On the Absolute Positioning of Chicken Heads in Space

A day or so ago, I was gathering the eggs from the chicken coop as I do each night. I needed to move a hen out of the way, so I picked her up. After holding her still for a second so she could calm down, I started moving her toward the nearest convenient flat surface. As I did that, I noticed a funny sight: the hen kept her head at the same elevation relative to the ground, rather than to the rest of her body. Moving her slowly up and down caused her to stretch her neck out in an attempt to keep her head in the same place. (She didn't want to go anywhere.)

It was really a hilarious sight to see. I wish I could have taken pictures or a video of it, but I do have some pictures of other chickens I manage:

Rooster walking about

Hens resting in the shade of a minivan

Other hens taking a dust bath

Truck

My parents were at an auction today, and purchased a '92 Ford F150. This serves two purposes: that it can serve around the farm as a pickup does and that I can drive it to school and other places. This is pretty great.

I've never driven a truck before. (The vehicle I've practiced in is a '98 Camry.) It's similar to driving standard cars, but the lanes seem really narrow because the seat is up so high. The pedals have different sensitivities than the Camry, of course, but I got used to that easily enough. There's currently an issue with the steering wheel's straight-ahead position not corresponding to actually going straight, but that can probably be fixed by some wheel inflation.

I'll have my license soon, possibly within weeks, so this is great timing.

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Opening Night 2015

Tonight, my high school theater class presented two one-act comedy plays. The first, The Big Black Box, only had two actors, neither of which was me. The only one who was actually on stage for that did an excellent job, as did the one reading lines into a microphone from offstage (voicing the Box).

The play in which most of the students acted was A Simple Task. There was one main character, a new hire ordered to simply pick up a box of merchandise. However, a series of confusing and strange characters blocked her access to the box. This was not helped by the fact that her boss kept changing identities.

I played one of the bosses (the only instance that reappears) and one of a set of three military-style guards, the role during which I got to tackle the main character.

As the first boss

Me (left), the two other guards, and the protagonist

The last appearance of the boss

Both plays went very well, with a minimum of skipped lines and no detectable awkward pauses.