badgerpendous is...

The Office Desk: A Freecycle Win-Win

2012-01-18T12:11:00.000-08:00

Back in early December I mentioned that I had a few things I wanted to get started on prior to the new year. One was earthquake/disaster preparedness, and I think we've made good progress on that front, getting the go bag started, the car bag finished, and the kids up to speed on shutting off the gas and water. We bought a fire extinguisher and we'll show them how to use that soon.

But we didn't make any progress on the desk. We had grand plans of having one built to our specifications, something constructed from recycled materials. Something made local.

Instead, we ended up getting a desk for free off of the local Freecycle. If you don't know about Freecycle, you're missing out. It's simple. If you have something you don't want/need, you offer it up on the email list -- for free. If someone wants or needs it, you work out the handoff. And vice versa.

So we found a desk that fits very well in our space and while it's not made from recycled materials, the whole thing is, in a way, recycled. It's fine for what we need and we kept it out of the land fill.

Over the last several years we've used Freecycle to recycle dozens and dozens of items. You'd be surprised (or, at least, I'm usually surprised) at what people will come get from your front yard. When we pulled up the carpet to refinish the hardwood floors in the office, we had several people offer to come take the 10 year old green carpet.

We don't have a lot of space, which is good because there are often items on Freecycle that are tempting. I've seen large barrels that could be used for rain water collection, used wood pallets, plywood scraps. All sorts of things I could find a use for...

Getting Fit

2012-01-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

Back in September of 2011 I, once again, told myself I should get in shape. I remember the day clearly. It was a typical morning, getting ready for work. The kids were getting up, slowly as usual, and I was in the shower. I do my best thinking in the shower, but I sometimes the thinking turns into introspection and this time I was thinking about getting older and the quality of life issues we all face. It's a recurring conversation I have with myself. Having a job where I sit down for 8+ hours a day, I need to get up and move about. I try occasionally. I'll get up early and ride the exercise bike we have in the home office. But that usually lasts a few days. Then I go back to my usual self and crunch noisy foods to drown out that inner, nagging voice.

Around this time I heard about a website called Fitocracy. This website, so it was said, was a trojan horse. It's kind of an online game--you get points and earn levels and do quests. But underneath it all, hidden away in the dark belly of the wooden horse, there was exercise.

I hopped in with both feet (I wonder if I could get points for that hop?) and started tracking my workouts. Riding 20 minutes on the bike was good, but I could get more points if I rode 30 minutes. And then did some crunches. Ooh, and the quests have points too! So I got extra points for doing 50 crunches. Woo!

Then I tricked, or recruited..., a few of my friends into joining Fitocracy and with them came peer pressure. While no, I wouldn't jump off a bridge if all my friends did, I will ride the exercise bike or do some extra dips if it meant an advantage in some friendly competition. I was off to the races. I've exercised 3 to 6 days a week since then. Here are some numbers for the end of the year:

Exercise (and regular) bike: 475 Miles
Crunches: about 6,000 (plus another thousand or two reverse crunches or oblique crunches)

And lots and lots of dips and pushups. I even ran 12 miles.

So, the questions:

Will I continue to work out? I think so. I hope so. I feel almost compelled to do it at this point.

Is Fitocracy just a fad? I don't think so. Since joining I've found a community of supportive like-minded folks. I'm as motivated now as I've ever been. I'll be installing my new chin-up bar this weekend. That said, of the original group of friends I invited, only one still is regularly working out and using Fitocracy.

Is Fitocracy just for muscleheads? Not really, though it's tempting to say yes. Several months ago it seemed the site was aimed squarely at the gorillas in the weight room. But the admins have added lots of "body weight" quests and exercises and achievements for the rest of us. And again, there are so many people there, you're bound to find a group that suits you. And now I'm looking at possibly joining a gym just so I can try some of the weight training I've been missing out on.

Would I recommend Fitocracy? Absolutely! There's so much more to the site than what I've mentioned. I figure I only use about 40 - 50% of the site. I don't do much in the forums and I don't do much in the way of nutrition, challenges, or competitions (though that will change, I'm sure). The admins are constantly adding new features and content. That said, the site is not for everyone. I've seen many folks drop off after getting a cold and missing some workouts, or going on vacation. If you only use it track fitness it will work just fine, but there are lots of (possibly better?) ways to track fitness (online or off). For me it was the social gaming aspect that formed the secret sauce that keeps me coming back.

Out Damn Spot!

2012-01-09T10:50:00.000-08:00

I've been really enjoying going for photo walks with one of my daughter's friend's dad. We've been concentrating on the bay here south of San Francisco. It's been even more fun lately because we've both been bringing our younger daughters and they've started to get interested in photography.

Unfortunately, I recently discovered that there's a spot showing up on all of my photos! Some little piece of lint or dust somehow got into my camera and I can't seem to clean it out. I'm going to have to pay someone to dig around in there and clean the sensor -- something I'm not really willing to risk.

Here's a photo that shows the spot:

And here it is online without the arrow/etc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tterragpics/6657045395/in/photostream/

If you look carefully, you can find that spot on most of the photos I've taken recently.

Hope to get this fixed asap and get back out there soon.

Shutoffs!

2012-01-06T12:37:00.000-08:00

I brought the kids into the garage and showed them the underside of the garage sink. I told them about how eleven years ago,just after we moved in to the house, we got home from vacation and a water line broke while my wife was washing her hands. We had been home all of 10 minutes. (Talk about good timing... Though I wonder if it only broke because of the change in pressure. Maybe it would have stayed intact until the next time the faucet was used...) I asked them what they would do if the water started gushing out.

"I'd go get a tool from the garage. I've seen people on television use a tool under there to stop leaks," said the twelve year old.

"I'd get a towel!" said the 10 year old.

"Oh, I'd get a tool _and_ I'd have my sister hold a towel or a bucket!" added the older sister.

I showed them the standard water shutoff valves that are on all of our sinks. I explained that if the leak was coming from the copper pipes and not the water line, shutting off the valve wouldn't help. Then we went over to the main water shutoff. It's a big yellow lever on the water pipe where it comes into the house via the garage. I explained how to shut it off, which was was off and on, and I even let them move the lever.

Then I explained about the gas. This one was trickier because there's not a shutoff inside the garage for that. Well, actually there are at least 5 red levers on the gas pipes in the garage, but each one only shuts off a single item (hot water heater, dryer, etc.). In order to shut off the gas to the house they would have to shut it off at the meter on the side of the house. I showed them the valve/bolt/whatever they'd have to turn. But we don't have a wrench outside. Some people keep wrenches right by their gas meters for emergencies. Maybe we should. I've always been reluctant to do that, as it just seems like someone would take the wrench or it would get lost somehow. So, anyway, I showed them where I kept a wrench for that in the garage.

Overall, they seemed genuinely interested and they were certainly paying attention. I'm fairly confident that they'll manage to shut off the water in an emergency. Not so sure about the gas though. I didn't have them practice with the gas because I didn't want to have to re-light the pilot lights in the house. Maybe that was a mistake. I don't even know how hard it would be to turn that valve -- maybe they wouldn't be able to...

Next up: Fire Extinguisher!

Earthquake Safety

2012-01-03T16:35:00.001-08:00

We decided that we should get a fire extinguisher for the house (kitchen/fireplace) and teach the girls how to use it. When I was younger than my older daughter, my sister and I had a fire going one night before my mom came home from her second job (that was our only source of heat) and one of the logs rolled out of the stove (it managed to push open the doors which, I'm sure, we didn't close properly). It bounced off the bricks and landed on the carpet. I started freaking out and it was my younger sister who said to get the fire extinguisher. I didn't even realize we had one! Oh, the red thing! Once I saw it, I recognized it though it took me a few seconds (maybe, 30?) to figure out how to use it. We were lucky in that all that happened was a patch of carpet in front of the bricks in front of the stove got burned/melted.

So we should teach the girls how/when to use a fire extinguisher. And I know we have an older one out in the garage, but I think that we should leave it out there for the car, and maybe get one dedicated to the house.

Oh, and while we're at it, we should teach them how to shut off the gas to the house. Maybe the water, too.

Bird House Gourds

2011-12-31T13:26:00.000-08:00

One of our daughters brought home a gourd plant that she started as a seed at school. All the kids in her grade did, apparently. Well, we planted it in a spare container along with some snow peas and kind of just forgot about it.

After a few weeks the thing had just taken off like a rocket and had produced tons of these really neat white flowers. They were the kind of flower that opens at night. What's that called? I keep forgetting. Anyway, we ended up with three that seemed to have survived the growing season and are now drying/curing/whatever in our garage. Apparently the process is a long one, so I still have no idea how these will turn out.

I really liked the plant and wouldn't mind planting another one this coming spring. Ours grew up next to the fence and then along a trellis-like extension. While it did get tangled up in there along with other plants, it didn't shade our vegetables or choke out any other plants except for the snowpeas. We'll have to do better with snowpeas if we decide to plant them again.

Here are the three we kept. The one in the front was harvested much earlier and so it's darker and weighs much less.

Winter Garden Update

2011-12-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

We've got a decent amount of winter veggies sprouting up in the box. Looks like way too much bok choi though... :)

But what about next season? Any plans?

Plans? Why yes! In the past, I've proposed that we remove as much as half of the lawn and replace it with raised beds. We already have the irrigation in place since we can repurpose the lawn sprinkler heads. But with the kids (older daughter was doing a lot of softball pitching and batting practice so we needed more lawn) we always ended up saying "maybe next year" and leaving that thirsty lawn in place.

But this winter we've started talking about how much more stuff we could grow (we've never really had melons or pumpkins due to the space constraints and we'd LOVE to grow more than 5 stalks of corn) and now it seems closer to being a reality than ever before.

Fingers crossed. Of course, there's another reason we've not dramatically increased our garden space. It's a dirty secret, but really, it's my fault. As much as I love the idea of a larger garden, I suffer from a very predictable summer malady. I love the garden in the spring, but by the dog days of summer I'm not always thrilled about going out there and weeding and taking care of plants. This is one of those things that I'll just have to do. Make it just something I do, because it's part of what needs to be done.

I mentioned that we wanted to grow more corn. The plan is to grow some feed corn for the chickens. I know we wouldn't be able to grow enough to feed them all year (we give them a little cracked corn just about every day), but it would be able to make a dent in the amount we buy at the pet/feed store.

We'd also like to grow some popcorn. We grew "strawberry" popcorn two years ago and it turned out nice. It was fun to experiment. This time maybe we'll go with some of the "hull-less" varieties...

Molting!

2011-12-21T13:21:00.000-08:00

Two of our three hens are molting. Here's a picture of the alpha hen, Mohawk. If she was a crabby (but not too violent) top hen before, she's even worse now. You can see that her tail feathers are gone. Her bum is showing too. Most of the feathers have started to grow back in on her shoulder and neck

Made

2011-12-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

After last Christmas I sat down with my kids to talk about maybe trying to take some of the commercial aspect out of gift giving. I wanted us to give things that meant a little more. They seemed to think it was a good idea and so we made a few of the gifts we gave this year.

That's an orange and black duct tape wallet for a San Francisco Giants fan we know. Also, some "survival" bracelets made from paracord.

We also made some little sewing kits that we put inside these cool metal tins shaped like mint tins, but about 10 times stronger. My older daughter did some sewing projects for gifts as well. Overall I'm pleased and I think we'll try to do more in the future.

Go Bag

2011-12-13T22:31:00.000-08:00

Just got the first thing for the go bag. A document folio. This will replace our "govelope" which was a comically useless used envelope we were using to hold a whopping $40 in emergency funds. I know this was a bit of an extravagance, buying something like this, and we won't be filling out the whole list with brand new stuff. But I saw this one and really wanted it...

We'll put our passports, some money (small denominations), emergency numbers/addresses, pictures of the kids, each other, and the pets, etc. in there and grab it on the way out the door.

And that's the next task: printing out recent pictures of the family/pets. The kids are easy: school pictures. And I know we took some pictures of the cats recently...

Go Bag (Car Version)

2011-12-11T13:08:00.000-08:00

I've had a little first aid kit in my car ever since I started coaching my daughter's softball team. Seemed like a good idea. And it came in handy on a family trip when someone got a big cut after falling on some rocks.

But now it's time to build a better kit for the car, something more like a go bag/emergency kit.

I was poking around in the garage and I saw my daughter's old backpack in the "donation" pile. She needed something larger for school so this one went into the pile of things they've outgrown. It's incredibly dirty, but still mostly intact. After I finished putting everything in it, I found out that my daughter was planning on using it again for things like sleepovers. So... Plan B! I found an old duffle bag, and I'll use that until/unless I come across a backpack (I prefer a backpack as it seems more portable...).

Into the old backpack, er, I mean duffle bag:

first aid kit (existing)
clothing in ziploc bag(s)

long sleeve
hat
socks/underwear
sweats

small blanket
carabineer (why not?)
food?
water bottle
rope/cord
scissors
lighter?
small bungee cords
TP

Still to do/Next Steps

Two items I don't have yet are the lighter/matches and the food. I'll work on getting those.
I should probably get a charger for my phone that can plug into the car.
Oh, and I haven't gotten spare clothes for everyone else, yet, but I'm working on it.

We have two cars, so we'll need a similar bag for my wife's car. Technically, we've already started as I put the small first aid kit in her car when I put a newer, larger one in the bag in my car.

Go Bag and Earthquake Readiness

2011-12-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

Look around... Read the paper, watch the news, surf the web. The world is ending. Zombies. Government out of control. Floods, fires, earthquakes, locusts. The place is crumbling and I'm not ready! I'm not prepared!

Ahem.

It's easy to get swept up in a kind of frenzy, to feel so helpless in the wake of so much bad news. I don't want to the let the craziness win. Luckily there are several things I can do to be better prepared for the more realistic emergencies such as earthquakes (I do live in California after all) or flooding (in our neighborhood minor flooding is possible).

I think our best solution would be to sell everything and buy some remote land and begin a homestead. But that's just not feasible for us. We have to have jobs in order to pay for our elderly parents' medical bills.

With that out of the picture, we'll have to settle for handling the things we can control.

So putting together a "go bag" and preparing the family and house for a "72 hour emergency" is a good first step.

I got started on some of this stuff, but as I said before, this won't be done in a week, or a month. It'll take while but every item I cross off the list now is a step closer to being better prepared.

Resolutions / Goals

2011-12-05T08:40:00.001-08:00

I've never really been a "New Year's Resolutions" kind of guy. Something about needing to wait for a specific trigger (Look it's a new year!) always seemed to rub me the wrong way. It feels arbitrary. Not that I don't understand why it works or why people like it. It just seems inefficient to me.

I do, however, love to make lists and cross things off. I like to set goals. So that's what I've done. I've started setting my goals for 2012. But after writing a few of them down I looked at the calendar.

I still have a whole month!

So I've decided to start on some of the list items early.

Here are the first two I want to at least get started this year:

1] Replace our desk

We had a desk. It was crappy, cheap, made of particle board, and it disintegrated when we tried to move it when we had the floors refinished. I do not miss it. We got what we paid for: lesson learned. Now we're using a small table. It's uncomfortable and unstable. We've got stuff that used to be in/on the desk (and the attached hutch) piled up in boxes around the room, making a small space feel even more crowded.

We want a new desk made from recycled/re-purposed materials.

Now, I _may_ end up just making one myself. I mean, I have a table saw and many other power tools/etc. I could do it, but I like the idea of supporting a local craftsman and of using recycled materials. Also, I know what mine would look like and I'd like something that's a bit more professional looking.

I think a realistic milestone for this goal would be to find a few places/people that do this kind of thing somewhere near where I live.

2] Put together a plan for Earthquake Readiness

Earthquake Readiness -- you hear it so often here in the San Francisco Bay Area that it becomes mere noise. Everyone knows we should be ready, but we all say the same thing. "Yep, I've got to get that earthquake kit together..."

We have a few odds and ends put away, but we need more. We need a comprehensive plan:

Evacuation/meeting plans
Emergency contacts
Family training (fire extinguisher, gas shut off)
Buy a fire extinguisher
Build a "go bag" for the house
Build emergency kits for the cars
Build a "72 hour" kit including food/water for the whole family/pets/chickens, etc. etc.

I won't finish this in a week, or even a month. But I'm going to start on this now and try to do something every week.

I think a realistic first milestone for this goal would be to build the go bag. But another might be to do the family training parts.

I'm going to chronicle some of this stuff on the blog if only because then I'll feel like it's more "real."

Loss

2011-12-02T13:52:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine lost his son over the Thanksgiving weekend. As a father I can fathom the loss, I can get my arms around it, measure it, do the math. But I just can't comprehend it. The pain he and his wife must be feeling. I can't imagine it.

I went to the memorial service.

In my whole life I've managed to avoid all but two other memorial services/funerals/etc. I don't do well in those kinds of situations. Heck, I don't even go to "going away" lunches for coworkers. I don't like saying good bye. I don't like sadness. I don't like loss.

I never know what to say or do. You offer your help, your assistance. "Let me know if there's anything I can do." But what can I do? Mow the lawn? (I really did offer to do this, and other household chores) Alas, what I cannot do for them is offer any real help. Anything to remove the pain, the hurt. The loss.

Nanowrimo 2011

2011-12-01T13:43:00.001-08:00

Nanowrimo 2011 is in the books. I finished a few days early (look at me, showing off) with a novel I really enjoyed writing. I enjoyed it so much that I've actually looked at it a few times since I finished on Sunday to do some minor editing. Now that's unusual for me.

But what I need to do now is let it sit, let it just rest over there on the back burner for a month or two or five. Then come back to it and see if I still like it and how much editing I can do. And that's a good plan because of how busy I am at the new job.

I did most of my writing on the weekends and the days I had off between jobs or during the holiday. In fact, I think I wrote fewer than 5k words during lunches/etc. at work. Where in past years, I've written all about 95% of the words while I was at the office either early in the AM or during lunch. I've just always had a better writing environment at the office.

This break in the middle of November meant that my Nanowrimo python script's logging data was spotty at best. Hopefully next year I'll have it running the whole time. I was excited about this year because I finally got the web/twitter posting feature fixed. Ah well, next year...

Nano, and Catching My Breath

2011-11-22T09:20:00.001-08:00

Nanowrimo continues. It's inexorable, daunting, a clock tick-tick-ticking away. And even though I have started a new job and have even less free time than ever before, I'm in. I'm in and I'm doing well, having crossed 40k words last night. I hope to finish of the story this weekend, marking my 7th straight Nanowrimo "victory."

Seems like I haven't had time to relax. I'm spending any spare time writing or working (where I also write, but not novels unfortunately).

And I'm exercising a lot. Maybe too much.

When I mentioned catching my breath, I was being literal. The other day after a medium-sized workout (pushups, dips, crunches, exercise bike) I spent the whole day feeling like I couldn't catch my breath. I was worried about that, which made things even worse. I was even contemplating the dreaded D word (doctor).

But then I realized that I was incredibly stressed about my new job. Not that it's not stable or fun or rewarding -- I just have very high expectations for what I can do to contribute and after a whopping 5 days I didn't feel I was making enough headway.

I stepped back and put it all into perspective and then took the weekend off. Date night on Friday. No exercising Saturday or Sunday, only writing when I felt I wanted to, not when I felt I needed to. The result was a feeling of rejuvenation.

Monday I came to work with ideas and plans, things that would work, would make an impact.

Things aren't perfect, but I feel better prepared to tackle the bumps and take the bruises.

Moving On...

2011-11-07T18:45:00.000-08:00

Friday was my last day at my job. I had worked there for over 7 years. I built the team from zero to ten (10!) technical writers, hiring most of them myself. I loved most of what I did and who I did it with, but it was time to go.

So, I'm moving on to a much smaller company. From 70k people to less than 70.

I'm really looking forward to the opportunity and I really can't wait to get started.

But last week was a tough week. I knew it would be hard, leaving the people I had worked with for so long. But I didn't know it would be _that_ hard!

Monday started out fine with just a tad of melancholy. I had told my team the week before so at this point I was simply running out the clock, doing my best to ensure a smooth transition. By Wednesday I was spending a lot of my time sneaking words in on my nanowrimo novel and generally avoiding human contact.

On Friday, I went to lunch with the team and we did our best to not talk about my leaving. We were all in denial.

After lunch I put the few remaining items from my desk into a box and took it out to my car. I really, really wanted to just get in and drive home, but I felt I needed to say one last goodbye so I went back in.

It's funny, saying goodbye to people. This experience reminded me a lot of the end of senior year in high school. There's a chance you'll never see these people again. The yearbook signing was a way to lessen that blow. "Keep in touch!" we write, not sure if it will ever happen.

LinkedIn is the digital yearbook of the business world.

"Yeah, link me on LinkedIn and we'll stay in touch!"

Exercising

2011-10-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

I've been able to get myself up and motivated to exercise more regularly lately, due in no small part to a fun website called Fitocracy. I have a few friends on the site and we manage to keep each other motivated via positive messages and, yes, maybe a little friendly and supportive competition.

But today I read an interview (at Fitocracy) with someone and when she was asked how she motivates herself, she said (basically) that it wasn't motivation. It's just what she does. Just like brushing your teeth or going to work every day, it's what "mature" adults do.

And that really struck a chord with me because I've often felt that way. When I was in my 20s and living in a house with 10 other people it was very easy to blow off work, or bills, or whatever else seemed boring or difficult. But then I took some night classes and got a second job. Everyone else at the house was asking how I motivated myself. I didn't realize it at the time, but it became more than motivation. It was just something I did.

So, does this mean I'll wake up and do crunches and push ups and ride the exercise bike every day? Nope. But I think I'm moving from being motivated to keep in better shape (for my family as well as myself) to it just being something I do.

Still More Editing Notes

2011-10-13T15:17:00.000-07:00

Just finished editing the second book. I really had fun editing this one as I went back into book one to add some seeds for plots/etc. that would be revealed in book two (and three).

But mostly I liked these rounds of edit so much because I could tell that I had continued the voice/tone I used in the second half of the first book. That made editing much easier as I went through.

Now, on to the third book where I actually have to add another chapter at the end. So I'll be doing some more substantial writing as well as editing. I hope it lives up to my expectations, as that's a long way to go for disappointment! Grin!

I have the first two books up on Lulu in .pdf and printed versions, but the cover for book two isn't done yet. And, of course, I'll need something for book three. Then? Well yeah. Then.

That's the question, isn't it?

But I need (well, want anyway) to get this all done in the next two weeks (18 days, actually). Then I'll start on the book for this year's nanowrimo. More on that (you've been warned!) later... :)

I'm Old

2011-10-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

I'm old. I suppose that's not news if you know me. I complain about "kids these days" all the time. In fact, I cannot resist. Here's one now: I saw a girl this week with a rain coat literally tied around her waist. She was standing in the pouring rain, wearing just a t-shirt. I think she didn't want to be seen at school wearing a rain coat. What kind of a dork wears rain coats?

But today I realized that this getting old business is real. And that's fine. Happens to everyone, or so I'm told. What sucks, though, is the way the world is letting me know I'm old. It's these little, almost subtle things. Like when the Sci-Fi channel changed its name to SyFy and replaced most of its programming with Professional Wrestling, Ghost Hunting/Finding/Recording shows, and Sharktopus-esque TV movies.

Message? Kids watch wresting and like ghost stories and watching somewhat known actors make "rent movies" about monsters.

And Taco Bell? What happened to you, man? You used to be cool. We used to hang out. I'd get some nachos, maybe an enchirito, maybe a burrito supreme. We had good times, right? But now? You're selling stuff that needs quotation marks: "food" I guess you'd call it. I mean, making taco shells out of Doritos? Is that even legal?

Now, where are my reading glasses and my cane? I think I hear hoodlums out on my lawn.

The Goings On

2011-09-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

On the writing front, I've gone through Jute 1 and finished with the editor's changes. A couple of notes there:

I'm going to take this opportunity to add a few things now that will be the seeds of sub-plots and reveals in the second two books (which are also already written, but need another pass).
The editor had some great ideas (and some I didn't agree with), but I found 6 (six!) typos that the editor missed on their pass through the text. I had paid for an editor because I wanted that kind of peace of mind -- knowing that the little typos would be found (you instead of your, for example). Alas, buyer beware! Now, I don't know if this is my fault or, really, if there's any blame to be had, but I know that 6 typos (that I found myself, who knows if I missed any?) in 160 pages is too many.
Do I mention this to the editor? It's been over a year since we last emailed and so I'm assuming that while it might help them do a better job in the future, they might not want to hear from me after this long.

I'm about to start on book 2, and I still have to get book 3 finished up. I hope to have it all done by October 31st... But then what? I really don't know! Self-publish? Submit? (both?) Create a website? Ebooks? Printed? "Middle Grade" is a good market, but I have no idea (yet) how to get in there.

Ok, on to the garden. Our tomatoes have done very well. We planted two varieties (some kind of roma and some kind of little grape or cherry ones -- those guys taste so good!). Also, we had a volunteer sprout up -- looks to be that uber late blooming heirloom-ish variety we tried last year. You know, the ones the mice destroyed?

Well, the volunteer is huge, and its fruit are taking forever to ripen. They're still green and growing larger.

Speaking of mice, we've been waiting for them to show up this year. Last year was so bad, there was even an article in the local newspaper about it. We have some of our garden encased in chickenwire. On Monday morning, we had two mice to dispose of. So, just two so far! I know there's plenty of time left for the rodents to attack, but we've already gotten so much from our measly little garden, at this point I'm calling this year a success. Well, unless you're a pomegranate tree/shrub, in which case you should sleep with one eye open as I'm THIS CLOSE to chopping ours down. Dropped every bloom again!

More Editing Notes

2011-08-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

I'm a third of the way through the first book, and I'm into my second really tough section. The issue here is that I hit the fast forward button and only provided a summary of what happened when I wrote the first draft:

"Over the next several months..."

Like a montage in a movie, but with even fewer details. It makes sense from one point of view: I had the section in there because it helps move the story forward. That said, what we're skipping over is the first few months of a friendship and a lot of research/exploration. That kind of stuff is a treasure chest of opportunity, so I'm working at fleshing it all out. It'll take a while, but I planned on this one being the biggest hurdle.

Also, since I've already written all three "books" (50 - 60k words each), I can go back now and "retcon" some facts/scenes to make things work better.

The Edits, Part Two

2011-08-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

Eight chapters in and this is hard work. I'm finding that I get distracted easily, and then getting back into the work is hard. I love the story, and I know what I need to do to fix it, but it's "hard" work. It's not just fixing typos. It's moving sections around, grafting and transplanting, and then fixing all the plumbing so all the pieces line up.

An hour or two per day, I tell myself. Just that much time and I can be done with all three Jute books in time for November's NaNoWriMo. I can do this!

Today was interesting because I found that I had a slow "flashback" section up near the beginning of the story, but it really didn't need to be there. Instead, that information could easily be included in a later conversation/scene and I could have it explained from the MC's point of view, rather than as a momentum-killing infodump. So the day's work is clear, but making it happen is not, er, happening. I find any and every excuse to context switch away (hello, blog entry!).

Anyway, removing/dealing with the show-don't-tell sections (I don't think there are _that_ many of them) is always an interesting challenge. I don't want them to seem contrived. Each one is a puzzle to solve.

Now, if I could just stay away from flickr/twitter/blogger long enough to solve a few of those puzzles...

The Edits

2011-08-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

Today I went through the comments and suggestions and edits from an editor I hired a little over a year ago. She dissected my Nanowrimo novel I wrote for my daughters. I've mentioned the book before, it's the first of three in a series for the "Middle Grade" audience about some girls who discover they can make magic charms. Before you roll your eyes, at least there aren't any zombies/werewolves/vampires/Biebers. Just sayin'.

Well, I actually went through every comment, every line and really tried to see a larger picture behind them, rather than just the one sentence or word or section they mentioned.

And I think I have a good understand of what she was trying to say, and after not really looking at the book or the edits for a year, I'm really in a good place to squeeze every bit of usefulness out of them, while not taking anything personally or rabbit-holing on minor points.

The end result was about 1000 words in a new scene, and about a thousand ideas for places and ways in which I could improve the story. I'm off for the weekend, but I hope to get back into this same writing groove next week.

The Slows (and a garden rundown)

2011-08-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, it seems that I've slowed down quite a bit, eh?

Well, that's only because just about everything else has fallen into a kind of quick pace. Seriously, time is flying past all too quickly. I'm finding myself scratching my head, wondering "where did the week go?"

The garden is growing. Tomatoes coming in (yum!). Oddly enough, the pests seem to be leaving the tomatoes/cucumbers/peppers alone. Heck, even the blueberries are safe. Can't say the same for the poor strawberries though. All season long we only got about two of them. The rest got chomped.

We never did follow through on our threat to go crazy planting corn. Instead, we ended up with a lone plant, something one of the kids brought home. It grew to about waist high before a squirrel (I presume) gnawed through the middle, cutting it down like a beaver fells trees.

I trimmed the heck out of the pomegranate during the late winter. It's tripled (at least) in size since then but unfortunately it's returned to its former habit of dropping every single blossom. It's frustrating.

Anyone know if peppers can cross pollinate? We have a plant that produced two measly jalapeno peppers last year. It survived the winter so we left it growing. Yesterday we harvested what should have been a very large jalapeno. Instead, it was a somewhat small bell pepper.

The sweet potatoes we planted got shaded/crowded by some squash and so they're still relatively small. No idea if we'll tear out the squash or just let things go. See, we're lazy. Not really "I'm too lazy to go outside" lazy, more of a "I don't feel like experimenting in the garden" lazy. It's sad.

The potted lime tree is zooming along, there has to be at least 20 limes on there now. Can't wait to start harvesting. The lemon and key lime... Well, let's just say they're not participating.

And the chickens! They're doing well. We only have the three, but they lay enough that we're always falling behind, giving away eggs occasionally as the fridge gets packed. One of the birds, Mohawk, goes broody every couple of months.

Project: Floors and Baseboards

2011-07-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

When we moved into our house way back, oh, nearly 11 years ago, we pulled up the carpet and exposed the original parquet hardwood floors. They were in terrible shape, but we preferred that to the "renter" carpet that had been in place for the last several years.

But two rooms, the back bedroom and the office, gave us problems. The bedroom's hardwood had been removed at some point, so we had to put carpet in (we couldn't afford the cost or time it would have taken to put in hardwood). And the floor in the office was so bad we felt we'd have to put carpet back in.

We finally got around to putting hardwood in the bedroom and refinishing the floors in the office. Some before and afters:

Above: Office, just look at that floor. Ick. Below, the girls room, with the 11 year old carpet and original baseboards:

Above, a closet we added during the remodel. That's laminate floor in there. Below, the original closet in the bedroom with the some original floor they didn't tear out.

And so that was "then" -- And here's now! We did the "demo" work -- tearing out the old carpet, tack strip, staples, and baseboards. The floor guys put in the floors (PROTIP: If you're a contractor, send your A team to work on a house, or let the homeowners know you're sending the scrubs in. Some people would prefer to pay a bit more to secure your full attention and/or skill set.). Then we put in the baseboards ourselves. We bought a really cool electric brad nailer and my wife did all the installation while I did the cutting in the back yard. Worked like a charm. We did the two rooms in maybe 5 hours, with several breaks. Easy!

And here below was the only real tricky part, that's a 45 degree corner, so each of those angles on the baseboard is 22.5 degrees. This was our first and only attempt. Got it close enough that a tiny bit of filler in the gap was all we needed.

And the girls' room. More of the same (another 45 degree corner) with two closets and a 13 foot wall, this one took longer, but it all came together and the kids are thrilled with their new floor.

Writing Update/Validation

2011-06-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing much at all lately, but I do have an update. My younger daughter is just about to finish fourth grade. Bear with me here. Her teacher spends time reading aloud from books during the year, mostly on Thursdays but occasionally at other times when there's a spare moment.

Earlier this year after the teacher had finished reading whatever story they were going through, my daughter asked the teacher if she would read "my dad's book" to the class. My daughter has a copy I gave her and she keeps it in her backpack.

The teacher agreed, but only if she had my permission. I was surprised to find out, and nervous, but also very curious about what my target demo would think so of course I said "Yes!"

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I went to the school to pick up my kids. Several fourth graders approached me and started asking all kinds of questions about my book! They wanted to know if I would draw a picture of a statue mentioned in there, or if I could tell them what was going to happen next. Apparently my daughter flat out refuses to "spoil" her classmates.

And now with just one week of school left, they're on the final chapter. There's a chance they won't finish the book so I pointed the teacher to the free .pdf download at lulu.com so she could tell the kids' parents where to find it if they're interested.

I have to admit that this has started to rejuvenate my interest in writing again, after a good long 6 months of apathy. One of the interesting things about this whole story is that the teacher told me that every kid in the class voted to keep reading my book and they have all expressed interest on their own without being prompted. I'm sure my press agent, er, I mean daughter, has something to do with that but I also like to believe that the kids are really enjoying the characters and plot and setting. Also, hearing that the kids actually laughed at the parts I intended to be funny led to a sigh of relief.

And that's especially fun for me because an editor I hired to read that book told me that I should "spend more time around kids, maybe volunteer to be a big brother" thinking that I was not relating to my target audience.

But I think this is a little validation, and who doesn't like a little validation?

Softball, Part 2

2011-05-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Over the last 5 months, I've spent an incredible amount of time with my daughter, mostly just the two of us. We play catch for hours, lazily chatting away. We drive to games and practices, arrive early, stay late, all the while making me the happiest father on the planet as I absorb and savor every last moment.

You see, I know the end is coming.

My older daughter is only 11, but I know the time will come -- swiftly -- where she won't have the time to spend with me.

But for now, we're learning about life via softball. Now, don't get me wrong. We play in a recreational league and we don't have our hopes pinned on an athletic scholarship or anything, but she loves playing and I would love just about anything that keeps us close like this.

As the season progressed, the A pitcher ended up missing a total of 4 games which mean that my daughter (B pitcher) had to pitch four complete games along with some fill-in innings in the rest of the games.

In every game, she faced some girls two years older than her and as much as 18 inches taller. She stood in there and pitched against them all. She gave up hits, hit batters, walked in runs. But she kept trying and kept practicing.

"Ok, just one more strike, then we'll go inside," she would often say as she pitched on the sidewalk in front of our house with me playing catcher. And I'd smile and forget about dinner for a while longer as the sun set and forced me to squint to find the ball in the dim light.

But in our modern society with our upward mobility and tiger moms, it's tempting to focus on the results. And her team lost every game she pitched. (They also lost all but one game the entire season...)

In the last game she pitched, we had an umpire that really seemed to get that this was a league where learning was as important as winning. He walked out to the pitcher's circle in the first inning and explained to my daughter why he had called the last pitch a ball, and how she had to "present" the ball/etc. prior to pitching -- just some basic rules she had to follow.

I saw a look of determination on her face as she got ready to pitch to the next batter. She threw the fastest pitch I'd seen her pitch all year, and it was a strike. She built on that success and struck out two batters. She managed to get out of the inning only giving up two runs. Then she went right back out there and did it again. In fact, in one inning she struck out three batters, one on a "change up," but still gave up 3 runs (dropped third strike rule...).

She never once blamed the catcher for dropping those third strikes. She didn't blame the umpire for calling some close pitches against her. She didn't give up when she got called out on strikes twice at the plate. She cheered on her teammates win or lose, even if they couldn't really hear her tiny voice.

Yes, they lost that last unremarkable and unimportant game by two runs, but she had her best game yet. We got into the car and she immediately started to make plans for more pitching lessons, more time outside on the sidewalk and in the yard, working on hitting and bunting. I smiled all the way home.

On Guts

2011-03-14T12:34:00.001-07:00

My 11 year old daughter has more guts than I did at that age.

She's learning how to fast-pitch softball (taking lessons for the last 3 months) and is in the local girls softball league. She loves pitching but she's much smaller than most of the other pitchers, as much as 18 to 20 inches shorter! She's the second youngest girl on the team, and there's more than 18 months age difference between her and the oldest kids in the division!

Anyway, my daughter is the designated backup pitcher for our team. The first game was this weekend and the main pitcher for her team was traveling on vacation so it fell to my daughter to pitch the whole game. This was her first live game pitching with the 12 inch ball and from the 40 foot rubber.

She was very nervous.

She gave up just 3 runs in her first inning and even managed to strike out the side. Then the second inning came and she got only one out before the other team reached the per-inning run limit. Same thing happened in the third inning. There were some groans from the parents, but mostly on the really close pitches. I checked on her there in the third inning because I could tell she was having problems. When I talked to her I was prepared for her to ask to come out of the game (which would have meant we'd have to put in someone who had never pitched before...) but she surprised me by saying that she knew what she was doing wrong with her motion. She wanted to stick it out. She wanted to finish the game because she still liked pitching even after giving up 6 straight walks.

In the mean time, offensively, the team was a real mess. The opposing pitcher was a foot taller than my daughter and had been pitching for years and she can throw about 10 miles an hour faster than my daughter. She was blowing through our batters, making them look like statues as the ball zipped past for strike after strike.

In the bottom of the third inning, after some errors, a LOT of walks, and some sagging shoulders, we told the kids that the runs just scored against them weren't important. That we just needed to have some fun and do our jobs and use our heads. We needed to score our first run of the season and then build on that.

Our first batter, the only girl on the team younger than my daughter, worked a walk and then my daughter came up to bat. She had zero hits all of last season. She always jumps out of the batter's box, even on strikes. She's just too timid. But not this time. On the first pitch, from the pitcher who had struck out our best hitters in three pitches, she swung the bat, made contact and reached first base safely. Her first hit in over a season! I was very proud of her. Not because she got the first RBI of the season. Not because she went on to steal a base and make two perfect slides. And not because she went out in the 4th inning and held the team under the run limit.

No.

I was, am, so proud of her because she didn't quit. She didn't give up when it would have been just so easy. No one expected her to be successful. No one expected her to swing the bat or get a hit or steal third with a beautiful slide.

She gutted it out. Gutted out the 18 runs she gave up. Gutted out the impatience of the infield, the throwing errors she and her teammates made. She gutted it out, end to end, and earned some respect. Not bad for a super shy 11 year old.

Looks like she'll be the sole pitcher again in a month or so. We better get practicing!

The Cringes

2011-02-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

Today I found myself cringing again. I can't help it. Every time I look at my "to do" list, I see that one item that makes me cringe. That item that causes me to shy away and look for other things to do.

"Finish Jute 3"

Three oh-so innocent words. Heck, that's really just two words and a number. Eleven characters and two spaces. Weak.

And yet I can't even think about them without feeling uncomfortable. It's the kind of uncomfortable that I feel when I'm in an awkward situation.

I wonder if that's because I am 99% of the way through writing the last book in the series. I wonder if maybe I'm reluctant to part with it after three years. More likely, it's that I know that the final 1 percent represents a ton of hard work and plot hole fixing and loose end tying. When I wrote the first draft for book three, I knew there would be one difficult part to write, and I kept putting it off and putting it off.

Finally, I got to the end and there was this hole just sitting there, staring back at me.

Darn hole.

My daughter has declared that if I won't finish the book, she will. And I'm close to taking her up on it. I mean, at least she's willing to try. I can't even open the word processor for fear I'll have to type something.

Of New Beginnings

2011-02-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

So far, the new year has brought more than its fair share of newness. Nothing major, of course, but a host of changes and new experiences have been lining up since early January.

My best friend moved away (again!). I'm going to coach my daughter's softball team. I have some new team mates at work. Out of the blue, my older daughter -- the shyest of the shy! -- auditioned for the school play and will be up there on a stage singing and dancing. My younger daughter seems to have suddenly turned a corner and matured about 3 years over night.

With so much new and changing around me, I would typically expect to be feeling uneasy and uncomfortable. But that's really not the case at the moment. I'm happy. I'm encouraged and excited and filled with an eager anticipation.

There are some larger changes on the horizon, though. Things hurtling toward me that I won't be able to avoid, even if I want to. Of course, we'll tackle those as they come, enjoying the good and dealing with the less so.

This is all reflected in simple things like our garden. The chickens are laying again, the sun's been out for weeks, the winter garden never stopped, but now we'll have to make room for the new stuff we're about to plant.

So here's to the year of new!

Chickens Back Online

2011-01-31T14:34:00.000-08:00

No, we didn't put wifi in the coop, but all three hens are back to laying. The alpha hen, Mohawk, was the first to start back laying after the winter molt. Cheepers finally came back on line on Sunday, ending a 3+ month drought!

Mohawk laid two soft-shelled eggs in January and so we're still keeping an eye on her just in case. But she's as hungry and "Mohawkish" as ever so that's good.

We're still feeding them lots of leftovers from the fall garden and they go nuts for the chard and spinach.

Next up is to finally get around to adding a pop door to the run so that we can let them out into the yard without having to open the main run door and leave it open all day. We'll have to be sure to make the new door very secure as we don't want to add any weak links in the security.

Rainy Day Photo

2011-01-30T11:26:00.000-08:00

Alas, it was a trap. Today was cold and rainy. I stepped outside during a break in the weather and took this photo.

Should be nice weather again later in the week, though.

It's a Trap!!!!

2011-01-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

It happens every year, and even though I know it's going to happen, I fall for it every time. My wife calls it the January Trap.

That's where you go outside (here in the sunny California Bay Area) in January and it looks and feels like spring. So you start doing outdoor chores. Maybe plant some seeds, you know, get all excited about the garden.

And the plants and birds all fall for it too.

But then February comes and the temperature plummets and we remember again that it's only January and we still have another six weeks of cold weather.

Now, I know that people living where they have actual weather probably don't feel much sympathy, but alas...

Today we spent hours in the back yard trimming and sweeping. We fixed/set up/rerouted all the irrigation for this year's garden areas. There's this annoying palm tree that I have to trim about every two months so that it doesn't knock over the fence (again). And cleaning up those giant fronds is never fun (inevitably I get stabbed by the ultra sharp needles near the thick end of the branches). We cleared out the old mint box and got it ready for a new crop. Can't wait!

Woodpecker (finally)

2011-01-22T15:29:00.000-08:00

About a year ago we noticed some woodpeckers had moved into a tree in the yard. They're beautiful birds, really, with black and white stripes and the male has a red head. I vowed then to photograph them, and I tried many times over the summer, but I had no luck.

Until now that is. Introducing two Nutall's Woodpeckers living in my back yard (click to enlarge):

That last picture shows the female. She's really shy, and this was the best shot I could get.

In Other News

2011-01-21T11:59:00.000-08:00

A friend and I started a "365 photo" project early last year and for a while we really kept it up. See, lots of people say they're going to do one. And lots of people genuinely believe they will. They have a plan, they say.

Well, we knew going in that we'd need something a bit different in order to get us to stick with it for a full year. Our gimmick (not our original idea though, sadly) was to post our pictures together, side by side, every day, without knowing what the other person would be shooting. It was a brilliant idea! A gym-buddy for the camera.

http://flyingonions.wordpress.com/ (my images are always the ones on the right side of the page)

And we did well for a while. But alas. We pooped out about half way through the year. I mean, Day 173? That's sad!

Of course there's always a good reason for things like this. And while I kept taking photos (I have them saved up through about day 210), it stopped being fun without my friend's participation.

So I'm adding this to my list of things I want to get done this year along with the garden. I want to take more pictures. I still want to finish the 365 days, even if it takes us closer to 600 days to get it done. Some of the combinations were interesting. And we have some ideas for a new direction for the second half of the year.

I've also been posting stuff to flickr the whole time, so it's not like I've completely stopped.

Corny Goals

2011-01-20T13:07:00.000-08:00

One of the things we grew last year that we really wanted to focus on again this year is corn. We grew "indian" corn (I really should find out what that's supposed to be called) and some little strawberry popping corn. We planted them in large landscaping pots (those black plastic pots that plants come in when you buy them...) and they grew well. The indian corn didn't pollinate itself much so most of the ears had poorly formed kernels (if any), but the strawberry pop corn ears were great.

We did have an issue with squirrels jumping up and trying to eat them. Also a mouse or two got to them in the early stages.

But this year we want to triple the amount of indian corn we plant. We love making our own cornmeal and would like to make our own cracked corn for the hens. The question is, what's the best way to go about it? Planting it directly in the ground is probably out of the question. So we want to plant more in the large pots. They grew just fine there last time, so it's just a matter of ensuring they pollinate better and that we find a way to keep the rodents away.

Ideas?

Blueberries?

2011-01-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here's what I noticed recently on our little blueberry shrub we just planted late last year.

Are those actual blueberries forming? I'm not positive we've placed the pot where it gets the right amount of sun, but things look to be growing well enough.

Now, if those are actual berries, we'll have to find a way to keep the birds away...

The Pile (and some mint)

2011-01-04T13:40:00.000-08:00

Weather, family, and work all conspired to put us a little behind on chicken coop/run maintenance. So when we did get out there to do a massive clean out, it was a bit smelly! Our poor neighbors... We did notice an area that was getting wet that did not get wet before so it's a good thing we dove in when we did so we could fix that before it became an issue. We found a couple of beetles in the run. How on earth some beetles could live in there without being gobbled up is beyond me.

We emptied the coop into the run and then raked out the whole run and put all of that into the empty side of the compost bins nearly filling up the side. I put the thermometer in and it read 58F. Checked it again the next day, about 25 hours later and it read nearly 160F! That stuff is baking fast!

And that's a good thing because it smells. Still, I figure we'll have two completely full bins of finished compost in time for the spring garden. The winter garden is really slowing down, finally. We're feeding most of the stuff to the chickens who really love to do their part to help out by munching it all down.

One of the things we hope to do in the early spring is re-do the mint box. We have a 4ft x 7ft planter box in which we've been growing mint for a few years (Mojitos with home grown mint and limes!). This last year the stuff finally really started to get leggy and the tree above it kept dropping branches/leaf litter/etc. Finally we decided to just ignore it and hope it died out and then replace it this year.

Looks like we got our wish. More on that later, once we start actually doing stuff in the yard.

Increase, Improve, Measure

2011-01-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

Those are my three goals for this year's garden. And, oddly enough, while "measure" is one of the goals, I don't know that I'll have a really great way of measuring my success at the three goals...

Increase.

I hope to increase no only the amount of stuff we grow, through extending the season/adding spring and fall crops. I also hope to increase the square feet of garden we plant. One idea is to pull out part of the lawn we put in. Another would be to chop down a tree or two in order to open up more sunlight hours on the patio for potted plants. I'm rooting for the "tear out the lawn" idea myself. We'll never be able to plant squashes/pumpkins/etc. unless we drastically increase the space we have, or reduce the amount of stuff we're trying to grow in that space. I'd rather add more space than give up pumpkins or reduce the other things we're growing. I also hope that we end up getting another fruit tree of some sort up and running. We planted a blueberry bush late last season and it got a few little white blooms on it. We're hoping that's a sign of things to come this year. The artichoke plant (in a pot) was moved and nearly died this year after giving us three or four chokes the year before. I'm really hoping it can get back into the swing of things and start producing again in 2011.

Improve.

For this one, I hope that we can improve the yield and quality of the crops we do grow. I want to get five or more fully ripe pomegranates, for example. I want to get more potatoes. Et cetera. But not just the food itself. There are many things we could be doing in support of the garden. We should improve the compost system we're using. Improve the irrigation, fertilization. Improve the way we handle pests. We did a lot of things on a "Just in time" scale, where we could have done better if we were better prepared. Less reaction and more pro-action.

Measure.

We haven't done much in the way of record keeping. We did eventually start to keep a tally of the eggs we receive from our three hens, but we don't track anything else from the garden. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We could be tracking the amount of lemons and limes we get. When we get them. The amount of vegetables. We can and should also track things like when and what kind and how much fertilizer we add (if any). What kinds of seeds gave what kinds of results. We have never bothered to track costs of things like chicken feed, hay, seeds, etc. We both LOVE data so this is something that I'm hoping we dive into with gusto.

Wraping Up the Garden

2010-12-22T08:02:00.000-08:00

Overall, we've managed to make some real progress toward supplementing our lives with some home grown food. The hens were a success from day one. This year's garden was more successful than last year's, for sure. We started earlier and got some spring crops, then we had a long summer with some decent harvests followed by a late crop of more lettuce and chard.

On top of that, we finally saw the pomegranate produce actual fruit!

The lime and lemon trees (in pots) are finally both producing with the lime tree going crazy with really great limes.

There's been talk of expanding the garden a bit in the spring. Right now it's just talk, but I'd love to double the garden space!

On the minus side, we lost Brussels sprouts, lettuce, spinach, and a ton of tomatoes to bugs and mice and squirrels. We caught something like seven mice ourselves and we know that the neighbors to one side of us caught at least that many rats and several mice. The folks behind our house got several rats. They suggested that maybe the rats/mice population explosion was due to our chicken feed. We pointed out that we keep everything sealed up tightly. Of course they have five large bird feeders in their back yard dropping seeds all over the ground... The final answer, I'm sure, is a mixture of several things.

I read that the extra wet winter last year led to a bumper crop of rodents. Also, we know that some of the pests had discovered our compost pile and garden. So between the extra rain leading to extra food, and the compost/bird seed/etc., it's no wonder the place went crazy with rodents.

This year we plan on being on top of thing with traps.

Hope to sit down and make more serious plans for expanding the garden soon.

Chicken Update

2010-12-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

Finally, after nearly 10 weeks our hens are beginning to lay again. We got just 10 eggs in early October, and then nothing until yesterday when we found a perfect egg waiting for us in the nesting box.

It was a rough 10 weeks for the hens, I'm sure. They molted, but the weather changed back to warm and then cold a couple of times. Glad that we've started to turn the corner.

Now they they're about to turn two years old, I suspect that their egg production will slow. That's fine though.

Nanowrimo 2010

2010-11-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

Nanowrimo has been tough this year, but then I bet I say that every year. The story is coming in fits and starts and I'm doing what I can to get enough time to finish. I'm writing at work, early in the AM, through lunch, etc. because it's so hard for me to write at home in the evenings and on the weekends.

But what's making this year difficult is, I suspect, the fact that I'm finishing up the "trilogy" for my daughters. It's been harder than I expected to find the right ending. I had an idea in my head when I started this two years ago, but since then so many things have changed that the original ending seems flat. So I'm scrambling to do better.

Then, once this is over, I can relax and decide what to do about next November. I have a great idea, but I might also consider taking a year off.

You know, like in college. And we all know how well that works!

Fall Garden

2010-11-19T08:58:00.000-08:00

Our Fall garden has been much more satisfying than our Spring/Summer garden. The bugs are mostly gone, the mice never came back, and things seem to just be easier.

We grew a lot of lettuce and various salad greens. Our peppers continue to crank out fruit. And we're eating it all, which is nice.

Of course, almost on cue, the chickens started molting and haven't laid an egg in two months! I'm sure the crazy weather had something to do with it as we went from very hot to cold and rainy back to hot again here in the bay area.

We've been giving the hens some extra protein to try to help with the stress, but so far they just seem to be getting uglier by the day. :)

In other chicken news, the coop and run are integrated so the chickens have 32 square feet of run they have constant access to, but when we let them out to range in a netted area of the yard we have to move several things around and it's generally a pain. We do it now by leaving the door to their run open. Also, they manage to find their way out of the netted section frequently.

So the plan is to make some kind of popdoor in the end of the run and then do something a bit more secure on the netted section of the yard. That way we can open the door from outside of the run without having to leave the main door open. They'll be able to range outside and everybody wins.

To start that plan in motion I took some leftover lumber from when we built the coop and painted it with the same sealer (nontoxic/etc.) as the rest of the run. I'm going to use that to make a frame/channel/etc. for a guillotine-style door.

I was hoping to make that this weekend, but now it looks like it'll rain. Sorry birds, maybe next weekend.

The Moment of Pomegranate Truth

2010-10-27T18:06:00.000-07:00

It started raining here this weekend and so I thought it was about time to harvest the pomegranates. Here's what they looked like after I brought them inside:

(click for larger view)

That one on the right is really big... And then I couldn't wait and decided to open the largest one right away. The skin/rind was spongy and the fruit was light for its size, so I didn't have high expectations. In fact, while I was peeling it open, a spider crawled out of of the bud end and scared me. Sigh. Anyway, the seeds were still sour, so I obviously picked them too soon, but they sure are pretty!

Next season I plan on thinning the fruit myself (rather than letting various animals do it) and leaving them on the tree a bit longer.

My Red Box Adventure (Part Three)

2010-10-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

(Possible Red Box adventure spoilers below)

(DM Screen not included)

This time around I swore I'd be ready. On Saturday night after the kids went to bed I set to work on the dining room table. Gone were the salt and pepper shakers, the napkins, and the placemats. The lazy susan stayed (the players put most of the dice and left over figures on it, too bad it turned into a distraction for the younger one). I put out the map for the "Crossroads" encounter and set up a screen behind which I would work my DM magic. I went through all of the encounters in the Red Box and did my best to not only understand them, but to set aside the right tokens and try to figure out what would happen in each room.

I put the kids' character sheets at their places at the table and even handed out the "Second Wind" cards and action point tokens. I liked having the cards for each of the powers there, it added something tactile to the experience and knowing my girls, it would help them remember which powers they'd used. But while I was handing out the cards, I noticed something. My friend had created his character (Human Fighter) using the Character Builder tool. And I had created a fourth character (Dwarven Fighter) for the group for some additional muscle. While I didn't expect the Red Box to provide a card for every fighter power, the set seemed to be woefully under serving the fighter class. I looked through the cards three times. Not a single fighter Daily Power was to be found. I wonder if I missed something, or perhaps a sheet of cards never made it into my box. The cleric and mage classes had a ton of cards though.

For all of the other powers, we just cut out the ones we printed from the character builder.

I went to bed late on Saturday night as prepared as I could be.

Sunday morning came and we were ready. My friend arrived with a couple armloads of snacks and beverages, further endearing him to my daughters.

A few things conspired to trip us up, but we did the best we could. A massive heatwave rolled into town so we moved the game time up to 10AM rather than post lunch to help avoid the worst of the mid-day heat.

My older daughter sat down to finish the last two pages for her character and noticed that our d20 from the Red Box was missing. Odd! I suspect our cat absconded with it, but we looked all over the house and never did find it. Luckily my friend brought plenty of dice with him.

My friend was still learning the new ruleset and so he felt it would be better for me to do the majority of the work for the fourth character (the Dwarven Fighter I created for them). This made my job tricky as I had a lot of balls in the air. I did my best to make the dwarf just bonk whatever was closest and not do much based on the DM information I had (separating DM knowledge from player knowledge from character knowledge! Phew!). In turn, my friend kept track of the HP and healing surges for the whole party and generally stepped in with ideas whenever the kids seemed to be stuck. That was a tremendous help.

In a few places I gave the kids some hints about searching rooms or examining objects. For example, even though I mentioned the pool of water and the basins and the braziers in encounter 1, they never thought to examine them. So I said things like "you notice something sparkle at the far end of the room." And my friend helped with these things too.

The party moved on to the encounter with the white dragon and decided to try to talk their way through it. I think those kinds of skill challenges are fun and I was happy to have them attempt alternative approaches.

Of course, I just plain failed at coming up with a way to make the conversation last for at least 8 skill checks. I ended up letting them pass after just four or five successes with zero failures. Part of this is, again, my lack of experience as a DM. I knew exactly where the conversation was going to go, but I just had a hard time coming up with what seemed like obvious filler. What could have been an epic encounter for the party fell a bit flat. That said, I overheard the girls in the next week talking about bluffing their way past dragons...

From there they went into the room with Kurrash (Kurresh?) the bugbear and we decided that would be the final battle of the day. Everyone used their daily powers and the party made quick work of the enemies. What a remarkable difference from our first attempt where a handful of goblins handed out a TPK.

And so we put the "The End?" on the session with the plan to eventually meet up to finish the rest of the small adventure.

Now, some things I handled incorectly as DM:

I had no idea how the thief works, and so I didn't know how to guide my younger daughter in doing anything other than throwing daggers all day. I know I could have made it a lot more fun for her if I could have had more for her character to do. I will add that to my list of things to learn before next time.

Skill checks. I tried to throw a few in there for them so they could get more into the non-combat parts. I can do better there for sure.

Keeping it moving. Working the fourth character as well as the monsters was just too much for me to handle. Even with a large area behind the screen in which to keep my notes/etc. I still kept losing my place and forgetting stuff.

Modifiers! There are just too many of them! It's so hard to remember who has combat advantage, who's used a Second Wind, who's standing in a hex/field/area of effect/etc. etc. Add in "marked" targets, bloodied, etc. and I just plain had a hard time keeping it all straight in my head. I'll need to rely on the players to do a better job of keeping track of their modifiers so I can at least just have the monsters' to track.

FUN! I didn't quite make the experience as fun as I had hoped. For our first/aborted/ill-conceived attempt a few months ago, I had written a lot of backstory and descriptive text that was tailored for my friend and my daughters. They seemed to enjoy that part of things. Using this adventure, it was up to me to add in the fun stuff that would keep their attention but I was so worried about keeping track of everything else (writing down initiative, tracking every monster's HP, conditions, etc., etc.) that I didn't improvise enough. And, yes, I should have been thinking of things before the game to keep drawing the kids in. I know next time will be better in this regard as I've had more time to learn.

And there you have it. One man's (and his daughters') experience with the Red Box.

LOVED: Lots of goodies in the box that I can use for future sessions.

TOLERATED: Typos/inconsistencies in the materials (a real pet peeve of mine for professional writing) and seeming lack of cards for the fighter class.

My Red Box Adventure (Part Two)

2010-10-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

Continued in Part Two...

I tried to DM the game, but I didn't have any of the source materials other than two small adventures I had downloaded from the internet. I didn't know enough about saving throws and the death mechanics and initiative and equipment. I had to dash down the hall to use the character creator to find out what a characters new AC would be if they bought a shield, for example. This really sucked the life and the fun out of our afternoon.

The game started out fine though. I had the characters meet on a snowy mountain pass. My daughters' characters knew each other, but they had yet to meet my friend's character. He arrived in somewhat spectacular fashion, being chased by both an avalanche and a goblin riding a wolf. At this point, we all agreed this was the Best Day Ever.

We didn't have enough miniatures to represent the whole party so we used an old cork and maybe some Lego's or some other little bits from around the house. The girls thought that was funny.

Maybe my younger daughter wasn't quite ready for D&D. At one point she asked if her thief could sneak up and tie some enemies shoelaces together. Alas eventually the wheels fell off. The game got a bit more complicated, more rules came up and were discussed.

Soon, a minor encounter with goblins turned the four character party to mush and we agreed to table the idea and maybe come back to it later. As the DM, I knew that I was the cause of the failure.

The whole problem, I know, was due to the fact that I didn't want to go out and buy $60 - $100 worth of materials to run a test game to find out if the kids would want to play more. I was hoping to get by on the cheap for a quick adventure. And I was learning as I went along -- a bad idea.

And then I saw the Red Box mentioned at Wired GeekDad. Well, technically it's called the "Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game Starter Set." But that's a terrible name. We'll go with Red Box from here on out.

This, I thought, would be perfect! According to everything I read, the Red Box had all the bits I'd need to get started and even a "Choose your own adventure" style rule set that takes you through creating a character and a solo adventure. Perfect.

I couldn't wait to get my hand on the game and give the whole thing a second try.

I mentioned it to my buddy and he seemed enthusiastic (apparently enough time had passed since our first fiasco to warrant another attempt).

A couple of weekends later, I had my opportunity. Circumstances had aligned to create a perfect storm for family gaming. My daughters had both had exceptional weeks at school. They had done a great job with chores around the house. We were heading to the mall to buy some clothes (the kids grow so fast!) and the local game store just happened to be less than a mile away from the mall. Perfect!

I hadn't been in a game store in years. Probably a decade at least. I stopped the girls right when we got to the door. "Ok, there will be a ton of stuff you'll want to play with or look at. That's fine, but ask me first before you pick up anything."

The guy at the counter took one look at me and knew I was out of my element.

"Can I help you find something?" He asked slowly but pleasantly.

"Uh, Red Box?" I held up my hands, pantomiming a square.

"Ah! Yes, I have them in the back. Hang on."

Meanwhile my daughters had discovered miniatures. They were fascinated by the racks and racks of them. I tried to show them the dice -- the stuff that had captured their imagination in the first place -- but they were locked in on the figures. I had planned on buying each of them their own little set of dice... Alas.

They liked the cheap plastic miniatures more because they were already painted. I let them each buy a pack of official D&D figures (they were on sale) and we brought the whole stash out to the car. My wife smiled as the kids tore into the figures and I ripped the plastic off the Red Box. We drove home to calls of "What's an arbalest?" and "Oooh, a giant unicorn!"

The Red Box was all it was advertised to be: the battle grid, tokens, dice, character sheets, all of it. The girls wanted to play with the tokens. My older daughter started in on the Player's book and began to create a character as I left the room. I came back later and she had her nose buried in a Harry Potter book she'd read twelve times already.

"What happened?"

"Well, it said 'If you want to be a mage, go to page 14,' but page 14 didn't mention magic users at all!"

Turns out that the book said to go to "number 14" not "page 14" -- oops. She swore she'd take another stab at it later in the week. Friday came and she still hadn't tried again. I was worried.

"Are you going to make a new character?"

"Sure! I call dibs on making my character first!" Her sister was not in the room, rendering her dibs null and void. But I didn't tell her that. So, hopefully character creation would take place after school. She set to work on Friday night and finished all but the last two pages. My younger daughter never did create a new character using the Red Box so we let her use the Tiefling Thief she created with the builder for the last game.

I read the rest of the Red Box's DM book on the train to and from work during the week and I listened to some podcasts of games being played (PvP, Penny Arcade, Wil Wheaton). I felt like I was ready to give the whole thing another shot.

Continued in Part Three...

My Red Box Adventure

2010-10-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

Like many folks my age (old), there's a special place in my heart for the old school Dungeons and Dragons experience. As I got older I moved from dice to mice though -- I stopped playing pen and paper games and dove headlong into video games. I'm an introvert so finding people to play PnP games with is just too daunting most of the time.

But still, through all of these years I had visions of dice rolling in my head.

A few months ago my daughters were poking around in my desk and found an old "lead" and a little set of dice. They were immediately fascinated and the following barrage of questions only served to get them more excited. What can I say, excitement is contagious.

A friend had given me that lead figure (hand painted, beautiful) and a small set of dice years ago, as we briefly entertained the idea of diving back into D&D. That game never materialized (we're both introverts so we don't have a lot of friends to play RPGs with) so I put the items away and pretty much forgot about them until their re-discovery.

The girls (9 and almost 11) had many, many questions about the game. And after I had answered most of them, they decided that they really, really wanted to play. They recognized immediately the fact that the video games daddy played were based on the same ideas.

Well, how could I say no?

I called my friend, the one that gave me the dice, and we arranged to play a game on an upcoming weekend -- on Sunday to be exact.

Leading up to that weekend, I had the girls create characters via the free character creator application and we began discussing backstory and personality. We were really going to do this! I spent my lunch hours writing an introductory scene and overarching "campaign" that would tie the characters to the mini adventure/delve thing I had downloaded. I wrote a fourth character (Dwarven Fighter) to help out the party. His backstory was so much fun to write it came to a couple thousand words.

On Friday I sent the opening scene and background information to my friend via email and had printed copies waiting for my kids when they got home from school. On Friday night my friend replied how excited he was about the weekend.

That game, using D&D 4th edition rules was a complete and utter disaster.

Continued in Part Two...

Big Spider

2010-09-26T16:59:00.000-07:00

This one built a web right next to our barbecue last night. She's a huge one! (click on the image for a closer look)

In other news, those green tomatoes we picked all ripened at the same time so we've been eating as much as we can and giving away the rest. I suppose in the end, the tomato harvest wasn't a bust after all.

NaNoWriMo - Attack of the Commas!

2010-09-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

I think I use too many commas when I write prose. With 5 "nanos" under my belt, I figure I have enough data to see what I'm doing, comma-wise, over the last few years.

I wrote a quick python script and here's the output for my 5 nano novels:

#--------------------------------------------------
#file    : nill_1.txt
#commas : 3609
#words   : 50046
#commas per 100 words is : 7.2
#
#--------------------------------------------------
#file    : icarus.txt
#commas : 3319
#words   : 50002
#commas per 100 words is : 6.6
#
#--------------------------------------------------
#file    : horace.txt
#commas : 3392
#words   : 50006
#commas per 100 words is : 6.8
#
#--------------------------------------------------
#file    : jute.txt
#commas : 2703
#words   : 50102
#commas per 100 words is : 5.4
#
#--------------------------------------------------
#file    : jute2.txt
#commas : 2267
#words   : 52449
#commas per 100 words is : 4.3

Wow, that's a pretty drastic/impressive drop off in commas. The "horace.txt" story had a ton of dialog in it, which inflated the commas a bit, I think.

So yeah, a great excuse to play around in the python today. My nanowrimo script does all sorts of useless things already, and this year I'll add "commas per 100 words" and maybe a few other fun/useless features or metrics.

Oh, and I should see how my comma totals compare to other 50k fiction novels. Maybe tomorrow...

Some Harvesting / Some Planting

2010-09-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

Due to the mice, we pulled out all of the tomatoes. Wow, we had a LOT of tomatoes growing in that box! As we cut and pulled, we kept finding more and more half-eaten fruit. It was a painful process. In the end, though we found ourselves with more tomatoes that we could eat anyway. Too bad they're all green. We're hoping to ripen them indoors -- many of them are still on large sections of vine.

So, the potatoes weren't too big, but the kids had fun digging them up.

And there are still some cucumbers growing out there:

And where we once had tomatoes, we've planted a bunch of lettuce starts.

Desperate Times/Measures

2010-09-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

So the mice and squirrels are winning the garden war. There's no disputing that. Here's what's left of the indian corn:

And this one hurts the most:

Aside from putting out mousetraps (which we do!), there's just not much I can do. Poison is certainly out of the question, and in my cozy neighborhood, so are firearms. I'm going to try odd/pointless things like this:

Of the original dozen or so pomegranates, there are now just three remaining. I'm hoping that when the squirrels come to eat this one, they'll laugh so hard they decide to leave it alone and go bug a neighbor.

That corn though... We have about 10 little tiny ears of strawberry corn (popping corn) and 1 ear of indian corn left. Tragic.

And the tomatoes... The mice have just plain destroyed the tomatoes this year. Today we're going out to yank the tomato plants and try to ripen the remaining green tomatoes in the house.

Garden Surprise

2010-08-28T16:49:00.000-07:00

I suppose all is not lost. We had written off the cucumbers as a complete failure and stopped paying attention to them over a month ago.

Well, here's what we found today:

Even a lemon cucumber! There are a few more on the vine, too.

And then we have this:

No, those aren't beans or peas. Those are the pods on the potato plants. The flowers are pretty and they seem to be growing well. Perhaps we should stop watering them?

Matter

2010-08-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of getting this "stuck in a rut" feeling. Like I'm just running laps -- I keep passing the same landmarks. Over and over they pass by or maybe I pass them by. But it doesn't matter; either way it's just perception. The kids started school again. Just like last year and the years before that. Our garden is slowly losing the battle to squirrels, bugs, and birds. Just like last year and the years before that.

What did I do this morning? I got up and took a shower. Then I spent 20 minutes with the family and then went to work. Just like yesterday. And the days before that.

Yeah, I'm complaining, but I can't complain. And by "I can't complain" I mean I'm socially and possibly legally, morally, and astrologically not allowed to complain. And yet I do.

I suppose the good thing is that since I've been here before, I also know I'll be _there_ again. Yes, there. There, where I'm active and engaged, where the kids are behaving and miraculous, where the job is interesting and the vegetables grow. There, where the pieces fall into place faster than I realize they weren't in place before. Where I have revelations and big ideas in the shower in the morning before work. Where metaphors don't escape me and words snap together into perfect, shiny piles.

Where I matter.

Argh! (Or, Patience is for Squares)

2010-08-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

Alas:

Something got to the largest pomegranate. Also, something pulled the second largest one off of the stem. So that's two down. We still have a dozen more fruit on the tree, and who knows, maybe thinning things will turn out to be positive in the long run...

But, that said. ARGH! I'd been waiting years for that pomegranate.

Also, aphids moved onto the corn (soap to the rescue, hopefully) and it looks like my liberal application of BT (which, it seems Home Depot doesn't carry) has paid off in the garden as we haven't been able to find any more caterpillars/worms in there.

Also, we're fairly sure something's gotten to the giant tomato, so we'll pick it even though it's only yellow. Sure wish we could have had that thing make it all the way to red.

Garden: Good News/Bad News

2010-08-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

Besides the mice that got all of the cucumbers, we have had a few more pests visit the garden.

Here's where worms are doing serious damage. I pick a dozen or so off of the plants each day. We really need to go get some BT!

And here's some mildew...

But then there's the good news!

Giant Tomato

Corn zooming along

Pomegranates

Patience

2010-08-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

Our garden is teaching me to be patient. I doubt I'm getting much better at it, but this year especially has shown me that I need to be more patient. Many years ago (7 or 8?) I planted a little pomegranate plant in the back yard of our new house. I'd always wanted a pomegranate tree and vowed that if/when I ever did end up buying a house I'd plant one.

And it refused to grow fruit. Year after year, it mocked me with its brilliant blossoms and vigorous growth.

I nearly pulled it out last year. Nearly chopped it up and composted it. But I waited yet another year. And... Success. It took this long, but we FINALLY have some fruit growing (one of which is size of a tennis ball).

On a much shorter scale, the tomatoes and corn we planted seemed to take _forever_ to finally start to produce. We have a jungle of tomato plants and we have 4 or 5 actual tomatoes growing. And our corn went from zero ears to a whole bunch in what felt like overnight.

So yes, the garden is teaching me patience. And just in time, too, as the kids race toward their teenage years!

Half Moon Bay, CA

2010-08-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

Photo Update

2010-07-31T23:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend I rented a lens from Borrowlenses, who was kind enough to move into a store about a quarter of a mile from my house.

On Saturday AM, something woke me up at about 5:40 (our cats were the culprits, most likely) and so I woke up my older daughter and we headed out into the overcast morning to see what we could find.

We mostly drove around the town of Woodside, CA, and we spent most of the hour just talking and goofing off. We stopped, finally, on the way home when we saw two horses chasing each other around in circles and generally acting silly.

Unfortunately, I was so busy laughing at the horses and talking to my daughter that I did not concentrate much on the quality of my shots. Here's literally the best one I took.

But it was just great to get a nice quiet, fun hour with my 10 year old before she magically turns into a parent-avoiding machine.

Tomorrow: Tide Pools!

Carrots!

2010-07-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

We finally managed to grow some full sized, honest to goodness, actual carrots! This is after many attempts, so we're really happy.

(click for larger view)

And of course, the chickens pitched in to help too, donating one perfect egg each.

We ended up tearing out the lemon cucumbers as they've failed to produce and we got tired of waiting/feeding the mice. We threw the plants into the compost (135F today) hoping it would help with the smell.

Another Garden Update

2010-07-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

Our potatoes are flowing, so that means it's about time to harvest them, right? I don't even remember when we planted them, but they were huge for a long time until the neighboring cucumbers came along and took all the sun. The kids are absolutely giddy with the thought of digging them up.

Also, the corn is 8 feet tall, complete with the little things that grow up out of the top:

Oh, and we finally have our first tomato! I'm sure a mouse is nibbling on it as we speak. This is a huge deal because we had about 6 plants all grow up to about the size of a small tree, and zero tomatoes. Of course, we have no idea what kind it is.

The pomegranates are huge, and I think we have about 6 that have a legitimate chance of becoming actual, edible fruit. Fingers crossed!

Some poblano/pasillo peppers. This is the best we've ever done with peppers in our garden, so we're wondering if that means we're getting better, or if the garden fairies are coming at night and replacing the dead ones with real, live peppers.

And then, a question. We have a blueberry bush we planted this year, and it has these nice healthy shoots growing up from the base of the plant. I figure that they're "suckers" from the rootstock, but I don't know if that's how blueberries work. Should I cut them off?

Dragonfly

2010-07-20T19:15:00.001-07:00

That dragonfly sure loves our yard:

Compost

2010-07-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

The compost pile was at 155F last night when I checked. That is a new all-time record for our composting efforts. This is great news as the stuff we pulled out of the chicken run continues to run hot. The problem is the smell (a little like urine/ammonia, bleh). I think we need more browns in there (I need to remember to throw in the spoiled hay we have...). I'm hoping the neighbors haven't really noticed yet.

We try to keep two batches going. The first side is the "in progress" stuff where we're throwing new stuff, and the second side is the "finishing" side where we let it just sit there and finish up. Our finished side is, well, finished and so we're looking to use it to amend soil/etc.

Little. Furry. Evil

2010-07-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

After getting three quick, large cucumbers, we figured our garden was about to head into overdrive. We imagined having home grown cucumber salad every night with dinner. "Oh my," we'd say, "you simply must take some of these tomatoes and cucumbers off our hands!" As our neighbors marveled at the bounty.

Alas, mice have again discovered the garden and have managed to destroy every cucumber after the first three!

The mouse traps are working, slowly. We've managed to eliminate several mice over the last few nights, but that's not enough. They're still out there. Lurking.

I'll say this, though. If those rodents get a taste for pomegranates, there will be war.

Big Things in the Garden

2010-07-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on the garden. The tomato plants are 6 feet tall, covered with blooms, and not a single tomato in sight.

The corn is over 6 feet tall, and not a tassel in sight!

The pomegranate? See for yourself, here's one of 4 or 5 that have set:

And finally, check this guy out! He sat there for a 10 minute photo shoot! My kingdom for a better zoom/macro lens!!!

Raiding My Kids' Bookshelves

2010-06-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

Recently on a vacation back in New Hampshire, I happened across a book on my step-mother's bookshelf: Choose Your Own Adventure #5: The Mystery of Chimney Rock. I grabbed the book (with permission of course!) and threw it into my suitcase for later inspection -- you know, research.

http://www.gamebooks.org/gallery/cyoa005bf.jpg

Mostly, I did so because as I move slowly toward finishing up the first Jute novel, I realize that I haven't read a ton of current "Middle Grade" stuff. Of course, this book is 30+ years old, but still, it's a start!

Reading it was 2-parts nostalgia and 1-part "Wha???" Not to spoil it too much, but the vast majority of the endings were negative, including death, broken limbs, and other evil fates. I don't recall the books being like that as a kid, but I have to say I enjoyed reading it today!

And that got me thinking. I wonder what kids books are like today. Ah, I can hear it already "What? You don't pre-read every book before your kids read them?"

Alas, I have a confession to make. The kids have hundreds of books and they're always adding more. Sure, we read some of them (anything on the "teen" side of pre-teen), but generally we let them have quite a bit of freedom when it comes to getting books from the appropriate section of the library or bookstore.

So I went into the kids' room and raided their bookshelf for some reading I can use to see how Jute stacks up. I mean, what if I'm using an overly mature vocabulary? What if I'm dumbing things down too much? I want to be sure I'm hitting my target of 8 - 12 year old girls. (My two daughters seem to agree that I've done so, but something tells me their opinion might be a bit biased...)

Today I started book one of "The Sisters Grimm." I got on the train platform in sunny San Carlos, California and opened my backpack. That's when I realized that I was almost hesitating to remove the book. What if someone sees me reading this little kids' book?

http://www.amazon.com/Fairy-Tale-Detectives-Sisters-Grimm/dp/0810993228/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277927033&sr=8-1

Shaking my head, I retrieved the book and started reading. At first, I paid strict attention to the pacing and the word choice and any minor plot hole (how did the little sister get home from kindergarten if her parents disappeared? Huh? Huh?) and then suddenly I realized that I was about to miss my stop. I had read the first 40 pages in the blink of an eye. That's a good book, folks. And there are, what, 8 of them in the series?

I suppose I should finish reading it... You know, for research purposes...

Late June Garden Update, From Pests to Pomegranates

2010-06-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Took the camera outside today (sorry for the blown out images, bad exposure setting by me) and here's what we're looking at (click for larger versions).

First up, here's what took over eating our brussels after we got rid of the mice. We don't seem to be able to win here:

Here's the main box. From left to right: Pomegranate, potatoes (in raised side), cucumbers, tomatoes (too bushy/not any fruit yet!), beans (purple), lime tree, behind the lime tree is the set of tiered boxes we built, with strawberries on the top (under the wire box) then some basil and thyme, and then squash/peppers on the bottom, and way over on the right is where we finally planted the blueberry.

Next is the corn. We planted them in these pots some other plants came in and never got around to transplanting them. They seem to be doing fine so far, but still no tassels (they've been in there since May 1st). on the left is some generic "Indian" corn, and on the right is "strawberry" corn. Whatever that is. I just hope the seeds weren't modified somehow to not grow into real corn...

And finally, pomegranates! Yes, I know I spend too much time doting on these two, but this easily a month longer than any blossom has ever stayed on the tree/shrub before. And they're huge compared to the last blossoms that looked like they might be fruit. Huge!

Inspiration Awkward

2010-06-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

I've struck an incredibly rich vein of inspiration here lately. I've bragged about it on the various intertrons and have been generally really happy about it.

Except for one thing.

95% of my new riches are directed toward things other than the third book in the Jute series. I really, really want to finish up that book and move on. But right now, my B novel looks incredibly interesting and I can't wait to get to it -- and all of this new found energy is pouring into the outline and notes for that book.

So now I'm sitting here and I'm "complaining" about only having these great ideas for things other than J3. Also "interesting" is that I'm motivated in work-related writing as well.

I'll still have to dig into J3 soon though. The question is, should I get to work on it prior to Nanowrimo this year, or should I wait? The other book, the B novel is clawing its way up and out regardless of what I do.

Collaboration

2010-06-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

There's something about collaborating with someone, creatively... I'm a big believer in things adding up to more than the sum of their parts. Take my 365 photo project. Tons of people start them -- dutifully taking a new photo each day and posting it on the internet. And that's great. But what keeps me interested in mine, what keeps me pressing that shutter, is that I'm collaborating. Each day a friend and coworker of mine posts her photo alongside mine. The result is something more than just a photo-a-day. Sure, quite often the combination of the two photos isn't spectacular. A typical pairing rarely inspires an "ooh" or an "ah." But sometimes an unexpected theme shows up or things get just plain creepy.

And I see opportunities for this kind of thing every day. I want to collaborate with my friends and relatives. I want to write books together. Make photo albums. I want to make stuff.

I've noticed that my friends and relatives have such unique views and experiences that I can't help but wonder at how much better the meager things I create could be... How much they could benefit from an influx of creativity and perspective.

I have another friend at work who has inspired me to write some very fun sarcastic and silly stuff. And he did it just by participating in some silly IM conversations with me.

I met a fellow aspiring author via Twitter and the opportunities for collaboration are real, even though he's a complete stranger to me.

I remember one time my best friend showed me some of the ideas he had for novel plots and I got so excited about them I was jumping from foot to foot while reading them. Alas, they remain unwritten!

Just this last weekend my cousin came to visit. He's about my age and has a family almost identical to mine (wife, two daughters, similar ages). The things that interest him are things on which I'd have never spared a second glance. He really cares about the story behind things, about how things got the way they are and everything he does is steeped in nostalgia. Hearing about them from his point of view made me interested, made me want to experience them. I want to see the world through his eyes, and what better way than working on something artistic together?

Sometimes it's just not as easy as saying "we should work on that together." People are busy, schedules don't align. Does asynchronous collaboration work well?

Pomegranate Part Three

2010-06-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

Well, right now I'm the most hopeful I've been in a long while... I have quite a few pomegranate blossoms that look to be turning to fruit. Here's an example. The bloom on the left is very different from the skinny one on the right:

My fingers are crossed and I don't think there's much else I can do. Wish me luck!

Bird Tetherball - The Latest Craze

2010-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

World Cup Fever! A few of the local birds, inspired by the futball/soccer phenomenon, started playing tetherball on top of our garden (click for a larger view).

Ok, maybe they were just trying to get the string off of the top of the stake, but it was amusing to watch...

My kingdom for a zoom lens! I have my eye on a really cool 70-200mm lens, but I think I might have to win the lottery first...

In other photo news, I've been filling up my flickr account at an alarming rate! http://www.flickr.com/photos/tterragpics/

Score Is Tied; and Gapeworm?

2010-06-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

It may have just been two mice, because we've had no further damage after catching a second one...

In other news, Cheepers (photo, right) spent a whole day making these exaggerated yawns and occasionally, violently wiping her beak on the ground. All signs pointed to gapeworm. We decided wait and take action the next morning, but we awoke to find her completely back to normal. We've continued to check on her all weekend and she seems to be completely fine.

The rest/remainder of the garden continues to grow. We've harvested quite a few radishes and snow peas. We have blossoms on a squash, some beans, and most of the cucumbers. Nothing on the tomatoes or potatoes yet, and the peppers and carrots are severely underperforming. The lettuce seeds we planted to make up for the mice's devastation haven't sprouted yet, but we expect something very soon. Planted more strawberries only to lose one to a particularly mean squirrel.

Mice: 2 -- Us: 1

2010-06-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I asked "Now the question is, how many friends and relatives did he have with him? Will our entire garden be chomped away night by night?"

The answer was a resounding "You bet!!!!"

Everything in that box (except for some spinach we protected via a 1/4" wire mesh cage) has been eaten by mice! Every last bit of greenery that they could get their greedy little mice hands on.

Now we're worried. It's only a matter of time before they find the other, larger garden box. We're going to have to go on the offensive now, and maybe try to place some traps outside of the garden itself.

A Mouse Ate Our Lettuce

2010-06-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

And our brussels sprouts and most of our spinach... Jeez, that little sucker got in there and mowed down all sorts of veggies. We were planning on harvesting the lettuce on Saturday, but when we got out there, it was all gone!

How do we know it was a mouse? We caught one in a trap next to our lone remaining brussells sprout last night. Good riddance.

Now the question is, how many friends and relatives did he have with him? Will our entire garden be chomped away night by night? Bleh.

The Porch Storage Bench -- Finished

2010-05-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

Several months ago we started a project. We wanted a bench on the front porch, one we could use for seating, but also something that provide lots of storage for the girls' skates, helmets, pads, and whatever else will fit.

That weekend we built the bench and did everything except for paint it and attach the lid. Then it got rainy and we got busy and a lot of weekends slipped past.

But we finally buttoned up the last little bit and now it's finished. Even right this moment it's doing it's girls' stuff storage task with efficiency!

We started with a very sturdy redwood base from 2x4s.

We got some pine siding that matches our house. Here we're just starting to cut/fit/attach it. Got very lucky in that we didn't need to rip any of the siding (no table saw, and so long cuts tend to be a bit iffy...).

Got some help along the way. *(this was a pose! The kids do wear eye protection and they know to keep their fingers out of the way/etc. Well, mostly...)

The awkward "you mean it's not a boat?" moment:

Here it is, primed and sitting on our porch.

Working on the lid. The siding made the box a little to wide for the plain piece of wood we were going to use for the lid, so we wrapped the board on three sides with quarter round...

Primed...

Now, several months later, paint!

And the finished product, complete with lid:

We like that we made this ourselves, and that we made it very sturdy. The materials didn't cost that much, compared to buying one already built. Of course, we could have done some things better, and the finished product is _heavy_, but really, it suits our purposes just fine.

Ugh, now to refinish the porch!!!

Micro Harvest

2010-05-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

Here's what we harvested one day this weekend. Well, there were a few more snowpeas, but the kids got to them before I could take this picture.

Still, those radishes sprinted to maturity! We have a dozen or so more radishes in the garden and some of them are close to ready. The kids don't like radishes, so two at a time is plenty. The carrots, though, seem to be getting shaded by the pomegranate shrub/bush/tree/thing. not sure they'll ever finish.

The potatoes are growing like mad. A couple of the tomato plants are starting to do their thing and a purple bean of some sort started to get these little blooms. Yay!

Should have more lettuce and spinach this weekend, too.

Mohawk, the Broody Hen

2010-05-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

Good ol' Mohawk (photo on the right side of the blog...). We can count on her to go broody about every 3 or 4 months. We have three hens but she's the only one who's ever been broody. This is her third time in the year or so that she's been laying eggs.

The first time it happened, we tried all of the remedies we could find that didn't involve confinement. We tried luring her with treats. We tried dunking her undercarriage in water. We tried all sorts of things. Finally, we gave up and put her in the upside down cat carrier. Three nights in there and she was back to her usual self.

The second time it happened, we skipped the other stuff and went straight to the cat carrier. Three days later, bam! Back to normal.

This time, we had our fancy "new" broody box that we got for free from someone on the block. We figured this would be perfect because it's much larger than the cat carrier. It still had a vented floor, so we figured it was an improvement. Here she is in the new, blue broody box, inside their run.

Well, 4 days later and Mohawk's still broody. Looks like it's a little _too_ comfy in there. I wonder if the floor is not "airy" enough or whatnot...

We'll give her until tomorrow and if she's not done, we'll break out the upside down cat carrier again...

Pomegranates and Potatoes

2010-05-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

The potatoes are growing like crazy. They're by far the fastest growing thing we've planted.

Also, the pomegranate has a few more blooms. Fingers crossed there.

We planted some basil and other herbs in the tiered planter; however, we haven't found any strawberries to fill out the rest of the boxes.

Weekend Construction Project

2010-05-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend we built this tiered set of planter boxes. Now, this is something we did with our very meager carpentry skills. Between that, and the Home Depot-grade materials, it's a wonder it hasn't burst into flame yet!

All kidding aside, this was a fairly fun project, and we both got a good feeling of accomplishment out if it. I think we're going to plant strawberries in at least one of the tiers...

Corn Again

2010-05-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, here we are on May 15th, and the corn is growing steadily, if not as quickly as I'd like. I suppose at some point I'll have to find a different planter for them...

Everything else in the garden is making the same kind of slow, measured progress. We neglected to plant the blueberry... Is it too late now?

Garden Progress

2010-05-06T23:25:00.000-07:00

Wow, the corn we planted sure did take off! Here's the container with the really tiny "strawberry" corn:

And here's our lime tree, showing off its many limes in progress. We've not had much luck with the lime tree, but I'm hopeful now, this latest batch of blooms looks promising!

Pomegranate

2010-05-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

I love my pomegranate shrub/tree thing, but I swear, if it doesn't at least _try_ to make fruit this year, I'm ripping it out!

Here's what's happening, bloom-wise.

This is really different from most other years. Usually we get a ton of blooms, and they all fall off a few days later and nothing develops further. This year, though, we have just a few buds/blooms, but they're longer than usual and they're darker, and that has my hopes up!

Fingers crossed!

Planted

2010-04-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

We finally have everything planted that we wanted to plant. Well, except for the blueberry bush. We'll have to figure that one later.

We went to a local-ish farm last year and brought home some "strawberry corn." We're going to try to plant some of that just for fun/grins. Our neighbors gave us some really good tomatoes last year and we saved the seeds from one of them (basically just let them dry out on a plate by the window...). We started 10 seeds and were shocked to see all 10 sprout! In fact, the neighbor came over to take one of the seedlings back because they wanted to grow the same plants again and had lost their seeds.

That said, I think we planted a bit too much in our new boxes. Things are going to be very crowded.

On the wishlist: things like room to plant watermelons/pumpkins and of course, more planter boxes.

Hawk V. Crow

2010-04-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

We had the chickens out ranging in our back yard yesterday when we heard some crazy noises coming from directly overhead. Usually when we're looking up, we're doing so because some extra loud small plane is flying into or out of the San Carlos airport, but this time it was a crow constantly "caw"ing.

Over and over it cawed and we noticed that it was chasing a hawk! There's at least one Cooper's Hawk living in/near our neighborhood so all of us chicken-owning families have to be really careful when we let our birds out. The crow was doing a great job of harassing the hawk and occasionally the hawk would let out a raptor screech as it dove and tumbled away from the annoying crow.

Suddenly a second crow joined the fight and the hawk quickly departed. I figured it's spring, and so the crows were just protecting their nest, but it was certainly fascinating to watch! Wish I had really great/huge telephoto lens, I would have had plenty of time to capture it on film.

Our First Harvest

2010-04-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, a pea!

This is a pea plant that got started as a seed way back in late December by complete accident. We finally planted it outside and it took off like mad.

Planted potatoes yesterday. That ought to be interesting... We have to get the rest of the stuff in the ground asap.

Chicken Update

2010-04-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

Spring has brought with it a rash of hawk sightings in our neighborhood and even a story on the radio this morning about a person who was attacked by a Cooper's Hawk. The answer is apparently to walk around carrying a purple umbrella.

But our birds are, so far, safe and sound. Between the three of them we're getting two or three eggs a day. For the last two days, one of our hens (they're all Barred Rocks) has been laying slightly smaller, lighter colored eggs complete with a few bumps. I think the bumps are what some folks claim comes from excess calcium in the hen's diet. We do have some oyster shells out for them to eat as a "free choice" though to be honest they really don't seem to eat much of it.

Between the rain and our recent vacation, the hens didn't get much time out in the yard but this last weekend we had them out there while we ran the irrigation in our new veggie boxes and they took some epic dust/sun baths. No pics, unfortunately.

Several months ago one of the hens decided she would rather sleep in the nesting box. We've tried putting her back up on the roost at night, but she's fairly stubborn about it. We did notice, though, upon returning from our vacation that the hen will choose the roost if the nest has a few eggs in it. Our chicken sitters left the eggs in the box the day we were due to return home and when we finally got home that night and went out to check on the flock, there she was, up on the roost.

This week we should finally get all of our seedlings into the boxes! Can't wait!

A Visit to Plimouth Plantation

2010-04-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

We spent spring break visiting relatives on the East coast and part of the trip was a visit to Plimouth Plantation.

Of course, the plantation isn't "The" plantation, it's a historically accurate reproduction, but we managed to have fun nonetheless.

The girls were very interested in even the mundane details of life in the 1620's. But what really got us revved up was, of course...

Chickens!

Red Dorkings to be exact. We were told this breed was the closest to historically accurate. They even let us gather a couple of eggs from the coop!

The roosters made a lot of noise and wandered all over the place in and out of the houses along with the rest of the hens and pullets.

The next day we visited the Mayflower 2 and Plymouth Rock itself (not that impressive, really)...

The boat was more interesting that I thought it would be, and it was interesting to compare the typical diet on the ship with modern standards.

We marveled at just how crowded that ship must have been with 120-ish passengers plus crew on board. It's just not that big inside.

I took a lot of pictures that day, and here's my favorite:

We were happy to finally get home, though now we have an entire garden to plant this weekend!

Sprouts!

2010-04-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update. We were away on vacation for over 10 days, and so most of our seedlings are screaming to be planted in the new boxes.

We have a ton more stuff to plant, and I still need to build another box or two.

New Garden Boxes: Finished

2010-03-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, everything's finally done. Well, everything except for the planting...

Yes, it looks a little funky, but that's because I'm using as much leftover or recycled material as I can.

Here we're ready to add the screen. The screen is vital because we have a big problem with squirrels and raccoons and local cats destroying our garden. Then, of course, there's the occasional chicken...

Finished! But not without casualties. The poor lime tree lost two "almost ready" limes when we moved the pot.

Also, what's this? A soldier beetle?

We had a several of these things hanging out and I let them live, hoping they were beneficial... That's the best picture I could get. I sure do want to get a macro lens for my camera!

Wordless Wednesday

2010-03-23T22:33:00.000-07:00

A Beautiful Day to Visit Coyote Point Museum

2010-03-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

We took some time off from gardening and hanging out with our urban chickens to visit a local museum. The kids had a really fun time and the weather was perfect. I took a few shots while we were walking around. We even got to see the new otters at feeding time and we watched as the two new bobcats sorted out just who was in charge during their feeding.

The beautiful spring weather had all sorts of plants in bloom out in the gardens.

In the aviary, this blue heron stood on its favorite rock...

We had arrived a bit early so we spent some time walking around along the bay.

The larger of the two otters (Gunner?) is looking for any left over bits of carrot that might have managed to escape...

Sprouts

2010-03-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

Peeked out in the garden this AM and found a couple of interesting things. First, some veggies sprouted:

Next, I noticed something white in the strawberry plant, and (apologies for the blurry photo) look what I found: Four or five blooms:

And then, surprise, I found this (my wife must have picked this up yesterday):

Garden Reconfiguration Update: Phase Two -- Compost

2010-03-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Hopped out of bed (extra) early this AM to tackle the compost pile. Here's what it looked like before, with the compost bins tucked away on the left behind the picket fence:

There's a pile of old, wet hay there in the middle, and of course a pile of dirt (or mud, really) right where the compost pile is headed. We're moving it because of a couple reasons:

- The old location was inside the "chicken zone" and so you had to change your shoes to go put stuff in the compost.
- The compost pile had been there for several years and tree roots had started to find it.

So I had to move the old compost, the mud pile, and the old/wet hay pile before I could even get started. It took a bit longer than I had hoped, but we moved things around. Here's what things looked like when I stopped for the day:

We have two compost bins so we can work on finishing one batch while another gets going. We dumped the finished compost into the boxes to mix in with soil later. With the other batch, we alternated layers of compost and the wet hay. I stuck the compost thermometer in and hope to see some heat generated soon. Fingers crossed on that one. As for the look of the place... The gates will need a little tweaking. We have plans for the far left corner, too. We'll clear it out and build a nice dry place to store the hay bale and other miscellaneous stuff. We need to get a bunch of soil in the boxes and then we'll be ready to go:

More Garden Boxes

2010-03-09T09:15:00.000-08:00

We put together the next phase of the newly expanded garden this weekend. This new box is 30 sqft (skwifoots) so we have 46 sqft so far, and we'll probably end up at around 50 when we're done.

And the view from the side:

Now that this is done, we can get some dirt in there. A neighbor is interested in going in halfsies on a huge soil run, but if we do that we'll have to wait at least two weeks. We have about 20 or 30 sqft of mostly finished compost we could use to augment, too. Wish we had already started some seeds... Better get on that soon!

The Things We Find...

2010-03-08T09:43:00.000-08:00

The other day my wife saw this sitting on the sidewalk with a "FREE" sign attached.

We'll use it for a place for a broody hen and/or a brooder if/when we ever get new chicks. It's a rabbit hutch, I believe, but who ever was using it before had added a small perch, so we're thinking we have yet another neighbor with urban chickens. That would make at least 4 families within a 10 house radius.

Some Garden Progress

2010-03-01T07:27:00.000-08:00

We started today by tearing apart the boxes and "anti-squirrel" cage we built about 9 years ago.

The trick was that the boxes had really deteriorated and the neighbor's trees' roots had found their way in through the rotted out bottoms. But we wanted to recycle as much as we could, so we gently slid them over and stacked them:

We found a few odd critters, including a blue snail (no picture...) and a salamander (or is that a skink?) and TON of huge pill bugs:

Then we cut the old squirrel cage in half and put that on there. Oh, and we had to dig out a ton of tree roots that had grown up between the cement slabs. The old 2x4 spacers between the slabs had rotted away almost entirely.

Next we'll build a new, slightly different shaped box where the old ones were and also one over to the right of the "new" one. After that, we'll move the compost pile to roughly where that hay pile is now, and then build a "hay cozy" over where the compost was. I'm sure it makes sense, somehow.

1000 Photographs

2010-02-28T08:01:00.001-08:00

Late last year I started taking photos with a new DSLR camera. This morning I took my 1000th photo with the camera.

I probably have 20 or 30 photos out of that first 1000 that I like enough to keep around. I wonder what I'll think of those after another thousand...

Splash!

2010-02-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

We got a quick but impressive drenching and I managed to snap this picture of my younger daughter doing some serious puddle jumping.

But that was yesterday. Today's weather made working in the yard possible, if muddy. I took a couple of before shots and then merged them into a panarama:

(Click to see a larger version)

From left to right:

Compost area, extra hay from chicken run, laziest pomegranate on the planet, stub for automatic sprinklers/waterer, shovel, existing 32sqft garden box armored against squirrels and birds, lime "tree", artichoke, garbage can used to store a big bag of DE, more junk.

We're looking to redo that whole area starting this weekend. We did some work today, but I think we'll get much more done tomorrow (if I didn't just jinx us...) and so maybe I'll post some "during" photos...

The Lizard Brain -- Or, Dear Author...

2010-02-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

"Dear Author, Thanks for your query..."

I recently received a rejection letter for this book I've written. The book itself began as a Nanowrimo project and it was targeted basically at my two daughters (both under 10 years of age). That it was rejected was not a shock at all. In fact, in a way I'm incredibly happy.

You see, I suffer from this affliction where I just don't want to be in the position to fail. I think I've read somewhere that it's called Lizard Brain (yep, lots of Lizard Brain stuff on the Internet). Where you are so afraid of failure that your mind comes up with ways to sabotage you or stop you from even trying.

So that's why I'm so happy. I sent in my manuscript. I really did it. Yes, the cover letter was poor (sabotage!) and I'm still not convinced that publisher would have been a good match for the book, but I'm calling it a victory because I actually *did* something.

My next cover letter will be much better. My next submission will be to a better publisher. The next draft of the book will be better. Take that, brain!

Daylight!

2010-02-22T13:49:00.001-08:00

The hens are working overtime lately, keeping up with nearly 3 eggs a day.

In other news, we've fed them quite a few snails and slugs recently, so I'm just waiting for the kids to start wondering about what's going in to those eggs...