A treat, a treat!

So here are some of the photos I took on that safari I was telling you about. Not really sure how to present them, but having trouble narrowing the choice down. So let me start with some close-ups today, and I will post some of the mid and long views another day. Most of the leaves are gone now.














Also a couple of links:

For an easy way to help fund free mammograms, (free to you, too),

.

For an easy and fun way to donate rice, grain by grain, play Free Rice vocabulary challenge. It's a wee bit addictive so watch out! Thanks to the folks on the boards over at CHE for this one.

And for those of you who are happy only with extreme cuteness, may I recommend the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee for some really wonderful kitten photography? (via Cute Overload)

RBOC Monday

• We got rid of all the beets. People lined up for 'em. I swear! Only kept one four-pound beet for us. Had to toss 2 beets b/c suspicious gouges out of them. Shovel mark? Rodent mark? We finally roasted our beet tonight and ate part of it in a salad.
• Also cooked lasagna, one whole small sugar pumpkin (couldn't cut it raw! We'll see how that turns out...) some other squash and a huge sweet potato. Cause, hey, once the oven's on, you might as well bake something, right? So we're covered for non-green veggies for the week, I think. Which is good, b/c we are both apparently feeling lazy about cooking and cleaning these days.
• Our neighbor found hus cat who had come home to the yard to die. I am very sad for hum.
• Apparently, in order to move to limit non-custodial parental visitation to the supervised kind in some states, the parent has to have physically hurt the child, not a current partner, and not a household animal. This is sick.
• Today, I watched a tree crew cut down and chip an entire ginormous dead tree. I know with some tree sicknesses you can't reuse the wood, but this was really hard to watch, even though the tree was already dead long ago. I just kept thinking, well *that* 4 foot diameter part of the trunk is gorgeous, surely they'll keep *that* part. And then, they would slice it up with their huge chainsaws and huck it into the chipper. This tree could have provided wood for a small household of furniture. Or many days of heating. I don't know where it will go. Where do infected wood chips go? Anyone?
• This also added to the regular construction noises we have been listening to at work for the last few months.
• Listening to music really loud on earphones doesn't really make the other noise go away. You just have loud music and construction noise together.
• I went out on a photo safari yesterday, and found out I now suck pretty badly at taking pictures. (I don't think I used to.) In my defense, it is hard to frame a shot when the ambient sunlight keeps you from being able to see more than vague outlines on the back display screen thingy. I guess practice and editing (choosing of shots, not necessarily editing the shots themselves) would help. It was a fun thing to do, in any case. I might show you one of the better shots later this week, if I have the energy to upload anything. And I might try again.
• Been reading a bit more lately, since work is less consuming this season. Sucktastic: Ex Libris. Decent plot and awesome characters, but too much lovin': The Changeling of Finnistuath. Pretty Good: Flora's Suitcase, and Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania trilogy, although dude, where did the plot go in the third book, and did you know your antagonist took over like the last umpty-ump pages of this story? Without really doing anything? Rein that puppeh back in.

That is all.

Holy Cow

That's a lot of beets!

We have a neighbor who is friends with a local farmer, who occasionally drops off excess produce. Most of it, they use, and happily. The beets, not so much. This is where we come in. We love beets. But, 40 pounds?!? And some of these suckers are almost as big as my head.

Well, my work is cut out for me. Last time, I'd guess we had maybe fifteen lbs. to dispatch. We had borscht, we had salads, we had beets in vinegar, we had vegetable soup with beets. All we could eat for about 2 weeks, until they were coming out our ears, and then there were still a couple that made it into the trash when we could eat no more and they had sat a respectable time in the fridge....

So, holy cow. What do I do? I guess tomorrow, I'll make the rounds of office workers and neighbors, to see if anyone else likes beets, although I'm doubtful I'll find anyone with as much commitment as us. Still, waste not, want not, right?

Wish me luck, and send your favorite beet recipes!

MIT's cool solar house

So here is a short blog action post about the environment:
As you know, I've been geeking out, following the Solar Decathlon (see links below) this week and last. MIT's team has made a house that is specifically designed for weather typical of the Northeast. So, yes, that's an entirely solar house that runs through the snowy winter, for those of you who think it isn't possible.

To meet decathlon requirements, the house must be "powered exclusively by the sun.... attractive and easy to live in. They must maintain a comfortable temperature, provide attractive and adequate lighting, power household appliances for cooking and cleaning, power home electronics, and provide hot water. These houses must also power an electric vehicle to meet household transportation needs." Sounds pretty good to me.

Here is the MIT team site, with CAD models.
Here is the page with photo tours of the final build of each of the teams.
Here's the link to current scores and standings, which update frequently. (MIT's not doing so well as of this posting, but hey, that was an ambitious project.)
Here's the page for video tours. They're pretty short, yet took a while to download for me, so I'm going back to reading specs and checking out the pretty pictures.

I wish they held this competition every year, instead of every two! And I wish they would give me one of the houses to live in and blog about! They're so cute!

Offsetting Books

Huh.
Boy, we would be seriously in debt if we did this.

Faith in Humanity

http://torontoist.com/2007/08/you_give_me_fai.php


a) I would love to see if any of you have a good similar true story you would be willing to write up in similar form in the comments. And then I would keep them all and have faith in humanity.

b) failing this, I would like to see people invent good stories in the same vein and paste them around the world, send them in to newspapers, and take pictures of them, as a collaborative art project.

c) failing this, I would like to see Aunt B. (or hey, any of you creative writers!) write a play with this roll of characters, not necessarily about a bike accident: Larissa, Gus (?), Nurse with Ice Cream Cone, Man with Cell Phone, Woman from the Hacienda with Wet Towels.

Pleeez?

Solar Decathlon is this week!

Check it out. Most of the house exteriors are up and solar panels are getting installed. There are new pictures every day. There are also webcam views that hint at some pretty cool architecture: look at the first house on the right in the webcam shot facing the Washington memorial. Can't wait to see what it looks like finished!
/squee

Kitties and other

Today I took both kitties to the vet. I thought it was a good idea to schedule them for the same day. Maybe not so much. It's much harder to get two cats into carriers for an appointment than just one. And it also makes for an expensive visit. Tally: one ear infection, two shots, 'suspicious' signs of fleas, enough for the vet to want flea treatment, not enough for me to feel sure it's worth putting poison on the cats, but who am I to argue. And an unsatisfying answer to my question below about cats and toilets (see the comments for my previous questions). Sigh.

I haven't ridden the bike yet this week, and am not likely to tomorrow, given how crummy I still feel. Also not good. I just want to curl up and sleep, and not have to go to work. My boss is sweet, and suggests I take another day, but I feel guilty.

A while ago, a couple of friends and I started a support group for people moving into my area. It's a place that is wonderful, but isolating. The support group is large, but not being used much at all. I find this disheartening. I don't know why folks are so shy about reaching out, but I also don't want to hound people, so I don't. But I wish it would 'take off' and get some momentum. I feel like people are so insular. When people talk to me one-on-one, they mention how hard it is, but nobody seems to have the time? impetus? courage? to really make that effort to connect. I am the same way, much of the time, so I don't judge, but do wish things would magically improve.