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?