Urban Jungle

Catching up a bit on yardwork this weekend, and took some pictures to let you see what's been going on outside the house. Oh, and let me explain the change to the Comments section. You can still post a comment, you just have to do a little word verification dealio.

Arrow, on the steps next to the bush that he tried to dig up:


What the raspberry patch looked like before I started digging things up:

The rhubarb tree (one of six) that I dug out of the raspberry patch. That's right, all you people who keep telling me how much you love rhubarb, I dug it up. If you had come over and picked it like you said you would, it wouldn't have come to this, but now it's too late. Bye bye, Rhubarb Trees! (And yes, that is my 5' tall shovel standing next to it!)

Remember when I bought that flat of verbenas? Most of them ended up here, on the North side of the backyard, in front of the peonies. Only two of them look like they're not going to thrive, so those might get replaced in the fall by verbenas from the flowerpots.

The Flowerpot Tree:

The rest of the verbenas ended up here, on either side of the front walk:

And finally, the poor trampled hostas, with the perpetrator in the foreground!

PS: Sara, your pothos plant is doing fine!

Time to do a picture page...

Okay, here is the massive catch up on our latest pictures. I'm breaking them up, instead of posting 500 pictures in one post, so keep scrolling down, especially if you haven't checked in lately (as if you have anything better to do!).

Arrow on the front porch. You can see that he's wearing his red walking harness. It's designed to keep your dog from pulling too much on the leash when you're taking a walk. It actually helps quite a bit, but we've also stopped walking so much and started going to the dog park where he can run around with the other dogs off leash.

Adam and Arrow indulging in their favorite pasttime:

Next week, pictures about yard work. But now, on to some Darwinistic fun!

The Dining Room Evolution

We started redecorating the dining room in January, after the Lam Christmas Invasion was over. We were supposed to be done in February.

Here, you can see three stages of progress. First, you can see wallpaper still hung on the right side of the window. Second, you can see where the wallpaper has been removed from the left side of the window. Third, you can see what the underlying wall looks like after steaming off the adhesive backing paper left from the wallpaper.

Here's another shot of the north wall after pulling off the wallpaper but before steaming (ignore the Devil Dog in the kitchen):

This is the step that we just completed. We had to scrape off as much of the old primer layer as possible, so that the new primer didn't go on over flakey, adhesive-ey grossness. (That's a technical term.)

While scraping walls by hand might be one of the tortures of hell, it can't compete with the agony of trying to clean up the dust afterwards. And just think, the step we are about to start is fililng in holes and cracks with spackle, and then sanding everything down. Do you think AxMan carries EPA suits?

Kitchen Evolution

Old school:

Hand powered:

Itty bitty chopper:

Finally, a respectable food processor:

Imagine this much corned beef and cabbage (16 quarts):

Wokka wokka!

A sadly picture free update

I keep meaning to post pictures here of the dining room progress. We have finished scraping all four walls, and now we need to spackle over all of the holes and cracks and gouges. After that comes a bit of sanding, and then it will be time to talk paint.
space
In outside news, Adam and I finally used our gift certificate to Gerten's. A big thank you to Tom and Marsha Ochs for that housewarming present! We picked up some little fences to try and keep Destructo Dog from trampling the hostas worse than he already has. We also brought home a flat of verbena, for me to use in my container gardening. It wasn't until I started potting them that I realized exactly how many plants are in a flat. After I filled up my flower pots, I still had 50 plants left. Yikes! So, I gave some away to our neighbors, Mary and Brant. They have lovely flower beds all around their yard, and they were happy to adopt a few verbena plants. Then I just decided that since verbena is a perennial, I might as well just plant a bunch in our yard, too. After all, what fun is having a yard if you can't just dig it up and plant stuff? Hopefully, they'll be able to winter over, and we'll have another section of yard planted with low maintenence perennials.
space
I was at the Many Voices reading last night, which was highly enjoyable. Each scene or play had to be about 11 pages long, and there were several that I didn't want to see end. I was mostly there for my friend Kiesung, who had written a piece called Love and Chicken, which was wacky and existential, hilarious and thought-provoking. It's so nice to be done with Midsummer, so I can catch up on all of the other theatre going on!
space
The rest of this week will be taken up with laundry, and cleaning, and other business. That's to leave the weekend free for more fun, so stay tuned for that!

Because everyone needs a little dose of carbon

Mmm...the puppy's nice and tender...time for...

Grilling With Thornes!!

space

When: 6:30pm, Friday June 2

space

Where: Thorne House

space

Who: You, your friends, your dogs, your kids

space

Why: Hello, people, it's FRIDAY! Bring your favorite grill food or side dishes, and your favorite summer beer. All utensils provided.

space

No puppies were harmed in the writing of this blog entry.

Houston, we are go for container gardening

I found the most brilliant example of, "recycle stuff you already have into neat-o crafty type thingies." I have made flower pot holders out of wire hangers. Look out, friends and neighbors! Soon you will not be able to pass our house without admiring the flower pots hooked onto the fence!

The process was easy and nearly painless. Just bend the hooked part up so that it is perpendicular to its previous plane of existence. Then, snip the bottom wire in the middle, bend it around the flower pot you want to hang, twist the wires around each other and snip off the excess on either side. Viola! Instant hanging flower pots! Just don't stab yourself in the thumb with one of the sharp ends of the cut wire, or you'll end up getting a lecture on tetanus from your hypochondriac of a husband.

To celebrate our soon-to-be-lovely fenceline, Arrow and Stella trampled the hostas along the front walk nearly to death. [sigh] Anyone looking to give any hostas away, I'm your huckleberry!

Countdown

Summer fun minus three performances and counting....
space
The Lam parents are here to see Midsummer and to celebrate Mom's birthday and to hang out on Memorial Day. So far, they've fed Adam a shrimp dinner, and fed the dog another Netflix movie. [sigh] The dog has the bad habit of eating mail. I cannot express how irritating it is to have to call an insurance company and tell them that your dog ate the information on your policy.
space
I don't know exactly what the plan is for tomorrow, but my mother mentioned a chocolatier and Adam wants to finish scraping the dining room walls. I keep taking pictures of our progress, and he never posts them. It's all his fault.
space
Sunday will be a matinee and then strike. I'll be skipping the cast pot luck to take Mom out for birthday dinner--most likely to Gasthof's (woo hoo!).
space
Which brings us to Monday, when I will finally do laundry. (Gotta love the clean socks!) And then, it will be on to the long, long list of other projects that we'd like to do: finish redecorating the dining room; plant more perennials in the front yard; buy and sell stuff at yard sales; install the doggy septic tank; reorganize the tools in the garage; take the shelves down in the basement; hang artwork in the stairway; fix the leak in the mudroom roof; clean out the gutters; and HAVE PARTIES!!

Theatre ruins everything

I was looking forward to a rousing game of ultimate frisbee tonight, at Nokomis Park. But instead, I put on my last pair of clean socks this morning. Which means only laundry fun for me.
space
space
[sigh]

Better than my Word A Day

Just found this link on Blurbomat. An original sci-fi story a day? Life gets better and better!

What my Mom wanted for Mother's Day

Dear Mom,

Here's the letter that you asked for. You know what they say about being careful what you ask for....

I called the city yesterday to make sure that our property taxes had been paid out of our escrow account. Does that make me a grown up?

I am thinking of taking a second job so that I can put more money into our savings and my IRA account. Does that make me a grown up?

I listened to my actresses talk about how none of them see marriage as an exciting goal, and I thought, Thank God I’m not that young anymore. Does that make me a grown up?

Every day, my priorities are becoming more refined. The more time I spend away from Adam and our house, the more I feel that I am being cheated out of something. Perhaps it’s simply because this current production has been unrewarding. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t made the desired progress on house projects. Perhaps I’m just tired. Or perhaps it’s because my real priority all along, my whole life, was home making.

Whatever the reason, the decision has been made: I’m officially taking a break from theatre. Three shows last year, and two already this year, have added up to even less patience than I normally have, mostly because the two directors I’ve worked for this year have been less than inspiring. Partly, too, because I finally have a job which I’d like to put more energy into, and feel is personally rewarding. Summer promises to a time when I can really develop some projects at work and at home, and that is what keeps me optimistic right now. I want time to clean the house and the garage. I want time to have a yard sale. I want time to plan yard improvements for next year. I want time to fix the bathroom tile, and time to repair the mudroom roof. And when that starts sounding more exciting than rehearsing a play, it’s time to take a break from the theatre.

That break might be a long one. With my mind turning more and more to home and family, I am feeling impatient to do house projects and improvements. I have been thinking of adding perennial flower beds against the front fence line. I think that we could have a lovely bunch of color there, which would be pretty and welcoming and would keep the grass from growing up through the fence. On the south fence line, I’d like to plant some easy generic little bushes. I’d like to cut the tree down and transplant those tiger lilies to the northwest corner, which is ugly and bare right now. That tree does nothing but aggravate me. It drops little seedy pods, it isn’t pretty, and it’s a poor excuse for a shade tree. I haven’t decided what should go there instead—we’ve even talked about putting in a rain garden and routing all of our gutters into it. Or we might simply plant a little pine tree. I had the thought that a lilac bush might be nice, too. We’ll have to see about that later. Adam wants to buy a little outdoor fireplace of some kind. I figure we could just cut the tree up and use it as firewood. I also have plans to make us a little doggy doody septic tank. We’ll be using an old waste basket and creating a top for it from some scrap plywood. I have hopes that this will inspire more doody picking up.

The garage and the basement are both in need of a good clearing out already, and we’ve only lived here 9 months. I think that part of the problem was that we weren’t sure exactly where we were going to store things, and where we wanted to leave space. It’s also hard to keep things exactly organized since the garage isn’t attached. Things like hand tools tend to wander back and forth with little rhyme or reason, and end up on the basement stairs for 3 months. It’s pretty sad when the first place you look for a screwdriver is on the basement stairs! Hopefully, too, I’ll be able to put together some yard sale fun, and we’ll get rid of some of the stuff that has been hanging around since our apartment days. Then some shelves in the basement need to go away, and then we’ll be able to use the Bowflex without kicking the dryer. (It will be good to start using the Bowflex again—I’m feeling a little wussy these days.)

Work at the museum continues to be interesting and challenging. We are about to lose one of our hourly part-time employees to his semester of student teaching, so that will make some small changes. Summer is the slow time here, with school out, so my goal is to redo our retail cases, and develop new tours around some of the other MN state standards. I’m going to try to write some economics lessons, and some geography lessons. The retail promises to be less fun, but it’s slowly coming under control. This was the first week that all of our inventory counting matched with no fudging. I’ve started taking inventory every week, so that it’s easier to reconcile. For a few months it was “garbage in, garbage out,” as we moved from no rigor at all to whatever discipline I can bring in. It’s rather a shame that Historical Services as a department doesn’t have a more standardized way of dealing with retail and inventory, but we’re working on it. My boss, Megan, tends to be supportive of my initiatives, which is a welcome change from the corporate strangulation at Ameriprise. It’s been pleasant to come to a job where I can make a noticeable difference every single day, even if it’s just writing the weekly sales report. So far today, I’ve exchanged a small flour sack for a large one, called to confirm tour requirements for a group next week, put together the materials to get mailed to the folks who volunteered for History Day 2006, complained (again) about Kinko’s, continued to read a book that I'm supposed to write a study guide for, and reviewed a memo from Megan on visitor interaction. Guess what’s not on that list: data entry.

I have to find the information to roll over my 401k from Ameriprise into my 401k here. Does that make me a grown up?

Someone asked what makes you a grown up, and I can’t get it out of my head. My answer at the time was that I feel like a grown up when I realize how much growing I have yet to do. I counsel others to patience more often than I succeed in being patient myself, and when I realize that this show will take me away from everything else important to me until June, I am more than a little irritated with my choice. Which is one reason why I didn’t want to write this letter last week. So, there it is. A stream of conciousness from me to you, with lots of love included.

Why I forgot a load of laundry in the dryer for over a week.

Mu Performing Arts and the Southern Theater present

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Theater Mu Infused Classic

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Rick Shiomi

***

Dates: May 13 – 28, 2006 (Mondays, Thursdays – Saturdays at 8:00pm; Sundays at 2pm)Description: Shakespeare’s most beloved comedy graces the stage this spring with its confused lovers, thespian mechanicals, and fantastic fairies. Infuse this Western classic with Japanese taiko drumming, Korean mask dance, and Kabuki sword fighting and you have a Mu-style Midsummer the Bard could never have imagined.

***

Schedule:

Friday, May 12 at 8:00pm (Preview Performance)

Saturday, May 13 at 8:00pm (Opening Night & Post-show Discussion)

Sunday, May 14 at 2pm Monday, May 15 at 8pm (Pay-what-you-can Night)

space

Thursday, May 18 at 8:00pm

Friday, May 19 at 8:00pm

Saturday, May 20 at 8:00pm (AD/ASL Night & Post-show Discussion)

Sunday, May 21 at 2:00pm

Monday, May 22 at 8:00pm (Pay-what-you-can Night)

space

Thursday, May 25 at 8:00pm

Friday, May 26 at 8:00pm

Saturday, May 27 at 8:00pm (Post-show Discussion)

Sunday, May 28 at 2:00pm

Venue: The Southern Theater (1420 Washington Avenue S, Minneapolis)

Tickets: $20 (Thursdays - Sundays) Pay-what-you-can (Mondays)

$2 discount for students & seniors

Children under 12 half off general admission price

$4 off groups of 10 or more

space

Box Office: 612-340-1725

Website: www.muperformingarts.org

Perspective

"What if I get a second job, instead of doing theatre, and you never see me because I'm never home, and then you divorce me?'
space
space
"Did the dog fart?"

pre-bagel ramblings

The bullet point update.

• Adam is sadly neglected at home, but has managed to console himself by taking the dog to different parks and buying Halo 2.
• I am in rehearsals for Mu's Midsummer Night's Dream, which is going well.
• My work is going well: I have started giving 4th/5th grade tours, and am writing a tour for a group of college finance students.
• The dog continues to grow and has been celebrating his first Spring by digging holes in the yard. Destruction wears a cute puppy face.
• The dining room continues to be a source of mess and frustration. A few more weeks should see us ready to prime, though, and then paint, after which we will return to the question of how to refinish the trim.

It's hard to believe that the first quarter of 2006 is almost over, but I am looking forward to summer dinners eaten on the front porch.

Haiku for Tuesday

Oh, puppy, not that!
Why don't you chew on a stick?
Now that bowl has holes.
splace
It was warm enough this weekend that I put a plastic tub outside with water for Arrow. This morning, I came out of the house, and he was laying on the lawn chewing on it. When I grabbed it from him, he looked so pathetically sad that I gave it back. And now you must picture the dog running joyfully around the yard carrying a big Gladware tub. Laughter starts the day off right!

Love in the time of rain

In honor of rainy April being National Poetry Month, here is the the un-official favorite love poem of Thorne House:

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

--Edna St Vincent Millay


Post your favorite poem in the comments.

Nevermind the lottery--I'll take the free bagel

Every morning, one of the building's cleaning crew comes in to dust and vacuum in the museum. Normally, it's a nice lady named Marta, who is prompt and thorough. Once I've opened the doors for her, and turned on the lights, I normally go across the street to Au Bon Pain to get my breakfast. I usually get an everything bagel with plain cream cheese, and sometimes a cup of coffee. ABP has a stamp card for coffee, and today was my free coffee day.
Now, I don't know how long they've had their stamp card, but it's got to be at least a year. So you'd think that they'd be used to ringing up free coffees. Every time I use my free coffee card, though, I always end up paying something different. It's the strangest thing. Today, the guy at the register got so frustrated that he gave me my bagel for free. I figure it's the universe making up for the fact that my Powerball ticket was a loser. I love karma that gives me free food!

29 plus one

Happy Birthday to me, and every other March baby I know, which is many. We are legion.

Adam and I had a fun weekend. On Saturday, I was going to do our taxes, but ran into a roadblock in the form of my desktop 'puter. It works great until you want to use any program written after 1999. Irs.gov wouldn't load up the PDF files because my Adobe was too old, but I can't download a newer version because my o.s. is too old. And then, adding insult to injury, my printer drivers freaked out, which meant that none of the computers could print. Adam's ancient laser jet died a while back, and the ink jet was routed through my computer, which we could have changed, but we decided that we should go to the library and get paper copies of the tax forms instead. Which evolved into a long series of errands including:

1. Home Depot, so we could get supplies for the next step in the Great Dining Room Redecoration.
2. Office Max, to look at new laser printers.
3. PetSmart, so we could look at a new walking harness for Arrow, to curb the pulling habit.
4. Target, so we could get toothpaste for Adam and various other things.

That's the order they happened in, too, which was good because it meant that by Target, I was tired of shopping and content to leave with only the 5 things we actually meant to buy. Otherwise, I'll spend 2 hours finding 14 more things that I really didn't need. I'm sure you're familiar with the phenomenon.

At Office Max, we found a major deal on a new printer. A $150 instant rebate on an HP network color laser jet. Super cool! We hadn't meant to spend a lot of money, but when you see exactly what you want for a lot of money off in a rebate that ends that day, it's a sign from God. Which meant, of course, that we've been able to print off tax forms. Which means, of course, that we've had aching heads ever since. In the best tradition of post hoc ergo propter hoc, that printer is nothing but a headache!

If Adam Dies I Will Marry Anyone Who Can Keep Up With The Dog

Adam had a work dinner last night, which both of us thought would get him home around 7pm or so. Boy howdy, were we wrong.

I got home at about 5:30, and took Arrow on a long walk until about 7pm. I thought that would be enough to work off some of his energy, but when we got into the mud room at home and I took his leash off, he went totally crazy. I thought he was going to break my knees. So, I let him out the back door, and he took off like his tail was on fire.

See, the stupid mutt still has stitches. He's supposed to say quiet. He's not supposed to do anything strenuous. And if you think that's going to happen, you're crazier than he is.

By the time Adam got home at 9pm, I was drowning my sorrows in whiskey and The West Wing, and Arrow was on his second two hour time span outside. Sometimes I think he annoys me just so I'll kick him out of the house. Thankfully, he settled down when we went to bed, otherwise, he might have spent the night on the back steps.

Oh, and Mom, I think he ate all of the clematis plants. Dumb mutt!

What Today Means

29 years ago today, C. Karbo was one day old.

One year ago today, the shootings at Red Lake High School. A moment of silence at 2pm.

Every year today, the first day of Spring. Gardeners rejoice!

This year today, Arrow is at the vet to be neutered and micro-chipped. He had to fast last night, which was not a fun process. Adam ended up kicking him out of the house for most of the evening. We were watching The Day After Tomorrow (which is a dumb movie) and making corned beef and cabbage. Arrow has lost all of his little fangs, now, and his molars are still growing in, so the chewing everything to bits continues. It's easier to let him go outside and chew on sticks than try to keep enough toys around for him to chew on inside. Thank God for the fenced yard!