It's melting!

The snow is finally melting! Oh, joy! I think I might be able to get out in my car on Sunday if the current weather continues. Mick's truck had a lot of trouble on our hill today, because now that the snow is melting, it turned into a very thick, icy slush that is apparently more slippery than dry snow. I guess the consistency is more like very wet snow than slush, but whatever, there was lots of slipping and sliding even in 4-wheel low. Oh, it's hard to imagine that I missed the rain, but I guess I did! Freedom is close.

Boy, I can't imagine how early pioneers must have felt during those hard mid-west winters ... I mean, I was "snowed in" for 2 weeks and I am more than just a little irritable. I can't imagine what I would be like after weeks or months.

A Small Amount of Vindication

So, one of the many things mentaljr and I butted heads on was the cleanliness of his room. I tell you, that boy is messy. Whenever I would tell him to clean it, he arugued that it wasn't that bad, etc. When he finally broke down to clean it, he would spent some amount of time in his room, but nothing would be cleaner, just sort of rearranged, shoved under the bed or under other furniture. There would inevitably come a time, about twice a year that I would tell him that if he didn't actually clean his room, I would clean it. He would spend some time rearranging the garbage as usual and tell me his room was clean. I would say are you sure? He would assure me that yes, it was clean. I would go look, and of course, it would not be clean. I would say, OK, I am going to clean your room. He would be mad at me and yell that I was expecting perfection, blah, blah, blah. Usually, there would be some amount of time, say a day or a couple hours, between me saying I would clean his room and me actually doing it. You would think that he would take that opportunity to actually clean it, since he knew what was going to happen when I cleaned it, but nope. He just sulked.

When I cleaned his room, I usually took out several bags of garbage (broken toys, broken CDs, random bits of weirdness, things that I figured if he wanted them so much, he would have picked them up, candy, candy wrappers, other food items, gum stuck to furniture ...) and several bags of paper recycling (tons of pieces of paper with a partial drawing on it or some chicken scratch, again, if it was important, he should have picked it up off the floor). I was ruthless -- if it wasn't put away, it was garbage. (I don't literally mean garbage. Some of it would go to charity, or if it was a special, sentimental item, I would hide it away in his "special box," but most of it actaully went in the garbage because it was garbage.) He would come home (I usually did it when he wasn't home to avoid conflict) and be very angry and quiet. Whatever. I told him to clean up.

Now, mentaljr is out in the world on his own. Mick and I visited his apartment a couple of weeks ago. His room was literally six inches deep in stuff from corner to corner. Garbage was spilling out of his room into the hallway. Apparently, what we saw was "nothing," since his roommate had shoved the bulk of the stuff in the hallway back into mentaljr's room to make the apartment "look nice" for our visit. I reminded mentaljr about how he didn't want rodents to move in, and did he remember the time he shoved all that candy under his dresser and the mice found it and we had a bad mouse problem for a while because I didn't know about the candy stash? He said, yes, rodents are bad, blah, blah, blah.

So, a couple of days ago mentaljr told me that his apartment manager was going to give him 30 days notice if he didn't clean his room. I asked how his manager saw his room. He said that a worker came into install new closet doors in all the apartments, saw mentaljr's room, and reported it to the manager. She came to have a look and told him to clean it or move out. Apparently, she doesn't want a rodent problem, either. Mentaljr said he cleaned his room. Hmm. I've heard that before. I just hope he doesn't show up on my doorstep homeless in 30 days.

It just won't stop

The snow keeps coming down. I just don't think it's ever going to stop! Yesterday, I walked up to the local hardware store to get a snow shovel. I called them before I left to make sure they were open. The guy who answered the phone said "Yes, we're open." So, I headed out. I took this picture of the creek behind our house on the way.

Pretty! When I finally made to the hardware store, they were closed! A lady in the parking lot said they had just run out of snow shovels and decided to close. Argh. I was pretty ticked at having walked all that way when they said they were open. The snow was up to my knees anywhere someone else hadn't already made a path, so it was tough going. Oh, well, I got my exercise.

The snow was so bad that Mick couldn't get out yesterday. Well, his battery was dead, so that didn't help anything. His good friend Jerry came to the rescue and took him to the store to get new batteries (his truck takes 2 batteries). Jerry has a big 4-wheel drive truck and chains. Today, Mick put in a new battery, got all the ice and snow off his windows and made a go of it.

I was worried that he would have trouble getting up the hill.

But, he made it.

Look at these poor bushes, weighted down with snow. They are the type of bushes that grow really tall and skinny and straight, not the kind that have any sort of horizontal branches.


I'm going to walk to the grocery store now. It's 34 degrees by my thermometer, so maybe some of it will go away.

Happy Winter

Happy Winter Solstice! Today, the sun didn't come up until almost 8:00 AM, and is supposed to go down at 4:30 PM. That's a short day.

Look how much snow we got yesterday!

Don't worry. My dogs were not outside sleeping in their dog houses. They were safe and warm downstairs on comfy dog beds. This is a photo of the same area I took a picture of yesterday afternoon. It's really covered now!

This is a picture of the stairs that lead to the back of my house. It would probably be nice to take pictures of the woods behind my house, but to be frank, I don't really want to go out there right now. It's cold!

Random Things

Well, it's still snowing. I think we have gotten about 6 inches so far and it shows no signs of stopping. It's about 21 degrees F, which is very cold for Portland.

Here's some random pictures from my camera to amuse you. Let's first start out with a photo of Ben in the mud.

He's actually really happy there. Let's follow that with a picture of Kitty in a box.

I made new curtains for my kitchen so that the new floor we put down doesn't look so out of place. What do you think? These are the old curtains.

These are the new curtains.

I like the new ones. Do you see the loaf of bread on the counter? I made that using the proofing basket my lovely sister sent me. It turned out great now that I am not using too much water in the dough.
This is a picture of the snow that we got today at around 2:00 PM. It's much deeper now, but it's dark outside now, so the picture would be ... dark.

Shut In

Wow. I am still stuck in my house because of the snow! I was excited this morning because it was 35 degrees and the snow that was predicted hadn't fallen. I made plans to run out to Costco and Target and school. Then, about 9:00 AM it started to snow and snow. The flakes got fatter and fatter. Now, the roads that were almost drivable (by my inexperienced, non-4-wheel-drive-having, bottom-of-hill-living standards) this morning, were covered in a few inches of snow again. I was crushed.

Depending on which source you listen to, this weather could continue past Christmas. I don't know how I'll get to Costco. Yes, I am obsessed with Costco. Last night, Mick took me up to Fred Meyer in his truck to get a few essentials. I could hardly buy anything, because everything I looked at was so expensive compared to Costco. For example, at Costco I can get several pounds of shredded mozzarella (3 or 5 lbs, I can't remember which) for about $10. At Fred Meyer, just 1 pound of shredded mozzarella was $8! Mick just looked at me like I was crazy, since I had told him I needed to go to the store so bad and would he please drive me in his 4-wheel drive truck to the store, and then when I got there, I didn't want to buy anything.

I haven't done any shopping for the holidays. I don't know how I'm going to get it done. I could ride the bus everywhere, but I don't really feel like carrying home a 20lb turkey, gallons of milk, etc. on the bus. Boy, am I spoiled!

And for any of you who don't understand why I don't want to drive in Portland in the snow, here's a classic video that should clear things up for you.

Snow Day

I'm sure everyone in Portland is blogging the same thing today: It's snowing!

As you may be aware, it hardly ever snows in Portland. We maybe get 1 or 2 snows a year and it's usually just a dusting that melts right away or doesn't stick. Today is one of those rare snows that sticks and accumulates and is supposed to continue all through the day. Then, it's supposed to get really cold (for Portland), down into the teens and twenties for the rest of the week, which means the snow will probably stick around for a while. This is good and bad: good because it's fun and bad because we'll probably be snowed in for a few days. We live at the bottom of a hill in a residential area, so it's not a priority for the snow plows to clear it.

Chew and Ben are really enjoying the snow.



I keep checking on Chew to see if he wants to come inside, but he ignores me and keeps playing. It's nice to see him having fun. Ben is having the time of his life, too, barking at anything that moves.

Mick and I are relaxing, taking a forced day off from Mick's new fish and chip restaurant. We're watching the local news, laughing at all the idiots that are spun out on the freeways. The city is now requiring chains on all cars, but that doesn't seem to be helping, as most people are out there without them or causing problems by pulling over on the freeway to chain up.

Chew's new trick

So, my old dog Chew has a new trick. Because it rains a lot in Portland, I have two pretty nice dog houses for my dogs, since, in theory, they would spend quite a bit of time in them staying dry. Of course, Ben prefers to sleep in the mud. However, Chew is prissy for a dog and hates mud. He usually finds a nice dry spot or sleeps in one of the dog houses. Unfortunately, his new trick is that he poops in the dog house, and then, since he's so prissy, he won't go back in it and sleeps in the rain. I, of course, clean it up the next day, and the cycle begins again. This has been going on for a few days now. I wish that when he did it, he would figure out that he could go into the other perfectly good dog house that is not pooped in. Sigh.

Talking Turkey

This is me checking my ridiculously large Costco turkey on Thanksgiving. As usual, my face is red because I keep forgetting to let the steam escape from the oven before I stick my head in there to check on things.

I've been under a lot of stress recently, mostly financial. Lately, though, I've tried to put it in perspective. I mean, seriously, how bad do I really have it? Some things I am thankful for (in no particular order):
1) A loving family, both nuclear and extended.
2) I have enough to eat. I have more than enough to eat. I am a little fat right now.
3) I have somewhere to live.
4) I still love my husband after 11 years together. He appears to love me :)
5) Sometimes it doesn't rain in Portland.
6) I am pretty healthy. My family is pretty healthy.
7) The Internet is awesome.
8) I don't have to worry about bombs or terrorists in my daily life.
9) My fat cat loves me.

Sister City

Last week, I was in Austin, TX for a conference. This is a picture of the capital building that was near my hotel. Although I was incredibly busy while I was there, it was a nice change of pace. It was good to see my colleagues and to be immersed in a crowd of 11,000 people who care about what I do. As a graduate student, it's very easy to sink into a lonely place where you think you're the only one in the world that thinks your dissertation is interesting. It was also nice, because the sun came up about 1 hour earlier and went down 1 hour later than it does here in Portland, and it didn't rain one single drop while I was there, and the temperatures were (for the most part) in the 70's.

Let's just say that my hotel wasn't the nicest place I ever stayed, but, thankfully, it wasn't the worst place, either. This is a picture of a gecko (at least I think that's the kind of lizard this is) in the stairwell of my hotel. We're not in Oregon anymore, Dorothy!

This picture is a sign posted by the 4th floor elevators in the convention center in Austin. I think it must be a typo :)

So, did you know that Austin and Portland are sister cities? I didn't either. Several independent Austin locals told me that this was true. Here, by independent, I mean that I met them independently at random locations and times throughout my visit. Even my good friend Billee told me this was the case. I asked him if anyone had told Portland about this and he said he wasn't sure. Anyway, Austin has a nice, friendly feeling about it like Portland does. However, the drivers in Austin are jerks to pedestrians. It's like they are trying to hit you. I am a total nerd (duh) and I pretty much always follow the pedestrian traffic lights (exceptions include Sunday mornings when there are absolutely no cars in sight and it seems silly to wait 3 minutes for nothing). I had about 3 close calls until I realized that they were trying to kill me and that I needed to be on the defensive. My mantra when stepping of the curb was "please don't kill me; please don't kill me." Here, in Portland, people are almost over-polite to pedestrians. It's really refreshing. Pretty much, if you see someone blow through a crosswalk with a pedestrian at the corner, the odds that they are from Washington are about 90%.

Sweetie

Dear Barack Obama,

Please reconsider your potential appointment of Larry Summers to your administration. Imagine that his remarks about women being inherently inferior in math and science were made about African Americans. Even if he had apologized, would you still be considering him?

Thank you,
me

Stupid Daylight Savings

I took this picture outside my back door a little after 5:00 PM yesterday. It's so dark so early! Boy, I can't wait until December when it starts getting dark at 4:00.

Inspired by Christmas

I have been thinking lately about the winter holidays and trying to figure out what I want to do. This is my first year without kids in the house (hopefully none of them will show up on the doorstep homeless any time soon!), so I wondered if I would even want to go to the trouble to put up a Christmas tree. Then, I thought about how wonderful the tree smells and how it makes my vacuum cleaner smell better when I vacuum up the pine needles. You see, if you have dogs, inevitably, your vacuum cleaner spews out smells of dog butt, wet dog, and dog drool whenever you vacuum because of all the dog butt, wet dog hair, and dog drool you have vacuumed up in the past. It really dampens the "fresh" feeling that you're supposed to get from cleaning.

Then, it dawned on me. Rosemary leaves look sort of like pine needles. I like the smell of rosemary. I have rosemary in my garden. So, I went and cut a sprig of rosemary and stripped off the leaves and vacuumed them up. Oh, it smelled so much better! But, then, as I kept vacuuming, it really smelled like rosemary in my house. For a long time. Don't get me wrong, the overly strong rosemary was definitely preferable to dog smells. However, next time, I will just use a little bit of rosemary. Oh! or possibly, I could vacuum up some lavender. I bet that would smell nice. Or maybe sage. And, it dawns on me. I do have douglas fir pine trees in my yard. I could just use those for the real scent I was craving in the first place...

For the Mechanically Challenged

So, for the first time in my adult life, one of my blinkers went out on my car. I didn't want to pay someone to change it for me, since it seemed like it should be a really simple fix. However, I had no idea how to go about it. I asked Mick and he said, "I'm not good at lights." I think what he meant by that was, "I don't want do it. Go figure it out for yourself."

Did you know that the owner's manual for the 1994 Ford Taurus wagon has absolutely no information in it about how to change the bulbs? It doesn't! It does, however, give you the model number of the bulb you should buy, so I went to get one of those. Also, did you know that if you google "how to change tail turn signal taurus wagon" (and variations) you get absolutely no helpful information at all? It's true!

So, I went out to my car with my tool kit and the bulb and figured I would mess around until I figured it out. First, I opened the hatch to see if I was supposed to come at it from the inside. There was a thing with some knobs near it that looked like it would come off, so I turned the knobs and pulled the panel off, and, guess what! I have a spare tire. Who knew? I put that panel back on, because there was no way to access the bulbs from there. Then I looked at the back of the car and noticed that there were two screws that looked like they were holding the colored thing that the lights are behind on. I figured I would unscrew them and see what happened.

See them there? (And, yes, I know my car is dirty. Shut up.) Well, I unscrewed them and the thing came off and there were some white things with wires coming out of the back of them. Hmm. Not knowing what to do, I tried to turn one of the white things, and it turned and came out. There was a bulb on the other side of it. Yes!

I changed the bulb. My turn signal still didn't work, though, because I changed the wrong bulb! I switched out the other bulb and it worked!

If you do not understand the feeling of accomplishment I got from this, you must not realize the depth of my mechanical ineptitude.

P.S. I forgot to say that Mick bought me this car a year ago at a police seizure auction. The door panels were all broken off when I got it, so I wonder if it was searched for drugs and seized. Whatever its history, we paid about 1/3 of the blue book value for it and it's been a great car. Anyway, as I was pulling off the tail light thing, I wondered just what I would do if I found drugs that the police had missed. What are you supposed to do? Call 911? "Hi, 911? I just found a lot of cocaine in my car." I wonder how that would go down...

Future Garden Wrecker

What is that on my new kitchen floor?

Let's look more closely.

It's a baby slug! I have no idea how it got in here. I couldn't bear to kill it, so I got it up with a tissue and put it outside. Next spring, I am sure I will be sorry when it eats all my baby plants.

Bitch'n Kitchen

This week Mick got a wild hair and decided that we needed to redo the kitchen floor right now. Mind you, we have lived in this house for eight years and have been talking about redoing the floor pretty much since day one. You see, the people who had lived there before had put shag carpet in half of the kitchen, in the eating area. I suppose that's nice for people without children, but for us it was a nightmare. For example, one time, mentaljr dropped a nearly full jug of purple grape juice onto the carpet. It never really came out. Fortunately Unfortunately, I don't have a "before" picture of the entire kitchen, but I do have this lovely picture of Mick with what was under the carpet!

I can't imagine what this kitchen used to look like. The paint underneath what was there when we moved in was pink! Can you imagine pink walls with that linoleum? Anyway, we went to Home Depot and picked up some vinyl squares that had a pattern I hoped would hide muddy dog prints better than the white linoleum and light tan carpet we had before. Here's a picture of the white linoleum. Where you see the ugly linoleum is where the carpet used to be.

After some intense cleaning of the floor, we began to put the tiles down. Oh, and I discovered that the vegetable cleaning liquid that you can buy at Trader Joe's makes an excellent cleaner for tough grime. It also rinses away very easily. Oh, and by "we began to put the tiles down," I mean Mick began to put the tiles down.

After a few hours, we had it mostly done. After we got it down, though, we wondered if we chose the right color for the green color of the cabinets. I think, though that I can bring the colors together with some new curtains. I'll check out the fabric store in the next few days.

Oh, I found a sort of "before" picture of the kitchen carpet. Here's Kitty and Ben on the kitchen floor. Kitty is smacking Ben in the nose and Ben is just sitting there looking confused. Oh, and you see that big, green tub behind Ben? That's where I keep the dog food. You see, when you have a dog as big as Ben, you don't get to buy those cute, little bags of dog food that fit nicely in a cabinet. Nope, you've got to buy it in bulk.

Last Days

We've been especially lucky in Portland this year. It's been mostly sunny throughout October. Usually, it starts raining about the second week of October and never stops. I have been trying to take some time every day to look at the blue sky and just appreciate it. I don't want to take it for granted and wish I had come February or March when I am so tired of the rain that I just want to scream.

LARPers Attack

This is a video by a Portland band, Red Fang. This is excellent and particularly hilarious to me, given Mentaljr's tendencies towards LARPism. His favorite pastime was to play in the yard, dressed in a cape and whatever else, swinging whatever sword-like implement he had at the moment, acting out some battle scenario, complete with sound effects. He never got tired of it.

How did you spend your weekend?

I spent mine grading papers. Yes, the entire weekend was spent grading undergraduate homework assignments. While I am appreciative to my department for employing me as a teaching assistant so that I can complete my education without going into even more debt, I really hate grading papers. I especially hate it when students don't seem to have grasped some basic concepts they should have gotten in grade school, like:
1) Put your name on your paper.
2) Staple your pages together. Don't just bend the corners and figure it will be okay.
3) Use a pencil and an eraser. If you must use pen, work out the problems on another sheet of paper first and then write them again. It is really difficult to figure out which of your scribbles are the answer and which of your scribbles are you attempting to remove a mistake.
4) Put the problems on the paper in the order of the assignment. I try to be a very fair grader. That means I grade one problem at a time on all homeworks, so that I have fresh in my mind how many points I took off for what. If I get to your homework and don't find problem number X after problem number X-1, I assume you have not done problem number X and give you a 0 for that one. Imagine my surprise when I think I am grading problem X+Y and find your solution to problem X. By this time, I have begun to forget my point deduction scheme for X and am now annoyed with you. Let's just say you might get graded a little harsher on X than the others did.
5) If the instructor says that your program must compile on a particular platform, say the computers in our department Linux lab, then make sure that it does. Don't turn in code you wrote on Windows/Unix/Mac and expect it to compile and run. It's not my job to fix your code; I end up doing it anyway, because if I don't then you complain to the instructor, who doesn't want to hear your whining, who asks me to regrade it, ...
6) Please write neatly.

Here Comes the Mud

Well, the winter rains are starting in Portland as it happens every year in late October. I generally don't mind the rain, but unfortunately, when you have big dogs, the rain brings lots of mud. It doesn't help if your big dog is Ben.

Do you seen Ben in this picture? He's behind the Japanese maple, sleeping in the pouring rain. Yes, I said sleeping in the pouring rain. Here's a zoomed in view if you're having trouble finding Waldo.

It also just so happens that there is a lovely dog house that he could be sleeping in, but no, Ben prefers the mud.

When I open the back door, he likes to run through some more mud and barrel his way into the house before I realize what's happening. Then, he likes to run around the house leaving muddy footprints everywhere and shaking the mud and rain off of his fur all over my walls and furniture.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I am 37. How do I feel about that? Okay I guess. I definitely notice that I am getting older. My hair now has almost gray streaks instead of the random gray. I am starting to notice lines around my lips, and consciously try to make myself not purse my lips when I am concentrating so they won't get worse. If I don't stretch well before and after going on a run, I get injured. I notice that I feel out of whack if I don't consistently do yoga. I still have on my Christmas weight from last year. Before, it used to just fall off on its own in the summer when I was more active. I guess I should do something about that.

I find myself getting more conservative, which is pretty weird, considering I have no assets. I always thought that people migrated to conservatism because they had assets that they wanted to keep for themselves. You know, "I worked very hard for this money and I'll be darned if the government can take it and give to some no-good-niks that just sit on the couch and collect welfare." Perhaps it's because I know quite a few of those no-good-niks that are currently sitting on their couches and getting government aid. Perhaps it's because I go to the grocery store and cringe at the rising prices, when I know those couch-sitters are getting food stamps and don't have to make the same choices I do. Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm just more cynical.

Luckily, with age, I seem to be learning to accept things as they come and to be able to realize that the plan was just that -- a plan. Things change, roll with the punches, get up running. Also, this might be due to living with Mental Micky who lives by the Mick of Time rule.

This is the year I want to finally finish my dissertation. Going to school has been a rewarding and also terrible experience. I feel very old to be working this hard and to have nothing to show for it. I really want to be done and to start my life. It feels very weird to say that, that I want to start my life at 37! That's what it feels like, though. It's been very hard to be a mom, a wife to a small business owner who needs my help all the time, working part time or full time, and studying all at the same time. Plus we have dogs.

All in all, I am happy. So, that's the good part!

Big Dog Bad Dog

You may remember meeting Ben in a previous entry. Ben has mellowed now that he's older and he's much easier to deal with. Some of that is due to me watching the Dog Whisperer and starting to understand dog behavior/psychology a little. I really noticed a positive change in his behavior when I started making him wait to eat until I gave him a command. He's definitely a food-motivated guy.

When Ben was a puppy, he ate our house. Literally. He ate a couch. He ate window sills. He ate walls. He ate door jams. However, after liberal spraying of that bitter stuff that keeps dogs from chewing (I am so thankful I finally found out about it) and him growing out of the chewing stage, I was finally able to relax and let him hang out unattended in non-ruined parts of our house.

A couple of weeks ago, Mick decided he didn't want Ben to sleep in his favorite sleeping spot anymore because his feet were tearing up the wallpaper. I guess when he was having running dreams in his sleep, his feet would scratch on the wall. So, I blocked off his access to his spot with a baby gate. I think this caused him some anxiety because the first night out of his sleeping spot, HE ATE THE HALLWAY.




Also, I had just painted and repaired the hallway just a couple months ago. Argh. This week, I filled in the holes. Today, I sanded them down and painted the patches. Let's hope this lasts longer than a couple of months.

Playing Footsie with Fatty

In case you are wondering, Kitty is still fat. Last time I weighed him, he was 17 pounds. I am still measuring his food and using the timed feeder.

Channeling Grandma

I bought some flannel sheets from L.L.Bean about 10 years ago and they finally were starting to wear out. I was sad because they were warm and a pretty green color and I didn't want to shell out the bucks for a new set. I remembered hearing stories about my grandma in the great depression cutting worn out sheets down the middle and sewing them back up with the edges as the new middle, so the worn out edges got tucked under the bed. My sheet that was worst off from the set was the fitted bottom sheet, and I didn't think I could manage this sewing feat since it wasn't just a rectangular sheet. I thought it would be a pity to throw out the sheet, and decided to make a rug out of it.

I didn't figure making a braided rug could be so difficult, so I just tried it. And guess what! It wasn't hard at all. The only part I had a problem with was ending it. As you can see, the braid just ends on one side when I ran out of sheet.


I didn't bother to try to keep the edges of the sheet from showing in the braid. I decided that it gave the rug a rustic look. Um. Yeah. (Also, as I look at these photos, it looks like there's a yellowish stain in the middle of the rug. There's not. The yellowish spot is an artifact of my crappy camera and the crappy light I took the picture in.)

I put it in the downstairs bathroom, recently scrubbed free of icky teenage boy and I think it looks nice. Nicer than the bare floor anyway!

After finishing the rug, I was still feeling crafty and wanted to do something else to keep my fingers busy in the evenings. I remembered that I used to like to crochet and decided to pick it back up. I decided to make something I had made before to warm up, and remembered all those wonderful evenings I used to sit on the bed with grandma, looking at Talbot's catalogs, watching Dynasty, sewing and/or crocheting. She taught me how to make granny square blankets, so that's what I decided to do for my first project.


It's funny. I was very awkward with the stitches for the first square, but after that, it was like riding a bike. I am happy I started this project. A funny thing is that I haven't felt crafty since the summer I worked in California and left the kids up here in Oregon. Now, suddenly, I am feeling crafty again now that I'm an empty nester. Coincidence? I think NOT !

Proofing Basket

I tried out my new proofing basket for the first time the other day. The bread turned out well, but I had a little trouble with the dough sticking to the linen in the baset. I floured it beforehand, but perhaps not enough. I think I also made the dough a little too wet. Okay, Okay. The dough was WAY too wet. It was totally my fault.

I saved the bread by letting it rise again in the baking container after removing it from the proofing basket. I'll let you know how it goes next time.

So pretty

I like to dual-boot my computers with Windows and Linux because I need both operating systems for my work. Windows is nice because it just works. It never deletes my printers when I do a security update, unlike a certain operating system that shall remain nameless (And yes, it still deletes my printers every time I do an update!). I like Linux, because I run a lot of programs that run on Linux and use X, which can take some time to render over my home Internet service. If I run Linux locally, I can run the program locally and it is much faster.

The first time I set up a computer to dual boot, while I was ultimately successful, I imposed a new rule on myself: Never touch the computer after drinking any amount of beer. This came about because I managed to reformat the existing Windows partition when installing Linux, not ONCE but SEVERAL times. Yes, you would think I would have been more careful after the first time, but no, I wasn't.

I just got a new laptop and fretted a little about setting it up to dual boot, given my track record at this task. Also, my laptop did not come with a Windows CD, so I wanted to be careful that I didn't delete or reformat the partition that the laptop vendor put on it that holds a backup copy of the factory installation. I investigated the available Linux distros to see what would be best for me and this laptop and settled on openSUSE.

As I started to install Linux, I was pretty nervous as I got to the part of the install where you tell it what partitions to use for what. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the openSUSE installer recognized my Windows partition, and told me that it was a Windows partition, and suggested a partitioning plan that did not involve reformatting the Windows partition. I went ahead with the suggested partitioning and am happy to report that it worked perfectly!

After that, I was pleasantly surprised with how very pretty the openSUSE KDE windows environment is. If you are a hard-core command line weirdo, you might not understand my joy, but I really find working much more pleasant if the windowing environment is easy on the eyes. Also, I found the package manager, Yast, to be intuitive and easy to use. I even got wireless working in a few hours, with updates from madwifi.


See, isn't that pretty?

Empty Nesting

So, I've heard that when women are expecting a baby, they exhibit "nesting" behavior. They work hard to prepare their home for the new baby, making sure it is clean, safe, and organized. I have never given birth to a child, so I don't have first-hand experience with this. (All the children I have cared for have been 6 years old or older when I got them.)

I am now an empty nester and I find myself nesting. How weird is that? Mentaljr has been out on his own for a few weeks now. Since then, I have found myself wanting to make the house mine. I've decided that the behavior I am exhibiting is "emtpy nesting." It's like you give your life up for your children and when they're gone, you want your life back. I took a couple of days off of work and I cleaned the carpets, scrubbed the kitchen, pressure-washed the sidewalks around the house, disinfected Brandon's bathroom, vacuumed under things that don't normally move, scrubbed the walls, and, well, I think you get the idea. I worked so hard that at the end of yesterday, I developed some sort of muscle strain in my hip. That's okay; that just meant I had an excuse to sit around watching People's Court and Judge Judy all day today.

I know this is an awkward picture, but it's a picture of my leg when I was about 1/3 done with the pressure washing. You should have seen me at the end!

Sweet Sister

My sister was reading my blog and apparently was feeling generous! She noted that I wanted a proofing basket to make my favorite bread. I got it two days ago, but haven't used it yet. I'll let you know how it goes!

Thank you Jennifer!

Drink up

Probiotic bacteria may work by beneficially changing the lipid profile in the intestine, suggests a new study from Finland. The researchers investigated the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus and found that it decreased levels of lysophosphatidylcholines and sphingomyelins in the guts of the subjects. According to the article, these lipids have been linked to hardening of the arteries and inflammatory bowel disease.

Dom's site says that Lactobacillus rhamnosus is found in milk kefir. Drink up!

SNORT

This made me snort like the geek I am. Tiddy bear. What were they thinking?

Tasty Research

Hooray! There's more evidence that eating chocolate may be good for you. This time, they say it's good for your brain. I buy dark chocolate in 1-lb sized bars from Trader Joes. Then I smash them up with a hammer and put them in my fancy tupperware old plastic takeout containers and leave them on the coffee table. This way, I can get Mick to at least snack on something potentially beneficial instead of whatever other scariness he can find in our snack cabinet.

Tick Tock

Wow, it's the 15th of the month already. I have been too grumpy to blog for a while, but I didn't realize that much time had passed. It's 100 degrees here today, which is hot for Portland. The good thing about that is that it gave me an excuse to leave work really early. I rode my bike in and couldn't risk riding in the extreme heat, you know!

I hope to get out of my funk soon and back to wasting time telling the Internet what I think :)

Doktor der

Tonight on Dr. Who, the Daleks were in Germany and they were speaking German. 'Exterminieren'!

Yes, I am a geek.

Pollution watch

The BBC is keeping track of the pollution levels in Beijing as the city tries to reduce the pollution levels for the Olympics. Today the pollution is really low, but yesterday it was pretty high. If you click through the days you can see how drastically it changes. Sometimes, it looks like the city is covered in fog.

Just so you know how crazy I am

Oregon has quite a few wind farms, and is slated to get the world's largest wind farm sometime soon. Wind farms are really pretty. There's something serene about the stark white turbines slowly spinning. My favorite thing is to see them from the air when I am flying back into Oregon.

So, what if these wind farms have some unforeseen effect, for example with the weather? What if by absorbing the energy in the wind, they affect weather patterns? You know, kind of like the butterfly effect in chaos theory, where a butterfly flapping its wings in China changes the weather in New York.

Portland Composts!

Today, I finally got my composting cart from whoever takes my garbage and recycling away. It also came with a new cart for recyclables. The exciting thing is that now Portland is recycling plastic tubs. I won't completely embarrass myself by admiting to the Internet how many plastic tubs I have been saving up in my cupboard because I just can't bear to thow them away into the landfill. I'll just embarrass myself a little by admitting that I have them :)

I had been excited because I thought that the composters would take anything compostable: food scraps, yard debris, and paper products like coffee filters and paper towels. However, the directions say just to put food scraps and yard debris in the can. I am already composting those things in my yard, so I'm not sure what I'll put into the composting bin. I will probably use it like I used my yard debris bin -- to get rid of weeds and invasive plants.

Interesting: Good and Bad

In an attempt to reduce pollution for the olympics, Beijing is reducing the number of cars on the road each day. They are doing this by plate number. If your plate is even, you can drive on certain days; if odd, the other days. This way they reduce the number of cars on the road by about half each day.

The cool thing about this will be the results. Will they be able to reduce pollution significantly? How quickly will it happen? Will people go back to driving after the driving restrictions are lifted, or will they continue to take public transportation?

The bad thing about this is the problem. The pollution is so bad that some athletes can't compete.

Probiotics good for Preemies

It helps their little guts stay healthy.

The Emperor's New Clothes

It amazes me how many journalists I hear pronouncing nuclear as nucular like President Bush. I wonder why this is. In one newscast, I heard the news person say it both ways. Webster's dictionary says that it is an alternative pronunciation, but not an acceptable alternative, whatever that means.

So, are we watching language evolve in front of our very eyes? Is the mispronunciation of this word so widespread that the word is changing? If so, it's pretty cool, but it still annoys me when people pronounce it that way. I mean, really, Homer Simpson says it that way. Do we really want to emulate Homer Simpson?

Portland is the Best

Just so you know how I feel: Portland is the Best! The city of Portland has a website and on it you can make requests for low-cost bike lane repairs. I have done this three times with great success. The first time I was totally surprised that they seemed to listen. I asked that some weeds that were overtaking the bike lane be chopped back so that the bicyclist didn't have to choose between getting ripped to shreds by blackberry vines and getting smashed by a bus. Within a week or so, the weeds were chopped back. I thought that perhaps it was a coincidence, and that the bike lane was due for maintenance anyway. The next time I wrote in, there were some crews doing work on the side of the road and they kept leaving big rocks and sticks and mud in the bike lane, which happens to be heavily used by bike commuters. I incidentally got a flat tire because I hit one of the rocks. I asked if the crews could please clean up. I got a response from that request pretty quickly and the mess was cleaned up. Just a few days ago, I asked if the weeds could be chopped back again, and yesterday on my ride home, I noticed that it was done.

Yay for Portland!

Winning the War Against The Slugs

Thanks to the summer heat, I am beginning to win the war against the slugs. I am still having trouble with blue jays that think I am feeding them every time I plant seeds, but at least the slugs are under control now. Look!

I have a baby tomato! And look!

I have roses! Usually, the deer eat all of my rose buds before they bloom. I could sometimes keep them away if I spray something stinky in the yard like perfume, but they were real pests. This past year Mick fenced off the back yard and the dogs are out there a lot. The deer don't seem to be jumping the fence just to get my roses. They have nipped a few buds that were at the top of the plants over the top of the fence, though.