nekosensei

* Hey everybody! Happy Lammas to those who celebrate it.

* This morning, I slept in until noon, then sat around for most the afternoon reading. I'm 70 pages from the end of the book I'm reading now. I'm reading a 900 page book, and with all the work I had this summer, it's taken me for-freaking-ever to read it. At least the library let my husband check it out for me after I used up all my renewals. Tee hee!

* Today, I discovered that what we thought was a melon plant growing in our backyard is actually a Hmong cucumber plant. I think somebody at the seed factory may have made a little mistake. Oh well, doomsey and I eat a lot of salad, so this shouldn't be too big of a deal. But dang...I was really curious about how that melon plant would have turned out.

Yay! Link Dump!

* Why mini cows could save the planet -- The short answer? They require less food and produce more beef. (Via ginmar)

* Lastly, These macros on the icanhascheezburger site amuse me greatly.

My dearest cilantro plant,

I fed you. I watered you. I put you in the warm sunlight. I spoke to you lovingly while caressing your tender green leaves. What have I done wrong? Why do you despise me so?

I guess this is the end of our beautiful relationship. I shall miss you terribly. Too-da-loo! *waves handkerchief*

Regretfully,
nekosensei

P.S. ¡¿Por qué?!

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I don't know. You think maybe I came on too strong?

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Dang! I just suck at growing cilantro in the house, don't I? This is the second plant I've managed to kill. I think my mistake this time was clipping off all the flowers. I thought that, if you let it flower, it would turn into coriander and that would change the flavor of it.

So sad. I love the smell of cilantro....

Also, I'm half tempted to start an LJ community for gardening fails...the fail blog of gardening if you will. Maybe we'll all learn from each other's mistakes. I think "oops_i_killed_it" is a good name.

I've been a bad nekosensei and haven't posted in almost a week. Sorry! My bad!

So...what have I been doing this past week? On Sunday, doomsey and I went to art in the park. We didn't buy anything this time around, but we did pick up some cards from a few artists we liked. Maybe we'll buy from them later this year. I really like this artist, and this one...and also this one.

Sunday evening, judygs, forestdruid, and his fiancee came over to watch the latest Doctor Who episode. forestdruid came to my house bearing various tomato, eggplant, and pepper seedlings, which I planted in my vegetable garden on Monday afternoon. I also did a bunch of weeding that day.

Tuesday and Wednesday were busy with work work and school work. Thursday I bought poblano pepper and acorn squash seedlings. I also got some cilantro and basil plants. Mmmm....cilantro...me loves the smell of cilantro. Future plans for my yard are adding more wood chips to the flower beds, planting a Japanese maple (which I've been meaning to do for years), and buying a hammock. Of course, I'm half tempted to hold off on the wood chips this year because they're going to replace the water mains on our street and they're probably going to have to rip up part of our front yard. I guess I'm going to have to see what the city is planning to do before I start working on that.

I've also gotten back into my old habit of walking three miles a day. And the past three days I've walked about three-and-a-half miles. I used to do a lot of walking in 2008, but stopped at the end of the year and eventually fell out of the habit. Seriously, you people need to yell at me if I stop going for my walks because they're so helpful: I have a lot more energy and I don't get the munchies quite as much when I'm exercising.

I've been reading LJ sporadically, so if I missed something, sorry! If there's anything you think I should know, please send me a comment.

Amusing Links:

Quantum Honeybees: How could bees of little brain come up with anything as complex as a dance language? The answer could lie not in biology but in six-dimensional math and the bizarre world of quantum mechanics. (Swiped from doomsey)

Lord Jesus Christ suffers minor injuries in downtown Northampton crosswalk mishap -- Uy...what were this guy's parents thinking? If I were him, I'd change my name STAT! (Swiped from bottledgoose)

* Blame bottledgoose. It's all her fault.

* Called an arborist to come and look at my two ailing pine trees, which seem to have some kind of borer. They'll be stopping by sometime next week to look at all the trees. [Scratch that....they're coming tomorrow]. I'm hoping they can save the pines because they make a good hiding place for birds. And having bug-eating birds hanging around is a good thing considering the fact that my garden is nearby. They'll control whatever likes to nibble on my plants. Also, I'm thinking that, if they can't be saved, then I'll call a tree removal company that will turn them into wood chips. That way, I can at least use the wood chips to control some of the weeds I have growing back there. Keep your fingers crossed that I can save them though, because they are pretty firs and I'm kind of partial to them.

* That brings me to my garden. Last year I had a huge problem with "something" nibbling on my garden. I was weeding and turning over the soil this weekend and disturbed a nest of red ants. I asked my next door neighbor, who is very knowledgeable about gardening and who was out at the time, if they would be a problem. He said that usually ants are a negative. He told me to put some coffee grounds out there and that should kill off a lot of the problem bugs. The caffeine kills the harmful bugs and, at the same time, is good for night crawlers, which make the soil richer. doomsey left me some of his coffee grounds from breakfast this morning-- I can't drink caffeinated coffee-- and I put them out there this afternoon.

* On my way out to the garden, I heard some rustling by the garage. Turned out it was a garter snake who was out sunning himself. He saw me coming and then slid into a crack by the garage. I love garter snakes. Do you think doomsey would get too pissed off if I kept one as a pet? :)

On second thought, scratch that. I would have to feed them crickets and other bugs. Crickets tend to squick me out. I could probably handle mealy worms though...

* The road construction on my way to work is turning people into assholes. I had not one but two people refuse to let me merge onto the expressway. (grumbles) Also, the exit where I usually get off-- which is already very difficult to navigate because you have to move over two lanes in order to get off-- has been made impossible to navigate with all the road horses they put up. I damn near clipped someone trying to figure out where my lane was and how to get off at the exit...in the dark. At first I thought they had narrowed it down to one lane because of the construction. I was wrong. I hope the guy behind me forgives me for the fright I must have given him. :(

So yeah, I think I'm going to get off at a different, much simpler exit from now on. They way they've got it set up makes it kind of dangerous.

* This video, called "Epilepsy Dancing," is based on temporal lobe epilepsy in which suffers have a kind of daydream during the episode. I think it's visually stunning. Unfortunately, you have to have a YouTube account to see it; some idiots flagged it because it has OMG BOOBIES! (Link swiped from willowing)

* Someone on my friend's list is in the middle of a study abroad program in Spain and for one of her Spanish classes, she had to watch a movie based on the novel, La familia de Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela. In the movie, the protagonist snaps, killing a dog and horse during his break with reality. And it's not a special effect either. The director had the actor shoot a dog and stab a horse to death on screen. Let me repeat that. They killed a dog and a horse to make this movie. Now, I'm okay with people going hunting to feed themselves and their family, as long as they're using that animal's life to sustain their own, but I don't at all approve of killing animals merely to make an artistic statement. If I had been in this person's place, I would have told the professor that there was no way I could watch the movie without getting upset and, therefore, I wouldn't be coming to class that day. This is one of the rare cases where I would have taken a hit on my grade. I'm just too much of an animal lover to watch something like that. Which brings me to a poll...

[Poll #1542764]

* Raked up some of the snow mold...thatch...whatever you want to call it. And now I've got a nasty blister on one of my hands from all that raking.

* And it looks like my crocuses that I thought were M.I.A this year have finally re-appeared. Going to have to get pictures of them before the flowers fade.

* I wanted to work on turning over my garden this week, but that might get put off so I can start studying for my German midterm.

* Wow...the right-wing in this country has gone completely and utterly bat-shit insane: Sarah Palin posts about not retreating but reloading on her Facebook page and Democratic congressmen who voted for the bill are receiving more threats. I know many of us liberals were ticked off when George W. Bush was president, but were we ever this bad? *shakes head* After this, there is no way in hell you can convince me to vote a Republican for office. If I don't like the Democratic candidate, I'd rather vote Green. (Links swiped from ginmar and gehayi)

* And look what we have here. One of the douchebags who is advocating stone throwing. (Link snagged from ambitious_wench)

* California voters to decide in November whether to legalize pot -- I wonder what the chances are of this actually passing... (Many thanks to ladyfox7oaks for originally posting this)

* In Stephenville, college play featuring gay Jesus stirring emotions -- More douchebaggery. At least one of the actors in this play was disowned by his family after refusing to quit the production. So sad. (Link swiped from tx_cronopio)

* Okay...now I'm honked off by all the crap that's going down in the news. Time to call it quits and go to bed.

( Click here for pictures )

Since the weather forecast said that it was going to rain most of the week except for today, I decided to make a trip out to the zoo. Got a bunch of cute pictures. I think I'm going to end up posting some of them in the days to come.