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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. 

come on, kate. get it together.

come on, kate. get it together.

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obvs i’m the one who needs to get it together. no blog posts for three days? what is this?? good grief. 
here’s what happened while i decided to not blog. 

  1. my green peppers started sprouting! here’s hoping they all have something going on today.
  2. liz, charlie, and i drove to lake city to check out hok-si-la park for charlie’s “i’m not dead” party. looks awesome! now i’m waiting to hear from the park lady on campsite availability and what dates would work. 
  3. leo won an academy award (finally)
  4. i pulled my hamstring trying to do full wheel at yoga last night. what a downer. 
  5. week five of half marathon training starts this week. bleah. 4-2-4–6 miles this week. 18 miles total! oy. 
  6. CAUCUS tomorrow. here goes nothing.
come on, al. get it together.

come on, al. get it together.

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today i got an email from al franken’s office saying he supports hillary and to get out the caucus for hillary. this made me a little bit sad, especially for a guy who holds paul wellstone up as a beacon of emulation. 
i sent his office a nice email saying thank you for the reminder on the caucus, and i will be going to my first caucus ever next week in support of bernie sanders. i also said he was probably well aware of the reasons that bernie is the better choice for president, and that if hills is the candidate, i’m voting green. my guess is that the dem senators are supporting hillary because of money reasons. which is really unfortunate. i’m all for a female president, but i think we need to look for the best person for the job – the one who’s going to look out for the american people (not corporations).
“Politics isn’t about big money or power games; it’s about the improvement of people’s lives.” – mr. wellstone himself
 
anyway, all this to say, go bernie. i am eager to go to the caucus and report on how that went. 

restored

restored

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i put a new solid state drive in my mac mini and it’s like a whole new computer. on top of that, i was able to keep my other drive in the computer, so now i have two drives internally and two drives externally. i think i’m set for space for a while. 
i also had to look for a different photo management software, unfortunately. apple has decided to stop updating iphoto and use a photos app instead, which makes your photos work more like on mobile. which is fine for mobile users. i am not a person who wants her RAW images to act like mobile images. so it was off to look for a new photo management system (i always use photoshop to edit). 
i looked at lightroom and thought about adobe bridge, but i looked at google picasa, and dang if that doesn’t work slick. you can import your photos to a specific place, and it uses the date the photos were taken as the folder name (as opposed to the date imported like iphoto). i do have to do a little extra work to move it into photoshop, but i’ll deal with this. it was free (unlike lightroom) and its naming convention was automatic (unlike bridge). 
slowly but surely i’m getting all my stuff organized on my newish computer. it’s fast, so it isn’t taking much time! 

relevant oatmeal

relevant oatmeal

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i watched the entire series of “lost” online. the day after the episodes aired on tv, i watched them on my computer on the abc website. it was a nifty little setup.
so now i’ve been trying to watch “the magicians” online after they’ve aired on tv, and according to the syfy (stupid syfy name) website, i SHOULD be able to do that. the quality is crappy, and when i chromecast it to the tv, it’s like i’m watching a weird, jerky over-the-air with rabbit ears antenna tv show. 
i guess i can deal with crappy quality. but what really is irritating me is that they seemed to have capped me at four episodes. why bother advertising being able to watch the show on your site if you’ve not going to let people actually watch the show? yes, i’ve tried an incognito browser. the only other option at this point is to try to run my IP through another location. 
i understand them wanting to force people to watch it via cable, but then why advertise the ability to “watch full episodes now” if you really can’t. (and i’m sorry – i’m not paying $2.99/episode to watch this. i’ll wait for netflix at this point.)
relevant oatmeal here. 
ps: did you know that now even the basic hulu costs a monthly fee? i thought it used to be free…

downtime

downtime

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generally i jump from book to book, but after finishing up red rising i need either a little break or jump right in and read it again!
so i’ve been watching firefly instead! and a little xena here and there. 
today was nice out so i ran my five miles outside. it wasn’t quite an awesome run, but it was ok. five miles is a while, and i tried to run most of the time (a couple hills that i just decided to walk, but oh well). 
the nice thing about running five miles is that i can eat a lot of food during the day – i got an extra 800 of so calories, so i made some frozen yogurt and ate that. yummy!