been following Francie's LJ, you might know that we bought our first chicken on Saturday, at the Boston Poultry Show. The few birds that were being offered for sale were either single roosters or pairs (rooster + hen). We can't have roosters, so we were looking for hens or pullets (young hens). We got this completely sweet Belgian D'Anvers. We took turns holding her before buying, and she practically fell asleep on Kylie.

In the rodent dept, we haven't caught a number 6, but the bait disappeared from the trap. I set it to be as sensitive as I could make it. We'll see. In the meantime, one of the two remaining pet mice seems to have an aggressive cancer. We had an almond-sized tumor removed from her butt a couple weeks ago, and it appears to be growing back already. Again, we'll see.

(no subject)

So I did my little lame civic duty today in New Hampshire. I thought I might work a "pull team", going door-to-door to identified Kerry voters who hadn't voted yet, chivvying them along to the polls. Instead, I found myself doing "visibility", i.e. holding a sign for 5 hours outside an elementary school. I'd hope there aren't voters who are so undecided that the presence of a few signs actually sways their vote. But it's "showing the flag", demonstrating the energy and enthusiasm of our side, and it at least shows Kerry supporters and Kerry leaners that they're in good company. And we were showing the flag a whole lot more than the Bush side.

I wasn't inside the polling place, so I can't say what the lines were like, but I saw heavy traffic into the parking lot all day, even in the middle of the afternoon. At 7:30, a fellow coming out told us that there was still a line of people (mostly young people) registering to vote. People don't do that in order to vote for the status quo.

Most of the Kerry volunteers I ran into were from Massachusetts, with a smattering from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and even New Hampshire. I actually work in NH, so I had slightly more standing to be there... We all had the same thought, which was that Mass is a complete lock for Kerry (or the Democratic hamster of the year), but NH is a toss-up, so the effort is better spent getting the vote out in NH. I worked a couple hours with a fellow who grew up in Andover (next town over from where I live), and who lives in Northampton (where I grew up). He's working on a graduate degree in History of Science at UMass (I took a minor in History at Umass), and working at new comic store called Modern Myths. Big shout-out to Mike. (And kudos for Desert Peach and Bitchy Bitch on the home page picture. If I'd been reading comics in the last 7 years, I might recognize more of the other characters.)

Yipe. In the time I've been typing this, NH has gone from Kerry by 4% to Bush by 0.2% to Kerry by 1%.