Nothing Much

Categories Gardening, Nothing Much

Lets see….

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Christmas at work was typical big box Christmas.  I really don’t understand the fascination with glitter and fake snow on everything.  It gets EVERYWHERE.  I sure as hell don’t want to ever have to vacuum the house that has that sort of holiday decor.

Apparently the cold temps back in the fall were a warning.  We’ve been running at not quite record breaking cold temps since the day after Christmas.  The same day I woke up and discovered that our furnace wasn’t running.  The furnace problems turned out to be the result of water in the line (it was POURING rain the last time we got fuel), and was an easy fix.  The cold temps not so much.

The big storm that ran up the East Coast didn’t do much to us, a couple inches of snow.  But it sucked weather across the Great Lakes in its wake.  Areas not to far from me got upwards of a foot of snow and temperatures dipped too damn close to record breaking cold.  Yesterday, Saturday, it was -1(F) as the official temperature when I left the house for work, with a “feels like” temperature of -23(F) thanks to windchill.  For you Celcius folks that’s -17.7 and -30.5.  Its supposed to warm up this week, cross fingers!

I did take advantage of the cold temps to smoke some cheese.  Cheese has to be smoked at temperatures below 90(F) or you risk melting the cheese.  Temps below 80(F) are preferred.  This normally requires special equipment, but by propping the door of my electric smoker open a couple inches I was able to maintain ~40(F) and still get decent smoke in the body of the smoker.  The cheese has been vacuum packed and we’re slowly working our way through it.

I’ve been working on my garden planning for this year, and putting together an inside grow tent with proper lighting to get seedlings going in.  The garden is going to be mostly tomatoes and peppers this year.  Carrots, lettuce, and a couple tires of melons and cucumbers, and that’s pretty much going to be it.  Course, just as I got the garden plan set and seeds ordered BOTH seed companies I ordered from included a packet of free seeds in the orders.  Which is normal.  What’s not normal is that both free seed packets are for varieties of black tomatoes (our prefered type) listed as “great for sauce”.  Since sauce is the main point of me growing tomatoes I promptly had to re-work the garden plan to fit at least one tire’s space worth of each in the garden to try.

Categories Nothing Much

Dear 2017……

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You can just go to hell now, k?

Yesterday, Wednesday, Husband and I decided to treat ourselves.  While we’re not huge Star Wars fans, it is the sort of movie thats fun to watch on the big screen.  And we decided to travel a few towns over to the fancy theater with the recliner seating and dinner while you’re eating.  Tickets are a bit more expensive, but not excessively so, and food was reported to be decent.

I can report that the food is indeed decent, and not horribly priced.  And the recliners comfy.

But we only got to see about an hour of the movie.

Their popcorn machine caught fire.

Pretty sure they had it out long before the fire dept showed up (which, despite the grumbling from other movie goers, was actually pretty decent timing), but of course once the alarms go off everyone has to evacuate.

We got vouchers for a free movie at least.

*sigh*

Categories Nothing Much

Black Friday Reminder

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Don’t forget that those sales clerks and cashiers are humans too.  And they’re not responsible for corporate’s policies or stocking strategies.  Screaming at them because you don’t like it won’t change a thing, except for their opinion of you.

I’m off to work where I can safely expect to deal with a minimum of 2 customer meltdowns over lack of advertised stock.

Drive safely everyone!

Categories Cats, Nothing Much

Busy

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Been both busy and not busy.  And not had much I wanted to bother to type up.

We broke cold temp records for the area back at the beginning of Nov.  And it snowed Sunday night, and it actually stuck long enough for Apollo to enjoy it.  It’ll probably melt today, high is predicted to be 51.  I took pictures but haven’t remembered to get them off the camera.

Life keeps trying to beat us over the head, and we keep resisting.  I’d hoped to build a small greenhouse structure to replace the cheap plastic things I use, but that won’t be happening this winter after all.  Which means buying a new set of cheap plastic things, because I kept forgetting to put away the two from last summer and I’m pretty sure the sun has killed the plastic (though to be fair, one of them needed to be replaced anyway).

This will be Husband’s first holidays without his mother and he’s taking it about as expected.  As in, when his sister asked him if he had Thanksgiving plans he was struck speechless, cause no, Thanksgiving has always meant his mother cooked…..

We’ve been trying to switch the cats over to a mostly wet food diet.  While they’ll both eat wet food no problem Trouble tends to be a grazer, which doesn’t work so well with set meal times of wet food, and so she looks like losing weight again, which she really doesn’t need to do.  But if I try to put out kibble for her Shadow gobbles it up.  Now SHADOW needs to lose weight, but of course its not that simple.  I do have a “food tray” that requires them to pull out the kibble bits piece by piece to get them, but once Shadow figured that out it stopped slowing him down.  There are a few different food bowls that will only open to the animal wearing the sensor tag, but I’m not sure I can convince her to wear a collar, she’s never worn one before.  Plus they’re not especially cheap, and the cheapest one definitely has some issues, based on the reviews.  There’s a really nice looking one that’ll trigger off of the animal’s microchip, and getting her chipped would be simple enough, but it’s $140.  And I can’t quite convince myself to spend that much when I don’t know that she’d even use it.  Choices.

Christmas is in full swing at work.  Except for the live christmas trees.  Which apparently got lost or something.  Us and two other stores haven’t gotten their deliveries yet.  The truck carrying them  has completely disappeared.  Awesome huh?

Categories Nothing Much

Speaking of fire extinguishers

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I forgot to post about this.

Over the summer, I was standing at the service desk trying to untangle a mass of spider wraps when a pair of customers walked in the front door “do you know that your cigarette butt holder thing is on fire??”  I’m thinking ok, so there’s a little smoke coming out the top, not a big deal, and walk outside to look.

Yah, it wasn’t a little smoke coming out the top.

Call a manager “hey, the cigarette butt holder outside the main entrance is on fire, like, I can see the flames on fire”.  “Can you toss a bottle of water on it?”  “Well, I can, but I’m pretty sure it’s way beyond that point……”

Walk back inside, grab the fire extinguisher right inside the door, and put out the fire.

It’s easy enough to figure out what happened.  Customers are constantly using it as a trash can, tossing receipts and other paper in it.  Then someone tossed in a lit butt.

By the time the customer alerted me to it the fire had not only melted the plastic, it was burning the melted plastic.

Lotsa fun…….

Categories Nothing Much

Massive Fire Extinguisher Recall

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This has made major news media, so hopefully it’ll be all over the place by tomorrow, but just in case, spread the word.

If you bought a Kidde brand fire extinguisher any time in the last 45 years you need to check and see if its part of this recall.  If you bought a fire extinguisher from Home Depot, Sears, Walmart, and any number of other big name stores, you are very likely to have a Kidde extinguisher, even if it doesn’t say Kidde as the brand, double check it.

Seriously.

CNN Article

Consumer Reports page

Consumer Project Safety Commission page

Kidde’s page for the recall

This recall includes Canada as well as the USA, though the large majority of the extinguishers were sold in the USA.  So the Canadians reading this need to check theirs too!

Categories 2017 Garden, Artemis, Gardening, Nothing Much

Fall in Upstate NY

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So, last post was on Sept 18th.  Sept 27th (Wednesday) we broke high temp records.  Sept 28th temps crashed, and we had several days of barely making a high of 70.  Yesterday, Oct 4th, we had a high of 80.  Tomorrow, Friday, they’re predicting a high of 69.  Saturday its going to be 80 again.  Next Thursday the predicted high is 62.

At least we shouldn’t be getting a frost any time soon, based on current predictions.  We came close last Saturday night, but it didn’t quite happen.

I finished getting black plastic on the empty garden beds.  Put frost covers back on the remaining peppers.

Gave myself a lovely set of bruises up and down my right arm moving heavy stuff at work, but hey, no bandaids required!  I’ll take it.

The husband of a co-worker died unexpectedly, and I agreed to work an opening shift to cover for her.  My body still hasn’t recovered from the 4:15am wake-up.

Arty decided that he was going to play lapdog:

Not much else going on here right now.  Have fun all!

Categories 2017 Garden, Nothing Much

Garden and General update

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Didn’t mean to go radio silent for so long, its been a busy couple weeks!  Plus I kept forgetting to get garden photos, and so kept delaying posting till I could get photos, and then forgetting to get photos…..

Pulled this giant carrot out of the garden:

The variety name is Oxheart, they can reach over 1lb in weight in about 90 days.  I didn’t weigh this one, but it sure was big!  Good carrot flavor too, I was worried it would be tough, but it wasn’t.  There’s still another giant one out there to be pulled.

My second try at picking a Snow Leopard melon I left it on the vine to long, and it split (from the blossom end) in a bit split taking over half the melon.  However the undamaged half was EXTREMELY tasty.  My 3rd attempt was just about perfect I think, it was showing signs of being about to split, but hadn’t quite, and was just about as nice tasting as the 2nd.

Tomatoes are just about done, the vines are dying back.

Today’s weather we’re predicted to hit 80 out there, but then its going to drop back to the unseasonably cool temps of upper 60’s to low 70’s, with nights in the 50’s or cooler.  Tomorrow I’m probably going to drop frost covers on the melons and peppers to see if I can convince them to finish ripening.

This past week was State Fair week, normal State Fair weather is hot, 90’s, and sometimes nasty raining.  Instead we had cool and sunny.  I understand that the Fair was packed both weekends and most evenings.  We went on this past Friday during mid-day and it wasn’t to bad crowds wise.

No Honey Dew melons for me this year it looks like.  I have a picture from several weeks ago that appeared to be a fertilized female flower, but the baby fruit died off instead, and I haven’t seen any others even close since.

We got a couple cantaloupe.  One watermelon.  There’s a BUNCH of Green Nutmeg melons out there, but none of them appear to be ripe yet.  They’re a close relative of the cantaloupe and so should fall off the vine when they’re ripe, but none of them have done so yet.

I’ve been having a HORRID time with bug damage on my hot peppers this year.  Damage identical to the damage I was seeing on the paprika peppers last year.  Minimal leaf damage, but fruit rotting on the plant after huge holes chewed into the peppers.  I found this bug on a severely damaged Hungarian Hot Wax pepper and posted the photo on a hot pepper group on FB:

 

This fellow is likely one of the variety of Leaf Footed Bugs, a relative of the Stink Bug.  And some varieties do indeed do this sort of damage.  I treated all the peppers with pyrethrum just over a week ago, very carefully staying away from any remaining blossoms, and will likely do so again this week.  And I’ll have to remember to do so in the spring after planting too.

Just about 2 weeks ago I went into my doctor with what seemed to be early UTI symptoms.  A constant feeling like I needed to pee mostly.  Thankfully it wasn’t actually painfull (I’ve had some really painfull UTIs) but I wanted to get it taken care of before it got that bad.  The in house urine test showed a small amount of blood, bacteria, and a 3rd thing I forget the name of, all indicative of a UTI.  The doctor gave me an antibiotic, and the urine sample was sent off to the lab to be sure of the bacteria type, and to make sure they weren’t missing anything.  Turns out that the bacteria type was only kinda sorta responsive to the antibiotic I was given, however since my symptoms appeared to be fading the decision was made to finish the course of antibiotics I was on, and then in another week do another urine test.

I finished the antibiotic last Tuesday.  Wednesday evening my UTI symptoms came back.  Called the doctor Thursday morning, and left a message, they called me back Friday morning.  By which time I was outright painful, including kidney pain.  They had me come in and go directly to the inhouse lab to leave a urine sample.  The inhouse test showed no blood, no bacteria, and none of whatever the 3rd thing was that I can’t remember.  But slightly high bilirubin.  The big lab test showed slightly elevated urethral flora.  THAT test result came in Saturday evening, I can see it on the patient portal.  Hoping to get a call from the doctor today with an idea of whats going on.  I’m still experiencing some kidney pain, and a constant need to pee, though its no longer an outright painful need to pee.  If I don’t get a call today I’ll have to call them tomorrow.

Categories 2017 Garden, Nothing Much

Pictures

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I went out and dug the weeds out of the cantaloupe tires, and lookit what I found!  Woot!

 

Butterfly!  I see them a fair bit, but don’t usually manage pictures.

 

Hummingbird Moth.  These guys I usually only see a few times a year, so I always try to get photos when I see them.

 

Black Pearl Peppers

 

And oh yah, bunnies.  I actually took this one a few days ago, through my front window.  This fellow was lounging less than 10ft from the window, with two dogs slavering on the other side of the glass……