Turkish Eggplant

Spent the weekend celebrating Ellison’s many accomplishments in Pittsburgh, where I discovered Turkish eggplants. I’ve never seen these orange beauties before but I’m smitten. This one was a lovely companion at a dinner party. She always looks good and never monopolizes conversation. And when I’m done with her I’m going to open her up and save her seeds to plant next year. I wonder if I can try the same thing with Ellison whose body is prematurely failing.

Stacks

I love to read, and I adore browsing library stacks. Online lists of similar titles are good, and so are bookstore shelves, but nothing compares with the experience of browsing by Dewey decimal system without the need for commercial success. Treasures untold lurk within their dusty shelves.

Backyard Habitat with your hostess, Patty O’Furniture

Finally done with my patio project. Here’s the story in pictures since I’m so sore it hurts to type.

The finished product, just an umbrella left to add. And maybe grass…. Below is the rest of the project as it went along.

This is my crummy yard before I started the project. I rented a rototiller back in May to start the transformation process.

After rototilling, a field of dust. The plan: reduce the area of grass by building stone raised beds, a patio, and finally (and still to be completed) increase the area of raised vegetable beds.

The walls are completed in June, and plants are growing in all of them.

Excavation and leveling of the patio area.

The vibratory plate compactor, which helps level and compact the area….until it stops working all together. It was a headache to get it back and forth but hopefully I got enough compacted before it failed that it won’t get too tippy.

Patio complete!

A Relevant Message

I came across this grafitti last night and thought I’d pass it along. Sometimes we all need a reminder, and there are a few folks in my life right now facing extra special trials and tribulations right now. <3.

Tech Separation

Ellison and I have a running conflict about the role of technology in our daily lives, and our relative tolerance for the checking of email, Facebook, etc. during an intensive conversation. This video sums up how I feel about a real face-to-face interaction being interrupted by “just checking” to see if anything interesting is happening out there.

My feelings are well summarized by this video, and particularly this quote: “And when you’re standing with someone and you’re on your mobile device, effectively what you’re saying to them is, ‘You are not as important as literally almost ANYTHING that could come to me through this device.’”

Available Cheap

When I see this sign I hear Billie Holiday singing. Somehow I don’t think Jew for Sale would have been the same kind of hit for her.

Beets and Carrots

Happy Birthday Merica

It’s one of my favorite holidays, and I’m at the beach, so here’s another photo of my lilies. These remind me of fireworks.

Stuffy, Archaic, and Outdated

I got some very disappointing news yesterday. No, not that whole civil unions debacle. Worse. The Oxford Style Guide no long requires the Oxford, or serial, comma. As they say, “As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’ [for example]: They had a choice between croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli.”

Well, phooey, I say. I am a big fan of serial commas, and if that makes me a holdover, so be it. I also double space after a period. But since I’m running for post-apocalyptic class president, I think outdated and archaic style suits me.

In other happier news, I grew these:

Stolen

Sometimes I think, “I don’t have anything to say in tomorrow’s blog post.” And then the universe provides. Yesterday morning I woke up before my alarm, feeling great. I sat and read with my morning coffee, knowing that it was going to be a marathon 14 hour day. I left the house with plenty of time to get to work on time. When I got out to my driveway, something looked strange – there was stuff all over my passenger seat, and the glove box was empty. I thought I must have been tireder than I’d thought when I got home Tuesday night. But then I got in the car and saw this:

Yep, someone broke into my 11 year old car and stole my radio. You may recall that my radio died last summer, and I bought a new one during the “Ellison Has MRSA and Might Be Dying” fiasco which involved lots of driving back and forth to Boston. I realized that I had no issues driving a 10 year old car, but I had serious issues driving a car with no radio – funny what you learn about yourself. Now, I’m in the same spot, and my cup holders don’t really work either. I’ve been hoping to make it to the end of the calendar year with this car and consider something new (to me) for 2012, but maybe this is the final straw for my beloved Lolatron. I don’t even have time to think until this weekend, so we’ll see.

I have intentionally been leaving my door unlocked because my neighbors’ car windows were smashed when their radios were stolen, and that decision paid off – no necessary repairs there. And while this is really annoying and potentially expensive, Ellison doesn’t have MRSA and I don’t have shingles and we’re together, safe, and healthy. So that’s worth a lot in my book.