Thursday, March 30, 2006

RIP Gale the Beta

This has been an icky day. First I had to talk to a policeman about work issues (not mine, someone else's). After lunch, we had storms all around us, and I had to listen to "doom and gloom" meterology for two hours. Then I came home and found Gale almost dead. After an hour of watching him twitch and float, I couldn't stand it any longer and gave him an "at-sea" burial.

RIP Gale--I hope your brief time with us was happy. We will miss you.

TG tomorrow's F.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Mother Nature again proves her insanity.

What's wrong with this picture?


It's Spring--but there's snow on the ground! Yes, it was snowing when I went to bed last night, but nothing seemed to be sticking. I figured it was melting as soon as it hit the ground.

The photo above and the one that follows were taken about 515 am this morning:


By the time I left for work around 7 am, there was probably 1-1/2 to 2 inches of snow, I swear. It took me 20 minutes to get my car cleaned off--I couldn't believe it.

And by 3 pm today--all gone, melted away like nothing had ever fallen.

I'm so glad I decided not to plant any lettuce until this weekend--I would have been kicking myself for sure.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Mother Nature ruined my evening.

This was the view outside my office right before 5 pm today:


(No, Missy, that's NOT a funnel cloud.)

There were weird clouds everywhere, and all afternoon the sun would come out and then five minutes later it would look like a really bad storm was getting ready to hit:






I had made plans to go with a friend to Edmond tonight to a spinning guild meeting, but at five o'clock the skies looked so bad that I figured I'd better stay home. Of course, by the time I got home--the sun was out, and all the rain was gone. Go figure . . . .

It rained here all weekend, a good, slow rain that we desperately needed. I'm sure we're still well under our normal rainfall rate for this time of year, but we'll take all we can get. It beats Nebraska right now--buried under all that snow!

Of course, now all I want to do is play in the dirt. I started some seeds about a week ago--Christmas grape tomatoes, dill, sage, rosemary, basil, and oregano. I now have seedlings! I started some common and garlic chives, coriander, white moonflowers, and Grandpa Ott and Scarlett O'Hara morning glories today. Hopefully I'll get some plants out of all these starts. I've never done this before, and it's been fun to watch what happens. I ordered some 8-ball squash and a couple of small eggplant varieties, all good for containers. Hopefully this year I will do better veggie-wise than I did last year.

Walgreen's has a lot of really cute garden decorations--whirlwinds and chimes and stuff, all really cheap. I found the cutest windchime there--it's a "shirt and shorts" with sunglasses, flipflops, and a sailboat as the chimes. It's awfully long, but it was so cute I couldn't resist.

I've had my Christmas icicle lights up since November--I like the soft light they produce. I didn't want to leave them up all year, so I found some cute hot-air balloon yard lights at Target that I plan on hanging as soon as the weather clears up a little bit. There won't be as much light, but they will be up and out of the way of my plants, and that's important.

I also bought a 20-inch plastic pot to plant loose-leaf lettuce in as soon as I can get some soil. Hopefully I can have quite a big of lettuce until it gets too hot to keep it growing. Then I'll replace it with something else and wait until it cools down to plant some more.

And lastly, I can proudly say that I am NOT at the bottom of my company's NCAA bracket competition--I'm currently in 10th place. Unfortunately, two of my Final Four picks lost last weekend (damn you, Wisconsin!), so I'm thinking I'll probably sink like a stone this weekend. Still, not bad for someone who doesn't know anything about college basketball.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

FREE THE GRAPES!!


Free The Grapes--a great idea if I ever heard one!

This is just one more "morality" issue that the Legislature is trying to mandate--no direct sales of wine over the internet by Oklahoma wineries. Apparently the wholesalers in the state believe that state laws regarding alcohol couldn't be enforced if we were to be able to buy direct from the manufacturer.

Just another example of being elected officials being bought by lobbyists, this time from the alcohol wholesalers.

On the bright side, there's another winery opening in the state: The Girls Gone Wine, in Hochatown, near Broken Bow. Congratulations, ladies--I'm extremely jealous!

March Madness starts tomorrow!!

I'm so excited! I never pay attention to basketball except for March Madness, and then I can't stand to miss a game. We have a pool set up at work--I'm sure I don't have a chance of winning, but it'll be fun. We're going to order in lunch tomorrow and watch OU play, a game which I don't think they have a chance of winning, by the way. As for my pick to go all the way, let's just say that I'm becoming an honorary Cheesehead for the next few weeks . . . Go Badgers!!!

Maybe all this basketball will take my mind off the crap that is going on in the state Legislature. It seems that there is nothing more important to deal with in the state right now than moral issues--abortion and contraception, apparently. And now Jesus' right hand man, Rep. Thad Balkman, wants to pass a law classifying gang members as "terrorists" right up there with Osama. Pretty soon everything in this damn state will be against the law, and we'll have to have laws written to allow anything.

You know, I love this state, but lately I wonder how much longer I can stand living here. It would take a flipping act of Congress to get me to move, but I may be forced to leave if the fundies continue to try to take over everything.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

It is spring yet?

My pansies are confused as to whether they're cold or warm-weather plants:


With temps being in the 70s and 80s this week (except for one day when it never got above 60), this weather has me itching to dig into some dirt. Unfortunately, it's just too early to really do anything serious without risking the chance of a late frost. So I've spent the morning perusing the online gardening catalogs, trying to get an idea of what I want to plant this year.

I have some seeds that I need to start--tomates, eggplant, herbs, some lettuce that I could probably just go ahead and plant outside since it's been so warm. I need to get those started in their little peat pots today--yes, it's late, but oh well. Better late than never.

I need to get some better/larger containers for my vegetables. Last year's crop would have probably been much better if they had had more space to grow. I'm thinking of getting plastic five-gallon buckets for my tomatoes and eggplants. I would like a different container for my herbs, and I definitely want to try strawberries again. I need to start looking for new containers now while the selection is still good. As for flowers, petunias and geraniums as always, and something that vines so I can have some height.

Other than that, I'm open to suggestions. I guess I'll just do what I always do, go shopping and buy whatever jumps up and says "take me home!"

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Today's my one-year blog anniversary.

When I started this blog, I wasn't sure I would do much with it. I thought it would be fun to learn a little html and play with my digital camera--those were my lofty goals. Little did I know how quickly you can get "sucked" into the Blogosphere.

After a year, I can say that I've enjoyed it immensely. I still don't expect anyone to read what I write, so I'm always very excited when someone leaves a comment! And I've definitely learned a lot, about html, writing, photos, web page composition, and, most importantly, what's worth writing about and what's just crap.

So thanks to everyone who's dropped by over the past year. Maggie, Gale, and I appreciate your visits.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

I've forgotten what thunder sounds like.

It's been thundering here off and on for the last half hour or so. I'd didn't realize what it was at first--how sad is that? In fact Maggie, who is terrified of storms and absolutely hates thunder, is sound asleep in the chair, snoring as usual, and has never stirred at all.

I hope it rains a lot--we surely need it.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

I found a clean fork in my kitchen today.

You don't know how happy that makes me. I have been too busy and too exhausted to do the dishes from last week--I'm eating frozen dinners and using paper towels for sandwiches. At some point I'm gonna have to break down and do them, but I don't know when that will be.

It was at least 85 here today--unbelievable. I was able to leave the office long enough to come home to fetch my laptop, go to the bank, get gas, and grab something to eat--just too much going on to be gone any longer than that. I haven't touched my inbox in 2 days, so I brought it home tonight to go through. I'm afraid what I'm going to find.

I think my "new employee glow" has worn off--I'm in it up to my neck now. I don't know if it's the job or if I just need to polish up my juggling skills, but I can't believe how much stuff gets thrown at me in a day. My company is in "acquisition" mode, and it looks like we will be this way for a while, and the days are absolutely insane. On the one hand, I do enjoy it--it makes the days go by REALLY fast--too fast--but on the other hand, there's never enough time to get anything done. My officemate and I have at least six Saturdays' worth of filing that I don't know how we're going to get done, and it gets worse every day. And meetings--my god, the meetings--we have them back to back all day long. I finally got to schedule some "office" time for my boss today after two weeks of traveling and nothing but meetings--I told him he could pay me back later. Still, I'm learning a lot and like I said, it makes the days go by faster, but WOW, it's really intense.

This caught my eye tonight:

Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina - Yahoo! News

Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina - Yahoo! News

Can we nail this POS to the wall this time with this? If we can find nothing else that shows what total disregard these jackasses have for our country and our citizens, not to mention that "sanctity of life" crap they keep spouting, this video should be the smoking gun. I hope this is plastered all over every newspaper and news show in the world--let's see how Scotty will spin this.

Then I heard this morning that the new GOP spin for those who are coming up on re-election this Fall will be that * is a "liberal," not a true conservative. How the hell can they spin that? But apparently some think that it's already happening. People, WAKE UP!!!!!