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Friday night, went to visit ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fishy1 and scraun23 and make sushi. That was the first time I'd ever made sushi, and it was quite enjoyable and not difficult at all. Must find out where to get the ingredients, and how long to cook the rice and what kind of seaweed goes best, etc! We saw Nightwatch and Immortal, both bizarre but strangely fun movies.
Saturday - Decided that one flat panel is never enough, so we went to some computer sales and found a flat panel forrialian. Two Old Eye-Fries down, two to go, unfortunately not the one involved in Tuesday Night... yet.
Sunday - We went to Heathcote Community in Baltimore to help their Permaculture coordinator clear a large wild rose and raspberry patch so they can plant fruit trees there. We worked on that for about 6 hours. By the time we were done, we were quite giddy, plus the whole place wanted to kill me (and for good reason). As a result, I tripped over various things all day and narrowly escaped death several times. This included falling off the hill and hanging on to the side of the hill by a root (until I realized solid ground was just a foot below), falling sideways and landing with my leg forward and sideways under me, and falling into a pothole and landing in the sticker bushes. Luckily I'm more limber than I thought, because nothing was hurt. Luckily is the operative word...
Those vines were taking over, and they were huge, and I understand why Heathcote wanted them removed. But after thinking about it, I disagree with what we did. People are too impatient, that's the problem. She could have had her fruit trees and let the vines live. The fruit trees would eventually have shaded out the vines, because the vines need sun to fruit. Raspberries and wild rose are pioneer plants - they grow fast, loosen up the soil, and fix nitrogen. This paves the way for the more mature forest to grow because they shelter the saplings from the wind and sun. A few saplings were already poking up among the vines, but she had us take the saplings out also, because she wanted to make room for her fruit trees.
However, logically, if what you really want is a "forest garden", which is what they say they want, aren't you supposed to leave the forest alone, and plant at the edge? Maybe trimming the vines back a bit, and making a hedge of them at the top of the hill with "keyhole" areas for the fruit trees closer to the bottom where there's natural runoff, would have been a better plan.
Another question in my mind is, how the heck are they going to get water up that hill (the one I fell off of, where they're planning to plant)? I hope they have an ingenious greywater or rain catchment system in mind, because they're putting trees where there is no shelter from wind and no water and no easy way to get water there without lugging it from the mill house. I think the trees should have been planted in front of the vines at the bottom of the hillside, lining the path. There they would have had plenty of water naturally (water flows down), and lots of wind shelter. Maybe a flexible gutter pipe running from the house's roof to the fruit trees will provide enough water. I hope so... People make work for themselves by not giving nature the time to take its course and build a forest, which it will always do if left alone.
Tuesday night - decided to do taxes using online TurboTax on my 200 MHz computer where I have all the records. Bad idea. Time to get a new Windows box. Aside from the gaping security holes in the clunker's Win98 OS, TurboTax is fatware in the extreme now, and 200 MHz will not handle it, ever again. Last year was it. I ended up staying up all night, only to realize that I'd made some errors. The clunker was too slow to click through the application and determine where to correct the errors (each click took about a minute to resolve). Plus, the end result seemed to show that I owed substantial taxes. By this time it was 8 in the morning, and I was feeling like burnt toast. I went upstairs and sobbed for about 10 minutes whilerialian (who had been asleep the minute before) worriedly asked me what was wrong until I was able to choke out the story of how taxes had just eaten an entire night's sleep and my bank account too. Poor rialian. I didn't mean to scare him with waking up to that! (But I felt much better after that).
I went to work, where I have a fast Windows box and my new monitor and a phone on the desk. I called the broker who manages the account my dad left me when he died (which, after the automatic import into TurboTax, had shown up on the form as having capital gains), and I found out that the 'gain' was actually a loss if I subtracted its price when I inherited it from its price now. The end result was that I actually had a refund about equal to what I thought I had to pay. I e-filed, printed, and it's done. I felt sad when the broker mentioned my dad's passing in such a strange context. The subsequent lack of tension reminded me of a marionette with no strings...
Wednesday night: On the way home from work, I encountered a traffic jam. Not the usual slow-down that happens when there's an accident or a stalled car in the right lane - no, this was both lanes blocked, police lights flashing, towtruck lights flashing, and a line of completely stopped cars. After about 20 minutes of watching the 4-wheelers and larger cars cut across the grass median and escape in the opposite direction, I was thinking of doing that also. But then I saw a smallish car get stuck, so decided not to try that. I recalled a day about a year or so earlier, whenrialian and I were stuck in a traffic jam in a tunnel in Baltimore. To unclog it, rialian sent clearing energy forward, wiggled his butt, and yelled "MOTILE!!" into the tunnel (basically emulating, well, a sperm cell...). The traffic started moving forward. (Dismissed... as coincidence.)
Anyway, I called to let him know I was late, and before I hung up the phone I asked him to send some "Motile" energy to the traffic jam. After I hung up, I also started yelling "MOTILE" and wiggling my butt. The towtruck and the police left, and the traffic started moving. This was probably a coincidence, though, because I'd already been there the proper amount of time for a towtruck and the police to do their various tasks. Unfortunately, they hadn't dumped salt or sand on the road, so the ice was still there, and it was still black. Two more cars slid into each other as I passed by in the left lane. Again, I was unbelievably lucky, because I usually take the right lane when weather is bad.
Thursday morning - Well, I Thought I'd e-filed but I hadn't. When I'd tried to e-file on Tuesday, TurboTax had found an error, which I'd corrected. Then the program had asked for payment and verification information which I'd given them. But I never did go back to the e-file screen and send the forms! So I was waiting for confirmation when I hadn't even done the actual e-filing yet. So today I actually sent them.
This whole week has been like that, with near misses and obstacles. I felt that weird obstacle feeling kind of lift somewhat today. Was Mercury retrograde again? *looks it up on http://www.astrologycom.com/mercret.html*
Holy ferthwiggets. I didn't really think it was. It went retro February 14, when all manner of Bad Things (TM) happened, as some may recall. And it stops being retro ... today.
fishy1 and scraun23 and make sushi. That was the first time I'd ever made sushi, and it was quite enjoyable and not difficult at all. Must find out where to get the ingredients, and how long to cook the rice and what kind of seaweed goes best, etc! We saw Nightwatch and Immortal, both bizarre but strangely fun movies. Saturday - Decided that one flat panel is never enough, so we went to some computer sales and found a flat panel for
rialian. Two Old Eye-Fries down, two to go, unfortunately not the one involved in Tuesday Night... yet.Sunday - We went to Heathcote Community in Baltimore to help their Permaculture coordinator clear a large wild rose and raspberry patch so they can plant fruit trees there. We worked on that for about 6 hours. By the time we were done, we were quite giddy, plus the whole place wanted to kill me (and for good reason). As a result, I tripped over various things all day and narrowly escaped death several times. This included falling off the hill and hanging on to the side of the hill by a root (until I realized solid ground was just a foot below), falling sideways and landing with my leg forward and sideways under me, and falling into a pothole and landing in the sticker bushes. Luckily I'm more limber than I thought, because nothing was hurt. Luckily is the operative word...
Those vines were taking over, and they were huge, and I understand why Heathcote wanted them removed. But after thinking about it, I disagree with what we did. People are too impatient, that's the problem. She could have had her fruit trees and let the vines live. The fruit trees would eventually have shaded out the vines, because the vines need sun to fruit. Raspberries and wild rose are pioneer plants - they grow fast, loosen up the soil, and fix nitrogen. This paves the way for the more mature forest to grow because they shelter the saplings from the wind and sun. A few saplings were already poking up among the vines, but she had us take the saplings out also, because she wanted to make room for her fruit trees.
However, logically, if what you really want is a "forest garden", which is what they say they want, aren't you supposed to leave the forest alone, and plant at the edge? Maybe trimming the vines back a bit, and making a hedge of them at the top of the hill with "keyhole" areas for the fruit trees closer to the bottom where there's natural runoff, would have been a better plan.
Another question in my mind is, how the heck are they going to get water up that hill (the one I fell off of, where they're planning to plant)? I hope they have an ingenious greywater or rain catchment system in mind, because they're putting trees where there is no shelter from wind and no water and no easy way to get water there without lugging it from the mill house. I think the trees should have been planted in front of the vines at the bottom of the hillside, lining the path. There they would have had plenty of water naturally (water flows down), and lots of wind shelter. Maybe a flexible gutter pipe running from the house's roof to the fruit trees will provide enough water. I hope so... People make work for themselves by not giving nature the time to take its course and build a forest, which it will always do if left alone.
Tuesday night - decided to do taxes using online TurboTax on my 200 MHz computer where I have all the records. Bad idea. Time to get a new Windows box. Aside from the gaping security holes in the clunker's Win98 OS, TurboTax is fatware in the extreme now, and 200 MHz will not handle it, ever again. Last year was it. I ended up staying up all night, only to realize that I'd made some errors. The clunker was too slow to click through the application and determine where to correct the errors (each click took about a minute to resolve). Plus, the end result seemed to show that I owed substantial taxes. By this time it was 8 in the morning, and I was feeling like burnt toast. I went upstairs and sobbed for about 10 minutes while
rialian (who had been asleep the minute before) worriedly asked me what was wrong until I was able to choke out the story of how taxes had just eaten an entire night's sleep and my bank account too. Poor rialian. I didn't mean to scare him with waking up to that! (But I felt much better after that).I went to work, where I have a fast Windows box and my new monitor and a phone on the desk. I called the broker who manages the account my dad left me when he died (which, after the automatic import into TurboTax, had shown up on the form as having capital gains), and I found out that the 'gain' was actually a loss if I subtracted its price when I inherited it from its price now. The end result was that I actually had a refund about equal to what I thought I had to pay. I e-filed, printed, and it's done. I felt sad when the broker mentioned my dad's passing in such a strange context. The subsequent lack of tension reminded me of a marionette with no strings...
Wednesday night: On the way home from work, I encountered a traffic jam. Not the usual slow-down that happens when there's an accident or a stalled car in the right lane - no, this was both lanes blocked, police lights flashing, towtruck lights flashing, and a line of completely stopped cars. After about 20 minutes of watching the 4-wheelers and larger cars cut across the grass median and escape in the opposite direction, I was thinking of doing that also. But then I saw a smallish car get stuck, so decided not to try that. I recalled a day about a year or so earlier, when
rialian and I were stuck in a traffic jam in a tunnel in Baltimore. To unclog it, rialian sent clearing energy forward, wiggled his butt, and yelled "MOTILE!!" into the tunnel (basically emulating, well, a sperm cell...). The traffic started moving forward. (Dismissed... as coincidence.) Anyway, I called to let him know I was late, and before I hung up the phone I asked him to send some "Motile" energy to the traffic jam. After I hung up, I also started yelling "MOTILE" and wiggling my butt. The towtruck and the police left, and the traffic started moving. This was probably a coincidence, though, because I'd already been there the proper amount of time for a towtruck and the police to do their various tasks. Unfortunately, they hadn't dumped salt or sand on the road, so the ice was still there, and it was still black. Two more cars slid into each other as I passed by in the left lane. Again, I was unbelievably lucky, because I usually take the right lane when weather is bad.
Thursday morning - Well, I Thought I'd e-filed but I hadn't. When I'd tried to e-file on Tuesday, TurboTax had found an error, which I'd corrected. Then the program had asked for payment and verification information which I'd given them. But I never did go back to the e-file screen and send the forms! So I was waiting for confirmation when I hadn't even done the actual e-filing yet. So today I actually sent them.
This whole week has been like that, with near misses and obstacles. I felt that weird obstacle feeling kind of lift somewhat today. Was Mercury retrograde again? *looks it up on http://www.astrologycom.com/mercret.html*
Holy ferthwiggets. I didn't really think it was. It went retro February 14, when all manner of Bad Things (TM) happened, as some may recall. And it stops being retro ... today.