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.
Friday, March 14, 2008
happy PI DAY!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Well I haven’t done a very good job of sticking to my “resolution” of posting to this site more often. I use quotes because I hestitate to call it a resolution, really. There were no oaths taken, no witnesses to my proclamation (except maybe you), and I had no real desire to stick with the resolution…
Anyhoo. Here I sit, at the reference desk. I am taking a wee break from actual work – cataloging archival materials, snore – to do some virtual work.
I might be the last person on planet Earth to hear of google reader. Am I? please say that you haven’t heard of it either. Or just lie, and say you haven’t. we’ll be better friends for it. Anyway! Google reader. You sign in, and add a bunch of websites and blogs that you obsessively check all the livelong day. Then google reader does the obsessing for you, alerting you only when something new is posted. W-w-w-w-w-wow! This handy little tool has saved me many hours of sliding around on the interwebs. You know how it goes:
Hypothetical job morning situation:
- Lar-dee-lar-dee-lar… let’s see, I think I’ll get some coffee! Yes. (10 minutes later, due to line at machine and morning chattiness)
- Ahhh… much better. Now I can begin. No, well, maybe I’ll check a few things online first – get that business out of the way…
- Hotmail! Hmm, junk, 2 real messages, oh ha ha ha guys, very funny [reply, reply].
- Now LOLCATS, of course… then cuteoverload… nice, nice….
- Then several knitting and crafting blogs… oooh, a new link to making shoes out of old napkins… interesting (15 minutes lost in tunnel of links)
- Now, jessie’s blog (what??!! No new pictures??!!)…
- Oooh! Maybe someone replied to an email! Back to Hotmail… nope.
- Maybe someone added new pictures to their Flickr! Hmmm, no.
- Another blog…. Too newsy today. Skip.
- Oooh! Maybe I got an email! Back to hotmail. Nope. But what’s this about TomKat? And Britney?
- And down the rabbithole you go…. And suddenly 40 minutes are gone, your eyes are shiny and dry, and you feel a bit dazed.
- Oooh, but maybe someone sent me an email…
And I think we all know how it happens. But google reader has saved my guilty conscience! I just check it obsessively instead, and it does all the work for me! *whew* what a relief. Now I probably only waste about 30 minutes total during the day – instead of 30 minutes here and there all day long.
New subject begins here: so julie and I signed up for a big walk in april. 50 kilometers! That’s 30 miles (ish? Not sure if that’s exact… regardless, that’s a long walk!) I signed scott up too. Julie and I have started training – just taking walks after work. Problem is, it gets dark by 6:00 so we can’t get too far on the trails around here. and last time we discovered a nest of hobos under the river road overpass. it's not a trail that you want to go waltzing around in the dark by yourself. We’ll have to start taking loooong walks on the weekends, to log some miles. The longest I have ever walked was in high school – a fundraiser for my spanish club trip to spain. 20 miles? Or something in that range. I don’t recall my legs being that tired, but I did have blisters. And the WORST part was the swelling of the fingers. Man, I remember walking miles with my hands way up in the air, like I was being held at gunpoint, just to help the awful swelling and pain. I really felt like my fingers would split their skins like plump bratwurst on a grill. So we are getting all sorts of tips for avoiding the finger-swell. Eeesh.
Speaking of sports – we are going skiing this weekend!! Yahoo! I haven’t been skiing in years and years. It’s to celebrate cliff’s birthday (which he dubbed “cliffmas” several years ago). So me and scott, cliff and courtney, dan and his sister and brother-in-law – we are all piling into the Dun-groves new honda pilot to head up to carroll valley, PA, to liberty mountain! I hope I don’t hurt myself. I also hope that scott is more flexible and nimble on skis. I’ve seen him on ice skates, and it’s enough to chill the blood in my veins.
Next weekend I am heading up to ohio, to spend the nice long weekend with my folks and with jess, david and maddie! I can’t wait to see el baby-o again. After that, we enter into the spring calendar doldrums. No more long weekends until memorial day. L we don’t get columbus day off.
I don’t have any new finished crafts to speak of. I have an unfinished strap for the lid of the gerbil cage… and an unfinished gracery tote bag. And that’s it. The stinky cat is intent on shredding all my yarn. It’s a good thing he’s so cute and wiggly, or he might have ended up in my frying pan by now.
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