Office Decor

Anne, do you remember this thing? I've been meaning to tell you that I've been rocking this in my office for the last year or so.

Dinner

Sprouting

My chart where I jotted down what's in each square.

Checking in on things after work yesterday.

This was the first I saw of my lettuce, planted four to the square. I planted these on Monday the 29th, so it took about 10 days for these to pop up. I'm hoping one of the seeds in the lower right corner germinated and that we'll see that one next.

The lettuce again, with the first row of peas visible in the square above it.

The bean plants are juuuust starting to show themselves. It's hard to see in this picture but there are nine little bumps in the soil here, where the plants are starting to push up. I could only see the green tip poking through on one or two of them, and am betting that the rest of them will be appearing today.

The king of the garden so far, my yellow pepper, transplanted into the garden on 5/19 after being grown from seed by Trevor.

The two in the back are tomatoes, a brandywine in the top left corner and a beefsteak two squares to the right. The yellow pear tomato is the big one in the second row, and a jalapeno is two squares to the right. In the bottom right corner is the cayenne pepper. These all seem to be growing strong.

See how the yellow pepper is off-center in its square? I planted that "lay-me-down" style, by digging a trench and laying the plant horizontally in it. The young stem was flexible enough that I could gently bend the top part up into a vertical position and then pack some soil around it so it stood up straight. This keeps the roots and stem closer to the surface where the soil is warmer and gives the roots room to grow down through the soil as it matures.

The yellow tomato plant and me.

In the second row from the top, far right, you can just see four little plants. Those are my orange California poppies, the one thing I planted on 5/13. All four seem to be growing well and I should be able to thin them out this weekend.

Where We're At

Most recent apartment pictures:

Note the dish rack and the clock. Those are new. And I put the driftwood on the built-in bookcase.



The new couch, out of which I am enjoying the hell, with a couple pillows I bought. Picked them out myself, nailed it.



Bedroom area, post-screen and with star up there...

The Gatorosa

My Grape Gatorade Mimosa, a.k.a. the Purple Gatorosa. The best thing you've ever had? It may be.

Recipe: It's Korbel Brut with a healthy splash of purple Gatorade.

Out of Touch

What do these two items have in common?

1) Greyness;
2) They're both in my home; and
3) The concept of being able to make effective use of either device is as foreign to me as Guatemala.

In psych class in college I read about the concept of cognitive unavailability, which is when something is so far removed from the collective radar of a culture that the people of the culture can't even understand the idea of the thing. After more than five years at 187A, that is what the idea of using a thermostat to somewhat precisely control an area's temperature is to me.

Heat in my last apartment was extraordinarily hard to come by. All winter, the radiators would sputter and clang to life only for a little while most mornings and rarely throughout the rest of the day, on the whole providing far more noise than heat.

So for the first few weeks in the new place, it's taken a long time for it to register in my head that there is a small dial in my home that I can move a quarter inch to the right and have my apartment start getting warm a couple minutes later. After almost a month, I shake my head and marvel a little bit each time I hear the boiler start rumbling below my feet a second after I dial up the heat.

The way I feel about that thermostat is the exact opposite of taking something for granted.

This all reminds me...I'm going to go turn on the heat.

The DVR is a a slightly different story. Out of my 30 years, I've only had the DVR for nine months. It hasn't been enough time for me to get into the habit of using it, so it still doesn't often occur to me to record anything. The Giants Super Bowl win that I should be watching about twice each month? Not on my DVR. When I do think to use it to record sports, I rarely get my whole game, which almost caused my head to explode when I was watching the Kansas-Davidson game and my screen went black with three minutes left and the score tied and me in the lead in my work pool with the Jayhawks as my champion. My failure to assimilate DVR into my life and easily absorb this technology makes me feel old.

I said it was a slightly different story, not a slightly interesting one.

By the way, I won the pool.

I Totally Blogged my Dinner

On the way home from the subway today, I bought a bottle of Korbel at the liquor store,and two pork tenderloins at Union Market. I seasoned up the pork with salt, pepper, garlic powder and my great Creole Seasoning while I waited for the coals to get hot and flame down. I put the grill over the coals and gave it a good scrub and then took it off and wiped it down with a paper towel and olive oil. Then I tossed the meat on.



Gave it about 15 minutes on the direct heat with the lid off.



For a while it looked like a snake:



Came out nice.



Added the finishing touches and ate outside using my chef's knife and a fork.