River of Consciousness

Labor Day Weekend 2011

2011-09-08T13:40:00.000-04:00

I acquired a Flip Slide vidcam shortly before they announced they were canceling the product line, but I still love it. Plus, I got to pick my own design for the forward-facing side, which was really cool. And then it sat in my bag for a while. But this long weekend (I'm taking the whole week off, and Julie took the Friday and Monday bracketing the weekend) I decided to put it to use, much to Julie's eventual annoyance. No, she really was a good sport, as you'll see.

After a day or two of filming, I sat down with iMovie on the MacBook Air (11-inch, works great for WoW after a few setting tweaks) for another day or two and picked, chose, edited, titled, etc. my way into my first iMovie. I also learned how to use iTunes Home Sharing, which was very cool.

So, I now invite you to the exciting times at Castle Henderscott on this rainy extended Labor Day weekend. Let the snark commence.

Coming soon: I have footage from yesterday's pantry makeover, and soon I'll be turning it into another little vid. I know you're on the edge of your seats.

American Idol Tour Season 10

2011-09-06T13:24:00.004-04:00

American Idol Tour Season 10, a set on Flickr.

The day they announced when tickets would go on sale, I set the date/time as an appointment on my iPhone, with a 24 hour alert. When the alert went off, I notified Julie that her ticket acquisition skills would be needed, and she warmed up her TicketMaster muscles in order to secure us the fabulous tickets she did. As has become our tradition, we also each scheduled a day off for post concert sleeping in, which worked out well this year since the day after the concert was the Friday of Labor Day weekend.

We did manage to get a spot in the parking garage across the street from Worcester's DCU Center, but we were on the sixth floor, which meant a LONG time of sitting and waiting to exit after the show. Made for a short walk to the entrance, however. We did get there about 15 minutes after scheduled start, but I don't think we missed much. Paul was singing as we took our seats (floor, row S), and he's my least favorite of this year's bunch.

In past years (this is our third), the format was very countdown oriented and sectioned. This year it was really well planned, and while they did have the solo performances in order of elimination, the flow was much smoother, with the duets, small and large group numbers integrated so it seemed more like a single show than a series of performers.

There was a pre- or early teen girl in the row ahead of us, sporting a hand painted, "Give Metal a Chance," in homage to James Durban. Speaking of James D., he was the only one to make an audience entrance, which happened to bring him within perhaps ten feet of us as he crossed the floor. Julie was ecstatic.

The first photo above is James and Lauren Alaina performing simultaneous stage leaps - awesome! Click on the yellow flickr link to go through the whole set. Many of the photos have additional comments.

Directly in front of me was a budding videographer, who at maybe seven or eight years of age spent the whole concert standing on her seat, waving her multicolored flashing light stick in her left hand, while steadfastly recording the whole show on her iPhone. While wearing a fabulous poofy ballet skirt, no less. I do expect to see her at the Academy Awards one day.

I was disappointed with Thia and Pia's numbers, as they really went pop, rather than the jazzy (Thia) or ballad (Pia) numbers they do so well.

Everyone did really well, although Stefano still seems like he's doing his best to sing how he thinks a boy band hunk would sing. The low point was when he walked out onto the forward stage extension and peeled off his t-shirt in order to finish out his song topless. Cheese-fest, but the teens loved it, based solely on the squeal-fest that ensued.

Even the American Idol himself, Scotty McCreery, did very well, and I found myself dancing despite myself.

Another great Idol night. Can't wait for Season 11.

My rating: Transwarp (5 star)
Julie's rating: Hole in One (5 star)

Post Irene Power

2011-08-31T22:09:00.002-04:00

Irene brought massive power outages, with ours joining the crowd at 10:00 Sunday morning. It just returned, a bit before 10:00 pm on Wednesday. This is 48 hours earlier than NSTAR projects it will have fully restored all their customers in our town, so we're tickled pink. So are the neighbors, judging by the whoopin' and a-hollerin' we hear up and down the street.

More Irene details later, perhaps tomorrow or Friday, with photos. For now, it's off to bed, secure in the knowledge that electronics are charging, alarms will chime in the morning, and I'll be able once again to log some Rosetta Stone (Spanish) and some dailies (WoW) before work.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Framingham,United States

Prepping for Irene

2011-08-27T14:23:00.001-04:00

The rain just started a few minutes ago, but already it's a downpour. The thunder had been rumbling around for a half hour or so, so I knew the window for storm prep was coming to an end. The heart of the storm isn't supposed to get here for another 24 hours or so, but this is one wide-ranging weather system. The good news is that we're well inland (about 30 miles west of Boston) so there's no storm surge issue, and we're at the top of a very long hill, so flooding really isn't a problem (we do get puddles in the garage, which is built into the slightly uphill side).

I got up early this morning with the intention of giving the lawn a last minute mow, but we'd had some showers overnight so it was just too wet. Instead I weeded the gardens, and broke out the weed whacker to clear out the edges of the gardens and around the shrubs. My hope was that the debris would get blown away by the storm winds, but I think this rain is just going to pound them solidly to the ground. I also tackled the volunteer forest that had emerged at the edge of the mint garden after the initial foray with the string trimmer. I don't know what these things were, but they were about three feet tall and appeared to be readying some prodigious seed heads. The downside of the hilltop is the wind factor, so I took the preemptive measure of controlled-downing a dead birch tree that was threatening the yard.

The deck finally got the attention it deserved, and it is now clear of the assorted flower pots and trays that had been attracting all the dead leaves from autumns past. The cute metal ladybug wind chimes usually guarding the raspberries have been garaged. I folded down the backs of the heavy adjustable adirondack chairs, and then decided to relocate them to the newly cleared deck. The grill is securely covered and in a sheltered corner, along with the additional propane tanks. I flipped the smallish round wooden table over, reducing its profile and blow-away likelihood. After I had gone back in, showered and changed out of my thoroughly dirt-covered gardening togs, I received an email newsletter from the local bird store. I had earlier decided to leave the (empty) bird feeders on their hangers, since they would need to flip almost upside down in order to blow away, but the bird store ladies strongly advised bringing in all feeders. I tucked my feet into my Merrell's (the sneakers are soaked from the earlier tromping through the wet grass) and collected all four feeders, which are now keeping the metal ladybugs company in the garage.

So here I sit, watching the pouring rain and listening to the thunder. Jules had an optimistic 11:30 tee time at a course not too far from here, so I'm thinking she at least got in 9 holes before being called in. We'll soon see. I should have picked up some Duraflames for the fireplace. Oh well, candles will have to do, because I'm in for the duration now.

Your Highness

2011-08-14T09:21:00.000-04:00

We had a Natalie Portman mini-fest last night, where we each chose a movie from Amazon Unbox (downloaded to the Tivo), and we each happened to choose one of hers. My selection was first, so Julie begrudgingly agreed to watch Your Highness, with the knowledge that her choice would be automatically downloading immediately after.

Your Highness is a spoof of medieval quest films, with a beloved, overachieving prince (James Franco as Fabious), his damsel in distress (Zooey Deschanel as Belladonna), a petty, unrealized potential, jealous brother (Danny McBride as Thadeous) and a mysterious warrior from another land (Natalie Portman as Isabel). Overall, it's a crude humor, profanity laden, sight-gag ridden and at times gratuitously bloody movie that made me laugh out loud and revel in the bad-assery that is Natalie Portman. Isabel is Amidala Unleashed and Padme with a Potty-Mouth. She has Nina's insane drive from Black Swan, without the self-destructive bent. The destruction aims squarely at her foes, starting with (spoiler alert) a sadistic captor (somehow they squeezed a Mad Max style arena scene into a knights questing movie) whose giant hydra hand puppet she dismembers one finger/neck at a time, finishing with an evil-soliloquy-ending javelin to the chest.

What's that? How are the rest of the cast/characters? Oh yeah, they're in there too. But let's just be clear - it's all about Ms. Portman, who can deliver outrageously tacky lines with such gravitas that you don't notice how offensive they would be had they been spoken by another actor in another setting, and whose fight scenes out-BAMF even Samuel L. Jackson.

My recommendation: set aside your bad taste filter for a couple of hours (in fact, lock it out of the house for the duration) and just go with it.

Ratings:
Warp Factor Scale: Warp 9 (4 star).
Tee Shot Scale: (I'l update it once Julie's awake, but I'm guessing it's a surprised Fairway/3 star).

Reviews and Custom Scales

2011-08-14T08:12:00.001-04:00

I've designed some appropriate ratings scales, so I'll need to write some reviews to go with them. For reviews from a past blog-life, see this index to reviews on my old blog. They can be quite entertaining. I'm trying to remember where the fuck I found time to watch all that stuff, let alone write about it, while working full time and going to law school. Oh yeah, Starbucks and Red Bull.

But enough nostalgia. For reference, here are the scales: the Warp Factor scale for me, and the Tee Shot scale for Julie (I haven't told her about this yet, but I'm sure she'll love it. Or at least she'll humor me).

Warp Factor Scale:
Space Dock - No interest
Maneuvering Thrusters - 1 star
Impulse Engines - 2 stars
Warp 5 - 3 stars
Warp 9 - 4 stars
Transwarp - 5 stars

Tee Shot Scale:
Rain Day - No interest
Out of Bounds - 1 star
In the Rough - 2 stars
Fairway - 3 stars
On the Green - 4 stars
Hole in One - 5 stars

What's in a Geek Name?

2011-07-16T09:22:00.001-04:00

A colleague was wearing an awesome DS9 t-shirt at the office the other day, and my complimenting him on it launched us into a discussion thread that went something like this:

I mentioned that my niece and her husband were considering the name Julian for their upcoming noob, and my feeling that if this were to be the first name, the middle name should be Bashir.
He wondered whatever happened to that actor, as he could not recall having seen him in anything beyond DS9.
I said that he was in that Oscar-nominated movie in the desert, with Matt Damon, but I couldn't remember the name.
He recalled that it was Syriana.
I described another movie he'd been in, that I couldn't remember the name of, but it was with Patricia Clarkson. He didn't know who she was, so I mentioned The Station Agent, that she was in with that guy Peter whose last name I couldn't remember but I held my hand up at about 3.5 feet to indicate his height. I also said he was in that show with Carla Gugina, and of course I couldn't remember the name, but it was awesome.
I then excitedly recalled that he was in that show on BBC, where portals in time open up randomly and stuff comes through.
He rolled his eyes at me and proceeded to chastise me for not being able to remember the title Doctor Who.
I rolled my eyes further and chastised him that they don't use portals to time travel on Doctor Who, they use the TARDIS. There are rifts in Doctor Who, but not portals. Although possibly that fireplace to 18th century France could be classified as a portal.
He then correctly placed the show as Primeval, which he had never seen.
He left my office, and I was left secure in my geek status, even though I was having serious trouble remembering names.

Happy New Year 2011

2011-01-01T08:03:00.001-05:00

I see I haven't posted since last spring. I would say the biggest contributors to my noncontributions to the blog world have been:

World of Warcraft
Shoulder injury

Let's start with the shoulder injury, since the root cause was the subject of previous posts: those raised beds. I did clean out the area for the two additional in front and built the last two beds. Then I took on the task of moving the dirt from the huge pile in the front yard into the beds. Most unfortunately, I thought it would go faster if I used a bigger shovel, so I dragged out the snow shovel and scooped huge piles into the wheelbarrow, which I filled to brimming and pushed up the hill. Over and over and over. Yeah, not so bright. After a couple of months of thinking the pain would pass, I saw my doctor, who sent me to an ortho, who gave me a cortisone injection and sent me on my way. That eased it a bit, but even that small relief faded. Eventually back to the doctor, who sent me to physical therapy. Another couple of months of stalling, and now I'm in my 11th week of PT, with some improvement. The PT did warn me that with the nature of my injury and the length of time I had been dealing with it, I should view my progress on a month to month basis, not week to week. So I have hope, and am already planning my gardening for next year.

On a related note, the dirt pile in the driveway remained through the summer and fall, though not as massive as upon delivery. It sprouted tall plant life and became a sort of wildlife refuge, which I thought was pretty cool, even though it blocked my side of the driveway and I had to navigate the Mini around it daily. One day eleven turkeys were meandering around and through it, and on several occasions entire flocks of small birds would launch themselves from it when I pulled into the driveway. Julie was not amused. I was rescued by my sister and nephew, who came over one afternoon prior to snowfall and cleared away the last of the pile. My existing framed beds are now nicely topped off, and I have a couple of new unframed beds for next year.

On to World of Warcraft. Sometime in the late May timeframe I finally tried WoW, which I had been avoiding for years as I suspected I would be drawn in to the world of online gaming like a speck of space dust to a black hole. I was right. In recent weeks, however, the Azeroth fever has broken, and I've cut down my logged in time to permit the return of other pastimes. Jules is immensely relieved.

So anyway, blah, blah, blah. All this to say it's New Year's Day, and time for fresh starts. I changed the design of the blog a bit, and hopefully I'll be returning on a more regular basis to entertain with tales from my continuing adventures. Happy New Year!

Dragon Challenge

2010-05-02T19:57:00.002-04:00

So I've been using speech recognition quite a bit lately, especially on the new iPad. This is appropriate, I suppose, since I do work for a speech recognition company. I love the Dragon Dictate app (get it now while it's still free), and I've really fallen hard for Siri, the "personal assistant" app. This thing is awesome! You say what you want to know, and it finds it for you, or does errands for you.

Want a dinner reservation? "Find a table for two at 5:00 near here." After displaying what it thinks you've asked, and you confirm its accuracy, it searches. Next thing you know, it's showing you available reservations on Open Table. You pick what you want, and you've got reservations.

"What's playing in Imax?" "Where's the nearest supermarket."

"Tweet I'm heading out for dinner and a movie." Yes, it will post it on Twitter for you.

"Remind me to pick up tomatoes after work." It will prompt you for a date and time, and will then email you the message on schedule.

I did just stump the Dragon recognition engine, though. I'll admit, it was a challenging dictation. I wanted to create a note in SimpleNote (another cool app I found today), listing the take out order I was about to place. I decided to say it in Dragon and then copy it to SimpleNote. What I said was:

"Samba style tuna salsa
El topo maki
Spicy tuna tortilla maki
Hibachi filet with fried rice
Fried gyoza"

What it came up with was:

"So much time to cell phone and tempo monkey spicy tuna tortilla month killed so you may have thought she was fried rice."

Oh well, most people would have had a hard time deciphering what I had said, and the output was quite entertaining. Other than this, the recognition has been quite accurate, though I haven't tried it on anything lengthy. Perhaps the next blog post will be dictated.

And remember - watch the tempo when with your monkey, or you may be mistaken for a fried grain.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Ledgewood Rd,Framingham,United States

Four Raised Beds

2010-04-04T17:00:00.003-04:00

I spent quite a bit of time, and some bit of money, at Lowes yesterday, equipping myself for the raised gardens. I'm traveling for business on Tuesday through Friday and am hoping to schedule a loam/compost delivery next Saturday, so today was building day.

After much perusing of bird things, garden things, lawn furniture and power tools, I grabbed a couple of boxes of exterior screws and twenty-four 1 inch x 12 inch x 4 foot boards, cashed out and loaded them all into Julie's Subaru. She took my smaller Mini Cooper to the golf course for the day and enjoyed driving in the sun with the top down.

Then I went back in for some bird seed, cracked corn and seeds for sweet basil, parsley and oregano. I know, I know - how many seed packets do I need? Clearly, I don't care to distinguish need from want at this point.

Once I got home, I decided to put off the actual construction until today. But today I got out there with my corded drill and outdoor extension cord (I longingly eyed the cordless drills yesterday but am sticking it out with my twenty-something year old Black and Decker that I received as a gift while in college), the boards, the box of screws, a kneeling pad, my iPod and headphones. And here are the results:

That's the little cherry tree to the right just above them. It's budding out quite nicely.

Next weekend I'll line the beds with cardboard and newspapers, then haul up the loam/compost that will hopefully be in the driveway by then.

For those of you inclined towards mathematics - you're right. Those are only sixteen boards, not the aforementioned twenty-four. The remaining eight are for two raised beds in the front of the house, but I need to rake out very old (previous homeowner old) decorative mulch and unearth the landscaping plastic before I can put those beds in place, and I'm just too fracking worn out at this point. But good for you for noticing.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Ledgewood Rd,Framingham,United States

Cherry Tree Attended To

2010-03-25T18:33:00.001-04:00

First off, let me note that I'm listening to the American Idols songs I've purchased so far from this season. Crystal Bowersox rocks the house, and the studio versions are totally worth the purchase. Okay, on to gardening.

After leaving it nestled in its box in the garage for a few days until the pouring rain passed, this evening after work I planted the cherry in its new home, off the southeast corner of the house.

But first, check out the new growth the raspberries are putting forth:

Now, back to the tree. You may recall that I posted previously on the fact that I stood right next to the box in the garage without paying it any mind. Here's the visual:

Yes, this box is as tall as me. Okay, now let's get everything loaded into the wheelbarrow and haul it up the hill around the side of the house and to the designated planting spot...

But wait - first a picture of the daffodils that finally decided to bloom:

Okay, back to the wheelbarrow:

I've got the organic garden soil, the shovel, kneeling pad and of course the tree. Again heeding the information I absorbed all winter, I dug the hole both deep and wide, to give the little roots plenty of loose soil in which to spread themselves. Once more, this shovel does a great job of slicing through the lawn:

After lots of digging, prying out rocks, dumping and mounding dirt and so on, I proudly present - the tree!

The Unnoticed Arrival of the Cherry Tree

2010-03-23T07:30:00.002-04:00

"Why is the door open?" This is the question Julie posed as we pulled up the street to our house last evening. I tore myself away from the Sookie Stackhouse novel on my iPhone to look up and see that the front door was closed. It's also still proudly bearing the VIP ENTRANCE sign we posted for the Oscar Party, but that's beside the point.

More to Julie's point was that the garage door on her side was indeed open. It has a motion sensor, and there was a leaf dangling from a cobweb that had caused the door to reverse just before it had touched down in the morning. We hadn't noticed, as once we saw the door moving down we had driven off to begin the work week. Our bad.

After we pulled into the garage, I hopped out, captured the leaf and associated spider silk, and returned them to the great outdoors, where they belong. Then I went in to start dinner while Julie went back out to pick up the laundry (an occasional treat - the wash, dry and fold place).

"Is that the cherry tree in the garage?" This is the question Julie posed as she came up the stairs bearing a bag of neatly folded laundry.

"Tree? What tree? Where?"

She replied that it was in the middle of the garage. The only out of the ordinary thing I had seen was the box with the dead steering pump, but that was way too small to be mistaken for a freakin' tree, plus it was against the side wall, not in the middle.

So I tore myself away from the Soyrizo, beans and rice as well as from the gardening podcast I had playing on the kitchen mini speakers, to go down to the garage and investigate.

Huh.

There, between the two garage doors and directly next to the motion sensor was a six foot tall, three-sided narrow box clearly marked LIVE PLANT. How I had stood next to it and then walked right on by, I have no idea.

Of course, it was pitch dark by then, so planting was not on the dinner menu. And today it's raining. I guess this evening I'll be breaking out the raincoat, rainpants and totally awesome neoprene and rubber gardening boots with the dragonflies printed all over them so I can get that tree settled into its new home.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Waltham,United States

Raspberry Planting

2010-03-21T18:54:00.001-04:00

I'm sure you'll be relieved to learn that I got the little raspberry twigs planted snugly into their new home, hopefully without any lasting trauma to them (or to myself).

The night they arrived I had nothing in which to plant them, other than the lawn. I thought they'd need something more than that after their journey from Territorial Seeds. The next night was bowling night, so they had to stay in their temporary cardboard crib for another day. Then Thursday after work Julie and I stopped by Lowe's on the way home (carpooling due to Mini issues) and picked up some topsoil/compost mix. I wanted to go to Russell's Garden Center in Wayland, but with all the rain we had last weekend and their close proximity to the Sudbury River, we couldn't get to them. Had I been by myself I probably would have persevered and gone the REALLY long way to get there, but when carpooling with Julie, the shortest route and time spent is generally the best. This is particularly true when it involves yard and garden themed events.

Four very heavy bags later, we finished our drive home and I went to work.

I brought out the raspberry shipping box from the kitchen, then emerged from the garage with a pair of gloves and assorted gardening tools, and set them down on the field of battle:

Next, time to unpack the plants:

Hard to believe these are going to turn into a thriving raspberry patch, eh? Now came the sweaty portion of the evening - digging the holes. I used the straight edge of the shovel to cut into the turf and then to undercut it so I could yank it out in chunks. I did take the time to knock back some of the dirt and as many worms as I could spot, so they could continue their good deeds for the soil. Then the grass chunks went into the purple bucket (since the wheelbarrow was full of the Lowe's dirt) for later transport to the back of the house. I think I got better as I went along, and the second through fifth plantings seemed to end up with larger holes and bigger mounds. But I'm sure they'll all do just fine. Here you can see the first one in the ground, with the second one underway, then the second one all done:

I like this shovel, as the top of the blade has two little platforms on which I can jump/stand to push the blade into the ground. I would have been in serious trouble if I'd had to rely on my shoulder muscles rather than throwing my formidable weight into it.

Fast forward to an hour later:

Okay, that last one's from the next morning. Since I started this after work and after the side trip to the big box store, it was getting dark by the time I packed up to go back inside. Thank goodness for the clocks having jumped ahead the previous weekend, or I would have been doing this by the glow of the solar driveway lights!

Of course, once the plants were in the ground I still had to haul the turf clumps around to the back. My, my, but those things are heavy! I had to use the purple bucket to gather them in sets and dump them into the wheelbarrow, and then I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get the wheelbarrow up the hill on the side of the house. But I persevered, and soon was able to unceremoniously dump the clumps around back to dry out. In a couple of days I'll toss them into the woods.

Yes, I know I still need to add a support system for them. However, I don't expect them to shoot up two feet before next weekend, so just back the hell off.

Julie was kind enough to take on making dinner and cleaning the litter box while I was out in the yard. Good thing, because by the time I finished I would have settled for a handful of granola and the litter box would have been ignored.

SO - the landscaping and gardening makeover has begun. Although Territorial Seeds didn't give me any heads up about the raspberries, I did get an email on Friday that another package of live plant(s) had shipped. No indication of what. I checked the website, and since the asparagus crowns don't ship until mid-April, it must be the cherry tree. I have two bags of the Stuff from Lowe's left, so that should do nicely.

Orphan Raspberries on the Doorstep

2010-03-17T18:21:00.002-04:00

Last evening I arrived home to find five baby raspberry bushes swaddled in plastic and cardboard and left on my doorstep. Okay, so they were from Territorial Seeds, and I ordered them back during the mid-winter inaugural seed catalog fest. But I'm not ready for them yet! I thought I'd have another week or two to get the planting area ready. Now I live in fear that I'll come home to find twenty-five asparagus crowns also waiting. And a little cherry tree. I'm not ready!!!!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Milford,United States

2010-03-13T22:21:00.001-05:00

In the course of trying to figure out what happened with the long post on the down events with associated up events, I encountered another up. The Blogpress app claimed it posted, but it in fact had not. The post wasn't even listed in the history in the app, which is usually complete. While checking the various settings to see if I had screwed something up, I discovered the facebook and twitter connect features. I set them up, and now I can easily send links to posts to my facebook and twitter accounts. Yet another plus from a minus.

The biggest plus from a minus today, though: after spending 6.5 hours at the Apple Store or wandering the mall waiting for some procedure or another to be attempted on Julie's MacBook, including a 1 hour and 52 minute call with Apple Support (including a brief conversation with an actual iTunes representative - which is apparently unheard of - I let the Apple Store Genius who was assisting us get on the phone because he was acting like we had a direct line to god), Julie's iTunes is now fully functional once again.

But bottom line - how could the day be all that bad? I started it off by pre-ordering an iPad, followed up by listening to some of my favorite gardening podcasts. Can it really get any better than that?

I Guess I'm Over It Now

2010-03-13T14:25:00.001-05:00

I just wrote a fairly long post about the various events conspiring to bring me down, followed by a list of the corresponding brighter side to each.

Yeah, the post supposedly went up, but it's gone.

Oh well, no point in wallowing.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Natick Mall Rd,Natick,United States

Garden Planning is Hard Work

2010-01-30T19:14:00.002-05:00

I'm worn out from thinking, sketching, looking out the window, reading seed packets, thinking some more... you get the idea. I'm trying to turn the garden thoughts in my head into an actual plan. Last weekend I lost myself in the world of the Territorial Seeds website, for the first time ever, and on Sunday morning I had Julie review my selections. After a few additions, we submitted the order, and the magical package arrived Thursday afternoon!

At the bottom of the pile you can see that they thoughtfully included a hard copy catalog, so I can peruse from the comfort of my living room chair. They think of everything!

After pulling out the various packets, I began having what I've dubbed Gardener's Panic. It's akin to Buyer's Remorse, but without any actual remorse. It's just an overwhelming feeling of, "Oh god, what have I done? Where am I going to plant all of these things? When will I plant them? What will I start inside and what will I direct sow?" But this weekend I've begun tackling those questions head on, so I don't sink into an abyss of overwhelmed indecision. I always feel better once I actually do something tangible rather than just rolling the questions and options over and over and over in my brain tumbler.

So, what did we get? I hear you thinking the question. Here goes:

Seeds (mostly organic and/or heirloom):

Arcadia broccoli

Christmas basil

Black plum tomato

Boothby's blonde cucumbers

Carrots (tossed in by Territorial as a bonus)

Chives

Green ice lettuce

Green zebra tomato

Grow the Best Asparagus (book)

Guardsman onion (scallion style)

Ellagance purple lavender

Lady lavender

Lemon cucumber

Midnight ruffles lettuce

Royal burgundy bean

Silvery fir tree tomato

Creeping thyme

Live plants, shipping in warmer weather:

Lapins cherry tree

Purple passion asparagus crowns (25)

Royalty raspberry plants (5)

Are you sharing my panic yet? Have no fear, I've sketched out the start of a plan. Five (maybe six) 3x8 raised beds along the side of the house, the raspberry bushes along the back wall, lavender along the front walk, some lettuce and broccoli under the living room window, cherry tree near the southern property line, behind the raised beds. I'm also thinking of a raised bed island type garden in the front lawn for the lupine seeds I picked up last summer.

With all these raised beds, I surfed around to price what it might cost to get some actual dirt with which to fill these yet-to-be-constructed beds, and after calculating the cubic yardage I'll likely require, found a place in the next town that seems reasonable, and will deliver what appears to be a nice loam-compost blend. Julie asked if they would deliver it right into the raised beds, and when I told her that they would dump it in the driveway and then I'd spend the weekend hauling it to the beds in the wheelbarrow, her face alternated between horror and hysterics, but she finally settled on, "Oh, yuck!"

Still deciding what to do on the other side of the house and driveway. One of last year's first-attempt gardens in the northeast corner is being handed over to the strawberries, which I transplanted from their containers in the fall. It's also partial shade, so we'll see what happens there. The other garden, right behind it, is being returned to lawn since it's what started my first property dispute with my neighbor, who feels that a corner of the garden is over the never-actually-marked property line.

Julie's pushing for the flower garden around the mailbox, but that just seems so done to me. Of course we'll have lots of container herbs on the back deck, for easy access from the kitchen, but the deck only gets a few hours of sun in the late morning and early afternoon. I'm also thinking of either some large containers or small raised beds of herbs scattered alongside the house and driveway, and/or in little garden islands here and there. Anything to reduce the lawn!

Clearly I have more to ponder.

What To Do?

2010-01-24T08:47:00.001-05:00

It's a cold Sunday in New England with nothing on the schedule. There are many enticing options, however:

Catch up on TV and DVD's: American Idol, Caprica, Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, BSG: The Plan, Star Trek VI
Bake something (or many things)
Transpose that googlemaps satellite shot of my yard into a template for garden planning
Actually do garden planning
Read some of the garden blogs I've recently started reading
Sift through the people I'm following on Twitter, to weed out the inactive ones or those that I just don't actually find as interesting as I had thought they might be
Pat my cat for hours on end (he requested that I add this to the list)
Play Wii Fit Plus (the healthy alternative to almost every other option on the list)
Order seeds and plant starts
Upload all the pictures that have accumulated on my cameras (iPhone and digital SLR)
Read some of the travel blogs I've been neglecting
Reorganize my office (who am I kidding?)
Read some of the books that are piling up next to my chair

So many choices. I think a good place to start would be a nice cup of tea. After all, it is a cold Sunday morning in New England.

Babka Success

2010-01-10T17:59:00.001-05:00

The Babka Experiment was a success! As noted in my previous (first) post, I had neither milk nor eggs, and it was just too freaking cold to go to the store, so I substituted what I had on hand on this day after returning from vacation: pumpkin spice soy milk and egg beaters. The result: delicious babka that actually had no hints of pumpkin to it, or spice other than the designated cinnamon. Click the shots below of the beginning and the finished product to see the full photo set.

Take Me to the River

2010-01-10T08:21:00.001-05:00

I had a blog for several years, while I was in law school and after graduation. I talked about life as a project manager by day/law student by night, about tv shows, movies, the world, etc. But after a while I lost focus on it and drifted away. It became a place where I would periodically link to flickr photo albums and occasionally tell an amusing story.

So I looked for something new. I then decided to try a one year "try new stuff" project, where every day for a year I would have to try at least one new thing - a new food, a new activity, a new destination, etc. It was fun for a bit, and I now am more likely to try out new things on a day to day basis (I can be a real creature of habit sometimes), but the blog itself was too limiting, and I stopped after 35 posts.

But I miss blogging. What's a geek to do? What she does best: ramble on about whatever happens to be on her mind at that moment. It could be the planning for next year's garden, the latest episode of a show on SyFy, a tale from the road on a business trip or vacation, or the details on whatever fabulous thing is in progress in the kitchen.

Current items possibly coming soon:

Friday's episode of Dollhouse. Saunders! Bennett! Boyd???? Eeek!
The Vibram FiveFinger shoes that arrived this week. Very cool
The get together later today with friends from... um... yeah - 30 or so years in the past.
The babka experiment.

Let's just get started with the babka experiment now. Jules and I just got back from vacation, so of course we have neither milk nor eggs. I want to make a cinnamon babka, but the current temperature is -1 F outside (-18 C), so the thought of venturing out really isn't appealing to me at this particular moment. What I do have in the fridge are Egg Beaters and Pumpkin Spice soy milk. A match made in heaven or a small slice of hell? I'll let you know.