Friday, June 27, 2008

in which i bike to work, and consider what it means to be "green."

well, i am back on the bike this week. i kicked off the bike to work revival about 2 weeks ago, but due to many interferences (illness, laziness, stupidity) i only rode in once each week. but this week! oh this week was different. i rode my bike in THREE TIMES - count 'em, three times! monday, wednesday and today. i hope that soon i will be in good enough shape to ride in everyday! i know, i know, that sounds awfully ambitious. and maybe it is. but it feels nice to say it.

already i can tell that my legs are on their way to getting rock hard and toned again. a welcome change after a long winter of sudden flabbiness. but, then again, my legs are always the first to show any reaction to exercise. one lap around the track and they start to wither away. which bugs the hell out of me, because my legs can often border on chicken-y looking and bony. they don't need to shrink much, let me tell you. just firm up. i mean, i can hardly keep knee socks up at my knees and those sexy knee-high boots? they either slump down and bag at the ankles or my bony shins bang around inside them like bell-clappers. but my doughy gut? i could jog all day, everyday, on a treadmill and i would still have a squidgy belly. even when i ran 4 days a week, training for races, i still had a mild gut. oh well. a body is a body is a body, i suppose. you can only do so much with the one you are dealt. but dang! it gets me mad.

i feel pretty good about biking in. i feel "green" about it. i bought the bike used, which kept a bike out of the landfill. i save on gas, too. driving to work, i went through a full tank about every 2 weeks. that's about $25 a week. i betcha i can double that by commuting 3 days a week.

but i can't lie to you. that's not why i bought the bike. two motivators fuel most of my actions in life:

1) first and foremost, i am CHEAP. some might say frugal, but i think sometime i am just mostly cheap. i might have some money in my pocket, but i get a sick feeling in my stomach at the thought of shelling out for something expensive. sure, i fritter away money all. the. time. but i like to get a big bang for my buck. if i am going to drop $200 on clothes, i'd rather do it at marshalls or value village and get 17 groaning sacks of things instead of a few well-chosen pieces to last a lifetime. i am too fickle for lifetime fashion. so when it came to getting a bike, i could have spent $400 at the bike shop and got a really nice new bike. or! i could spend $170 and get a neat, unique bike that i absolutely adore. i've always been a bargain-hunter. i live for the challenge. for a time after college, with my first paychecks burning in my greedy paws, i started to drift away from the hunt. but grad school quickly slapped me awake and rekindled the cheapskate within. and it's back to stay, i'm afraid.

2) in conjunction with being cheap, i enjoy having unique things. sure i buy clothes at target and furniture at ikea, but i try to hide them with other things that look more interesting. not like everyone else's. unless you have a lot of money to buy designer items, i find the best way is to patiently dig through thrift stores, junk shops, and stores that sell out of season or overstock.

so yeah! just pretend you didn't hear that, and you can think that i am just making some very good environmental choices by buying used items instead of new.


other "green" practices that we are doing at our house:


- recycling (we've always recycled the obvious stuff, like newspapers and bottles and such, but i am trying to get better. like the plastic thingies that grape tomatoes come in. cracker boxes. smelly cat food cans. things like that.)

- compact fluorescent bulbs (when i replace a burned out old bulb, i buy compact fluorescents to replace them)

- vegetable garden (i like to garden, but i think some of the cheapskate is very excited about not spending so much on tomatoes and gol-durned red peppers this summer.)

- judicious use of air-conditioning

upcoming projects:

- rain barrel to collect all this freaking rain, to water the garden

- compost bins for kitchen waste, to feed the garden

- insulation under the house to save energy (ahem, cheapskate wins again...)

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

harvest at the Rat Farm

Already been picked, consumed, and ripped from the ground: lincoln garden peas; mammoth melting sugar peas; purple plum radishes (although I planted more radishes to replace them...)

Currently being eaten on a near-daily basis: mint, basil, cilantro, parsley, various lettuces, jalapeƱo peppers, chard, green onions

Growing, but not quite ready to pick yet: bloody butcher tomatoes, st. pierre tomatoes, egg tomatoes, hungarian hot wax peppers

Just forming signs of fruit: zucchini, cucumbers, red peppers, yellow peppers, black hungarian peppers

Verdict so far:

i don't think i will bother with the sweet sugar peas next year. this is the second year that i've grown them from seed, and while they grow really fast and the vines look pretty - you really have to plant a lot of them in order to get more than a handful at a time, and they start to die when the hot-hot sun comes out. they mostly just served as a snack while i water the other plants. i think i will do green beans next year instead.

the tomatoes and peppers are doing well. i am a bit obsessed with them, and i can't wait for them to ripen. the herbs have been a wonderful idea - i've saved scads of money already, without having to buy them at the store. i am hoping for similar savings with multicolored peppers and tomatoes. we eat a lot of those in the summer...

the lettuce is always great, and quick to grow. you just sprinkle some seeds around and watch it go crazy. i've had really good luck keeping the plants through the hot months - just buy varieties that do well in hot months, and plant them in long window box type pots. then, when it gets really hot in june/july you can just slide the trays into the shade under a chair or table and it keeps the lettuce from getting bitter.

radishes were great! it was fun to pull food out of the ground instead of just picking it. i forgot, however, to replant seeds after picking the first ones - so now i have to wait for more to grow. oops. maybe i'll try potatoes next year?

Monday, June 23, 2008

post-solstice summer already?

i'm back! well, you might not have noticed i was gone. but i was. believe me. i was laid low, so low, last week by some sort of mysterious illness. i came to work on Thursday morning, but by around 9:00 i was having severe "lady problems" and had to leave. that knocked me out of commission for most of the day, but i started to feel better around 6:00 or 7:00 that night. we had dinner, played some wii, and i thought things were better... but i was so wrong. Friday morning rolled around, and i had planned on biking in to work. i felt kind of crappy when i woke up, so i decided to skip the bike trip. later, i was very thankful for this choice. very. soon you'll understand why. i got to work on Friday morning, still feeling bad and getting worse by the minute. i ate a bite of a banana for breakfast... and things went downhill quickly after that. i wandered down to the sick room in human resources to take advantage of the sick bed for a few minutes. but due to an unfortunate building design choice, the sick room is located right next to the kitchen. i caught a wiff of someone heating up his gamey-smelling breakfast and it was all over after that. i literally ran to my office, grabbed my purse and ran from the building. i couldn't even stop to tell anyone i was leaving. i just ran, fearing that i would barf all over the place any minute. i jumped into my hot, humid car and drove home, willing myself not to barf in my car. "please, god, don't let me barf in my car." i had the air conditioning blasting right in my face. i had to turn the radio off because the sound of diane rhem's voice just wasn't helping matters.

i made it all the way to my neighborhood before remembering that there was construction happening on my street and parking was prohibited on my block all morning. the fates are not kind, sometimes. not kind at all. so i was forced to drive around like a crazed maniac, looking for legal parking, all while smelling the hot tar fumes and being assaulted by the pounding of the paving equipment. i finally found parking and walk/ran to my house. i held my shit together, mostly, until i got in the house. i did, however, barf a little bit on my shirt while parking. can you imagine if i had to bike home? or take the metro? there would have been copious amounts of public barfing, to be sure.

i will keep the rest of the details to myself. just let it be known that Friday was not a good day. i even crawled to the computer to google the symptoms of salmonella poisoning. negative. and toxic shock syndrom. negatory. so lord knows what i had. but i didn't feel completely normal until Sunday.

i feel great today, though! i biked into work today and all went well. the only things i forgot this time are: hair products (so i am left with limp, limp hair); breakfast (so i am left with a ravenous hunger); and my lunch. but lunch is not a tragedy, because today is the AIP summer picnic! at 2:00! so i have a short-short work day, followed by a catered BBQ lunch and bingo and prizes and all sorts of fun. yahoo. not too bad for a Monday.

in other events this weekend, i saw a few silverdocs movies with scott, and went for a bike ride with courtney yesterday evening.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

v49!TYs1x

that is one of the passwords that i recently had to use to administer a downloaded program at work. it puts my passwords to shame. and knowing that certain-folks-i-know (you know who you are) have a history of really-easy-to-figure-out passwords - we are all doomed to be mass victims of internet hackers. just so's you know. i am fully prepared for the day i wake up to find my bank accounts drained and my email taken over by terrorists.

i rode my bike to work yesterday! just as planned. of course, i tried mightily to talk myself out of it when my alarm rang at 6:15 in the morning. the birds weren't even up yet, for pete's sake. then again, as i stumbled around the dark bedroom trying to remember to pack all my vitals (underwear, blowdrier, deodorant) for showering at work. then again, as i wrestled my bike out the door, fiddled with my shorts and felt embarrassed about my flabby belly and ugly helmet. but once i got rolling it was all worth it. whizzing through the cool morning air is a fine way to start the day. since i shower at work, i don't even need to worry about not sweating, not splashing merrily through huge puddles, and not getting bike grease all over my hands when my chain falls off - all of which i did on the way to work.

the way home is a different story altogether. i am usually a bit sleepy. i hate sneaking around the locker room and lobby, hoping that no one sees me in my flab-revealing shorts and t-shirt until i can jump on the bike and get-a-way fast. and once on the road, the trail is almost flat - but just enough incline almost the whole way home that it wears me down after a while. then again i am pretty out of shape, so i trust that will get easier. just in case all of that wasn't enough, yesterday i volunteered to stop at the store on the ride home to pick a few things up for scott. i didn't have to do it. he could have easily gone on his way home. but i was high on the adventure and it sounded like fun. in my mind, i was riding a pink bike with a woven basket filled with bottles of milk, fresh strawberries and a puppy - not covered in sweat, toting a backpack already half full of toiletries and clothes. so to the store i went! once there, i realized that i still haven't done any research on the legalities of locking up bikes in the city. if there aren't any racks - what can i do? i found a likely-looking spot in the parking lot and chained up ole Shiny. scott wanted beer, chips and salsa for his script writing meeting that night. "simple enough," you might be thinking. but you're not remembering that i like to make my own easy life hard. so i saw that canned crab meat was on sale. the crab was right next to the chicken andouille sausage - "say, that would make a good soup!" i said to myself, and tossed both items in the basket. "gee, olives are on sale too!" and in goes a big jar. on and on it goes, until my hand basket is too heavy to carry without using both hands. i try to stuff it all in the backpack while the checkout lady looks at me like i am crazy. everything fits, except for the can of crabmeat, the jumbo jar of tomato sauce and the bag of chips. those items i put in a plastic bag (oh, the horror!), then shouldered my heavy backpack and stumbled back out to the street. i slung the plastic bag on the handlebars, then admired how urban that looked. then i squatted down to unlock the u-lock. then i almost couldn't get back up, because my pack was so heavy. that's when the foreboding began. i hauled myself up and stood, looking at the road ahead. uphill, as far as mine eye could see. with that cement-heavy pack on my back, and lacking any sort of forward momentum, i decided to walk until i got to the top of the biggest hill - about 7 or 8 blocks. at the top of the big hill, i stood next to my bike and looked downhill. there is a traffic light at the foot of this hill. i knew that once i got rolling, my combined weight would be like that of a freight train out of control - unstoppable. i got on the seat, and with my foot on the curb, i waited until the light at the bottom turned green. shoving off, i coasted downhill, gaining speed until i was almost invisible - all the while praying that no cars or buses decide to pull out in front of me.

success! i made it down that hill alive, and my momentum carried me most of the way up the next one. after that, i just had about 2 miles of slow and steady incline until i was home. oh goody. to sweeten the pot, the wind started gusting - and not at my back. i was riding right into the wind. luckily i understand my gears now, so put 'er in 2nd gear and pedaled for home. in 2nd gear, the pedal resistance is eased and you pedal and pedal and pedal... and slowly move forward. it takes a while, but if you are hauling a heavy load uphill it takes some of the stress off the ole knees. my leg muscles were so quivery at this point, i can't see how else i would have made it home. i'm sure that, to passing cars, i looked like i was riding a stationary bike - but screw them. i just want to live, man.

Monday, June 16, 2008

google search terms

i love to see what kind of google search terms bring folks to my blog. then, i like to imagine how disappointed some of these people are when they get here.

#1 google search that brings in random visitors: anything related to building your own cold frame - in fact, if you type (in quotes) "build your own cold frame" - i am the 4 link down! neat. so my tutorial has helped a few people, i hope.

#2 google search, and possibly the most disappointing: anything related to norwegian pornstars. which brings them here, which is surprising devoid of dirty pictures or 1-900 numbers to call. gosh-darn it. folks have also found their way to this post my googling, specifically, "gardening porn"! who knew there was such a thing?

oh, a silver dream i had...

my new bike! is great! and speedy! and so shiny!

i took the bike out for a few rides this weekend - a 2 and a half hour ride on saturday and a short spin on sunday - and she rides like a dream! honestly, i wonder if anyone saw me and thought "gee, what's wrong with that girl?" because there were a few times where i was downright laughing out loud and smiling like a fool. that's just how fun this bike is. the handlebars are just upright and swoopy enough, and the seat is comfortable and bouncy, and the fenders are so shiny. i even understand the simple gear system - a first for me. my old bike had a ridiculous amount of gears and i never quite understood how to use them. i just turned the handlebar grips at random until the clicking and grinding stopped... then if the gear was too hard or too loosey-goosey, well then i just started turning the gears at random again. which resulted in me using about 2 settings total - something scientific like "use 4 on the left side and 12 on the right for big hills" and "use 16 on the right and 7 on the left for flat spots" - something along those lines. this one in a six speed - the right handlebar grip has 6 gears, marked 1 through 6. very clear for idiots like me.

it's just great. i can't even find the words right now. the bike wasn't the kind of bike i thought i needed, but i am so glad i went with my gut on this one. although, maybe i'll have less of a gut after riding it for a while? har har. i went to citybikes in adams morgan on sunday - got a bike lock thingie and a contraption to hold my waterbottle. all set! weather permitting, i am riding to work tomorrow - something i haven't done since last fall. i can't wait!

in other news, we went to the drive in over the weekend - first trip of the year! "kung fu panda" was better than i thought it would be - i usually hate dreamwords animated stuff. and "incredible hulk" kind of sucked. i slept through the last 40 minutes or so. we didn't stay for the third movie, since it was after 1:00 and the place is all the way up past baltimore. i went to bed around 3:30, and MAN did i ever sleep in on sunday.

tomato watch, 2008: 5 "bloody butcher" tomatoes growing nicely; 7 smaller tomatoes - possible egg or st. pierre - on the way as well. yay! i suppose in a week or two we will start eating tomatoes!

Friday, June 13, 2008

friday the 13th

pretty uneventful (knock on wood) so far.

i DID manage to spill a cup of scalding hot coffee on my foot this morning. but that was entirely my fault. i was being selfish and lazy: here at work, we have one of those new-fangled coffee pod machine things. those of you who are familiar with these machines know that each time you make a cup, the used little pod of coffee gets dumped into a container inside the machine. so, you blissfully make cup after cup of coffee, laughing as your coworkers are forced to dump out the bin of empty pods... then your luck runs out. this morning, for instance, i trundled into the break room to get some coffee. i had some coffee at home, so i opted for 2 little pods of decaf. i put the first pod in, pushed the green button, and whooosh! a few ounces of coffee. i pulled the little tray out to put in the second pod... when something inside the machine caught my eye. peering inside the machine, behind the tray... i saw a mountain of used-up pods in the little tub inside. grrrrr! that meant that the instant i put in my next pod, the red light would pop on and i would have to stop what i was doing, disassemble the whole front of the machine, dump out the dang pods, put it all back together and THEN make the rest of my coffee. no way, jose. not this time! plus, every time i have had to empty the tub i've noticed that one end of the tub is all stacked up with used pods, while the other end of the tub is empty. wasteful! stupid design! so there i stood, paper cup half full, tray out, peeking in on the stack of pods... and a brilliant idea struck. i could reach in, flick some of the pods over to the empty side of the poorly-designed tub and go on my merry way, crisis averted. c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y i snuck one finger into the opening behind the tray... almost there... just a bit more... *YOWCH!* in my intense concentration on the stack of used pods, i forgot what was right in front of my eyes - a half-filled paper cup of scalding hot coffee. which i had knocked over, nearly right down my whole front. luckily, my cat-like reflexes (seriously!) saved me. i did some sort of insane cheerleader jump over the splashing coffee and managed to avoid the burn - except for my right foot. and a double bonus, no one walked into the kitchen while i was cleaning it up - so no one made fun of me at all. yay, me. so all in all, a pretty clean friday the 13th.

for those poor fools riding the red line to work today, there was a different story to be had. (wash post article) some sort of power outage (possibly combined with an electrical fire? i can't be bothered to actually read the article) downtown wreaked all sorts of havoc with the red line. scott takes the red line to work and had to trudge up the steep, seemingly endless escalator out of the station at dupont circle. people who gripe about DCers being lazy, and how no other big city has escalators in the undergrounds... well, people, i mostly agree with you there. most of the stations don't need escalators at all. waste of power, lazy, etc. EXCEPT for the dupont circle station. that one is an unholy bitch to walk up, especially in the summer heat.

tonight is the kick-off of the summer movies on the roof of ian's apartment building - with a showing of Friday the 13th, part 4; and some other horror movie that scott is picking out. we use our DVD projector and screen, and ian provides the great outdoor location - pretty swell, all around. i have a busy night, as i am going out for drinks and dinner with julie and jennifer from work - at dr. granville moore's, on h street. can't wait!

so happy friday the 13th! i am going to take garden pictures this weekend - tomatoes abound, and the hollyhocks are threatening the neighbors. stay tuned.

Friday, June 6, 2008

my new ride

in case that other link gets disabled, and in case you are too lazy to click on it in the first place - here is a picture of my sweet new ride. i haven't named her yet, and i am waiting to do so until after my first bike ride - which was going to be this weekend. but. it is supposed to be ungodly hot this weekend and i don't feel like having a heat stroke.



ain't she purty?

Thursday, June 5, 2008

in the hours after

or, in this case, the days after.

a week away from the office is good for the soul, but bad for el paperworko. i've been busy busy since my re-entry on monday, and it has taken me until now - thursday afternoon - to find a moment to pause and post.

vacation was a wild success this year. family, am i right? i think we all had fun, and nearly everyone got to stay for almost the whole week. highlights include:

1) bonfire! we've talked about having bonfires before, but we just never get around to it. this year, we came through. scott and i thought we could buy some bundled firewood over at the baitshop - but no. foodlion, lowes foods, farmer's market - no, no, no. lowes hardware? no again. so we just drove around aimlessly until i spied a vacant lot filled with giant piles of brushy stuff and made scott pull over. we filled his hatchback and backseat with sandy branches and small logs torn from the piles, and headed home with the loot. oh! and we did succeed in scoring a large pile of sap-laden pinecones at the farmer's market. good kindling. after dinner, the whole family kicked in and we combed the immediate area around the house for firewood. joe flexed his engineering muscles and somehow he and scott broke down a 40'+ tree into usable chunks, using only their hands and the support posts of the deck for leverage. impressive! we made s'mores and roasted hotdogs and basked in the smokey warmth.


2) crabbing! our housemate, michele, clued scott and i into crabbing just before we left. catching crabs? why not! so we got string traps and frozen chicken necks at the baitshop on the corner - and in a fit of inspiration, a slim jim - and headed to the little bridge and tidal canal on 40th street. i had read a little online about catching crabs, and sources say that crabs get bored with the same old bait and are intrigued by different smells and oily patches in the water... hence the slim jim. sources also say that the best times for crabbing is when the tide is rolling in, just before high tide. we got to the spot about an hour before high tide, so conditions were perfect. also, this perfect time was about 11:30 in the morning so we didn't even have to get up early or anything torturous like that. screw you, early-bird-gets-the-worm! i ended up catching 7 crabs!! to keep a crab, it must be at least 5" across - and these were all keepers, and one or two were downright huge! it was really thrilling, actually. the water was shallow, so i could kind of make out the hoop as it lay on the canal floor... then i would sometimes be able to see if a crab was in it or not - but most times, i would just jerk the trap to the surface out of sheer boredom or impatience and nearly fall over from surprise to see one or two big ole blue crabs scrambling around in the trap. yikes! there was shrieking. and yes there was wimpish prancing and gnashing of teeth. and my mom had to help me with getting those pesky snappy crabs into the bucket. and i can't wait to do it all again next time we go camping! crabbing is also satisfying in it's democracy. there doesn't seem to be much skill involved - you just toss the trap out there and wait, then jerk it to the surface with a little finesse. catching 7 was out of no skill of my own - just sheer luck! which is sometimes even more satisfying. scott ended up not catching any crabs big enough to keep, and for a while he was chasing the trail of a wily ole grandaddy crab... but that crab proved to be to smart and elusive for the likes of our slim jim. ahhh. maybe next year.

2) Hand and foot! a card game that our family plays obsessively when we get together as a group. it is some sort of mixed-breed canasta-style game that involves a lot of luck and screwing of thy neighbor. david and i were partners for the first game, and trounced everyone so badly that we almost lost appetite for the game entirely. but we persevered and played many more hateful games through the week.

the rest of the time was spent lounging in our village of sun shelters set up on the dunes behind the house, or playing with maddie (cutest baby in the universe, as shown by the slideshow on jessie and david's blog). i started a new knitting project, of which i will hopefully post pictures soon...

in other news, my garden is taking over the yard. eeek! we've kept up the spring schedule of a few sunny days followed by a day or two of torrential downpour.

i bought a new bike last night!! it is a jamis earth cruiser 6-speed and it is S-W-E-E-T. entirely chrome plated, and so shiny that it would take your eyes out on a sunny day. you can see a picture here, but i can't guarantee how long the picture will be there (right now, it's the second picture down - the shiny chrome one): http://bulldogbikerestoration.com/Currentbikes.html

this is a long post. i think i'll quite now.