Spring harvest

I finally got around to making a few changes to the plants in my bedroom window. Given the way things are growing or not growing I should probably consider making few more drastic changes in the coming days.



Aside from watering, I haven't really done anything to the banana plant or the aloe droplets for months. So far this seems to be working out. Both seem to be plugging along quite nicely. The main change I am contemplating is re-potting the banana plant and then putting it outside for the summer. The only problem with such a scheme is where I might expect to put it once the summer is over and I would need to return it to my bedroom. I have no idea how I might try to re-pot the aloe droplets as the soil is quite poor and would likely just fall away instead of moving with the root structure.



The most significant change I made was to cut down the old corn plant. For the past few days I have noticed that all of the leaves were turning, so I thought I might try to cut it down before it died completely (though I don't know why I was thinking this).

This is a shot of the plant prior to the harvest.



I removed the two ears so that they could be husked before they were disposed of.



This is the ear of corn that was highest on the plant, it was also the first ear of corn that was visible on the plant. As you can see, it really didn't amount to much as far as corn is concerned.



This is the lower ear of corn, and it quite clearly was a slightly more substantive ear of corn. I think that if I had left this a little longer it might have continued to develop, though I don't imagine that it would have ever turned into anything useful. I guess the key aspect is that proves that you can grow corn in an apartment, though the technique might need to be slightly refined if you actually want to be able consume the resulting ears of corn.



The thyme is going nuts. I think that I should probably try to harvest some of it soon. I guess if I needed it or knew the best way to dry it I might be more inclined to make a move in this direction. I imagine that for at least the next several days I will continue to let it grow



Though it may not be clear in the top photo, one of the three bean plants surrounding the bay tree was dead. I was able to remove the plant without doing too much damage to either of the other bean plants or the bay tree. The neat part of the process was finding a bean seed, which I hope to plant in the coming days.



The bay tree continues to develop. The new leaves continue to darken. I keep hoping to find buds that just about ready to open, but so far the buds that are visible seem unchanged. At the moment I still have no idea whether I might expect any additional growth this summer. Interestingly, the new shoot is almost as tall as the original stalk was when I acquired the plant.

A Few Quick Notes 297

-Today was another great Spring day. According to Environment Canada it made it as high as 13, which is quite a nice temperature. If things had been a little brighter it would have been almost perfect.

-We had pot roast (beef) for dinner tonight. In addition to the standard carrots and potatoes, we also had corn, green beans, and cauliflower, making for a rather colourful selection of food.

-Yesterday I posted a YouTube video in one of my posts. For some reason it didn't seem to work. I have since uploaded the video again, and it now seems to be working. If you are so inclined you can watch it in yesterday's post or here.

-I finally added an 'App' to my iPod Touch. The 'App' I have added, Remote, allows me to control the iTunes program on my computer from my iPod, thus turning my iPod into a remote control. While this might be somewhat useful at some point, I haven't really had much cause to use it in the four hours since I downloaded it. Maybe I will try to acquire one or two more free 'Apps' in the coming days.

-I don't understand why it is that Environment Canada will report that it is a temperature higher than the forecast temperature and then not change the forecast to reflect reality. This always baffles me. I know opening a window isn't a particularly sophisticated technique, but sometimes it seems to work.

-This morning, for breakfast, I decided to make another batch of Cowboy Coffee Cake. I still don't know why the recipe has the word 'cowboy' in the title, but so far I am quite impressed with the results. Unfortunately, the recipe caused me to use all of our brown sugar.

-Because all of our brown sugar had been used in the cake baking, I ended up making a late afternoon trip to the grocery store. Aside from replenishing our sugar supplies, I also snagged a few vegetables. I am particularly looking forward to consuming some of the newly acquired celery and radishes, two of my favourite vegetables.

-While at the store I forgot to pick up a can of kidney beans. This means that I will have to put off my 'Bean Brownies' until at least tomorrow. While I hope these turn out well, I am not really sure what a brownie with beans will taste like. Though I guess if I was willing to make pork cake I might as well try brownies with beans.

-There is nothing quite like being woken up from a nap by kidney stone related pain, particularly when it is coming from the 'clean' kidney. Yum.

-A few days ago Neil, Rebecca, and I happened to purchase a few inexpensive used DVDs. After watching one of them, Cleaner with Samuel L. Jackson and Ed Harris, I decided to check out the synopsis on the back. As I was reading the synopsis something struck me as a little off, it seemed that the name they were assigning to the main character was different than the name that I remembered being assigned to the character in the movie. After a little checking I was able to determine that my recollection was correct, and that they had screwed up on the back of the DVD case. This would seem to be a rather embarrassing mistake to make in this circumstance. It also suggests that the individual writing the blurb on the back of the case hasn't even seen the movie, or a copy of the script. I now wonder what information such blurbs are actually based on.



-The scarlet runner beans in my bedroom are continuing to grow at a reasonable pace. I think that with a few days more growth I will be able to more effectively photograph their development.

-Last night I ended up using some of my new potting soil and planting a few tomato and watermelon seeds. As I am a little more hopeful that the tomatoes will actually be productive more tomato seeds were planted. Hopefully I will start to see signs of germination in a few days. (The pots are not in the same location as the spider mite infestation, in case you were wondering).

Hot bean-on-bean action

It seems that after a few days of relatively rapid growth, my new bean plants have now started to climb the string set-up and are now making their way towards my bedroom window. If all goes as planned the beans will be making their way across my window in a few days, and then back across after that.

A Few Quick Notes 296

-Today was a pretty great day. I know that at one point the high was expected to be 11, I am pretty confident that the temperature made it that high. Though there were a few cloudy periods, for much of the afternoon the sun was shining brightly. As far as I can tell, the forecast is calling for similar conditions for tomorrow.

-It seems that I have now fallen to 1/14 in this year's Roll Up the Rim to Win competition. My mid-week spurt of five cups seems to have done nothing to help me win. I am starting to think that my hear may not be in it this year, which is fine, as it likely means that I will buy less pre-made coffee (but more whole-bean coffee).

-Neil and I bussed ourselves over to local commercial district and made a few purchases. The main reason for making the trip was to purchase a step stool for $9.99, but we ended up acquiring a few other items while we were there. For a few product demonstrations check out the following video.



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We also purchased another bag of potting soil as well as two packages of seeds. Not surprisingly, I purchased some scarlet runner beans to replace the plants that I had to cut down, and also a package of tomato seeds so that I can try to grow some tomato plants for Neil.

-The plays we saw last night were much better than I expected them to be. A few of the plot points were a little far fetched, though I didn't always pick up on this until after the play had ended, but on the whole quite watchable. Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised, but I don't think that there were too many non-theatre students, or friends of theatre students, in attendance. Actually, I feel pretty comfortable that we were the only individuals without a connection to someone involved in the production.

After the plays we checked out the schedule for the music student's graduation recitals. If things work out well we might be able to catch a few of these free shows.

I should also mention that Neil didn't like my joke about being "more cultured than yogurt." I have no idea why he found this so troubling.

-Apparently this evening was 'Earth Hour.' For some reason I still don't have a good handle on exactly what this is. Maybe I will know more by next year, as it does seem to be somewhat of an annual event.

-I have a gut feeling that we will either be having chicken or beef for dinner tomorrow night. I guess I should try to decide in the near future as I will have to defrost something either way.

The Theatre

What a week.

On Wednesday night Neil and I attended a stand-up show at undergraduate bar. Tonight Neil and I are going to try to make it to a student theatre production.

Actually, the event we are hoping to attend is likely to be comprised of a few productions, somewhere between 1 and 9 one act plays written by the Dalhousie theatre students. At the moment this is basically all of the information we have, we don't know anything about any of the plays we might be seeing.

The key element in our decision to attend is that admittance is free.

Hopefully Neil can manage to get out of the shower and dressed quickly. I would really rather not be late.

Given that I also attended two public lectures this week, it is beginning to appear that I might be more cultured than yogurt.

A Few Quick Notes 295

-Though a little chilly and, at times, windy, today was pretty nice. By mid-afternoon the sun was out in full force, making things a little warmer and more pleasant.

-One of my two classes was cancelled today. This allowed me to attend a lecture that would have otherwise conflicted with my class. I hope to attend another lecture tomorrow, though the lecture tomorrow would be on library, rather than political science, related topics.

-Just yesterday I found out about Google Street View. I was amazed to be able to make my way around my old stomping grounds in New York. What I don't understand is how I managed to not know about this service for such a long period of time. The irony of the timing of my discovery is that today a number of news sources, including CBC, are reporting that Google Street View will be photographing several Canadian cities in the very near future (meaning that I would have found about it by today at the latest). I guess if I found out how I could figure out when the camera van would be going down my street I could try to find a way to position myself appropriately so that I could make the photo, but I imagine aside from standing outside all summer, this might be a bit hard to guarantee.

-The scarlet runner beans are continuing to make good progress. Presently three of the four plants have made it to the string. Unfortunately, the location of the plants and the way in which they are growing makes it a little hard for me to photographically document their growth. Hopefully in a few days, once they have grown a little more, I should be able to more clearly get a picture of what is going on with them.

-For those of you that are interested, Mike Schmidt has started releasing year two of his podcast "The 40 Year Old Boy." Funnily enough, just a few weeks ago Stop Podcasting Yourself, a Vancouver based comedy podcast, also entered their second year, though as far as I know they have not opted to go with a season/year episode labeling system (though they have set a cap at 1200 episodes).

-Yesterday it was reported that CBC would be cutting about 800 positions. Today some of the implications of these cuts were released. As far as radio is concerned, it seems that many local noon-time shows will be cut from two hours to one hour and smaller outpost stations will also face cuts.

If I recall correctly, such an approach was tried before to only limited success. With each cut to local content CBC seems to become less relevant to a number of listeners. I keep wondering when they will realize that there is only so much centrally created content that people want to listen to, and also that people are interested in local news and events.

A Few Quick Notes 294

-Today has been somewhat cold and a little windy. This combination is rather unpleasant, though it wasn't bad enough to keep me inside.

-It seems that Neil and Rebecca purchased some chicken at the grocery store yesterday, so we will be having chicken for dinner tonight. Should be good.

-Today, the Hearing Voices blog posted a YouTube video of a group called the Leningrad Cowboys performing Lynryd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama. Upon watching the video, in which only the people at the front of the audience seem to move, I decided to try to find a little more out about the group as the whole thing seemed to be a bit of a non-sequitur.

It seems that this Finnish group was originally formed as a fictional group that was featured in a Finnish film. Apparently after the film was released the group began performing regularly and releasing albums. The Leningrad Cowboys, with their flamboyant costumes and hair-styles, have now been together for more than 20 years and been featured in at least three feature films. Sadly their website doesn't list any upcoming shows for 2009, though they did play about a dozen times in 2008, and even more frequently in 2007.

-My bedroom scarlet runner beans are really taking off. At least two of the plants have already reached the string, and should be wound around it by tomorrow (though I may have to assist in the initial winding process).

A Few Quick Notes 293

-It seems that we have managed to turn back the clocks and re-enter Winter. I would guess that we have between 5 and 10 cm of snow on the ground in most places, and a little wind and drifting to convince those stragglers that we are definitely in the midst of a period of inclement weather. Fortunately, as of tomorrow things are supposed to become a little warmer and sunnier.

-For dinner tonight we had a white kidney beans with pork and vegetables cooked in a slow cooker. I think the most useful aspect of this dinner is that we reached the conclusion that we prefer white kidney beans to red kidney beans. There seemed to be key attributes that made them better. Firstly, as their colour didn't bleed as much (we have had a particular problem in this area with green lentils). Secondly, the skin seemed to be thinner. This made for a more pleasurable eating experience. It is quite good that we found these passable as we have a bag and a half to get through.

-Almost immediately after dinner all three of us went for naps. While all of us are relatively regular nappers, it is somewhat unusual for us to all nap at exactly the same time. The beans seem to have wiped us out.

-I am not quite sure what we will be having for dinner tomorrow night. Hopefully it is something tasty.

A French Third or New Math

A few minutes ago I noticed that Neil purchased two boxes of candy at the grocery store. As I was inspecting the boxes I noticed something a little peculiar, which is that a third of a box is apparently 5 grams less when the division is done in French. Until now I didn't know that division was impacted by language. I guess one learns new things every day.

A Few Quick Notes 292

-Well today was a bit of a bust as far as the predicted snowfall was concerned. By the time 5:00 PM rolled around we did manage to get a little snow, though things seem to have largely wrapped up before 7:30. I guess we will wait and see, but I don't imagine that we will get too much more snow this evening, though who knows, maybe I will be way off.

-Given that we did get a little snow, I thought that I would try to make a time-lapse video of it accumulating. What I found interesting in the resulting video is that it seems that the snow is starting to melt near the end of the clip, though this could just be the result of changing light conditions.



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-A few years ago I broke my collar bone in a rather ill-advised, planned sledding collision. Since then, on occasion, my shoulder has made some strange grinding noises when moved. I was reminded of this phenomenon again today when I heard some noise coming from my shoulder as I was lifting my left arm. Fortunately these noises don't yet seem to be connected to a reduction of mobility, though I can only imagine what time and age my do to my shoulder.

-Yesterday, Neil, Rebecca, and I went to the apartment of their friends' to play a few board games. I was introduced to a game called Power Grid, which was pretty good. I also managed to get a game of Condotierre in, and somehow managed to win.

-For dinner we ended up going to a local Chinese restaurant called Mr. Chang's. All three of us were quite impressed with the food and the prices. Though I don't imagine that we will make weekly trips, I do imagine that we will return at some point in the future. It is nice to know that there is an inexpensive, quality food option nearby.

-The more I have been listening to the The Moth podcast the more I have been sensing its connection to This American Life. This week's episode of the The Moth podcast was the re-telling of a story that appeared on This American Life several years ago. A story by Mike Birbiglia was also recently on both shows. I guess this connection shouldn't surprise me as I learned about the The Moth podcast because one of its stories was featured on a This American Life episode.

-A few days ago my sister was kind enough to send Neil and I a link to Highlights' online joke repository. Boy do they ever have some gold material. Neil and I have been laughing about a number of these jokes since getting the email. Definitely check this link out if you are interested in quality internet content.

-I was shocked to learn today that the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals do not have the same owners. I wonder how they share the revenues? I also wonder how it feels to be on the Washington Generals, and how long people tend to stay on the team?

-Though I had to do in my living room scarlet runner bean population my bedroom plants seem to be doing quite well. Shortly after taking this picture I installed the preliminary string set-up to allow them to climb to my bedroom window. Eventually I hope to get these plants to climb across my bedroom window, and then back (though this latter trek may be wishful thinking on my behalf).



The other plants in my bedroom seem to be doing relatively well, though aside from the new corn and the thyme none have put on too much additional height in the past few days (though most have shown some form of growth)

The snow has finally started

It has finally started snowing in Halifax, though as you can see, as of right now there hasn't been all that much accumulation. I guess I should give things a little more time before I completely call the forecast a complete bust.

That's quite a snowfall

Yesterday night Environment Canada informed us that we could be in for quite a snowfall. Apparently the bad weather was supposed to kick off with some rain, and then switch to snow last night.

At about 1:00 AM, when I was heading to bed, things were still fine, and showed now signs of taking an immediate turn for the worse. Shockingly, this seems to have been the condition all night long, as you can see from this photo, taken about about 10:30 AM.



Interestingly, Environment Canada is still predicting 15 CM of snow for mainland Nova Scotia by tomorrow morning. Though things were originally supposed to start last night, it seems that the start time has now been pushed back to this afternoon (which we are in the midst of right now). While there were a few flakes earlier this afternoon, there hasn't been much in terms of accumulation, actually I can't see any snow on the ground.

I guess I will have to wait and see whether or now we get the predicted snowfall.

Graffiti Removal

Today while sitting at my desk I noticed that the building next door sent someone to remove some of the graffiti on the side of the building facing me. After watching the process for a few minutes I noticed that the individual working on the task was actually from a company who seems to specialize in graffiti removal.

The process seemed to start by the individual coating the affected areas with some kind of liquid, presumably a solvent of some sort or another. After this was allowed to soak in for a few minutes the guy then proceeded to spray the previously coated areas with a pressure washer. Within just a few minutes the graffiti had been removed.

The photo shows the original graffiti as well as the process of it being coated with what I presume to be a solvent.



The embedded video is of the power washing of the graffiti. As you can see, the whole process only took a few minutes and worked quite well.



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A dark day in Halifax

After a little reflection and further examination I came to the conclusion that the spider mite infestation merited rather drastic action, meaning I needed to do more that than simply spray the offending critters with some soap spray. Based on the resources I have available to me, and my desire to have mite-free plants in the near future, I decided to solve the problem by removing the infested plants.

Just moments before the plants were chopped down and emptied out, this is what the living room looked like.



It should be possible to see that some of the leaves are not doing particularly well.



In case the previous two pictures didn't give you a sense of the damage caused by the spider mites, this might be a little more illustrative of the problem.



The spider mites have also been on my pepper plants for some period of time. What may be most impressive is that though under siege for almost 6 months, these plants managed to survive, and continue to grow. I am now starting to think that this infestation may explain why none of the pepper plants ever managed to produce peppers, they had to devote their energies to fighting off the spider mite attack.



As you can see, the living room plant collection has been cut back significantly. The only plants on the wire stand that survived the carnage are the zebra aloe, the chives, the dill, the beets, and two african violets. Depending on how things go in the next few days even these plants may need to be re-assessed. Hopefully today's actions will significantly reduce the impact of the spider mite infestation.



I can't wait to get things going again.

A Few Quick Notes 291

-We are in the midst of another beautiful day in Halifax. The only complaint that might be reasonable given the present conditions is that it is a little on the cool side, being just above freezing. As I tend to think things cooler rather than warmer, I don't tend to complain about such things, so I won't in this case. I might even go as far as to suggest that the weather deserves to be given two thumbs up.





-While taking the above photos I decided to take a 'self-portrait' along the same lines. It didn't work out quite as nicely as I might have hoped, but that isn't particularly surprising, as I didn't wait for sun to be where I wanted it to be, nor did I really take much time to plan the shot.



-It seems that our Ultimate season ended last week, though we didn't know it until this week. A shortage of gym space meant that our game that was supposed to take place this week was cancelled. This was a somewhat anticlimactic way to end the season. It is also disappointing from the perspective that I now will no longer be playing Ultimate on a regular basis for at least another few weeks (if I end up signing up for a summer league).

-Last night a friend and I went to Point Pleasant Park for a while. It definitely reminded me of Newfoundland to be able to climb along a rocky beach and throw rocks into a bay. I think that I will have to make an effort to make repeat trips this summer.

-Yesterday I made a batch of humus. It is quite tangy, which is just the way I like it. I am looking forward to consuming it over the coming days.

-I am hoping to make some gingerbread tomorrow. For some reason I have been jonesing to make this recipe for a few months and haven't quite managed to find the time or reason to make it, until now. Should be fun.

-The new beans in my bedroom are continuing to develop rapidly. Between a few days ago and today they have all grown several inches. I will probably need to set up the climbing string by the end of the weekend.

Mighty Mites

After a number of months of complete inaction, I finally decided to try and figure out what was infesting some of my plants in the living room.

Based on the characteristics of the pests (small and web-casting) and their impacts (leaf discolouration and disfiguring) I was relatively quickly able to determine that I was dealing with spider mites. In some ways this was good news, as I now know what I have to face, and I now know that there are some pesticides that can take care of them.

The bad news is that these are apparently a rather hard pest to eliminate, particularly once they have spread to a number of plants, which seems to be my situation. Some sources seemed to indicate that you might as well just toss the plants and start again (which is drastic, but a move I might need to consider).

The other bad news is that it is likely not a coincidence that they are doing well on my watermelons and beans. I found at least two sources that discussed spider mites on these plants. Given the universe of plants and the universe of pests I don't take this to be a good sign.

The only nice thing is that they don't seem to be particularly interested in my chives or Zebra Aloe, nor, for that matter, the African violets.

Shortly after learning a little about spider mites and their pesky ways I decided to make my way to our local plant store to buy some pesticide and plant food. Interestingly, the store has moved across the street within the past day or so, so I may have been one of their first customers at the new location. Unfortunately I wasn't much of a customer as they didn't have plant food or pesticide.

As I was making my way home I stopped at the grocery store. Though I didn't expected to find much, I thought that I might as well check the store's floral/plant section. It turns out that they had one pesticide, a pesticide soap spray, which claimed a spider mite killing ability. Since I wasn't interested in traipsing all across town for other option I bought the bottle and have already applied my first dose. Obviously it is a little early to tell whether or not this spray is having the desired effect, but I am certainly hopeful that it will both kill the mites and allow the plants to regain their vitality.

Edit: Apparently predatory mites are a pesticide-free spider mite control option. Given my present circumstances I am not really sure if this is a feasible option.

So there is an explanation

Earlier tonight I went for a walk on Spring Garden and Barrington in downtown Halifax. Given the somewhat sub-par weather I wasn't particularly surprised that it wasn't a very busy evening as far as pedestrians were concerned.

I was a little more surprised that Ginger's Tavern/Granite Brewery appeared to be closed. As there weren't any signs and it was dark I wasn't immediately able to determine with the closure was permanent or whether it was a matter of the facility undergoing renovations.

Just a while ago I happened to find an article from The Coast that gave a definitive answer, which is that the bar has closed for good. It seems that the owner has decided to get out of the bar business in Halifax and instead focus on the microbrewery side of the business. While I can't say I was a regular customer, I am a little surprised with this closure given the prominence of the bar as a live music venue.

More news on the bean front

Yesterday I posted a this photo of one of my new bean plants. This shows the plant with the most progress.



The second photo is of one of the other plants today, which is clearly further along than the best plant was yesterday. As you will be able to see below, this other visible plant has made even more progress.



This is what the pot as a whole looked like yesterday.



And this is what it looks like today. Though two of the plants clearly made more progress than the other two, it does appear that all four have sprouted. Hopefully the laggards will be making proper appearances in the very near future.



Again, the plan is to have the plants grow along a string and then cross the window in which the other plants are growing. While it may take a few weeks for this plan to come to fruition, I am pretty confident it is possible, particularly given my experience with the same type of beans in the living room.

A Few Quick Notes 290

-Today wasn't quite as nice as yesterday. Things have been rather overcast and wet for most of the day. I can't say that these are my favourite conditions.

-When my mother was in Halifax in September I acquired a 20 kg bag of flour. As of Wednesday this flour was basically gone. Though I am not surprised that I managed to make my way through such a large bag of flour, I am somewhat surprised that it went so quickly, I was expected this to last at least another month or so. Not so surprisingly, the 1 pound bag of yeast is still quite full, though I think I will be able to make my way through it in the coming months.

-Somehow I managed to make it through Tuesday and Wednesday without a nap. Sadly I wasn't able to carry my streak through to today, though I did make it to 4:00 PM before breaking.

-It seems that I am now 1/9 with this year's coffee competition. At the moment I am where I would expect to be, but if I don't want to fall below this success rate I am going to have to be sure to not miss any opportunities and compete at the highest possible level.

-I had a presentation to give this morning. Going into the presentation I was a little worried about how it would go as it was quite early in the morning I am not all that much of a morning person. Somehow, once I got going things seemed to go much better than they should have. The post-presentation question and answer session seemed to go particularly well, I was really having a lot of fun and I there were a number of good questions from the crowd (I even managed to get a few laughs).

-Yesterday, what at the helicopter crash memorial service, my sister observed Danny Williams and Stephen Harper shaking hands. Given the public rhetoric this might not be the behaviour one might expect, though it is quite appropriate given the circumstances. I am curious if any of the Newfoundland political bloggers will mention this interaction. As I don't follow all that many of these blogs it would be quite easy for me to miss such coverage.

A Few Quick Notes 289

-Today was incredibly beautiful. While Environment Canada was reporting a temperature of 5 degrees, I am pretty sure that it was actually warmer than that in town. Of course, the sun was also out, which really helped things.

-As some of you may have noticed, I have removed the web-call button from the side-bar. This wasn't getting much (read 'any') use. And since moving from GrandCentral to Google Voice it had begun to take up much more space. I guess if you really need to contact either of us and you don't have our contact information the best approach might be to use the comment section associated with each post (not that this is a problem that comes up all that frequently).

-Today while reading the Globe and Mail I came across a few stories of note.

Firstly, it seems that G.W. Bush has now given his first post-presidential for-hire speech. The strange part of the story is not that he has decided to do paid speeches, but that the speech was given in Calgary instead of somewhere in the United States.

Secondly, apparently both Stephen Harper and Danny Williams will be attending this evening's memorial service for those lost in the recent off-shore helicopter crash. Hopefully everyone will have enough tact to behave appropriately for a memorial service. (A related note is that my sister will be performing as part of the mass choir assembled for the event). Also, CBC should be streaming the service here for those of you who are interested.

Thirdly, I read that AIG will have $165 million, equal to the sum the company recently paid in bonuses, deducted from its $180 billion of bail-out money. I found two things particularly strange about this story. Firstly, how could a company that needs bailout money justify bonuses, the company clearly isn't doing all that well. I guess those handing out the bail-out money felt the same way. Secondly, and more importantly, if the bail-out money is based on need, how can $165 million just be cut from the package. This would suggest that the sum allocated to the company isn't really based on much at all and that a few hundred million here or there might not make all that much difference. For some reason I find this very troubling. Also, according to the story, the US government "now holds about an "80-per-cent stake" in the company. I really wonder how all of this is going to play out in the long run.

-Last night Neil and I made our way to Your Father's Moustache for their St. Patrick's day event. We made the trip because one of my classmates was one of the fiddlers performing. Overall I think we had a pretty good time.

The only bummer all evening was the twenty minutes that we had to blow trying to send a package at the postal outlet across the street. The employee was very unhelpful and slow. We both suspect that it likely cost us more than was necessary for us to send the package, though as we were provided with very little information it is hard for us to be certain about this.

-Earlier today I mentioned doing some spring cleaning. I forgot to mention that I also did a few loads of laundry.

-In a few minutes dinner should be ready. We will be having pot roast. I can't wait.

Are beans vindictive?

For a change I decided to take a photo of the plants from the outside. While this photo demonstrates how visible my plants are from outside, it may be a little harder to compare with some of the previous photos. Seeing how visible my room is from the outside I am glad that my room is at the back of the building, instead of at the front.



This second ear of corn seemingly came out of nowhere. Almost as soon as it became visible it began to grow a beard. This beard seems to be spilling out unceasingly. I am not sure why this ear has developed a beard and the first ear seems to only have a few hairs sticking out.



The beans and other plants in the living room keep growing at a relatively decent pace.



At least three of the bean plants are now making their way along the second horizontal string. Unfortunately, progress along the bottom string seems to be a little slower than it was along the upper string.



A few days ago I noticed that many of the bean leaves seem to be dying. As you can see, many of the sections of the leaves seem to be without life. I really wish I knew what the problem was so that I might be able try to do something about it. Though I don't think that this is due to underwatering, I have tried to increase the watering schedule as of today. Not surprisingly, it is a little too soon to tell if this is what is needed. The other thing that I have done is to give the beans another hit of plant food, based on the assumption that the small pots and limited growing space may mean a shortage of nutrients (though I have not real evidence to suggest that this is the problem).



The other option is that the older bean plants are jealous of the new bean plants in my bedroom and in an attempt to spite me for planting more beans the bean plants in the living room are committing mass suicide. Interestingly, the beans that have been growing in my bedroom since the fall are seemingly under-going a resurgence and are showing new blooms for the first time in weeks. Maybe these three plants are glad that I am giving more attention to general bean population in my bedroom? If you have any ideas please let me know, I really would rather not lose all of the plants in the living room.



About a month ago I picked this radish. The radish seed from which this plant grew was planted in late August. It would seem that I provided the plant with less than ideal growing conditions.

Spring Cleaning

When I woke up this morning I realized that my room had started to get a little out of hand. I had papers and documents all over the place, some of which were stacked for filing, others that were not. My desk had all kinds of things on it that had outlived their usefulness. Things were just generally cluttered.

So as soon as my regular Wednesday morning batch of bread was rising I started working on my room. By taking care of my backed up filling, much of which was related to a few school projects that I recently completed, I was able to make significant progress. I also put away several items that have been sitting on my floor since early January.

One of the most satisfying aspects of the cleaning mission was to clear my desk and given a quick scrub. After a number of months of use there has been some dust build-up in some of the areas that tend to have clutter. By removing everything I was able to access, and remove, this dust, and some miscellaneous debris.

Though I don't have any proof of this, I feel that having an organized room will likely make me more productive in the coming days. I guess the main reason for thinking this is that I should be able to save time by not having to sort through piles of crap to find things that I am looking for. Also, I won't have to take care not to step on things as I make my way through the room. Hopefully I can keep on top of things for at least a few days.

A Few Quick Notes 288

-So far today has been great. The skies are clear and the temperatures are a few degrees above zero. Unfortunately I spent much of the day indoors and was unable to take advantage of the great weather.

-I did take a trip to the grocery store largely to take advantage of the weather, so I guess I can't claim that I didn't at least get a few minutes of good times and fun in the sun.

-Our Ultimate game was a bit of a boondoggle yesterday. Shortly after we arrived we learned that our captain had given us the wrong time and that weren't in fact scheduled to play until an hour and twelve minutes later.

As the two teams playing the game prior to ours were short players, so Neil and I, along with two other teammates, ended up playing as subs.

The consequence of our playing two games, instead of one, was that we were rather tired by the end of the second game, at least I was. This turns out to have been rather significant as our game was quite close until the last few minutes, by which point I was in no position to hustle as much as normal.

-Aside from playing extra Ultimate, the other consequence of the delay was that we were delayed in returning to the apartment. Normally this wouldn't be such a big deal, but as it turns out Neil and Rebecca had invited a couple over for games. So instead of all three of us being here to assist with the hosting duties, only Rebecca was here to handle the heavy burden that is playing a game with guests.

-Man, do I ever need to get back to work on my paper. It is supposed to be 7500 words and I definitely don't have that many yet.

-Google is now offering a new service called Google Voice, which is basically just a new version of GrandCentral. The big downside seems to be that they no longer offer free calls to Canada, the upside is that I should now have free texting capabilities.

Unfortunately, membership is presently only available to those with GrandCentral accounts, but you may way to keep an eye out for the opening of the floodgates because I get the feeling that this will be a pretty useful service (particularly if you are in the US).

Mr. Gushue and the Brier

It seems that Newfoundland's Brier team, skipped by Brad Gushue, has lost to Manitoba's team, which was skipped by Jeff Stoughton. This loss means that Newfoundland is out of the play-offs for the year.

Upon learning this news I suggested to Neil that I could make a make a joke on Montifax along the lines of "don't send a Pearlian to do a man's job." As he didn't think such a comment would be appropriate (presumably he thought that not everyone would see the humour) I have decided not to include such a joke about the loss. He is probably right, such a comment could be offense to those from Mount Pearl. Instead Montifax wishes the Newfoundland team the best of luck in next year's Brier (which is to take place in Halifax, if I am not mistaken).

I guess we now have to wait and see which two teams will make the final.

A Few Quick Notes 287

-As noted previously, today was pretty great. The skies were clear and the wind was relatively low. The only slightly problematic element was that it was a little on the cool side of things, but as I didn't really spend all that much time outside this wasn't much of a problem for me.

-It seems that I am still dealing with the cold I picked up some time ago. The only remaining symptom seems to be my runny/stuffy nose, and even this is much less of a problem than it was a few days ago.

-London's Mayor Boris Johnson posted his chutney recipe on his blog today. It is definitely worth checking out. It is exactly the kind of recipe I would expect from Mr. Johnson.

-It seems that an individual Neil and I went to elementary school with is the sole survivor of the recent off-shore helicopter crash on the Grand Banks. I have heard that he is showing signs of improvement, which is great, though he is obviously still in a tough spot.

-The plants are continuing to grow rather nicely. In particular the thyme and new corn plants seem to be making the most progress, though the banana shouldn't be ignored.



The most impressive growth that I noticed today relates to the second ear of corn. It seems to have started to ooze all kinds of the tassel-like things at the end of the ear. I think they have grown rather noticeably since I took the photo a few hours ago.



As has been their habit for the past few weeks, the scarlet runner beans keep growing and sprouting new leaves. Still no sign of blooms.



I have started getting some of the plants to follow a second string back across the window. This doesn't seem to be going quite as smoothly as the first string.



I really like they way the beans have wrapped themselves around each other.



-I planted a few scarlet runner beans in my room yesterday. If all goes as planned they should be following a string and traversing my bedroom window in no time.

-It seems that Brad Gushue has secured himself a spot in the Brier play-offs. Gushue and team will be playing Jeff Stoughton on Saturday afternoon.

Blue Skies

If you were outside in Halifax today and decided to look up, you might have seen something a little like this.



Check out a version of Blue Skies by Devon Sproule here, if you are so inclined.

Big news

For a while I have been thinking about my baking ingredient consumption patterns and noticed that I have been going through a fair bit of butter, certainly much more than Neil and Rebecca would have used before I arrived. The problem with this habit is that it is somewhat costly considering that butter typically goes for about $4.29 a pound.

While in the local grocery store a few days ago I ended up in the lard/shortening section and decided to check out some these products for both price and trans fats. Not surprisingly, the price was much lower, typically by about about $2 a pound, which is a pretty wide margin on a $4 product. The only thing that scared me was the trans fat content, which went as low as .1 g per serving.

Moments ago I Neil and I were talking about such matters and I decided to check the butter trans fat levels and learned that it is .2 g per serving (though there could be differences in serving size between butter, lard, and shortening (I will have to look into this). Anyway, as it seems that lard and shortening are not only cheaper, but also less trans fatty I have decided to make the switch to these products, and away from butter. The additional side benefit is that neither of these products require refrigeration.

Of course the irony of the timing of this decision is that butter was on sale last week at one grocery store, and will be on sale at another store as of Saturday. Anyway, even the sale prices don't bring butter down to the price of the two alternative options.

The other funny part of the decision is that as butter was on sale last week I have a bit of a stockpile to get through before my new decision will actually come into effect, which I hope I haven't forgotten by then.

The other thing that should be interesting is what impact this switch will have on the baked goods. As I haven't don't much baking with either shortening or lard (though I did use lard in my tortillas a few days ago) I don't know what impact it might have on my baked goods, I don't imagine it should be anything too scary, but there will likely be some flavour differences.

Should be fun. I will be sure to let you know how the transition goes.

A Few Quick Notes 286

-Today has been absolutely beautiful, which is not at all what I expected given yesterday's rain and snow. From early this morning the sun has been out in full force. The only slight flaw with the day is that it has been a little cooler than might be desirable, though I don't think that it is as cold as Environment Canada has been reporting.

-Neil and Rebecca attended the Dalhousie Student Union Annual General Meeting, which was apparently quite the event. It seems that before the agenda had been approved the cops had to be called to remove non-students from the meeting. It seems that after about three hours the agenda eventually was accepted. It seems that basically the only thing that was decided was that there would have to be another meeting, this one on April 1, 2009. There is a great live-blog post of the event on Punditry.ca, a site devoted to covering DSU elections.

-I should probably take advantage of the great weather and go for a walk, but I imagine that I am much more likely to spend the evening studying.

-I am now 1/6 in this year's Roll Up the Rim to Win. Apparently the energy I brought to my first three cups has not been sustained. Somehow I am going to have re-energize my game and dial it up a notch. I guess I will use the weekend to re-group and come at things fresh on Tuesday.

Am I missing something?

Though I haven't read Charlotte's Web, I was under the impression that it came to a pretty conclusive end. It would seem that I was mistaken and that some creative types in Hollywood managed to make Charlotte's Web 2 in 2003. It seems that the story follows Wilbur and Charlotte's daughters as they try to check up on farm animal that has been sold to another farm.

If I had known about this I would have been much less shocked when I first heard about Hamlet 2.

A Few Quick Notes 285

-In the past two hours the weather has gone from overcast and calm, to relatively heavy, wet snow with a touch of wind. Word on the street is that we could get up to 5 cm before it turns to rain. Great. I hope this doesn't make my walk to school tomorrow morning too unpleasant.

-This morning I got up and started a batch of bread. While the bread was rising and baking I worked on an essay that is due tomorrow. Once both were complete I felt a rather significant sense of accomplishment, and was somewhat proud of my domestic multi-tasking.

I guess I can now focus my energies on dinner and other assignments.

-A few days ago I realized that the several of the scarlet runner beans in the living room were soon going to run out of space to grow along the string set-up that I had created in the window. Eventually I decided that when they became long enough I would rung a string parallel to the first string and send the beans back across the window. By this morning the first plants were long enough to need the second string, so I installed it soon after waking. Now that it has been in place for several hours it is clear that at leas one of the beans has already started to grow along the new string. As the second plant is somewhat entangled with the first I have no doubt that it too will start to grow in the right direction. I guess I will keep adding new plants to this string as they reach the end of the first.




As you can see, in general, the beans are continuing to grow at a rather impressive pace. I am a little disappointed that I haven't yet seen any signs of blooms, but I imagine that this should be happening in the next few days.



-I guess I should try to pull something together for dinner and then head back to work for a few hours. I am really hoping that I might be able to get to sleep before 3:30 AM, which is when I have been hitting the rack the past few days.

Is this something I should be worried about?

A few days ago I noticed a troubling trend in my apartment, that certain jelly beans were being left behind uneaten (as seen below). Does this mean that someone in my apartment might be prejudiced? I am starting to thinking troubling thoughts about my roommates, hopefully none of them are true, but I am starting to wonder given this rather observable behaviour.

Why not?

So for no particularly good reason I decided to make tortillas tonight. I am not really sure why I wanted to do this, it is not as though I have done this before, or had a pressing need for tortillas tonight.

I think that some of it may have had to do with me finding out how few ingredients were involved and how simple they were supposed to be to make. Basically you just add flour, lard, and water, knead, and then fry on an ungreased pan.

Actually, once they were finished I didn't really have anything much to do with them, so they are now in the fridge, just sitting there.

The good thing is that they seemed to turn out pretty well, and were relatively easy. I imagine that I will try making them again in the very near future now that I have a general sense of what is going on. I think that the key change I might make would be to roll them a bit thinner (and larger) and maybe cook them a little longer.

More excitement on the farm

Another few days have passed so I thought that I might as well make provide further documentation that my plants are continuing to grow, many of you might be inclined to doubt this growth were it not for the photographic evidence I continue to post.

Given my time constraints this week I won't give as detailed a run down on all of the plants, as has been my habit these past few weeks. Hopefully the pictures of the general growing area will give you a sense of the general progress.

As usual, things seem to be generally growing and developing, though nothing particularly exciting has happened in the past few days.



Maybe the most exciting development, at least from my point of view is that I seem to have a second ear of corn. Also, the first ear seems to be causing the plant to grow on an awkward angle.



There is a now a fair bit of room between some of the new leaves. Also, the new leaves are almost at full size, and have started to much darker. I keep hoping that some of the other buds will start to show signs of action so that I can develop more of a bush feel with the plant. The frustrating aspect of this plant is that I likely won't be able to harvest many of its leaves for another few years, but once the harvest starts I imagine that I could be giving bay leaves away for Christmas for years to come (maybe that is just my dream).



As you might be able to see, the scarlet runner beans have really gone wild. They ended up growing much more quickly than I expected.



They have almost reached the far side of the window. I really don't know what I will do with them once they do. Neil didn't seem to think trying to get them to grow towards the chandelier was a good idea. Maybe I will run another string and get them to grow back the other way.