Daft F*ing Hippies!! **

I had a really annoying night … though it started and ended pretty well. It was just the bit in the middle that sucked.

I was in class all day and we were set to pick up our first CSA share in Boulder (a good 30 min from our house) so we decided to eat out instead of cooking. So we picked up T from her sitter's and went to Sweet Tomatoes. It was fun as usual (I'm a huge fan of buffets with toddlers since you don't have to wait for food and decreause the likelihood of a hunger-induced meltdown). After that we headed off to The People's Republic of Boulder.

Boulder is a hard thing to get if you're not from the Denver area, probably. It's our own little slice of California. Northern, not southern. Fruits and nuts. Granola. Hippies. Green this and that. Organic. Extremely liberal, bordering on socialist. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se. That's just how it is. It brings a lot of neat stuff … like CSA. Well the CSA people we've been dealing with have been a bit flaky all along. Their phone was disconnected for quite a while. And their voicemailbox runneth over the rest of the time. Their website is down or screwy sometimes. Not the most professional operation … but what the heck. They're modern farmers not dotcommers, so we were fairly forgiving. Our share pickup was supposed to be at 19th and Violet.

We had a bit of trouble finding it. This was partly due to us misreading Google Maps … and partly due to the fact that Boulder (unlike Denver) is not laid out on a grid system and numbered streets and named streets arbitrarily change direction, change name and end for no apparent reason. This makes navigation spotty at best.

Pick-up was between 4 and 7 PM tonight. We arrived at our destination right around 6:50. No one there at all, let alone anyone who looked like they had a sack of produce for us. So basically we drove (over) an hour out of our way for NOTHING. I was not pleased. Either we were at the wrong place, or they left before we could get our share. Either way, not terribly impressed this first week. And of course, we couldn't reach them. And they still haven't called us back.

Hopefully we can get this sorted out. Otherwise, I'll be asking Discover Card to refund our $$. But at least the night has ended nicely. More Wii fit fun … and a nice run.

** This is a quote from a movie. Bonus points if you can tell me which one. Also, I harbor no ill will towards hippy Boulderites or hippies in general. So don't hate mail me, plz.

Five Things

Marisa tagged me to do this fun meme.

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

Five facts about me:
1. I do not drink coffee. This is fairly weird for an American adult, but EXTREMELY weird for a former engineering/Comp Sci major.
2. I took over 10,000 photos last year. Only 8,000 or so of those were of Tabby.
3. Peanut butter is my Achilles heel. Or is it cheese? Mmmmm
4. I was recently invited to my 10th high school class reunion. I have no idea how they found me. I hope no one put much effort towards it. I will not be attending.
5. I have cost Zappos approximately $500 this month in free shipping … and I have no shoes to show for it.

I'm running late, so I'll tag whoever wants to play.

We've got a garden!

Many many days of work (mostly by my charming husband). Pounds and pounds (double the original 1000) of dirt, mulch, manure and soil. And lots of $$ (the timber and bolts were the cheap part!). The garden is now complete. It's a big experiment. Neither of us have much experience with this.

We planted tomatoes (three varieties), squash (zucchini, pumpkin, butternut and buttercup), peppers, and some herbs, plus leftover marigolds around the edges (we hear bugs dislike them). And had a ton of fun with the sprinkler system (including driving 30 miles across town to pick up drip line that only one place in town seems to carry).

But, perhaps best of all, our backyard is now in good shape and (once we get some new chairs – Loki ate the old ones) we won't be embarrassed to take people out there (photos here). Looks like it's time for BBQ and s'mores. Just in time!

Happy summer everyone … hope you had a great memorial day weekend.

Lake! Biiiig Lake!

Soooo … the 10 days o' gardening continues. We're just completed day 7. Today was a biiiig ol' work day. We started off bright and early (10 ish). The big tasks were to get the raised bed built and the sprinkler system for the backyard all set to go. Matt monkeyed around in the backyard and found two pipes that run down our back yard (which, by the way, more like a dog run, maybe 25 ft long and 5 ft wide with a patio to the side). One pipe would turn on with a zone and the other we could not get to turn on AT ALL. Matt had theories … he wondered if some rocks we placed to keep Loki in were crushing and pinching the line. And our neighbor suggested that possibly the landscapers just laid extra line and never used it. Anyhow, Matt had cut it open to see if there was any water in there (there didn't appear to be) and since it wasn't in use, we just left it.

Umm… yea … probably shouldn't have. We went out and got dinner with my parents and when we got home the water was flowing freely and we had quite the puddle in our back yard. Turns out it's hooked up to our next door neighbor's sprinklers and when Matt cut it … went right into our back yard. Haha. So we'll be fixing that soon. Like tomorrow bright and early (ran out of daylight today). But the bed's built, the sprinklers are mostly done … hehe … and now we just have to take the 1000 or so lbs of dirt out of Matt's truck and put it in the bed. Should be cool.

Hope everyone's having a great long weekend. Bonus points if you can tell me what movie the title is a quote from.

Almost Thursday

Soooo … where's that weekend at? I am working on the world's most boring, tedious and time consuming project at work. So Friday just can't come quickly enough. Luckily I have great audio books to listen to… I'm more than halfway through Blink which is very interesting.

Things at home are still good .. still busy. More gardening today. We prepped the backyard for more work tomorrow … trimmed some bushes, tore out others, blah blah. Had to put in this photo of Ms. Tabby helping out. Matt picked out that dress-top for her and dressed her in it today … matching it with her purple sneakers and green socks.

The Wii Fit came. I've had about 30 minutes to play around with it. It's pretty interesting. I can't make up my mind yet if it's a like it or love it, but it's at least a like it. There's strength exercises, yoga poses, balance games and aerobic games. It told me I had terribly balance until Matt realized that the pad was backwards… hehe. I actually have pretty good balance apparently.

So now we're enjoying a bit of Top Chef before bed … and I must say, I don't expect to last long once my head hits the pillow!

P.S. If you have a minute, stop by and give Sammy some love.

The Garden's Kicking My Ass

I don't know if I've mentioned this recently or not, but I am BUSY. Busy at home. Busy at work. Busy busy busy. It's a busy time of year. Events, holidays, birthdays.

And it's gardening season. Out front we have a teeny tiny lawn with two flower beds (almost as large as the lawn) that have to be filled. You might think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. They HAVE TO BE FILLED or we get KICKED OUT OF PLEASANTVILLE. We live in a picturesque planned community with strict HOA covenants. Thou shalt keep a neat dandelion free lawn. Thou shalt plant pretty flowers in thine flower beds, etc. They're coming to inspect on Thursday. The lawn is 18″ high. But at least now, the flower beds are filled.

Then we went insane and decided that the useless bark garden in back could be more advantageously used to grow herbs … and perhaps some tomatoes and zucchini. So we're tearing out the two ugly bushes that reside on top of the bark and the landscaping cloth they pop up from and putting in a raised garden. $40 worth of lumber. $40 worth of SCREWS. Yep. Metal has gone up and the screws we needed were $1 each!! And we still have to modify the sprinklers to be drip lines and fill the sucker with dirt … and some vegetables.

Wish us luck! We have some big brown thumbs to overcome!

Abysmally Short Weekend

Here's what I didn't do …
• take any photos
• get all of the laundry done
• finish getting our yard in order
• sleep in
• go hiking
• play video games
• get a haircut
• work on transfering data to our fileserver

Here's what I did do …
• got a pedicure (yay!)
• got some of the laundry done
• somehow convinced my husband to build me a garden in the back yard
• got grocery shopping done
• got some of the gardening done
• went shopping (got new pants @ The Limited)
• spent an hour at the gym (people, I actually lifted weights!)
• went and saw Iron Man
• played with my cute and charming daughter
• went to dinner with my parents, sister and brother in law (and Matt and Tabby, of course)
• went for a bike ride (Tabby still HATES her helmet)

Not too shabby.

Of Possible Interest to Web Denizens

Y'all. I actually made a new running playlist last night, drawing from your great suggestions and those of some of the fitness blogs I read. I'm so excited to get out and run. And I'm totally in love with The Fratellis too.

Anyhoo, I have lots of links and sites, etc. that I've been saving up for weeks, so I better get them down so you can enjoy them … before I forget them and all.

Kid Stuff
Earth friendly diapers whose maker plants a tree with every package sold.
• ran across Nymbler last week … it's a very unique baby name site that will take names you like and give you other suggestions you might not have thought of
• love this cute school house chair
• neat places to store stuff from KangaRoom Storage
• darling mama jewelry
• we need one of these snack trays for the next road trip
• Matt can totally make this for Tabby Continue reading “Of Possible Interest to Web Denizens”