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Showing posts from June, 2007

I got worms!

So, a package of worms arrived for me today. It seems sort of weird to pay 30 bucks for a pound of worms. It seems weird to think that the USPS delivered a pound of worms to my porch. I wonder what else people are mailing across the country. When I worked at the bookstore, a guy once brought in a package of horse semen to have shipped. Anyway, I watered down the composting box and turned the worms loose. A pound of red wigglers (latin name: eisen foetida) is approximately 500-800 worms, by the way. They're tiny, maybe one-tenth the size of your average night crawler. But they can eat half their weight in kitchen scraps a day. Soon I'll be feeding them cucumber peelings, egg shells, apple cores, lawn clippings, and whatnot. Very exciting news. Now I've got to start thinking about how to protect my big investment when the temps drop next fall. Maybe I should also consider getting a lock for the worm box, to keep people from sneaking by in the middle of the night

princess

Yesterday I took my new phone back to AllTel and traded them for a different one. I didn't like the one I originally picked out, an "LG RAZR ," was disappointing. It's hard to say why, exactly--I feel almost bad about taking it back. It wasn't broken, after all. But it just didn't have the same functionality and adaptability of my old phone, a entry-level Motorola. So now I've got a Moto RAZR , and it feels so much more intuitive. I feel like those people at the restaurant who say, "I HATE to complain, but this steak is just a bit too spicy. Do you mind if I change it for something else?" Or, "This Long Island iced tea is poorly mixed. Can you bring me another one?" The phone experience makes me feel like that kind of princess. Seriously, all the phone really has to do is make a call and store my contacts, right? So who gives a crap if it takes me three steps to get to the alarm clock instead of just two? I do, I guess. I probably cou

couple other things

There were two other notable things this weekend. One was my unexpected detour to Wheatland Reservoir on my way back to Laramie. Enough said. The other is my lunch at Cheyenne Crossing. It was, by far, the best restaurant meal I've had in a good, long while. In fact, I don't remember when I've had a better lunch out. A buffalo patty melt, a Dr. Pepper, then rhubarb pie and a cup of coffee. The sandwich was juicy, with perfectly sauteed onions and just-crisp rye toast. The pie came out looking a bit jumbled, and the waitress apologized for not being able to get it out of the pan in a perfect slice. Way I look at it, I'd rather eat a pie that's been made to taste good than a pie that's been made to slide easy-like out of the pie plate. And the crust was good--chewy and crisp and not too thick--and the filling was tart like rhubarb should be and not too sweet. Events like this should be celebrated. It was a good lunch.

'long valley road'

That's just one of the songs I heard this weekend, at the Black Hills Bluegrass Festival. Dad and I jumped on the motorsickles Saturday afternoon and pointed them towards Rapid City, then sat out in the grass until 10 and listened to half a dozen groups pickin on banjos and mandolins and fiddles. Then we went looking for a hotel room in town, thinking we'd go back up to the festival Sunday morning to catch the gospel show. No dice: every room was booked; apparently that's 'just the way it is in the summers here,' according to the night staff at one hotel. So we had a drink at Murphy's, then drove over the hill to Sturgis and found a place to lay our heads. Murphy's was sort of an odd choice for a drink--it's definitely the college hangout, so Dad was the oldest guy, by about 30 years. (That's also how much older than me he is, which maybe made me the second oldest guy there, maybe... hell.). But it was still a fun time. Sunday we rode the back r

some randomness

There is, as they say, a first time for everything. Yesterday I was driving down the street, on my way home from a new haircut, when I saw a little kid riding his bike down the street. Then came a stroller. Then, dad, pushing the stroller while skateboarding . I've never seen that before. On my way to the haircut I was thinking about that part in Barbershop where the dude is laid back in his seat, getting his hair washed, while everybody else in the barbershop is looking out the window watching some crazy lady beat the crap out of a car. And he's laughing along with them, talking about how crazy she is, and then he realizes it's his car. For some reason, that part of the show cracks me up. In the paper yesterday I read that a Boy Scout waiting to have his immunization records checked was killed when he got crushed by a totem pole as he sat outside the camp nurse's cabin. When I think about the ways that I might day, that isn't one I spend a lot of time worrying abo

good pain

Saturday I hiked part of the Headquarters Trail. Yesterday I played soccer for about an hour and a half. Today I feel like somebody snuck in last night and beat me with a sock full of quarters. I think I'll try to run the loop at the south end of the green belt sometime this week, but I'm pretty sure it's not gonna be today. I spent more time outside in the last two days than I typically spend outside in a week. Saturday was Upward Bound bbq, an outdoor wedding, and the hike. Yesterday was soccer and mowing of the grass. Even my legs have gotten a shade darker. Which means, of course, that I'm still white like a ghost. But at least now it's not white like a bioluminescent ghost.

sketch

I tried to blog yesterday but it wouldn't let me in. Now I've got to be home in fifteen minutes to complete, finally, the last of the car sale. But I wanna remind myself of the things I wanna say. --False confidence --Safeway and receipts --The elusive search for a 36" inseam, sweet Lord Okay, now I'm back. Eighteen years of school--and the good grades I earned along the way--created a sense of false confidence in my ability to 'get things right the first time.' Now I'm discovering that, really, what I often did was avoid opportunities for failure: school was easy, so I put lots of time into that work at the expense of other things I was interested in. This is, I now realize, a stupid way to go through life. Failure is okay, and so is making a mess of things. Right now I've gotten myself into a mess, but it feels okay because I know that all of this confusion and headache and heartache will eventually lead to me getting it right. I'm not going to r

the micale index

My friend David judges prospective purchases in terms of Walmart Great Value spaghetti, the 3 lb. box. Which costs, generally, 97 cents. So, for example, when I tell him I've been wondering if a new shirt is worth thirteen bucks, he says, "Get the shirt that's ten bucks. Do you know how much spaghetti you can buy with the leftover three dollars?" If you're not great at math, three dollars will buy approximately nine pounds of spaghetti, according to the Micale Index. Last night at Safeway I was looking for fruit. For 2.88 American dollars, I bought two pounds of fresh strawberries. No matter who you are, that's a deal. When I got home I cleaned them up, sliced them up, and had a bowl of them with some coffee ice cream. Today I printed off a recipe for strawberry-rhubarb crisp (I think the neighbors have some rhubarb that is coming along well. Maybe I'll have to freeze the strawberries until the rhubarb is ripe enough for me to carry out a midnite raid.) I&