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Month: March 2016

just some stuff

just some stuff

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i was going to talk about superdelegates today, but time got away from me. maybe tomorrow! instead, i finished a book, used the exercise bike, did a little yoga, and watched a couple episodes of xena. 
in other news, i already have some tomato seeds up and running! i’m super impressed, especially since the seeds that are already up are four years old. i have my garden meeting april 6, and i’m hoping they realize some people might want to get in there early and let us in sooner rather than later. 
i also have some tulips poking through. this doesn’t surprise me much, but i am surprised that they haven’t made more of an appearance already. i’m ready for some green grass! (and tree buds. and birds. and frogs. let’s go.)

spring!

spring!

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it reached nearly 70º here today. aahhh!! hello spring! i went for a run outside, which was pretty awful because it was so windy i had to keep my head down most of the time to keep dirt out of my eyeballs. but running in 65º weather was pretty nice. shorts were nice. tshirt nice. no treadmill VERY nice. 
this weekend is daylight saving time, and i DON’T CARE that you lose an hour of sleep. the first day with an hour more of light at the end of the day more than makes up for that lost hour of sleep. now think about that  for the ENTIRE SUMMER. more than worth it. so all you DST naysayers can suck it. 
my peppers are sprouted, my tomatoes are planted, and i’m hoping this year i’ll actually be able make some viable seedlings. here goes nothing. 
i’m getting a quote on a deck from a contractor in town. i want to see what the price difference actually is then tell nate it could be worse. i’m having trouble finding $2000 for a deck this spring, but i REALLY WANT ONE. if anyone knows anyone who could use my services (i can take pictures! i can design crap! i can photoshop you atop a unicorn! i can proofread your papers! i can grow you a crapton of vegetables!), let me know. i will amass my funds and make a deck appear. 

cat woes – sophie takes a trip to the vet

cat woes – sophie takes a trip to the vet

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poor sophie. she just has no luck when it comes to head injuries. 
two years ago she faced a cat attacker and got a claw in her head, which got infected. now i woke up this morning, and one of her eyes was squinted closed after being a little squinty last night. this has happened before, but it usually has cleared up after a couple hours. my guess is that chasey gets a little too free with her claws and gets a little too close to sophie’s eyes. 
but this was pretty bad. we went to the vet this afternoon to have a look at her eye and see what can be done. i took her in the deluxe double-wide cat carrier (it’s ralf’s), in hopes that it would at least help her to not be cramped up. 
once in the exam room, i let her out to meet the vet, and she slinked out and across the counter, and her tail – only her tail! – was shaking with nerves. poor little cat. every time the vet went out the door, she perked up. probably looking for an escape route. 
she had her eye prodded – drops went in to highlight what was going on while the vet looked at her eye with a blacklight. she has an eye ulcer. hopefully they can be cleared up with some eye drops over the next week. 
then to top it all off, i opted for a rabies shot, which means she got a shot in her behind as well as her eye messed with. what an evil overlord i am. 🙁 but overall she was good during her visit. no caterwauling or lashing out like a crazy cat a lá chasey. back in the cat carrier and then home for some treats. 
she’s not looking too hot right now. her eye is gunked over and closed most of the time. she seems pretty calm for the first set of eyedrops, but the second set must sting, because she sure flinches when those get dropped in. then her fur gets all a mess from the drops, and she just looks pathetic for a while. 
all this to say, chasey needs to calm down.

weather, running, and tree-hugger crap

weather, running, and tree-hugger crap

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so call me a pansy. it was 50º here today and the sun was out, but it was so windy that i decided to run 6 miles on my treadmill instead of outside. bad form? probably. but i hate running in the wind. it really blows (ahahaaa see what i did there). 
other than the wind, the weather looks fantastic this coming week. 65 on tuesday, great running weather the rest of the week. i’m not surprised at how quickly it warmed up, considering the rest of the winter was kind of weeny. i was listening to mpr the other day, and paul hutner the weather dude was on. he said that this winter, the frost line was only 5″ down. here’s an indication of how insane that is: when building a deck, i need to put concrete 42″ in the ground to get beneath the frost line. so 5″ is REALLY tiny. thanks el niño??
the meeting for my community garden is in early april. i feel like if the weather continues the way it is, this could be bumped up a little bit.
in other news, the land stewardship project is hosting a “land ethic at work” workshop on april 2, which i might go to! it seems really interesting and is at eagle bluff envrionmental center in lanesboro. i applied for a scholarship to go, since it’s a chunk of change to go it, but even if i don’t get a scholarship, i’ll see if i can pull together some funds. (i’d be sad if i can’t.) 
let’s go spring!

house of cards!

house of cards!

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in all my political and gardening fever, it’s a wonder i even remembered that house of cards season 4 was dropping tomorrow. after work, i’m off to do some errands, then stop by famous dave’s to pick up some ribs. can’t watch HoC without ribs, after all. 
 

and we're off

and we're off

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i’ve got four sweet pepper and two ancho (hottish) peppers up and peeking through. i was hoping for some of my green pepper seeds i saved from two years ago to do something, but so far nothing. oh well.  here’s hoping they’ll be getting bigger in the next week. i’ve got to get my tomatoes started! 
i’ve got a new plan this year for my seeds i’m starting. put them in the cold. apparently i’ve been coddling my veggies and they need some tough love, otherwise they die. so it might be a matter of putting them in the garage unless it’s 32º out or less. right now they’re hanging out in the basement, so i’ve got to figure out a space for them in the garage.
ok, enough with a gardenblog update!
 

first-time caucus

first-time caucus

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i am a big proponent of voting: do your civic duty. however, i’d never participated in a caucus until tonight. i wouldn’t even call what i did tonight participating because circumstances led to me leaving directly after turning in my ballot. but i cast my ballot tonight in my first caucus ever, because for the first time in my voting life, i actually feel like there’s a candidate who’s worth the effort.
CcgORTbUAAAxKgnanyone who knows me knows i’m a bleeding heart, tree-hugging hippie, so it’s no surprise that i’m supporting bernie sanders. he’s got the right views for me as far as social causes, environmental causes, big bank causes, corporation causes, and even seems a little on the fence as far as gun control, which is pretty much how i feel. on top of that, his campaign was funded entirely by people’s individual donations, not money from superpacs or big corporations or lobbyist groups. from you and me ($35 here). 
i would love a woman president. i really would. but i put what a candidate stands for before i ask what gender she is. if hillary were as pro-environment, anti-corporation as bernie is, there is no doubt i would vote for her. if she weren’t kind of shady and elusive, i would vote for her. if she told the people that she couldn’t do this alone – that the populace will need to get involved in order to make real changes in politics, i would vote for her. but as fate would have it, bernie is all these things, not hillary. i’m voting on the issues, not the gender.
“If we don’t fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don’t really stand for them.”
this is from paul wellstone, late, great minnesota senator who was champion of the people. i think if paul were alive today, he would endorse bernie. 
enough political talk for a while. it’s getting to be gardenblog time soon, and i know people are tired of me bringing up politics. gardening is pretty non-combative.