Use your time thoughtfully. What I mean by that is...



Decide that removing snow is probably not really worth it, as it will get above 50 this week. So sayeth the weather guys. They better be right.


Finish the projects you started. You can see 3 raised bed frames and 3 trellises for peas. There's two more halfway done in the shop now, after I spent a couple hours on them. That will be 4 pea trellises, and 1 trellis for cucumbers, assuming that I don't kill them this year.

Force completion of at least one project on the "spring" list. This weekend it was replacing the bad caulk around the bathtub. J and I watched some YouTube how-to videos. We then scraped and scratched up the old stuff, cleaned it out with a toothbrush and bleach and got it to the state you see now. Wasn't so bad, but wasn't that much fun either.

Decide that the state of the carpet is just something that can't be ignored for one second longer and finally vacuum.

Plant some seeds. You see before you...tomatoes, celery, parsley, peppers, more tomatoes, watermelon and more pepper plants. And then ...

there's garlic, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, onion and more parsley. Yes, I realize this is all horribly early. I'm hedging my bets for an early spring. I even planted some flowers this weekend. Why do I think that?



This has given me hope.

I've got some tomato and herb plants in a southern facing window, and they cheer me.


It's a little something to look forward to as we try to not curse the snow.

Labels: random update

  ¶ 6:05 PM 0 comments

  Spring Cleaning Back in the day, I would sometimes watch Martha Stewart. This was pre-felon M.S., as I like to call her, and when everything she did turned into golden rainbows. One day, on her show, she revealed her "secret shame". She had a junk room. You know, a room where everything that didn't belong elsewhere, with piles of ribbons and clay and buttons and beads. Where all of the single-use kitchen paraphernalia eventually was consigned. Where she put the not so successful Christmas ornaments and those pesky little baskets that you can't store anywhere else because they kept shedding all of the feathers. Well, in my mind it was all that. I'm probably misremembering it, because it was probably an ornate closet of lots of storage boxes that were carefully labeled and just not filled. After all, M.S. would not show us anything that wasn't perfect, now would she?

Anyway, I have a secret shame too. It's on my computer. I call it my "Stuff" folder. It's cleverly titled Stuff. When I go to work with someone and they have stuff scattered around their computer desktop, all helter skelter, I have to resist the urge to create a stuff folder for them. Someplace they can push all of the stupid stuff that ends up on the desktop to hide. Note that I'm not sorting these things into careful categories or anything. I'm shoving them in the same place and forgetting about them. I know I forget what is there, because I've done things like download the same piece of software 3 times. And then, when I'm done burning it or installing it or copying it, and I put it into the Stuff folder, it has a number (3) after it.

So today, I started doing an install of a program that will enable me to use Windows from my Mac. This is a pretty well known program and what it actually does is create a virtual machine to allow you to see a Windows like interface for doing things that Mac users can't do, like use MS Access or test websites with Internet Explorer. For a long time, I thought I could get by without it. Except in the last 3 months, I've had about 6 things I need to do using a Windows machine and have had to slum to other machines to do it. So, I finally gave in.

In the course of installing this long dreaded program, I was told "There's not enough hard drive space to run this well, it will be slow or something". You know that those error messages aren't terribly descriptive, and my work computer isn't that old. I checked how much space I had, and I was surprised to see that I only had about 10% left.

That couldn't be right. I checked again. How could I have filled up this hard drive in that little time?

Time to clean house, I decided, and seeing as how Windows takes a good long time to install, I had time. I started by removing my music and then cleaning out my trash can. That was barely a pittance.

Then I looked upon Stuff. I knew it was huge. I knew I was ignoring the problem by just stuffing things in there. I gulped and did the little click-get-info thing and discovered, to my horror...100 gigabytes? How did THAT happen?

I sorted them a couple of different ways and started to do some deletes. Old zips and gzips? I can redownload that stuff. Old pieces of software? Gone. Folders of projects long forgotten? Goodbye. Old ISO's for burning CDs? Why am I keeping this? Was there anything I needed there? I racked my brain. Most of the things I really want to keep go into an online storage area that the UW gives us. I really just used this folder for the stuff that I didn't want to look at anymore.

I'd just read through a PDF on records retention on campus, where they discussed which emails need to stay and which need to go. They came to the conclusion that only 10% of our email correspondence really needs to be retained. My mind, upon reading that, automatically thought of about a dozen people who use their accumulated emails not as a record but as an address book to remember email addresses. We could never erase their inbox, for all of the addresses would be gone.

I didn't need any of the stuff in Stuff. But could I just let it all go? Surely, I MIGHT need it, right?

This is the argument that we get into all of the time, with the people who refuse to thin their email mailboxes. It's probably the same argument that a hoarder might make about needing to get rid of boxes of plastic tupperware or the reason why people wash plastic sporks. I can't get rid of this. I might need it.

The problem with this argument is that you lose the meaning to the item. I kept this because I thought I'd need it someday and that someday has not come. It doesn't mean it won't but in the meantime, this thing is waiting to be used in the near certainty that it will again have usefulness.

In the meantime, it clutters up your life and your head and your computer's hard drive.

I settled. The folders would go. The individual items stayed, but only if their date was more recent than a couple of years. And then I hit the "remove trash" function.

Over 175000 items lined up and started their eventual destruction. I watched the little bar inch across the screen and I tried to not feel a little panicked. Did I trust that I'd backed up the important stuff? But the Stuff folder wasn't where I stored good stuff, it was where I shoved things until I wanted them again.

I didn't want any of this stuff again. Or I couldn't think of a day that I would.

That little deletion opened up 40% of my hard drive. My program installed and the computer even started working a bit more smoothly. I was kind of glad. It felt good. I felt ... renewed.

And I continued to work, feeling secure that ... there's always backup.

Labels: computers, data, work

  ¶ 7:45 PM 0 comments

  Pruned I felt well enough on Sunday to go outside and do something that I'd been waiting to do. The books say do this on a warm day sometime between January and March. As we've seen quite a few warm days, I wanted to get it done.

Here's our victim....last year, pre-pruning and post-pruning.

Pre-pruning, 2011	Post-pruning, 2011

We didn't kill it. It survived. We are still eating apple pie filling and applesauce from it now.

But it was time again.

Pre-pruning, 2012

Post-pruning, 2012

It seems extreme, but it seems to thrive on this. We took off even more of the upper branches, which were difficult to reach and cut off a bunch of the sucker branches.

It's starting to look like an orchard tree.

Labels: apples, pruning

  ¶ 4:38 PM 0 comments

  The Breakdown

1. J brought me flowers again for Valentine's Day. I'm absolutely floored when he does something like that...I never ask for it, and yet it happens.
2. At work, A told me that J is the like the most recent version of software, and her husband is deprecated. All because of the flowers.
3. Yes, J got chocolate covered strawberries, and salted caramels. So he had a nice holiday too. I restricted how many he could have though...doctor's orders.
4. Bella's had goop on the surface of her eye forever. The vet gave us some stuff for it, but it had to be given 4x a day. J and I are out of the house 11 hours of the day. So it didn't get to her eye as often as it should have. I asked the vet for something we could give her 2x a day, and she DID. And it's working. Yeah!
5. J gives Bella a "Greenie" after each drop. It's not so difficult to do it when she knows she'll get her favorite treat afterwards.
6. I went to Garden Expo on SUNDAY this time. It was much less crowded, and less stressful. I went to a seminar on Grape growing. Oh, how interesting it was! It was done by a member of the UW Horticulture department, and she did a great job. I started to dream of a grape vine in a little used part of our land and think about how to make wine.
7. The other thing I saw at Garden Expo (other than a boring thing on hardscaping) was a movie called Mad City Chickens. No, I have no plans for chickens. That's one thing that I think I've been asked about 18 times. "Now that you live in the country, will you be getting chickens?" No. My neighbor has chickens and has too many eggs; and I think that if I were tempted, I'd ask her for advice first. Regardless, this movie resolved my question of ...what happens in the winter? Nothing. Chickens can handle the winter just fine. You don't have to kill them. I think that was one of my concerns about chicken raising. I don't think I'd want to do the killing part. I'd make a rotten farmer. I have other qualms too. Like what about the cats. And the coyotes. And how to deal with chicken poop. It was a good movie, and if you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.
8. J and I have been getting up frightfully early to exercise. We have these DVDs here that we can use and some are really easy....like Yoga for Beginners. The first lesson of Yoga for Beginners was "let's spend 15 minutes breathing". But then there's the other end of the spectrum. [LINK] That one will be coming soon. We'll save that for a special day.
9. Nothing back yet from the Amish Guy. J wants to wait a couple of weeks before we leave a message with his phone answering machine.
10. Am currently addicted to Zynga Poker, Words with Friends and Anger Birds Rio, on three different platforms.
11. The tablet. I bought this on some sort of close-out. It's an Android Tablet, and it ran a disabled version of Android software. Okay, so I did a bit of internet trolling and found out you can "jailbreak" your tablet to run better/newer versions of Droid. Yeah, not as easy as you might think....and I do this sort of stuff for a living. So I made the big decision to do a complete wipe of it, and start completely over. . This meant a lot of fiddling (like WEEKS), but it finally worked. I got a Droid 3.0 system that actually works to do most of what I want. It's no iPad, but it doesn't really need to be.
12. I've been on a real health kick lately, and one of the things I tried were some "Broccoli Pancakes" that I found in a local health food aisle. (Don't scrunch your nose like that! Less carbs, more deliciousness!) They were really good, but J questioned their cost. (Which was kinda pricey.) He said I could make them myself. So I did. [LINK] Mine turned out a lot greener, but still pretty tasty. They are like potato pancakes really. With a little yogurt and some dill, they are savory. With a little applesauce and berries, sweet. And they are filling too. Good to make for breakfast. J looked at them and called them Hippie Breakfast food. I don't care. They are delicious.
13. We've also tried growing sprouts. First we tried broccoli sprouts. And they started smelling funky, so we started over with regular bean sprouts. And that was pretty easy...just a daily or twice daily rinse and all was well. Of course, we now have a bunch of bean sprouts to use up, so I will have to start over again soon.
14. I love this song, playing it on a loop in my head and now in my web browser. Sort of Peter Gabriel-esque, especially with the weird video. Gotye: Somebody That I Used to Know

14 is enough for today, don't you think?

Labels: random update

  ¶ 7:36 PM 2 comments

  Boating in February Saturday, we had some errands to do, and we had to do them in the truck.

I got in, because I had the truck keys last and they were still in my purse. We loaded up the stuff for the dump, and I swung out onto the highway.

Now, this truck has got some sloppy steering. Combine that with a cold northwest wind and I felt like I was all over the road. I point out, for my mother's sake, that I was not in fact all over the road, and I did manage to stay in my lane and kill no one. I just felt like it was difficult driving. I told J that he was driving it so he could see after our stop at the dump.

We don't pay for someone to come and take away our garbage; we take it to the town dump. This is mostly because 1) we have a long driveway, and putting out garbage cans for a pickup would be painful and 2) we can go once a month usually without any consequence. We basically put it off as long as we can. One of the reasons for the pick up today was to drop off the bags and bags of garbage. The town dump only charges for "real" garbage, not recyclables, so it always seems we only have 2-3 bags of real garbage to maybe 2x as much in recycling.

J got in and started towards our next stop. He was better able to control the steering, and he agreed it could be the wind, the bad steering, or maybe we just need some power steering fluid. Since it seemed better at lower speeds, we turned off to some back roads, where it was indeed a bit more controllable.

The truck rarely goes out really. Just a few times a month. It's so useful when we do need it though, but I feel bad for not using it more.

We were headed towards SWAP. I wanted a table, and I wanted to show J some racks that I thought might be good for holding figures for his tabletop gaming.

The wide open expanses where the wind howled were pushing and pulling on the old white truck, but J was able to keep us plugging along at just over 50 mph. That was enough to get there without having to drive white knuckled.

The SWAP shop had a few browsers in it. We walked in to see a display of coffee urns and poker chips. Why? Who knows? Maybe someone at the University had a casino night sometime.

Then there's the standard desks and computers. Yucky G5's which were going for $50 each. That's too much, if you ask me.

I wanted a table to replace this really large unwieldy table that our cat Lulu likes to sit on. They had something I had seen during a previous visit, an 18" wide by 60" long simple table. Skinny enough to not be difficult to move around but wide enough to hold a few plants and a cat.

J didn't like the racks. He felt they were too unstable for holding his things. I could see his point. Plus, they were $50! Much more expensive than I thought they'd be.

They had boxes of live mouse traps. 6 for $5! I mean, we have the occasional mouse and sometimes our cats aren't the most successful at capturing them, so it was a good deal. Of course, these are LIVE traps, so once a mouse is trapped, there's the issue of dealing with it. J wants to put it in a room with the two cats and close the door. I think I'd just take it outside. That would make me less popular with the kitties, but I feed them, so I think they'd get over it.

I also bought two cooler blocks, you know...those blue freezer blocks you put in a cooler to keep it cool. J found some straps for .50 each. Straps for ... well, I'm not really sure. Strap something down, I guess.

J was enticed by a DC power supply and signal generator. He started to explain about how he could use the two together to make different tones. I pointed to the note attached to the signal generator. "Broken", it said. Well, maybe not then. I have to say, I'm relieved.

We paid, loaded up, and as we drove home, or I should say, as J held the car to the road, he told me that with an oscilloscope and those other two pieces of equipment he could do all sorts of experiments.

"We have an oscilloscope at work. No one uses it so I'll be sending it to SWAP."

He had the same reaction that someone else at work had ..."Don't send that to SWAP! I'll take it!"

What is it about men and these geeky toys? "No, I can't do that," I said. "It will likely go to someone who WILL use it for work purposes in a different department. We have it, we don't use it, it gets sent away."

The trip back home was less fraught with danger than the trip there...the wind was at our tail. Our last stop was a stop for gas. This is another reason why the truck stays most of the time in the garage. It costs $50 to fill one of the two gas tanks. $50! I don't even think it went very far. Just a few times out in the last couple of months. Okay, maybe $50 once every two months isn't THAT bad.

We got home, safely, and unloaded. Not bad for a cold day in February. A table and some good junk to replace all of the old junk we took to the dump.

Maybe I'll wait until Spring with no wind to take the truck out next time.

In the meantime, Lulu likes her new table.

Labels: errands

  ¶ 2:58 PM 2 comments

  What are leggy tomatoes? You hear it all of the time. You don't want leggy tomatoes.

And what exactly does that mean. I mean, humans, you want leggy. Long legged.

Well, it means the same thing.

(Not my picture.)

My research says, this happens with not enough light and when they are planted too shallow and maybe when its planted in cold. That's a lot of reasons that all apply to me.

I got some leggy tomato seedlings. So now I'm experimenting with planting them deep in seed starter with some fertilizer for the start of what might be a patio tomato someday. Yes, I know, I've planted too early.

So what? It's fun to watch while it's freaking cold outside. I'll start my real seeds soon. Actually, I kind have already. I bought those little peat disks that you water and they expand like magic. Then I put seed in them. The pepper seeds? Haven't done much, but the others? The Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Carrot and Celery?* All have plants starting or shooting up. A marked contrast to last year when I had tiny little plants for replanting in May. I was probably distracted.

And when I actually have a viable tomato seedling or two? Out comes the Topsy Turvy Tomato! (I'm experimenting like the Professor on Gilligan's Island here!)

And to think...we still have weeks before we can even get a rototiller to the garden! J and I have been discussing the purchase of a Mantis, but he is gung ho to hoe. Well, more specifically, to forgo our morning exercise routine in favor of turning the garden. It wasn't that fun the first time, I recall.

This weekend is the Garden Expo. Last year, the only thing of use we learned was about pruning our apple tree. This year, we're hoping to learn about growing grapes and hardscaping. We're putting off our trip until Sunday, hopefully the more sedate day, because last year it was crowded and a bit claustrophic.

Garden Expo is on a weekend when the wind chill will be hovering around 4 degrees. Yeah, spring can't come too soon for me.
___
*I planted those alphabetically.

Labels: garden

  ¶ 9:09 PM 0 comments

  Modern Kitchen Design So, we are looking to fix up the old kitchen.  Actually it went a little something like this.
"Gee, we should get a space for a dishwasher."
"Oh, if we get that, then we can't get a replacement door for the cabinet because it isn't made anymore."
"Well, I hate the cabinets anyway."
"So we should get new cabinets?"
"And if we are getting new cabinets we should get a different countertop.  And now of those fancy sinks that don't have a lip. And get rid of the stupid peninsula thing that doesn't do anything.  And maybe get different flooring."

You get the idea.  It adds up quickly.
So, we decided against a vacation this year, and for a kitchen.  So, we went to a kitchen place.

When we walked in, we were asked if we could wait for another salesperson.  We said yes because we had time, and plenty of ideas to consider.   While we waiting, someone said something to the effect of "We're so busy now, right after Christmas!  It's like a lightswitch being flipped!  What recession?"

So, I kind of felt...maybe they don't need our piddly little kitchen remodel, being so busy and everything.

Then, when we talked to a salesperson, we were steered towards some cabinets with basically fiberboard sides.  And a countertop?  We had 3 basic choices.  And we weren't even doing the lowest prices stuff...this was all middle of the road.

And...if we agreed to plunk down half before the end of January, we could have a free sink.  We said we'd be happy to get a quote and think about it.  And we did.  We got the quote, we discussed it, and my gut said "This is wrong."

We briefly discussed maybe Home Depot, but then I remembered a conversation with a co-worker.   He had this Amish Guy (AG) do his cabinets in his house.  And this is what I remembered about that.  "5x the quality, half the price".

Okay then.  I talked to my co-worker who was happy to give me all of the details and send me a picture of his kitchen.  Wow.  I know my co-worker probably doesn't make a ton of money so I'm thinking this could be an option.

Now, AG doesn't have a website, or an email.  He doesn't even have a phone.  But he does work with a showroom out in another town about 45 miles away.   And they have all of those new-fangled things.  So I contacted them.  And they set up a meeting.

It was amazing.  Beautiful woods, nice construction, really quality workmanship.  He did their fireplace.  He did a desk.  He did a table.  He does everything.

And...they handed us instructions to his workshop, about 25 miles more away.   "He's waiting to meet you."

AG lives among some seriously beautiful hills.  Good biking hills.   We rolled along these windy country roads during some of the most beautiful weather in all of February.  We got to his shop to find him with someone else.  And a sleepy dog that raised its head to recognize us and then shift position and return to dozing.   We did some browsing as Couple #1 proceeded to tell him not to break the bank and left.

We met him. AG has workman's hands, thickly callused and huge.  He was wearing handmade clothing and had the traditional beard.  I dug out the rough sketch that I'd tried to draft onto graph paper to show him what I meant.   I also sheepishly showed him the pictures that I took on my iPod so he could see what I meant.

He was personable and impressed by my sketch.  He asked all of the right questions, and it wasn't like talking to a salesperson in this for a commission but someone who really cared about what might be done. 

AG asked J did for a living, and if you've ever heard J try to explain it, imagine how it might sound to someone who doesn't use computers or televisions or even a phone.   He got this look on his face like, "Boy, that sounds ... weird."  But he was nice about it, just privately amused.



He promised to get us a quote.  And now we await that.  I'm not even sure how that is supposed to be handled.  Do we drive back out there?  Will he mail it to us?  Does he do mail?  I'm going to wait a week before I call the showroom and find out what our next step will be.

If we do end up going with AG, he has people who drive him to his worksite, and he'll have to come for more exact measurements.  And then...well, I'm assuming it takes time to make the pieces and then we'll have to make more arrangements.  Which might mean another long drive. But I think we are up to it.   If it falls within our budget...we'll get the quote and see.

Labels: kitchen

  ¶ 7:33 PM 1 comments