Home alone on a Sunday night

Shortly after dinner Neil and Rebecca made their way over the apartment of some friends of their to wile the evening away with some fancy computer game related activities. The consequence of them splitting was that I had the apartment to myself for the evening.

My original plan was to try and read a few of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories. For some reason the reading hasn't quite materialized yet, maybe I will see if I can get working on that in the near future.

Though I haven't yet been able to bring myself around the reading or any school related work, I have been able to take care of a few other tasks.

While I still had a little natural day light I look care of planting a few seeds. Originally I had been planning on finishing the planting and then leaving most of the pots and seeds outside to germinate. As I was wrapping up the planting operation I started to think that it might be a little too cold to leave them outside, whether this is the case or not I don't really know. What I do know is if the weather happens as is forecast, I should be able to safely move things outside by Wednesday.

Anyway, I ended up moving to various locations inside (and plan to return them to the balcony in a few days).

The pots on top of the stand in the living room are primarily beans of various sorts. The three uniform pots have scarlet runner beans while the ice cream container has yellow beans. I believe that the green container has some kind of leaf lettuce, but I guess I will find out if my memory is correct in a few days.



The pots on top of my filing cabinet are a bit more of a mixed bag both in terms of what I just planted, but also in terms of what I plan on doing with them. Not surprisingly, I plan to leave the more established plants where they are and only move the recently planted plants outside. In the larger terra cotta pot I planted more lettuce while in the smaller plastic container I planted a few watermelon seeds (my third attempt at watermelon this season).



The remaining six pots are pots I don't really plan on moving outdoors once things get a little warmer, also some of these were planted a few days ago. Four of these plants have some hot pepper seeds while one has thyme (which was planted a few days ago) and the other chives.



After I finished with the planting and pot arranging I moved on to baking. While I had originally been thinking about baking bread today I realized that we didn't really need any once Neil and Rebecca managed to snag a dozen free bagels at the marathon, nor do we have enough freezer space to store the extra loaves. Eventually I remembered that I had been interested in baking gingerbread again, largely because my last batch didn't meet my very exacting standards. I am hoping that this will be out of the oven in a few minutes.



Once the gingerbread was in the oven and the dishes taken care of I was able to move onto a project that I have been thinking about for months, the resurrection of the free book box that I had with Nithum in Montreal. As you can see, I have seeded the box with three books already, hopefully I will be able to add a few more in the coming days. Now we just have to have some people over to take advantage of the free book box.



As the night is still young I should see if I can manage to take care of a few more tasks while I am still in a somewhat productive mood.

A Few Quick Notes 166

-Today was another nice day, though a bit on the chilly side. My understanding is that such weather is not to hold, snow or some other form of precipitation has been predicted. This is rather unfortunate as just now the sidewalks are starting to clear and the snow disappear.

-I must now be 11/51 on this year's Roll Up the Rim contest. The decision to pick up my game that I made several days ago seems to have paid off. My win ratio has definitely started to improve. Hopefully I will be able to manage this level of intensity for the rest of the competition. If you are curious, my strategy is to play for more smaller prizes, such as coffees, rather than the big and rare prizes. So far this seems to be working.

-I was able to do some laundry yesterday. Once I started the process did I realize that I had less to wash than I expected. What caused this to be the case still baffles me, particularly as it seems that it was about the standard interval between washes.

-I am really having a hard time getting down to work. Though I have been trying all night, I have managed to make very little progress. Maybe if I take a walk I will be ready to work when I get back.

-A few days ago I heard an interview with George Saunders about his work, which tends towards satire. This motivated me to see if the library had any of his work, which they did. I was able to check out two of his books, one of which I completed that day. Generally I have been impressed and would consider looking into other of his works.

-A few days ago, at the Purim party, some of the guests noticed the 'take a book, leave a book' box and found some content that interested them. In class today someone gave me a book for the box to replace the one that he took. I am glad to see that this has finally worked in the way that it was supposed to, though it took much longer than I expected (but that may be because of the limited number of people that visit my apartment).

-A few days ago I planted some beans, peas, and peppers. While I am hoping for some action on the growing front before I depart, I don't know if this is actually going to happen. So far all three seed varieties have disappointed me, but it may be that I have not given them enough time to sprout.

-When I returned home from school today I found that the north-bound lane of my street was closed by a police car. At the end of the block I was able to see some more flashing lights, as well as a few at the end of the block to the south of my apartment. Fortunately, my apartment doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger.

I should note that this is all after there were two police car outside of the building to the south of mine. As these cars didn't have their lights on I assumed that there wasn't much of an emergency, though I am now wondering if something developed during the course of their visit.

Take a book, Leave a Book Box

Several years ago Nithum and I, while in St. John’s, came across a box in a house that encouraged people to either take or leave a book. Before moving into our apartment last year we thought about establishing a box of our own, though because of space restrictions this did not occur.

Now that we have moved to a significantly larger apartment we finally have the space to establish such a box. The box was seeded with a few discards from the collection that I acquired through frequent visits to the McGill book sale free book box. The problem with the seed books was that most of them weren’t very good, which explains why they were being given away for free in the first place.

Fortunately, today I was able to find a fair number of classics for free. The newly available books are:

-Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

-Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

-Dracula by Bram Stoker

-Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

-Lord of the Flies by William Golding

-The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne