The Mono

A quote I often think of

2008-05-12T00:47:42Z

Posted here to keep it handy.

----------

Londo: "I was... never a child. I had responsibilies. I've had responsibilities for
as long as I can remember. Duty. Honor. Family."

G'Kar: "Ah. That explains a great deal."

Londo: "Really. And what exactly does it explain, G'Kar?"

G'Kar: "I spent my years in one shelter after another, but sooner or later I was able
to leave the shelter, and walk out into the daylight. You do not have that
luxury; you carry your shelter with you, every day. You did not grow up.
You grew old."

-- Babylon 5: "A View from the Gallery"

Rescuer of Avocados

2008-05-09T01:32:12Z

Since I have become increasingly frustrated with people who dump a couple of spoonfuls of salsa and an avocado into a bowl, mash it up, and call it guacamole (no, I'm looking mostly at restaurants here), I have decided to strike back by telling people exactly how easy it is to make The Good Stuff. Once you know, you have no excuse for making bland, gluey guacamole.

You need five food items, a kitchen knife, a bowl, a fork, and some strategy for eating the result.

Scale up as desired:
1 soft ripe avocado
1/8th of a lime
1 medium clove of garlic, crushed or minced
1/8 tsp salt, approximately
pepper

For you non-native-Californians who have never dealt with an avocado before, slice it lengthwise around the pit, then twist the two halves to take them apart. Hit the pit with the knife blade like you're using a hatchet, and when it's firmly embedded in the pit twist to get the pit out. Detaching it is a bigger problem.* Peel each half of the avocado, scraping out the inevitable brown spots (if there are none, it isn't ripe enough) and put the good bits in the bowl. Cry and reach for another avocado if the amount after trimming is less than half of the original.

Add the garlic. If you're incredibly lazy, you can even use the pre-chopped stuff in a jar. I like some garlic flavor, but if you know you love lots, add more. Just keep in mind it's not supposed to be the primary ingredient by volume.

Squeeze the heck out of the lime slice. Not a genteel, polite squirt; mash it. The amount of acidity you get will vary depending on the lime, but an eighth seems like a good starting point. Don't use lemon juice or you'll summon a lynch mob -- the flavor of the lime matters almost more than the acidity. If it still seems to be missing some zip at the end, add a little more.

Mash everything up with the fork. Guac lovers know that a little chunkiness is fine, but sometimes a smoother texture is desired. You don't need it as smooth as pudding, though.

Salt to taste, it's often about 1/8th of a teaspoon (a hearty pinch). Remember to leave it a little undersalted if you have salted chips.

Add pepper until you can just taste it. Taking little dabs "to see whether it needs more" is a great excuse to enjoy it before anybody else has a chance; do it often. It helps with fine tuning the flavors anyway.

Mix it all up well, and serve as soon as possible. Lime helps protect against oxidation, but avocados are always best served as close to when you crack the skin as you can.

What? If you wanted tomatoes, you should have made salsa. Onions aren't something I usually mess with, but if you want to, mince it finely and tell me it's in there so that I can shun your creation. You can add a little chile powder (or better still, hot paprika) if you like heat. Cilantro doesn't belong here -- save it for that salsa you're going to make. Keep your guacamole simple and fresh. :)

* I recommend banging the knife flatwise, pit and all, on the counter until the pit comes skidding off and gets lost somewhere in a dusty corner; laying the knife flat with the pit hanging off the edge of the sink or cutting block, then pressing down as you carefully drag/lever the blade out of the pit may work as well, without necessitating a game of hide-and seek afterward. As comments suggest, if you want to involve your fingers, push from the blunt edge of the knife blade toward the pit, rather than directing your flesh at the sharp edge.

The non-spoons energy model

2008-05-07T18:31:21Z

Water flow: 2
Reservoir size: 6
Crack severity: 1

I'm not sure I ever actually explained this one. Each category is out of 10. "Water flow" is how fast my energy replenishes after doing something; high is good. "Reservoir size" reflects my overall stamina: ignoring refill rate, how many things can I do in a short period before I run out of energy? Again, high is good. "Crack severity" takes into account anything which is sabotaging me at the moment -- inflammation, stress, hormones, being sick, and so on. The lower the better, as the more severe the crack in the reservoir, the fewer things I can do before it all runs dry. A higher crack severity than water flow means I'm rapidly headed for a crash, even if I'm not doing much.

So today is... slow. I have a decent amount of stamina, but I'd better not do things too quickly or I'll run out my energy before it has a chance to replenish. Nothing is really putting a drain on me at the moment, fortunately, so I'm just taking my time and being careful. The main thing is to take my activity level down to something my "water flow" level can handle.

Sleep resets the values, but obviously there are factors that influence it from day to day. There are too many variables for prediction, sadly.

The revolutions continue

2008-05-05T21:52:27Z

Happy birthday to the one who knows me best.

It's been interesting so far. Best wishes for another solar circumnavigation.

Life at 5 mph

2008-04-27T03:42:11Z

Caught up on LJ (I hit "skip=120"). Whew.

Lots of stuff brewing up for a thought-provoking post... hopefully later.

Today I baked rolls -- the usual little cheese rolls for school mornings, plus big fat Lunch Rolls as an experiment. One set has canadian bacon and American cheese (the cheese escaped wherever it could, but came out well otherwise) and the other has deli turkey, dill havarti, and a squirt of pesto added after they had cooled down a bit. All of them are now in the freezer; I'll test-drive them next week.

That was all the energy I had, sadly. I really need to plant stuff out, but simply walking around the house has been exhausting me this weekend. Sigh.

In the market

2008-04-26T03:01:16Z

By the way: my PDA died (it's not sure it wants to turn the screen on when it wakes up anymore). I'm in the market for a used one that runs PalmOS 3.5 or later, preferably for less than $100. Anyone looking to upgrade?

Lazy day

2008-04-26T02:57:12Z

It's been a long week... I gave myself permission to veg today.

I did drive into Pleasant Hill after breakfast, to check out the Master Gardener Help Desk... the schedule said that it had two MGs on duty, which is a full set, but I figured I could at least check out what was in the "pending" file. I ended up helping with the currently open cases as well, chatting with the MGs (we're always so social, I tend to forget that) and closing three cases by the end. I hadn't worked the desk for about a year, and every time I do it I remember how much I like it. I'm hoping to do it just about every other Friday until the end of term, then maybe more often in summer. They have three stations now, and the warm weather has brought enough work for three people, at least by the end of the week.

The interesting thing was when I overheard one of the other MGs fielding a call about a possible brown recluse spider. I told her afterward that it would be pretty funny if that call was from a friend of mine who had found it in the bathroom a day or two ago.... sure enough, around 11:30 or so pure_agnostic and hopeforyou walk in with a glass jar. At least I had some warning that I might see them; they hadn't known I'm a Master Gardener, I think, so they really hadn't expected to see me. :)

In case anyone else has occasion to use the information: the Master Gardener program is collecting specimens of suspected brown recluse spiders for a project at U.C. Riverside. They'll be shipped to an entomologist for identification, and the people who found them will be told what the spider was. I can't recall how long this is going on for, but I seem to recall it's all summer... since brown recluses are not known to haunt Central or Northern California (their territory tends toward the Southwest) I'm personally interested in whether people are finding them here. I keep being told we don't have them, other than the odd individual, and if they manage to establish a hold here that's something we all need to know about.

I haven't done much of anything for the rest of the day, but since walking the length of the yard and back wore me out, I think that's a good thing. At least I watered the fruit trees, and thinned the tiny nectarines.

Another day in the life

2008-04-21T16:29:41Z

The Cute Guy's name is Mike. I planned to ask him this morning, but first he was napping, then he got on the phone and was still conversing as we got to Davis. So instead I went down the car to someone I know he's well acquainted with, an older fellow, and asked. He suggested that next time I see TCG, I should greet him with "Good morning, Mike." A bit of mischief there. :)

The friend's name is Tom, which he gave me after I gave him mine. I doubt anything substantial will come of any of this, but it provides some small amusement for my early mornings. Besides, I'm stretching my boundaries and building confidence by talking/lightly flirting with strangers, which is something I've never felt comfortable with. Yay personal growth.

In other parts of life, the showers at the ARC are still fairly adequate, if a little drafty. Well worth it for an extra fifteen minutes in bed this morning.

Slow today, which is fine. It was quite a weekend -- I discarded my plans to go to Picnic Day in favor of helping with an emergency move. Eight hours later, I was still reasonably alert and carpooled down to San Jose for a party; I stayed over, got zinged by a mattress that is still a little too new, and spent much of the next day sort of out of it. I got a Dr. J appointment, though, and finally scored the ice cream I've been wanting for two weeks, so it wasn't a bad end to the day.

I responded to the frost warning last night (a month late! wtf) by putting plastic over the melons, which have flourished, and burying the still-tiny cucumber starts. I'll unearth them this afternoon. I suppose that not having planted any tomatoes yet turned out to be a good thing, as they and the peppers were easily carried to safety indoors. I hope that's the end of the cold weather... I want to get this garden going.

Ooooh, I need to pick the peas. Forgot about that.

Shiny!

2008-04-19T01:05:45Z

I made a dorodango.

It's not mirror-smooth, which may be due to my inexpert technique, the soil (Concord heavy clay makes it tricky to handle and causes things to go rather differently than either set of instructions), or both. It's getting pretty darn shiny despite the little pits and bumps, though, and as it gets more dry it may surprise me.

I plan to make two more, so far: one from Davis near the Student Farm, where they have limestone just under the soil which should make it quite pale, and one from the sandstone hills of Pleasant Hill. I expect that sandier soil will be easier to work with, as it sets harder and the fine particles make a better polish. Clay tends to stay wet longer, deform or scratch easily, and slough off under indelicate treatment.

Greg thinks I'm crazy. That's fine. I like my dorodango. :)

Tire, tire, tired

2008-04-16T16:29:57Z

It's been a tiring week.

Monday the train was late, which isn't normally a big deal (I have two hours of fudge time between arrival and class)... but then I got to Davis and discover I have a flat on my bike. Also not normally a big deal... but then I discover the enormous rip in my front tire. Stress failure, which must have happened just as I got to the station Thursday afternoon. Sigh.

I could buy a tire, or I could get one for "free" (tiny donation) at the Bike Church. I just needed a quick patch so that I could get across campus to it. I pulled out my spare tube and switched out the one on the bike, which had a 1/4" hole in it. Definitely an ex-tube. If I didn't fix the tire, though, the new tube would blow too.

I was already tired, and trekking to a couple of bike shops in an unsuccessful hunt for a temporary fix of the tire had me quickly running out of cope. I bought some duct tape, then discovered that it won't stick to the inside of the tire... argh. I ended up walking all the way to class with the bike after all, feeling ready to drop from exhaustion. After class I finished the walk to the Church, found a suitable tire, changed it out and walked (*sigh*) to the air station on the north end of campus to fill it back up. The ride back was easy in comparison. On my way to the train I bought more CO₂ cartridges, one of which would have saved me that last trek.

Yesterday I took a look at the back tire, figuring the front one had been a warning. I was horrified at the cracks in it, some of them running almost all the way through the rubber... it could go any time. I babied it, and finally decided to change it out in the 45 minutes I had between History class and my train home. I rode to the Church, picked out another tire, cleaned it (they're stacked next to the chicken pen, so they're pretty filthy sometimes), and put it on. I wasn't hurrying as much as perhaps I should have, since I realized while I was finishing up that I had 15 minutes to make my train. oops.

I found a working pump at the Church, thankfully, and put enough air in the tire to ride on... but I was down to 10 minutes by the time I mounted up. Time to run.

It was a mile and a half as the crow flies, and I made the train by 20 seconds. No time to park the bike; I rode it straight up to the train. I was dumb enough to try to rack it without taking the pack off the back, straining my shoulder (*sigh*). My lungs hurt, and I almost couldn't make it up the stairs to the seats. It was a few minutes later that I had to fight off a wave of nausea... I've never pushed it quite that hard before.

The bike went in my trunk (no racks at Martinez, not one). I went home, had a very nice early dinner, then headed off to a potluck -- the one I was racing so hard to have time to go to. I did get to soak my shoulder in the hot tub, but we probably should have come home earlier than we did -- I'm really tired today.

At least now I have confidence in both tires, both are fully inflated (I did that when I got home), and I can expect that the bike won't have any more issues for a while. I still need to tweak the derailler so that it has full use of its gears, but I've managed pretty well so far with the ones I have. I should go to the Church today, while it's officially open, and make a donation for the two tires... whatever it comes to (I'm expecting about $6 total) it'll be much cheaper than the $15 apiece they cost new.

I just find it a little ironic that I keep the bike because it saves me lots of energy over walking... yet it's tired me out much worse this week than walking would have.

It's the weekend...

2008-04-12T03:12:30Z

I have planted cucumbers and melons, sowed popcorn, and dug another tomato bed today.

For the rest of the weekend, these need my attention:

Taxes
Bills
~~Budget~~
~~Root beer rebottling~~
~~Laundry~~
Essay
~~Farmer's market (either Saturday or Sunday)~~
~~Carpet for litterbox pad~~
~~Comics run~~

I should also replant the sweet corn and sort out the tomato bed watering for the beds that are done; most of the rest of the watering is set up. Oh, and weeding/rock removal would be good.

I may want to set up the alfalfa brewer, and/or look into cooking soil for bean planters.

It turns out that when water accidentally gets into the bags of leaves I steal in the fall, it stews them into something closely resembling horse manure... at least, that's what it smells like. Makes sense, too. Let's see how it does for the tomatoes.

Every so often this happens.

2008-04-11T16:51:11Z

What do these things have in common?

Gaskell Ball
Davis Picnic Day
The one-year anniversary of a friend's hospitality business (big party)
A birthday gathering for another friend
The second-to-last day of the Cherry Blossom Festival
silverkun's moving day

That's right! They all fall on April 19th.

I'm doing two of them. I regret having to miss the others, but god damn, people.

Status check

2008-04-03T17:22:35Z

I'm doing pretty well (beyond having a cough because, surprise, my tonsils are swollen again). I've hit a few snags this week -- namely that the pack of yeast I used for the root beer last weekend was dead (the sarsaparilla is doing a little better), and apparently Yahoo!IM has changed its protocols yet again, so that I can't log on this morning. I'll deal with the root beer next week, and try to carve out a little time to look at IM clients (I have my eye on Freehoo for my text-based client, which is the hardest thing to find... no idea whether Gaim will still work this time).

In the meantime, I've collected a few observations on this quarter's classes.

Weed Population Biology (or Biology of Weed Populations or whatever you want to call it)... should be useful. Lots of weed ID, which has a very practical use in my everyday gardening, plus studies of how seed reservoirs work for different types (which determines how fast they can be gotten rid of). The teacher is a sweetheart, an older man who rolls his R's gently and has a shy smile. Not quite sure where he's from (Dr. Rejmanek, J is silent; his complexion could be Indian or South American). The class itself seems reasonable, considerably easier but along the same lines as Plant Anatomy. The first lab startled me because everyone in it was eager to get to work (filling flats and sowing them), did their part assiduously, and did things like cleaning up when they had run out of tasks. It was all very pleasant, and felt like teamwork. Never had a lab section quite like that.

Intro to Winemaking is set up as a general ed course, so it has both science and sociology components. Shouldn't be terribly hard; the teacher strikes me as the sort who will pass you if at all possible, and give you the benefit of the doubt to boot. The TA is a fellow I know from previous classes (Plant Path and Crop Ecology)... he was introduced as Will, from Britain, and the teacher assured us that "he speaks excellent English". Adams is definitely a kidder -- he has gotten several chuckles from the audience, and refers to our neighbor to the north as "Canadia". Not a bad class.

History is one I haven't gotten enough of a feel for. Prof. Walker is as interesting to listen to as I thought, but he warned he was something of a hard grader, and there are lots of minor assignments. I don't think I'll be stressing too much over them, as long as he's as clear about expectations as he promises to be. The reading has been cut down (thank goodness), but the first assignment was as easy to read as promised, and very very interesting. "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change, From Hawaii to Iraq" is very readable, and gives a good feel for where we're going in investigating U.S. influence in Latin America. Walker does try to give us readable books, which will be a relief after last quarter.

All in all, more fun than last round. Feels like less class time, too.

Technology hates me.

2008-04-01T22:16:03Z

Most things have gone well today. Everything that has gone wrong has involved a piece of electronic equipment. To wit:

I went to use my headphones today and found out that only one ear works. Somehow, the insulation on part of the articulation next to the plug got compromised, and I now have bare wires there. I get to either take the articulations off and attempt to fix it, or replace the plug entirely. I'm okay with a soldering iron, but the plug will never be quite the same.

I logged on to IM, lily, and my email via PuTTY, and my school webmail, on one of the South Hall terminals. Somewhere along the way, it lost connection to its Windows server... and then wouldn't come back up. I crashed a second one trying to bring up another PuTTY session to log out, then gave up. (From the looks of things, it came back up around an hour later with my windows still active, as I have random keystrokes in my IM window).

I opened my PDA to check what room my history class was in, and found that the battery compartment had opened (despite the tape holding it in place) and it had forgotten everything. I have a backup at home, dated Sunday, but I haven't yet figured out how to work it so that I can revive the thing up at Davis. It's worthless to me until I get home again.

My Meizu is fine, though I can't listen to it without headphones, and my watch hasn't rebelled. I'm praying that my laptop doesn't decide to chip in once I get home.

Since it has happened so rarely of late....

2008-03-28T18:56:28Z

I just wanted to let people know that I am thoroughly, ecstatically, boundlessly happy.

Even when school starts again, the multiple reasons for that happiness will still be there, and under the "aaargh" of school stress will still be the kernel of glowy contentment. I see no date of termination for it.

I thought you'd like to know. :)

Go tell it on the list

2008-03-27T18:12:40Z

Since vim doesn't have the satisfying feature of strikeout, I'll put my to-do list here.

Saturday:
~~brew root beer (Zatarain's) and sarsaparilla~~

Sunday:
rebraid

sometime this week:
essential:
~~clean out school bag~~
~~bake cheese rolls~~
~~do finances/bills~~
~~sign acceptance letter~~

would be really nice:
~~bake pie (I have strawberries that need to be used)~~ It didn't come out soupy! yay!
~~dig garden beds~~ anything more is gravy
plant corn for the_ogre
can up soup (chicken with wild rice, for lunches)
~~laundry~~
pot up tomatoes
~~sweep/clean room~~
~~punch another hole in my birk straps~~
~~fuss with the bicycle derailleur (the stop is bent)~~

Happy birthday

2008-03-25T20:33:49Z

to shadowwalkyr!

Enjoy your early birthday present: a miniature human!

Somebody grab silverkun

2008-03-23T05:50:45Z

and have him read Shrine of the Mall-Ninja. firestrike, have a look when you're back online.

Anyone who has run a White Wolf LARP will find this guy all too familiar.

I've been having to read it a little at a time, because it makes my head hurt. You think the first part is funny? Wait until you get to halfway down... and it just keeps getting worse.

I am not responsible for any keyboards you may have to clean/replace, so watch what you're drinking when you read it.

Still sinking in

2008-03-23T02:32:13Z

I will never have to deal with that rather pathetic history teacher ever again.

I will not have to do another idiotic in-class essay.

I will no longer have a class where they treat us like naughty cheating sixth-graders.

I won't have to wrestle with the TA of plant biotech over how a journal abstract should be written.

I won't have to read that really horrible Crop Ecology book again. (I sold it today.)

I (presumably) won't have to deal with calculating root and soil water potentials after this. Hallelujah!

I won't have to struggle through that painfully disorganized book about Canudos anymore.

Here's to next quarter being a little more interesting (in a good way).

And the diagnosis is...

2008-03-13T01:22:53Z

It's flu.

It's been so long since I've had a lingering bout of it that I couldn't tell for sure... besides, I didn't get the usual signs of onset. Given that my tonsils sat it out until yesterday, then turned into raw meat again, I suspect the lack of warning was a sign of my currently dysfunctional immune system. Sigh. I also don't remember hurting this badly.

I went up to school today, partly to get checked out, partly so that I wouldn't miss the entire week of plant biotech (and finals review sessions for the other two classes). Dr. Kono heard me out, checked my temperature history (still at 99.5, down from 103 a couple of days ago), pronounced that it was probably flu, and told me "go home before you infect anyone else". She managed to delay me long enough that I missed plant biotech anyway -- given how stern she was about how I shouldn't be out among the general population while still contagious, I can't rule out that she did it deliberately.

I told her that if it weren't for the pain, I'd be okay. She didn't seem to take that seriously until I asked her whether I could take Aleve opposite Tylenol, because I was hitting the limits on Tylenol dosage and it sometimes wasn't quite enough.* She suggested some other OTC painkillers as well, and when I said that most of them don't work for me, she replied that all she had to offer were narcotics. Once I told her those was on the table, we had a little chat. It seems that she's sensitive to codeine as well (hallelujah!) and she has a much better grasp of the relationships between the opiate narcotics than I do. She had found her sensitivity to codeine/Vicodin when she had her wisdom teeth out, and said that throwing up when you have holes in your mouth is no fun. When I told her I needed something in case my tonsillectomy was painful, she visibly flinched at the thought of going through the experience with holes in your throat.

So in the interest of getting me to sleep a little better right now, and test-driving a possible backup painkiller for July, she gave me a scrip for Tramadol, the only non-regulated opiate narcotic. Apparently it doesn't have enough of an addiction potential to worry the government. She also suggested I look into Toradol, which is not an opiate at all, but needs an initial injection before the patient can switch to pills. (She doesn't know why either.)

I took a half-pill of Tramadol almost two hours ago, and I feel okay. My brain is kind of slow, which I expect from a narcotic, but I haven't had a trace of the horrible vertigo I get from codeine. The half-strength dose has taken the edge off my remaining aches... it remains to be seen whether it'll be potent enough to be worthwhile, but I'm tentatively ruling out the worst-case scenario with this one. I suspect the worst outcome I'll have now is that it simply might not work. Feeling drowsy is fine, as I want it mainly for sleeping... and if I'm in enough pain during the day to need more than Tylenol, I probably need to rest quietly anyway.

I brewed some bitter but potent herbal cough syrup yesterday, which worked well last night -- I had to take a second dose around 0100, but it did keep me from hacking up a lung while I was trying to sleep. Between that and the Tramadol, which makes me about as drowsy as Benadryl, maybe I'll actually get a decent night's sleep for the first time this week.

* Answer: naproxen is a cousin of ibuprofen, and either one is fine in combination with acetaminophen.

Whether I'll make it to class tomorrow is anyone's guess. I'm almost tempted to say "in for a penny" and write off the rest of the week, since I need to catch up anyway. Biotech's final review is Monday, and I need to do my own in the other two classes... and I need to rest in so many ways. Not sure I could justify going out to the Exploratorium for Pi day on Friday if I skive off, though. :)

I'll be going up Tuesday afternoon, I think, to catch the history TA's office hours and talk to a prospective advisor. No classes that day.

Vegetating

2008-03-09T04:14:30Z

I hope everyone else is enjoying their weekend... I made the decision to drop any parties, social obligations, or plans to go out, and I'm spending the weekend at home by myself. I don't regret it at all. There was one small thing I was going to go to Friday night, but it got moved to another weekend, so I spent the evening reading (both published fiction and my own work). It says something about my improved state of mind that I have enough brain cycles to get interested in my own stories again, pulling them out and reading them to visit the "friends" that live in my head. I'm not feeling quite up to writing again, but I'm getting there.

Today I have repotted my orchid, gotten my usual set of comic books and groceries, failed to connect with my brewer friend (oh well), worked on the front yard trench, dug out the first tomato bed in the garden, weeded around the fruit trees out front, ordered seeds, fixed my Fastweb profile, and looked through a bunch of scholarship/fellowship offerings. I need to fix my FAFSA for this year, but otherwise I've gotten everything essential out of the way.

I got the hard part of the trench dug out to 18" -- the part that we didn't dig out with the machine last summer -- and now I'm down to clearing out the dirt that's fallen into the part we dug with the trencher. It's fairly quick and easy, just tedious. My dad offered to help me trim the barrier material to size tomorrow, so that I can put it in place once the trench is cleared out. The barrier has been the sticking point for this whole project... once that's done, I can install the watering system in a day or so of work, then I can call up the tree trimmers and ask for a pile of wood chips. Getting the whole place buried in mulch will reduce my stress enormously -- I hate driving down the road and seeing the mess that's out there now.

If I have to wait until fall to plant anything more out there, so be it. I suspect we'll have hot weather early this year, and I don't want to crisp things... besides, I need to revisit my plans for what goes where. I can't wait to put in the herb patch, as digging around in my potted plants for just a little more of this or that herb has been driving me crazy. I'll have my oregano, thyme, rosemary, terragon, and lemongrass all in one place. Not to mention being able to move the rhubarb and the currants to a real, established, permanent bed. So much has been on hold these last few years...

Meanwhile my brain has been working out a way to make a drought-tolerant, wind-resistant, heat-loving front yard for very little money -- I've got 90% of the place solved already for about $100-120 and a few weekends of reasonable work. As if I didn't have enough challenges. I've never claimed to be sane...

Not a bad finish to the week

2008-03-07T16:44:59Z

I overheard the fellows right behind me talking about a bomb scare on a college campus that happened yesterday... I was curious (the cute guy was saying that nothing like that had happened while he attended that college), so I asked where they were talking about.

Did you guess they were talking about U.C. Davis? I didn't. The older fellow said that it happened around the middle of the day yesterday, while I was on campus, but the bulletin sitting in my mailbox says it was actually "last night". They found explosive materials; rumor has it they included two complete pipe bombs. I hadn't heard anything about it until the train ride.

That was an interesting start to the morning.

On the personal side, I'm feeling relaxed and a little lazy, but not as exhausted as I have been. I'm feeling pretty good, partly because I calmly and smoothly complimented the cute guy on his looks, and he took it well. Yay for courage.

I need to send off another slew of email to plant path professors... I guess the morning can't be all fun and games. :)

Edit: Apparently it was the night before last, and the evacuation lasted until noon yesterday. Color me oblivious.

Revisiting old friends

2008-03-05T17:16:46Z

It's funny... I read cheerful books (fantasy with, largely, happy endings)... but I listen to rather dark music. It occurred to me when I was introducing a friend to XTC -- I hadn't realized how grim a lot of "Skylarking" actually is -- and I'm reminded of it again now. Depeche Mode may have changed the style of their darkness toward mystery and sensuality with "Songs Of Faith And Devotion", but the fact remains that "Music For The Masses" is full of betrayal and unhappiness, and "Violator" is focused on vices.

Still.... nobody sounds like Dave Gahan. Talk about an iconic singer. I may love the way Maynard James Keenan sings, but his isn't a voice that haunts my subconscious.

It strikes me that songs end up being the set of friends that never really leave you. You may outgrow them, and they may mean different things to you at various stages of your life... but you can always go back and visit. I first started listening to "Music For The Masses" when I was fourteen and angsty; I listen to it today and wonder what my "friend" would think of where I am now. I certainly didn't expect to end up here.

Down with HFCS

2008-03-03T02:27:19Z

Even though the whole corn-based ethanol craze has people coming up with pie-in-the-sky predictions and groundless optimism, before it all comes crashing down (and it will), it has at least done a couple of good things:

It's brought the selling price of corn up from its stagnant level of four decades, where it didn't even budge for inflation -- that's good for farmers, and

The spike in price -- it's doubled in the last five years -- has made corn syrup immensely less attractive to food manufacturers. Add that to the organic movement, where cane is not only easier to grow organically but not potentially tainted with GMOs, and we're starting to shake loose the ubiquitous presence of high fructose corn syrup.

On a personal note, I've found that corn syrup has increasingly had a "thickening" effect in my throat, to the point that I end up feeling thirstier after I've drunk a soda with HFCS, and I cough more. As a result, I've started avoiding soda (not easy when you can't drink the water most places). I brew my own, but only when I have time and energy. So I've begun looking for cane-sugar soda... and found that, in addition to good old Hansen's, Whole Foods' own brand uses cane sugar, and (what do you know) so does Jones, which I had never looked twice at before. Safeway hasn't started making standard soda with cane sugar yet, but their organic line of sparkling lemonade/fruit juices is cane-sugar sweetened, and their cranberry juice cocktail is too. I hope that other companies will start joining in as the price of corn continues to rise -- most of my friends prefer cane sugar in their soda anyway, if they don't do diet, so it may sell fairly well.

If nothing else, other processed foods may start quietly getting more beet and cane sugar. One downside is the rising cost of wheat as more farmers grow corn, but that will stabilize soon enough.

One little, two little, three little Vorlons...

2008-03-02T17:36:23Z

I'm at the point that I'm counting the tomato sprouts in my light rack twice a day.

It's a good thing I've grown all but one of these eleven varieties before... otherwise I'd be worried about the fact that Kellogg's Breakfast hasn't shown any activity at all, while every single one of my Black Krim seeds is up, and I have one Sudduth Brandywine sprout out of six seeds. After a few years of this, I know that 1) Black Krim is very eager, 2) Kellogg's Breakfast comes up late with weak seedlings susceptible to leaf crud, and 3) Sudduth is irregular but ultimately fairly dependable at germination. It'll all work out.

The commercial seedling mix packs down a little too much for my taste, but I do seem to be keeping it moist enough: no sticktight seed coats yet this time. Trying to ease the coat off the leaves without beheading the whole thing is always tough.

Four out of five Vorlons so far. It gets to compete with Woman's Name Starting With A for which one gives me the first slicing tomato. The race is on...