a day on the farm

[Kragen Sitaker]

Beatrice and I came out to her family house in Bolinas last night
because the housesitter is out of town for a couple of days.  So
someone needs to be here to put the chickens away at night.

I worked last night from about 1:30 to about 4:00, trying to get a
client's software to behave better.  Python is not as smart about
reusing freed space as I'd like, I think.

This afternoon, as Beatrice was leaving to go shopping for food, I
tried to open the back door; the knob came off in my hand.  I guess
the knob's threads no longer fit, and the setscrew wasn't very tight.
So I fixed that.

Then I cleaned out the chicken coop --- two and a half wheelbarrowfuls
of pine shavings and chicken shit to the compost pile, a flat
wheelbarrow tire (I pumped it up to 30 PSI, but it was back down to 10
by the time I was done), and another 16 cubic feet of fresh pine
shavings to go in there.

I begin to understand why my mother's parents, who grew up on and
around farms, were so enthusiastic about handwashing.

When I got out to the coop, there were a quail and two smaller birds
flying around frantically, trying to escape me.  As I worked, they
gradually disappeared.  I finally watched the quail as it escaped
through a hole in the chicken wire --- probably how they got in there,
too.

I was astonished to discover that I weighed 96 to 98 kg this morning.
Last time I weighed myself, about three weeks ago, I weighed 102.
That's kind of a large, sudden weight loss.  (My peak weight, perhaps
two or three months ago, which had been steady since 1997, was 109 to
113 kg.)

I haven't been eating a lot lately, and what I've been eating has been
fairly healthy --- miso, tofu, bread, bread and butter, rice,
vegetable soup with chicken, risotto, chicken curry, plus the
occasional can of condensed milk (in a sandwich or otherwise).

So I haven't been trying to lose weight, and it worries me a bit that
it's happening so fast, but it's not terrible.  When I was thin, back
in early 1996, I weighed 86 to 91 kg.

I've noticed lately that various unpleasant things that go with being
fat have decreased significantly --- boils on my inner thighs (which
have gone away), heavy sweating, trouble with leg joints.  (My ankles
used to spontaneously twist every once in a while while I was walking,
which was quite painful.  That hasn't happened in quite a while.)