Wednesday, March 26, 2008

nothing to see here, move along...

boy, i really went on a posting rampage the past couple of weeks. that wasn't too bright, because now i've really set myself up for certain failure. the posts will dwindle back off to nothing, and my vast readership (read: 1.5 people in the central ohio region) will not be terribly surprised.

but i haven't done much of note. the plantlings are moving along nicely, getting bigger. i still keep forgetting to call the vet (dammit, i need to do that!). same shit, different day.

although! i invented a new recipe last night, and i was quite pleased. i will share it with you, because that's the kind of friend i am. it all approximations, because i don't measure when i cook. i just cook. i was inspired at the grocery store because i saw fresh blackberries in kind of closer proximity to the fresh sage, and i recalled a lotion i had once called "blackberry sage." it was quite nice.

Roast Chicken with Spicy Blackberry Stuffing
(if spicy isn't your thing, i'm sure it would be fine w/o the peppers)

1 whole chicken, appropriate for roasting
red onion, cut into smallish chunks
whole wheat bread (hot dog buns, stale french bread, whatever), torn into big pieces
fresh jalapeño peppers, cut into small chunks
sage (i used dried, powdered because that's what i had; fresh would be good, just use less)
olive oil
water
salt and pepper, to taste
whole, frozen or fresh, blackberries
flour

preheat oven to 400. find a heavy, metal pan for roasting. don't use glass or ceramic, because gravy making will become a pain in the ass and won't turn out very good.

Stuffing:
- put bread, peppers and onions in a large bowl. i used about 2 cups of bread, 1 cup of onion, 1/4 cup chopped jalapeño for a pretty small chicken. keep a similar ratio based on the size of your chicken, or just do amounts to taste. rough-chop some extra jalapeño and keep off to the side.
- add salt, pepper and sage to taste.
- sprinkle with olive oil and a little water, until moist enough to clump together a little bit.
- mix in a handful of blackberries - don't go overboard, just enough to have one in every bite or so of stuffing...

Chicken:
- remove bag o' innards from the chicken. keep for making stock (yeah, right), feed to the cat, or throw it away.
- jam as much stuffing as you can into the cavity of the chicken. and i mean, JAM it in there good.
- put a little olive oil in the bottom of a heavy pan and place the chicken breast side down into the pan. drizzle with a teensy bit of oil, salt and pepper. i try to cut off as much of the extra skin and chunks of fat as possible, leaving just some skin on the top of the breast and on the tops of the legs.
- roast for a while at 400 degrees, until it starts to look brown.
- flip the chicken breast side up and add the reserved jalapeños to the bottom of the pan with the drippings.
- roast until it is nice and golden-ly dark on top, and when you poke a knife into the leg joint the juice runs clear.
- remove chicken from the pan and place on a cutting board to rest.

Gravy time:
- a healthy person would let the drippings cool, then remove the hardened fat. i usually am pressed for time, so i just buy a nice lean-looking chicken and cut off some skin and fat at the beginning...
- so! put the roasting pan right onto one of your burners, over medium heat. sprinkle in a few tablespoons of flour, and keep stirring while the drippings bubble and cook the flour. (the amount of flour you add will depend on how much drippings you end up with. start with 1 and move up from there.)
- once the flour/drippings mixture looks darker and bubbly, splash in a little water or maybe some white wine if you have it. start scraping all the sticky bits off the bottom of the pan.
- keep adding liquid a little splash at a time, until the gravy is the consistency that you like.
- add a handful of blackberries, and turn down to low heat and simmer for a while.
- taste, and add salt and pepper if it needs it.

Serve:

- slice the breast, carve off the legs and wings, and scrape out the stuffing. don't be alarmed a the sight of dark purple-y wet blackberry chunks in the stuffing. i temporarily forgot that i had put berries in the stuffing, and thought that those were pieces of bloody guts. then i remembered and felt silly. the gross part is (shhh, don't tell) that i actually considered eating it anyway. just for a minute.

- pour the gravy over it all or serve on the side in a fancy little pitcher. ta dum!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Food hangover and hatching plan(t)s.

is it possible to have a food hangover? i believe so. and i think that i am suffering from one this morning. it can't possibly be a *real* hangover, as in from drinking to excess, because i didn't. !! i did have a drink before dinner - something called a "london sour" - but i think it was negated by the 2 tons of chinese food that i consumed shortly after.

melissa and alfredo are here from NM and we let them pick dinner. after being secluded in the wilds of new mexico, they were drooling at the prospect of all the different foods to be had. add to that the fact that they used to live here for years and years, and have been missing their old favorite restaurants... well, i'll just say there was no problem of them choosing a place. so we went for victuals and drinks at City Lights of China, in/around dupont circle. it's kind of an old-fashioned-fancy chinese place - good standards, nice booths. we each ordered something and all shared. i suppose i'm not used to all the salty oily goodness, because i feel bloated and ill this morning. and my innards have that wobbly, uncertain feeling that can only mean bad things to come this afternoon.

i am supposed to be writing a grant proposal today. i have an outline ready to go. i've run it by my boss, and got some good ideas to add. but i just can't start it yet. it's too sunny, and i was too busy yesterday to allow for starting it just yet. i need to fool around for a minute first.

i am writing out a list of questions to ask eric during his assessment tomorrow... i am going to take pictures, too. man o man, i can't wait! i love to rearrange furniture (shout out to jessie, in remembrance of our bedroom rearranging at home), and i have rearranged the hell out of my own furniture. i have nearly exhausted all possibilies. i think. so the thought of a blank - and by blank, i guess i mean cluttered and meaningless, canvass thrills me to no end. i hope eric doesn't freak out and give me a bunch of conditions. i want to have carte blanche. (note: i just looked up "carte blanche," to make sure i spelled it correctly - and affirmed its definition to be - "open-ended or vague, and therefore subject to abuse." which is perfect! i want his needs to be vague, so that i can abuse them and do whatever i want.) [insert evil villianess laughter here]

this world is perfect sometimes. blogger just underlined "villianess" to notify me that it doesn't believe that is a real word. blogger suggests that i use the following instead: vaudevillian or, brilliantness. both of which are perfect, too!! this is a perfect word day. i could cry.

in addition to plans, i am also hatching plants! my onions are still alive, which is surprising and good. i moved a tray of lettuce into the cold frame and they are just bustin' loose. the gale-force winds yesterday didn't kill my peas, which is also surprising and good. everything inside is still growing and alive - except for the rest of my gol-darned peppers. !!! they are really pissing me off. i think i am going to start another tray of them, if i don't see progress by sunday. i will try a few different methods of encouraging germination - soak, bleach rinse, shallow planting... all sorts of options. jerky seeds.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

the windy plains

holy jeebus, is it windy today or what? i thought the roof was going to blow off last night. then, this morning as i got into my car, the stinkin' wind slammed the door on my left leg. yowch. i am sitting here at the reference desk facing the big windows that overlook the circle, and the flags are crisp and fluttering at full attention. i have a feeling that it might be kinda cold as well, but i won't find out until i leave at 5:00.

we have houseguests again this weekend - some film friends of scott's, in from new mexico. scott is helping them with a weekend shoot for a Large Corporation in town - he's even getting paid! holy smokes. that absolutely never happens. these guys all work in trade, it seems. "you helped me on that last project i had, so i'll help you out on this one, buddy!" scott just had about 7 billion dollars of work done on his car today, so the extra ca$h won't go unnoticed.

my crafty plans for the weekend (why, oh why, am i acting like it is friday? planning my weekend? that's just asking for trouble.):

- finish secret knitting (not sure why it's secret - it's not like maddie uses the computer yet...)
- buy more yarn for sweater/jacket
- obsess over garden plans
- go to eric's place to give him an assessment for his Apartment Fantabulization(c).

re: that last bit: eric has been a'bitchin-and-a'moanin about the state of his apartment. it's kind of a mess, in the way that scott's house was kind of a mess. loads and stacks of crap everywhere, no apparent order to anything, piles and piles of movies, crooked half-broken shelving, pictures hung in weird places. you get the picture. he always says how much he loves our house, and keeps saying that i should come over and help him... but we're finally going to do it! i'm trying to get ashby to help, but i am willing to do it solo. i'm excited! i love rearranging furniture, and messing with other people's stuff - this will be dandy.

gah, it's only thursday.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

TUTORIAL: Build your own cold frame - cheap, quick and easy

condensed from an earlier post: http://joyandjubilee.blogspot.com/2008/03/im-wearing-green-thumb-for-st-patricks.html

Materials:
Bricks (I think I used about 100 bricks... give or take)
window frame with glass intact
weed cloth
gravel or rocks
fill dirt
topsoil

Hints:

- I got the window from freecycle, and it came with a matching screen which will come in handy to keep squirrels and other rodents away from the vulnerable plants once the top comes off.

- The fill dirt came from my own yard, as did the rocks/gravel

- This kind of installation is perfect for decks and patios, as it can be disassembled easily - or simply used as a planter later in the season.

How-to:
Step 1: Choose your location. You'll want a mostly-sunny spot, but try to find a place that gets at least some shade during the day - otherwise, you run the risk of cooking your plants. If you are constructing this on a deck or raised surface, pick a spot with adequate support and planon making a smaller cold frame. You don't want your deck to collapse!

Step 2: Measure your window, and lay out one layer of bricks in a shape that matches the size and shape of your window. After the first layer is down, place the window on top to check the layout. Make sure that all edges of the window are centered over a brick edge - you don't want the window to overhang the brick edges.

Step 3: Start layering up your bricks. I planned for a smaller cold frame - about 30" x 30", and only about 14" of dirt. Since my area was to be small and shallow, I did not bother mortaring the bricks or supporting the walls in any way. If you are planning a large cold frame, you might considering staggering the bricks for stability (this requires cutting some bricks in half) or using rods to shore things up.

Step 4: Install the liner. After you get to a good depth (at least 12", I'd say), stop laying bricks and get your weed cloth. Most cloth comes on rolls about 36" wide. Cut strips of cloth to cover the entire bottom and sides of the coldframe. If you have to use more than one strip, make sure the strips of cloth overlap a few inches. Let the extra material hang over the sides of your frame for now...

Step 5: Rocks or gravel. Add a layer of rocks or gravel to cover the bottom of the cloth-lined frame. You could also use busted up old flower pots, broken chunks of brick, seashells. Anything to provide a drainage layer at the bottom.

Step 6: Fill dirt. Get fill dirt from somewhere - many people give it away (check freecycle or craigslist) or just dig some out of your own yard. Fill about halfway up with plain fill dirt. If you are feeling fancy, you could skip this step and just fill the whole thing with potting soil.

Step 7 : Potting soil. Dump in a thin layer of potting soil, and work it into the top of the fill dirt. Dump in the rest of your potting soil, up to your desired depth. Tamp down lightly.

Step 8: Finish the bricks. Trim the overhanging weed cloth so that it only overlaps to the middle of the top brick. Place at least another 2 layers of bricks along the entire frame, so that your seedlings and plants will have enough headroom to grow.

Step 9: Place the window flat on top of the frame... and you're done! Simply tilt the window up or remove and place to the side when you need to get into the frame. On sunny days, slide the window so that a crack of fresh air can get in, or just remove one of the corner bricks to let in some air - otherwise you might overheat the interior. Just put the brick back in place at night.

You can see photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melaniejeanbrown/sets/72157623934475859/

Have fun! You can take this basic idea and fancy it up a multitude of ways...

~Melanie

Monday, March 17, 2008

tumor? tuber?

okay, so three posts in one day might be a bit excessive. but i just solved a disturbing mystery - all by myself! well, my friend google helped some too - but that hardly counts.

so when i was fussing around in the backyard on saturday, i starting poking around in the flower beds to see what survived the winter. i mostly planted annuals back there, so there wasn't much to see. i noted that i forgot to protect my hibiscus and it perished. oops. and the catnip is already coming back, as well as the cup plant. all good news. i started raking up some of the garbage flotsam and jetsam that accumulated over the winter - mostly carryout containers and malt liquor cans from the drug/prostitution shack across the alley. lar de lar dee lar... rake rake. *thump* the rake hit this skull-shaped lump protruding from the ground, right at the base of the neighbor's board fence. huh? i was almost afraid to see what it was. i jabbed at it with the rake... nothing. i scraped at it, and part of it ripped away to reveal a flesh-colored stringy insides. *yeechk* i scrape some more, and it started to wobble out of its hole, like a large boulder or bowling ball might. i turned the rake around and started jabbing with the handle... and the durned thing popped out of its hole and rolled in a wobbly fashion across the yard, into the alley, and came to rest in the middle of the alley road. it was the size and approximate shape and color of a human head - only with no face. thoroughly grossed out, i just left it there in the middle of the road and returned to fooling around with bricks. much later, i heard a tussle out in the alley and looked out the window to investigate. i saw two drunk old men shoving each other around, walking down the alley drinking beers in bags. they came across the lump/tumor in the road, and halted in their tracks. through the window, i could hear them muttering about it. one of the men tentatively kicked it, and it wobbled toward him. the drunk old guy actually squealed and pawed at his friend's arm - then they skirted around it and continued on their way.

odd.

today, i was thinking about it again. i recalled that i had planted sweet potato vines there last year - the decorative, wildly green and rapidly growing kind that you find in planters and such. "i wonder..." so i called upon google, and wouldn't you know? given enough sun, those decorative plants can occasionally produce large tubers with pale flesh! they are edible, technically, but those strains are cultivated for the decorative and drought-hardy foliage, not for delicious sweet innards. ha! so it wasn't a tumorous, faceless human head in my garden. just a mutant bitter tuber. tumor, tuber. potato, po-tah-to. whatevs.

Pi Party - the aftermath

Well, i tried to take pictures. i really did try! i took a few at the beginning of the party, but then got sidetracked and distracted and forgot about the camera. oopsie. i guess a few pictures are better than none?

Pi Party!
























we ended up with the following pies: frito pie, tybee island pie (sausage, egg, cheese, etc.), key lime pie, raspberry pecan crumble pie, blueberry pie, veggie quiche, chicken pot pie, sweet potato pie, jello shot pie, oreo pie, and i can't think what else. it was a lot of pie.

i'm wearing a green thumb for st. patrick's day

i forgot to plan for st. patrick's day. i wore a really pretty green and white springy-looking shirt to jennifer's baby shower on saturday. a smarter gal would have saved it for today. oh well. i suppose most people don't care much about that. and besides, i can't be sure if i've got any irish in me (:insert dirty joke here)... but, of late, i do have a green thumb!

so i got a huge, full window set on saturday - through freecycle.dc, from a lady named arlene. the full window (top window, bottom window, and frame) was as tall as i am! and heavy heavy, to boot. i drove over there to pick it up, and it took both arlene and me several minutes to wrestle it into the back of my car. as it turns out, arlene is a fellow freecycle-addict. we compared stories of trying to fit huge heavy items into our small cars. i told her how i had to tie a bicycle to the lid of my trunk using shoelaces taken from my shoes, and how 3/4 of the bike hung out of the back as i drove all the way from upper wisconsin ave. she topped me with a story about how she used tubesocks to tie her passenger door shut, to hold in the oversized futon in her backseat. good times. i like to close freecycle transactions with a brisk handshake, and a heartfelt "long live freecycle!"

so i wrestled the window home (note: it had been sitting in her back yard for god-knows how long, and was covered in mud/dead bugs/leaves/cobwebs), through the house, and onto the back deck. "hmm. there has to be a way to dismantle this thing....," i thought. there was! i found about 18 kajillion little screws holding the frame together. once those were gone, the whole thing came apart. i threw the frame pieces into the wasteland under the deck, and i was left with 2 windows and one screen - each about 30"x30". perfect!

at this point, i thought briefly about stopping right there - maybe finish up on sunday... our pi party ran really late on friday night, and i had gotten up bright and early to make it to the baby shower... but i kept on going, knowing that if i stopped i would likely never finish the project. so i slapped on some sunscreen and some cruddy jeans and went to work. i had to duck-walk in a crouch, under the deck, to fish out the bricks leftover from the patio project. duck-walk in, grab a maximum load of 5 bricks, duck-walk out, stand up without smashing skull on overhanging deck, walk to deck stairs, walk up stairs... make tiny insignificant stack of 5 bricks. repeat. over and over again. not to mention the fact that the stack of bricks, in the creepy under-deck, were covered in unidentifiable schmutz - dead spiders, rotten paper from who-knows-where, hobo germs, a tuft of what i can only guess was rat hair, feral cat pee, and a layer of freshly hatched baby slugs. i had the heebie-jeebies like you wouldn't believe. at one point, i picked up a brick and a chunk of muddy rubble rolled down my bare arm. i promptly dropped all the bricks from my arms, and high speed duck-walked outta there making panicked gibberish sounds along the lines of "ghurr, ghurr, ghurr!" but i persevered, and moved a goodly number of the bricks up to the deck proper.

i measured (!) out the size of the window, and plotted out a space on the deck where i wanted to construct the cold frame. i chose a spot in a sort-of out of the way corner, closest to the strongest support beams. i then laid out the bricks to match the size of the window, and started stacking. due to the shape of the cold frame, and also my laziness, i didn't want to have to cut any bricks. thusly, i couldn't stagger the bricks. those of you who have played with legos or blocks, you know that this could be a problem. but i think that the walls are shallow enough that it shouldn't be an issue. so anyway. i stacked the walls up 4 bricks high, then lined the entire thing with weedproof cloth (also leftover from the brick patio experience), followed by a layer of gravel and smallish rocks from the "yard." now for the dirt. hmmm... dirt. i recalled that i had left a dirtpile by the deck stairs (product of often mentioned patio project), so i shoveled that into a series of buckets and empty flower pots and transported the lot up to the deck, and dumped it in. hmmm. this is going to take a lot of dirt. i was too tired to think of driving to home depot for potting soil, so i proceeded to empty all unoccupied planters and pots into the new cold frame bed. i made it! then trimmed the weed cloth to overhang the bricks a bit, and stacked up 2 more rows of bricks. just made it! i used up EXACTLY every brick that i had. how's that for perfect? the dirt ended up being about 14" deep, with about 8" of headroom to the top. capped off with one of the windows, it makes a handsome mini-greenhouse thingie for the deck. once the plants get hardy enough, i will just leave the window off and i'll have a nice raised vegetable bed right there on the deck. yay! i figure the screen will be handy for transitional times, when the plants will be vulnerable to the crazy-ass alley squirrels. anytime they see me messing around in the yard, they wait until nightfall to dig the crap out of everything looking for bulbs, edible seeds, hamburgers, DVDs, whatever it is they are after. a nice screen should keep them out for a night or two until they lose interest.

to test things out, i moved 24 little onion sproutlings out there. i hope i don't kill them. i have some really healthy tomato seedlings coming along, too! but they aren't going outside for a while. i did, however, move the sugar peas outside on saturday. they were threatening to climb all over the inside of my house, devouring us and the furniture a la the ruins. i think they'll be fine out there. it's been sunny and 50/60 during the day lately, and high 30s at night. just fine for peas and lettuce.






































For more gardening adventures, go to my flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/melaniejeanbrown/sets/72157604129426864/

Friday, March 14, 2008

happy PI DAY!

i've done lots of tedious, boring, probably pointless work today thus far. i've declared it is now time to take a break. i made a list of things that i need to do before par-tay-time tonight - mostly involving a little last-minute straightening up in the house, and stopping off at stores to pick up stuff. i need to get PRIZES for the party tonight. i generally feel a smidgen simple/retarded when i give prizes for stuff at parties, but it always turns out to be a huge hit. people like to win stuff, in general. we have an old TV that we need to get rid of - i only-halfway-jokingly told scott that i am going to make the tv the door prize. if anything, just to say: "and the winner is so-and-so! you've won a 30" screen color TV!!!" - much in the way of a game show announcer. but maybe some people don't want a TV. hmm. i guess there's a problem. julie and i are going to franklin's pub after work to pick out prizes. in addition to being a sit-down pub/restaurant, they have a general store which sells odd microbrews and weird imported beer, but also crazy hot sauces... and they have a whole room devoted to repro toys, weird games, retro candies, gag gifts, and just strange stuff. and cheap. perfect for random party prizes. i think i will make people vote and i'll give prizes for tastiest pie, most creative, and then a randomly drawn door prize. or maybe i'll just keep all the prizes for myself. we'll see just how dorky i am feeling when the time comes.

so that's that.

in other news, i am currently trolling freecycle to find some discarded windows. i'd like to make my cold-frame box on sunday, if i can. pretty soon it will be warm enough that i won't need one. i am also obsessively entering a contest to win a free composter. the contest is on the gardening blog - which i won't reveal the name of, because i selfishly don't want the competition taking away from my chances to win. !! i am not very nice that way. but i can enter once a day until march 31. then i'll tell you if i win. the composter is one of those barrel-kind that you crank to turn the goop inside. and it's rat-proof so any templetons in the neighborhood won't be able to gorge on the garbage:

"A fair is a veritable smorgasbord-orgasbord-orgasbord,
after the crowds have ceased.
Each night when the lights go out
it can be found on the ground all around...
Oh, what a ratly feast!"

i have always liked templeton. he's a rat who tells it like it is. a straight-shooter, if you will.

other plans for the weekend include: a baby shower on saturday, and a long training walk on sunday. in between times i want to fiddle around in the yard.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

little babies, growing up!

Maddie (a.k.a. Cutest Baby Ever)



















Nilsson (a.k.a. Stinkerpants)

pass the peas, please

so this is the time of year when i become obsessed with my garden. i've found that i can help ease the obsession by planting seeds that sprout almost faster than immediately. like peas. i planted the seeds on march 1st - and the seedlings already have real leaves and are climbing about 6 inches above the soil. 11 days, man! that's fast enough to keep me occupied. the rest are chugging along nicely. Other superfast sprouters are hollyhocks. i think i will put the peas outside this weekend - it's only been getting down to lows in the upper 40s around here, and a random frost or two shouldn't hurt anything. peas are toughies. these are mammoth melting sugar - i've also planted lincoln garden peas, but those haven't sprouted yet. i thought it would be good to stagger things a bit.

i've also been obsessing over knitting projects, but in a much more half-assed, scattered manner. i just finished part 1 of secret-baby-project (shhh!) - i'll cast on the second half tonight. i have stalled out on the grocery tote bag (1/2 done), the straps to keep the lid on the gerbil cage (1/3 done), and i ran out of yarn on my "sophisticated rustic sweater" (dammit!! i forgot AGAIN to bring the yarn info with me, so i can buy more. grrr...). i am also printing all sorts of interesting future projects. luckily everyone i know is growing babies, so i will be occupied for a while. baby things are fun - small = quick to knit, soft yarn, cute things that adults would be shamed for wearing (hats with ears, cardigans with frogs embroidered on them, stupid looking cardigans, etc.). my next challenge might involve more complicated shaping... knitting in the round, perchance? i have some leftover sock yarn laying around - maybe i'll try a sock?

and our PI PARTY is this friday!! yahooie! in honor of the date being Pi (or, the shortened approximated version of Pi) - 3.14 - i am hosting a pi party. the food, of course, will be pie. !! potluck style, so who knows what we're going to end up with. i am making frito pie, i think. i have leftover chili in the freezer, so that'll be easy... i'll post pictures of the aftermath.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

sowing seeds: porn and gardening?

well, i was all fired up last night when i got home from work. i planted another tray of 72 seedlings, using the seeds i got yesterday. the trays that i use contain 72 little pods of soil/peat that i plump up by pouring warm water all through the tray. then, i gently squeeze each one at the base and use a pencil to poke a small hole in the center of each little pod. then, i drop 2 seeds into each little hole and pinch/tamp the pod back together. pour on a little more warm water (fortified with a smidgen of fertilizer), put on the greenhouse lid and secure with rubber bands to keep devil-kitty out. done! i usually do 6 pods of each kind of seed. in the past, usually one pod doesn't sprout... then i kill off one or two during the transplant process. so out of six, i get 3 or 4 healthy plants. not too shabby for a lazy/not-very-dedicated gardener. if i have too many healthy plants, i will give them to courtney or scott's dad.

so as i plugged away in the sunroom, sowing seeds and creating life... scott was in the living room watching norwegian pornstars sow their own kinds of seeds. !! seriously! well, there was a reason. i suppose i should tell you that. scott is volunteering as a "screener" for the SilverDocs documentary film festival held at the American Film Institute Silver Theatre. SilverDocs is one of the largest documentary film festivals in the worlds, and it gets thousands of submissions - which it weeds down to a hundred or so. as a screener, scott gets assigned stacks of DVDs each week. he watches them, makes notes, then writes a summary, assessment and recommendation for each one. some are okay, some are really compelling, and some are just horrible.

last night, he watched several - all from norwegian filmmakers. the first was just great - i was trying to build a new house for the gerbils, but i kept drifting over to the couch to see what was happening. it relayed the account of this norwegian skiier/climber/adventurer who, along with his best friend, decided to climb mt. everest - then SKI down the other side. !!! his friend never made it. it was beautifully shot, exciting, and touching. very good. then he put on the next one, about this off-the-cuff norwegian porn star who recruits high school seniors to act in his porn films. sort of like girls-gone-wild meets american idol meets some else really pornographic and depressing. most of the film follows the story of the pornstar/director's girlfriend, as she progresses from one of his high school recruits to pornstar to jealous girlfriend watching on the sidelines. it was quite good, but i can't see it playing at the festival. it had a few really graphic moments - not exciting, but just to show the sort of businesslike, no nonsense aspect of making a porno (bright lights, setting up the more splattery scenes, orchestrating scenes). illuminating, kind of depressing. but i can't see it playing the big screen at the AFI. :)

so that's that.

Monday, March 10, 2008

seeds, glorious seeds!

okay, so i just got the BEST package in the mail! my seeds! i ordered them back on the 5th, and have been complaining and griping about how slow this company was to ship... but my patience (or lack of) has been rewarded - the seeds came today! here is an exhaustive list:

Lincoln (garden peas)
Peppermint
Black Hungarian (peppers)
Hungarian Hot Wax (sounds like a kinky, possibly illegal hygienic treatment, but it's a pepper)
Golden Treasure (again, sounds kinky but it's simply a pepper...)
Mini Red Bell (pepper)
Purple Plum (pepper)
Five Color Silverbeet (Chard)
Zuccino Rampicante (zuccinni)
St. Pierre (tomato)
Egg (tomato)
Bloody Butcher (tomato)

I ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, based on a recommendation from a gardening blog that I read. I think I love this company. Cheaper than Behnke Nursery, by far, plus Baker Creek delivers. I had ordered, in addition to the list above, sugar peas and parsley - but apparently they ran out of stock before they filled my order. Instead of refunding my debit account, they sent back 4 dollar bills stapled to a little envelope containg a quarter! my change! $4.25! how sweet. plus a little note of apology AND two free packets of seeds!!! sunflowers and something called Lemon Cucumber. yahoo! definitely worth the wait.

Already in the starting trays I have:

hollyhocks (sprouting already)
marigolds
scallion
mammoth melting sugar (peas)
dill
poppies

I've already planted some spring mix and other various lettuces outside. Somehow, lettuce turned into a perennial without notifying me. I have several renegade patches that sprouted back up in late november. who knew? well, maybe you knew that lettuce could do that. but i didn't.

if you've seen my backyard, you might be questioning my sanity or my grasp on reality. where the fudge am i going to fit all these plants?? well, i have one billion (approx.) containers and several large planters that i will use. plus some creativity in the yard area. i have plans. oh yes. plans. in addition, i am factoring in the plant death-rate that i have established through the years. i do very well during the beginning. then in late may, when i leave for a week, about 1/2 of the populations perishes either in a freakish heat wave or drowns in a freakish deluge of precipitation. so there's that.

oh! and i managed, for the first year, to NOT kill my Giant Moonstone Goldenlorious Trumpet Vine (not really it's name - but it is something dramatic like that. i just can't remember offhand.) i buy a small one each year at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival - not cheaply, at $7 per little sprout. each year i am similarly inspired by the giant potted version that the vendor displays - it reaches easily 6 feet tall, covered in lovely golden-yellow trumpet flowers. each year it grows nicely through the summer... i bring it in when the cold fall begins... then i forget about it until sometime around christmas, when it is long-since dead. not this year! i've kept it alive (barely) through thick and thin - even through our poor baby kitty using it as a litter box for a week. i hope i didn't speak too soon and kill the durn thing before spring really arrives.

i also hope that the aforementioned kitty doesn't get curious and dig up all my seedling whilst i am away at work. well, i've always wanted a pair of kitten mittens. no time like the present!

Friday, March 7, 2008

WALKERONI

Walkeroni? Sounds like pepperoni. Yumm, pizza.


Oh, rainy dreary afternoon.
No snow for us wicked district residents. Just chilly drizzly rain that promises to turn to a deluge just in time for evening rush hour. Lucky for me, I don’t have to go on the freeway to get home. Although, I can’t say my commute is much safer. Just yesterday, this crazy bitch was trying to race me to a traffic light – someone in her lane was stopped, waiting to turn left, and this lady wanted to cut into my lane to get around the turning car. No way, jose. My general rule is this: if you are so short-sighted and distracted in driving that you wait until the very last minute to get around an obstacle… then you richly deserve your fate. Pay attention! Plan ahead, people! Look around you. This is how you defensively drive. But I digress.


So this crazy lady is zooming up on my left, and I say to myself, ‘ha, ha! Think again!” and I gently close the gap ahead of me as we both approach the stopped car ahead. She zooms forward, then drops quickly back, but the guy behind me closes his gap (good man!) and at the last minute she zooms ahead again to get in front of me. Too late! Way, way too late! She gently rams the front left corner of my bumper, swerves back into her lane, almost smashes right into the poor stopped car… before giving up the fight and sitting behind the left turner. I couldn’t pull over at that spot, then in my mirror I saw her yank out around some other person before zooming past me again. I couldn’t get her license number because of the sun glare, so all I could do was flip her off as she made a crazy turn off onto a side street. Thanks be to plastic bumpers, as I don’t even have a single scratch to show for the whole encounter. And it cheered me no end that she lost the race.

But all that is beside the point. Is there a point? I forget. It’s Friday and my boss is leaving early. I have had a busy busy stressful week, and my brain has been closed for new business since lunchtime. I plan to mentally design my vegetable garden… daydream about sewing projects… obsessively stalk the blogs on my google reader… I also have a plan to make a cold-frame for my garden in the back – I have a formidable stack of bricks left over from last year’s patio project and I’ve been wanting to build a cold-frame. I am going to scrounge up an old window on freecycle or craigs list, then use the bricks to wall in a small raised bed the same dimensions of the window… plus, oh, say about 1.5 feet deep. Then I’ll line the bed with weed cloth and fill with dirt, and top with the window! Instant cold-frame. Maybe I’ll build that this weekend. There’s been a lot of illicit action in the abandoned garage across the alley. I should have plenty of opportunity to call the coppers if I’m out putzing in the yard all day.

My only other mission is to plot out a long, winding 12-mile walk for tomorrow’s training session. I went with Julie and her friends last weekend, for a 12 miler. It was fine. Honestly! I had a few kinks for the first 100 yards or so (you know, wedgie, crooked-feeling-shoe, itchy tag in my shirt, something crinkly in the pocket, etc.) but those went away in pretty short order. Then it was fine for quite some time. A little boring, but not bad. Then around 7 miles my right hip area started to get sore – at our pace, this was just under 2 hours into the walk. The soreness soon turned into throbbing. Which turned into feeling like someone stabbed me right in the center of my butt cheek. I was really to turn in the towel at about 10 miles, but somehow made it through the last 2. I walked like a rusty robot for the whole next day, but was back to normal by Monday. So I am ready to go again this weekend! It can only get better, no?