Teleidoscope

Fri, Aug 28, 2009

Cool

Posted at 6:56 am MDT to Weather

The weather has been unseasonably cool for August. This has been a weird summer.

I was awakened last night by a charliehorse. I don't know why my left calf muscle decided to tie itself into a knot at 4 am, but I wish it wouldn't do that. This is the second time since I've been back from Mobile. Ow.

I noticed that I was laying on my left hip when it happened, so it's probably a sign that the hip is slightly out. I'll give things a day or two tounkink, then start some exercises to strengthen the muscles around the hip.

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Thu, Aug 27, 2009

Zombie

Posted at 7:02 am MDT to Exercise

I did some yoga this morning for the first time in about a week, partly to try to work loose a muscle cramp up between my shoulder blades that gets annoyed by the mousing I do at work.

I have been feeling ... strange ... for the past couple of weeks. Hot flashes. Cold flashes. Low-grade headaches. A sort of swimmy sensation that isn't quite being dizzy, but isn't really not being dizzy, either.

And a sort of fading in and out that isn't quite dozing off and taking naps. But in the evenngs I suddenly find I've lost 20 minutes of the TV show that's running in the background and the screensaver on my laptop has kicked in. I don't think I've faded out at work (I hope) the focus there seems to mostly be enough to prevent it.

It isn't exactly lack of sleep. Last night I staggered to bed at about 9:30 after one of the fadeouts, but I just seemed to have fadeouts in reverse. I kept waking up every hour or so. Though some of that was the hot and cold flashes.

There's stuff I need to do around the house and stuff I should be working on for the comapany that isn't getting done. I think I'm going to make an appointment with my acupuncturist: regular medicine doesn't do well with symptoms that are this squishy.

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Fri, Aug 21, 2009

Sluggish

Posted at 6:54 am MDT to Miscellaneous

After a couple of weeks where I was full of energy and getting very little sleep, this week has been the opposite. I've been sleeping a lot (8 hours a night is a lot for me) and dozing off at odd moments, and generally feeling a bit off. I suspect allergies are part of it: I've been sneezing more than usual.

I really did not need my employees trying to poison me on top of everything else.

Last night was the Colorado Rational Users' Group meeting that our company sponsors. I arrived a little late because of traffic, and very hungry, and found that the food we were providing was pre-made sandwiches with cheese in them. And I'm pretty sure I don't trust the bread they were made with to not have malt in it. I picked out the cheese as well as I could (it was sort of smooshed into the bread and meat) but by the end of the evening my skin and eyes were feeling tight and itchy and I was having mild dizzy spells.

This morning, I was still itchy and my fingers were a little swollen. I don't like to think about what the lining of my esophagus was doing at that point. I have taken some Advil to try to knock down the inflammation before I try to swallow my breakfast.

Fridays at the office tend to be very quiet. This may not be a good thing: when you're not feeling well to begin with, a slow day stretches out forever.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about food at the next CRUG. I may be on another gig, with different travel conditions, by then, so maybe I'll just have to make a point of bringing my own food. Or return to what I did a few times last year when I was working from home and bring my own food to the meeting.

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Sat, Aug 15, 2009

Foxy Car 2

Posted at 10:11 pm MDT to Technology

Man. The Forester is a zippy car, even though it has only a 2.5 liter engine. It wants to go fast. I'm going to have to keep an eye on my speedometer until I get used to it.

And it is really nice to park after the Dakota, too -- today I pulled into the parking garage near the farmers market, parked, got out, looked at how I was parked, and got back in and pulled about a foot and a half closer to the wall.

The driver's area is very well designed. When I am in the driver's seat, with it adjusted properly for reaching the clutch, etc., I don't see any part of the hood of the car. It is all below my sight line so all I see is road. And none of the gauges and meters are hidden by the steering wheel at all.

And the height of the mount for the seatbelt shoulder strap is adjustable, so I could make it stop sawing into my neck. (The shirts I wear to work have upstanding collars, so I hadn't noticed the rubbing until today.) I may lower it one more notch, but the current improvement is already wonderful.

I've made an appointment for Tuesday to take it in to the dealership to add some options and accessories: towing package, roof rack, engine block heater (much cheaper than building a garage) and a cover for the cargo area.

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Silly Bee

Posted at 10:11 pm MDT to Weather

The weather today was very strange, and felt more like late September or early October than mid-August. It started out cool and cloudy, but the sun went in and out, with occasional bursts of cool breeze and a brief period of rain at the farmers' market (it doesn't look like I got any noticeable precipitation at my house).

THe crowd was strange, too. Lots of out-of-towners,and (therefore) a lot fewer dogs than usual. There seemed to be a lot of parent and grown child combinations... I wonder if the out of state students are beginning to arrive for the university. Our sales were as sporadic as the weather.

The most persistent visitor to out booth was a bee, or possibly a series of bees. We had a small, clear clamshell box of nasturtium flowers out on the table -- they are edible and good in salads: they taste like radishes. The box had some small air holes in it, and there was a bee that kept crawling into the box and rummaging among the flowers for a while, then coming out again for a while.

I think it was always the same bee: the breaks in its hovering around our table weren't really mong enough for shift changes unles the beehive was very close by.

Our booth is across the street (maybe 15 feet) from a florists' booth that was full of bouquets of all kinds of flowers. But the bee didn't want those flowers, even though they were out in the open and readily accessible. It wanted the flowers in that little 5x7x1 inch box.

Maybe it likes a challenge. Or really likes nasturtiums for some reason.

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Mon, Aug 10, 2009

Foxy Car

Posted at 9:35 pm MDT to Technology

I have my new car. It's a color they call Paprika Red: more or less fox colored. It has all the cool modern features (radio aux jack, external temp) and one that I hadn't expected: a backup sensor that is supposed to beep if there is something behind me when I back up.

They took FOREVER to get the paperwork set up.

Now I need to update my insurance and see about getting the Express Tool transponder account updated. I also need to find out whether Forresters use truck plates (so I will re-use my old plates) or car plates (so I will need new plates).

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Sun, Aug 09, 2009

Trimmer Line and Shop-Vac

Posted at 3:56 pm MDT to Garden

I've remembered another reason I haven't used my string-trimmer lawn mower much in recent years. It is amazingly hard to find 155 mil string trimmer line locally. The smaller gauge stuff I tried isn't going to cut it (literally).

Even McGuckins failed me, which is a little annoying since they sold me the trimmer mower (years ago, granted, but it's still annoying.

I'll swing by Earl's Saw Shop before work tomorrow and see if they have some in stock. If not, I need to order some other stuff from Amazon so I can get free shipping... otherwise, the shipping will cost as much as the string.

I got a new garden hose to replace the ripped one, and a nozzle-repair thingy for the hose with the squashed nozzle. So now I have two usable hoses.

The truck is cleared out, and ready to be traded in tomorrow.

While I was at Lowe's getting garden hose stuff and the new gas can for the mower, I also picked up a new 12 gallon Shop-Vac for the basement. The old one (an 8 gallon model taller than the new 12 gallon one) is about 20 years old and really won't deal with the dust and grit very well anymore. And the new one has a drain plug for wet mode! No more tipping over the big cannister of sludgy water to empty it down the floor drain. Modern filters for both wet and dry modes are better, too.

The Forrester has a fair amount of cargo space, especially with the back seats folded down, but the box for the Shop-Vac is pretty large. I decided I might as well take advantage of the truck's volume while I still have it available. And I really need to bring the basement to more presentable state.

With the wet/dry vac (and new, working garden hoses) I'll be able to vacuum up the loose dirt in dry mode, then wash the cement floor and suck up the dirty water in wet mode. And once the new doors are installed the basement will be more weather-tight and should accumulate less dust going forward. The lack of new avalanches (because of the beautiful new retaining wall) will help too.

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Sat, Aug 08, 2009

Costco Books

Posted at 9:52 pm MDT to Garden

The books department at Costco usually has a fairly banal mix of books in the fiction section, but they sometimes have interesting cookbooks and special collections at very good prices: not long ago I got the new edition of "How to Cook Eveything in hardcover (which is a HUGE book) for less than 20 dollars. I was able to get the Complete Far Side for my brother one year for Christmas at a fair proce, too. And the Complete Calvin and Hobbes for myself.

Their garden books are excellent, too, and very well localized to the individual stores, which is impressive for a big warehouse operation like Costco.

Books I have acquired at the local Costco in the past: Rocky Mountain Gardener's Guide and Xeriscape Colorado: The Complete Guide.

Most recently they have had copies of Durable Plants for the Garden by Colorado State University, the Denver Botanic Garden and Green Industries of Colorado.

If I ever get my deck, grading and hardscape work completed to a point where I can start planting, these three books should be very helpful. And in the meantime, they are full of beautiful photos of plants and gardens to admire.

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Tasks

Posted at 6:59 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Accomplished today:

Retrieved weed trimmer (lawnmower) from repair shop

Started paperwork for cashing in my clunker, ordered a red or green Forrester after test drive

Visited Harlequin's Gardens to look at native and xeriscape plants

Tasks for this evening and tomorrow:

Clean all the miscellaneous stuff like tool and first-aid kits, flashlights, etc. out of the truck

Buy gas for lawnmower (and maybe a new gas can)

Mow weeds in at least part of front yard, measure areas for beds, patio and labyrinth

Buy an intact garden hose: my old ones give me a choice of a hose that is torn but has working end connectors, and one that has a squashed connector on the end opposite the faucet, and a couple of hoses that have been buried in the fill dirt pile that came out of the retaining wall hole and are useless (gee, thanks guys)

Water square foot garden and grapevine

Plant carrot, parsley, and thyme seeds, and mums and marigolds

Plan landscaping (the Territorial Seed catalog arrived, and I found my books on Xeriscaping and Rocky Mountain Gardening)

Start sorting clothes from dressers and closets: the Viet Nam Vets truck is coming Thursday, and anything I no longer wear or that no longer fits is going to them or the trash, as appropriate. I'll give them my old manual pasta machine, and tire chains for vehicles I no longer own, too. And a lamp and fireplace tools and some other stuff that have been cluttering up the basement for a long time.

Fix the XP image on my laptop so it will stop locking up the rest of the system.

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Tue, Aug 04, 2009

Progress

Posted at 7:55 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I have planted most of the nursery plants in the squarefoot bed. Tomorrow I'll plant the last two plants (the mums and marigolds) and the carrots, parsley and thyme seeds. Garlic, onions and peas can wait a bit, but I'll put up the trellis tomorrow.

The deck is making progess, too. The old railing has been cleared off, and I can see preparations to for the new support posts and railings.

Sunday evening I made homemade pasta with my new Kitchenaid pasta gadget for the first time. It came out pretty well, and having the mixer do the cranking made things much easier. I think in the future, rather than make a full size batch and deal with leftovers, I'll just make one egg-worth per person. Though the leftover pasta is also yummy. And making the large batch gave me enough practice that I think I'm getting the rhythm down.

I should try ravioli one of these days...

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Mon, Aug 03, 2009

Tomatoes

Posted at 11:27 pm MDT to Garden

I bought a small tomato plant at the farmers' market on Saturday.

It isn't actually in the ground yet. The planter box is assembled and filled with dirt, but I need to soak the planting mix once more, thoroughly, before i put the plants into the squares. And the ones that came out of green houses need another days of partial sun before they move out into full sun conditions. I may actually plant things tomorrow.

But I have eaten three golf-ball-sized vine-ripened tomatoes from my very own tomato plant.

Other plants waiting to go into the square foot garden include:

sage
rosemary
marjoram
oregano
portulacas
chrysanthemum
marigold
summer squash (already flowering, like the tomato plant)
iceplant (a flowering ground-cover)

I also have garlic cloves to plant, and seeds for fall crops of carrots and parsley, and thyme. And Nanette has promised me some pea seeds (which she buys by the pound) and onion starts.

Besides the grapevine...

Some of these plants will move into other beds, once I have other beds to move them to. In the mean time, it's nice to have some herbs and flowers.

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Sun, Aug 02, 2009

Deck Jack

Posted at 8:42 am MDT to Miscellaneous

The deck outside my bedroom looks crooked to me, but that is because it has been sloped in the other direction for so many years. It is actually level now (I checked with an actual level).

The deck was built oddly, like so much about this house. It doesn't have ordinary posts holding it up, but is cantilevered off the main house structure. And the cantilever support is off center, so the deck has torqued over the years.

Yesterday while I was at farmers' market I got a call from a guy at the company that is supposed to repair the deck. He wanted to try jacking the deck so they could start to judge how extensive the repairs were going to need to be. By the time I got home from market, he had been and gone, and the deck was propped and leveled.

It looks to me like we are in pretty good shape to put in the permanent supports (actual support posts to keep it from torquing again) and the new railing, without having to dismantle and rebuild the whole deck. I suppose I'll learn the official verdict next week.

I am psyched to get this done. I can't really work on the parts of the landscaping farther from the house until the counctruction work near the house is done.

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Sat, Aug 01, 2009

Labyrinth

Posted at 6:44 am MDT to Garden

I have been trying to decide what I am going to do about the area of my front lawn that was scraped bare by the bozos who did the digging for the power-line burial last year.

I really want something there other than weeds. (I'm amazed that bare spot has grown so many weeds this year -- some of them must need very little organic matter in their soil, just minerals and water.) But I don't really want a lawn, especially not one that I would need to inflict my horrible well water on.

I was looking at a website about xeriscape ground-covers which cautioned against mono-cropping them in imitation of a lawn, and something in my memory went "ping".

I could do a xeriscape meditation labyrinth! I have wanted a labyrinth for years, and now I have a good spot for one. If I'm going to put money and effort into the yard, it might as well be for things I want.

I went to the Labyrinth Company website, which sells (among other products for building labyrinths) weed cloth preprinted in labyrinth patterns to use when laying a labyrinth out in your garden. I ordered the pattern for my favorite labyrinth, an octagonal 5-row model that harmonizes well with the Net of Mirrors symbolic system.

I'll do the paths in gravel and the boundaries in river rock and xeric ground covers. And I can put a flagstone in the center, and elemental symbols in the 4 corners outside the octagon, to make it an even better ritual space.

It probably won't really be set up until sometime next year, but I need the pattern now, so I can lay out the over-all landscape design. (I am terrible at visualizing things like this.)

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