About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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August 14, 2008
Our tomatoes, while subject to a few cracks and holes early on, have been a most satisfying crop so far. It’s not just that they fruited so quickly, but they’re ripening very sedately. I was expecting a long wait, a sudden ripening and a rush to eat all the produce before they went bad. Instead, at most, one or two are ready for picking at a time, a few days apart.
I just picked a newly blushing one, and a still yellow one on my way into the house to make dinner. There are two very light yellow/orange tomatoes still on the vine that’ll be ready in a couple of days, with a multitude of green tomatoes varying from a wee thumb-sized one to a double-fisted behemoth.
I’d say we’ve picked an average of three to five tomatoes per week for the past three weeks. They’re no more than one or two pounds’ worth depending on when we pick them, so that’s about an average of $3 per week since our supermarket sells them for about $3/lb.
Considering the only expenditures we made were labor in replanting the poor vines several times thanks to the dog’s romping, and watering, I’d say this was well worth the trouble. (I don’t know if my dad’s doing anything them while I’m gone to make the vines produce so well and so quickly, but I’ll assume he’s not.)
August 13, 2008
Please excuse the lack of posting, I’ve been back for a couple days but inundated with work and work-related issues.
The travel was a bit insane, as evidenced by the 14 delays and overbooked planes, but thankfully the return trip was much less eventful. They only asked for volunteers, they didn’t actually have to bump anyone. Call it foolish but I actually put my name in thinking that it’d be great to get two free round trip tickets from the one free trip. Of course, it’s just for mainland travel, so I couldn’t finally make a free trip to Maui or anything, but still, it’d be cool.
We had a great weekend, but more on that later. I’d forgotten my camera so I had to take pictures on my cousin’s camera.
August 9, 2008
Another delay, that is. At this rate, we’ll never have enough time to properly hike the Multnomah Falls area. Boo.
We had to change gates as well which is great because I’m further away from that enticing Mango store.
Oooh I see our plane….
I’m curious how people blog from their Blackberries with links and such. I can’t put together a proper, interesting post with links or pictures with my phone. Lucky that I can blog at all, of course, just wondering what skills I require to do it for real.
Friday night, an announcement: My departing flight was delayed last night for potentially two hours. This would make me miss my connecting flight so I could go home and try again in the morning or take this flight and rebook the connecting.
Decision: I didn’t want to repeat the airport dropoff dance in the morning so I waited out the delay and booked the first flight out the next morning. Lucky for me, BF was around so he could put me up for the night, and I would be halfway to my destination by morning instead of travelling all day Saturday. If he hadn’t been available, I would have been able to book a distressed passenger rate hotel room for the night for about $45. Not in the budget!
This morning, checking in for my flight, the first one of the morning, the check in kiosk asked if I’d volunteer to be bumped if necessary. I was curious so I hit “yes” and it automatically wait-listed me! Wait! Wait! I didn’t mean that! I was just *curious!!* ahhhh. I got to the gate late because the security line was insanely long and the gate agents were super happy to see me because I was officially a volunteer. Reluctant, I asked what they had in the way of flights. If I got there by noon, I was willing. If not? Nu-uh! It was hard enough to get one day off, I can’t be wasting all my time in the airport!
Then it turned out the by-noon flight I was promised didn’t have a seat and I could no longer get on my original flight because the smaller planes have 20 fewer seats than the first plane and ten people were still sadly standing in the corral with no seats. Better to choose my fate as best i can rather than hope to be squeezed in. I wonder if this system is really cost efficient for them? They had to give something between ten to twenty free flights, and here I am, flying on BF’s free travel voucher to begin with!
The next flight out is 11:05, so here I sit, waiting for my seat assignment with my free travel voucher tucked in my bag. *sigh* At least the free voucher means I can possibly come back another time and see her again.
Oooh! I think they gave me a first class seat. *spiffy*
August 8, 2008
Nothing like a free yummy Orange Creamsicle for a hot summer day.
Oh horror: Someone in my office is strutting around in new …. CROCS. *shudder*
And another someone is wearing a tube top. I thought those were even more casual than tee shirts?
Yay long weekend!
Either I should look at my portfolio with an eye to rebalancing as necessary or just, as my bio teacher used to say, “Shut my eyes and cover my ears and it’ll all go away.” *grump* It’s probably really going to all go away as it’s profusely bleeding red right now.
Yodlee makes it so easy to take an unnecessary daily peek at the balances bouncing all over the chart; I’m going to make it a point to scroll right past my portfolio on a daily/weekly basis because there’s no point in fretting if I’ve made my choices. June was the worst month with a depreciation of $1,710. The losses have been exponentially less since then: July (-344) and August (-169 thus far).
It’s a little sad because just the month before (May) it was doing pretty well and the value of my investments was actually above the net investments. Now they’ve traded spots on the graph.
I’ll be giving it some time to ride out some of this market volatility. Since I’m taking a very long view with this money, and am not contributing a significant amount right now, it behooves me to be patient and educate myself about the market in the meantime.
August 6, 2008
I’ve just discovered our $20 yard sale treadmill, and boy howdy, suddenly I’m all about using it. After my feet were hurting yesterday after I walked home, I was still grumpy and needed to work it off, so I finally decided to give the treadmill a try. Never before have I given treadmills a chance; why should I when there’s all that lovely pavement outside and a dog to walk with? But it’s totally different than I expected, and I felt all workouty.
In fact, it was the first thing on my mind on the way home, so I threw a load of wash in and started up a run. Of course, it rapidly devolved into a run-walk-run-walk session, but whatever. I love me some endorphins.
I’m even thinking of getting up early and getting in a 20 minute run before getting ready for work. Clearly, I am thoroughly wound up because I only implacably need to snack, clean or work out when I just can’t keep it bottled up inside anymore. It’s time to get in better touch with my feelings, and stress levels, otherwise I’ll find myself cleaning other people’s houses and wondering why I just can’t stop cleaning!
