Sculpin

For the National Day of Reason I did not stand at the I-5 overpass with a big sign saying “THINK”, as threatened, though I sort of wish I had. Maybe next year.

I was reminded of that in a roundabout way when I came across this sweet essay in my files. It’s from 1874 and was originally published in Every Saturday. Reading it, I feel nostalgic for studying natural history.

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Josh and I are going to the Seattle Cheese Festival tomorrow. Anybody want to meet up?

The festival runs from 10 to 5. While I’m down there I’d like to make a stop at World Spice, which is open 12-5. So any time after 11:30 would be fine with us.

It didn’t take six months. Yesterday I got my heels all the way down in downward dog. I’m happy enough, but I’ll really celebrate when I can do it consistently. And I’ve managed to strengthen my legs enough to do utthita parsvakonasana without propping a block between my knees and the wall.

STP@home: Cam - 4.5 miles; Josh - 1.0 mile. Oh, yeah.

Let me take a moment to thank Desolina in particular and everybody else who encouraged me to take up Pilates. It’s been a remarkable transformation. I’m much stronger now, my spine bends more evenly, my balance is remarkably improved, and my sacrum hasn’t given me that hot-knife sensation for months. It’s given me so much confidence that I can actually go out, walk around, and not get stuck anywhere with that old semi-incapacitating pain. I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s marvelous. Thank you! You were right!

Josh and I have started racing on the treadmill, doing our own virtual Seattle-to-Portland. It is a very slow race.

I am so going to kick his ass at this. Because I will deliberately stroll a mile or two every day in easy increments, and he will do five hard miles and give up for a week. And then his ass will have been kicked by somebody with CFIDS. Not to mention a girrrrrl. Oh the ignominy!

You know what’s good? I’ll tell you: deviled eggs with cilantro, chives, hot sauce, and a little lime juice. The lime juice makes it.

We used mayonnaise, but I bet sour cream would be better. Avocado, ancho chile, and chipotle would be good flavors to try.

Gardening that requires a pickax is pretty hardcore. And that was my day. There was also a lot of collapsing into the grass and checking myself for stupor. It wouldn’t do to get so tired that I’d send a pickax into my foot. That’d be bad.

Our soil is about the worst possible garden soil short of contamination. Six inches of sand overlay a whole lot of very compact rocky clay. Some of the rocks are very attractive — there are some fist-size rounded quartzite cobbles — and I’m glad to have them available for use elsewhere in the garden. It’s fun to see them unearthed. The clay I’m not so fond of.

So I got tired enough to talk funny, and I did not disappoint. My favorite today:

The Simpsons quotation: “I’m cold and there are wolves after me.”
What I meant to say: “I’m old and there are wolves after me.”
What I did say: “I’m old and there are worms after me! Words after! Wolves! Agh!”

Some good stuff about our local geology is available from the Pacific Northwest Center for Geologic Mapping Studies. Check the Popular Downloads page for some of the coolest maps.

Something I read today brought up a memory of possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever witnessed first-hand: my parents arguing about which of them was more Scottish (good) and who was more Irish (bad) than they were admitting. They argued about this for the whole twenty-or-so years that they were married, as far as I know. For the love of Pete, people. There are so many things stupid about that, I hardly know where to start.

I can begin to understand this continuing argument of theirs in terms of how it worked within their spectacularly broken relationship, but still, for crying out loud.

In contrast, my family of choice is more likely to argue about sensible things such as vi vs. emacs. *duck*

It’s been a day of sheet composting. (Die, lawn, die.) I’ve got most of another bed laid out now, and I’m building up the level of compost to approved grass-killing levels. My cockamamie idea of temporarily laying out path boundaries with bricks has turned into a slightly less cockamamie idea of lining all the beds with bricks. This was working out well until I ran out of bricks long before running out of boundary.

It’s going to hurt my mingy Scots soul to buy new bricks. I’ve checked Craigslist and Imex for local used brick; no dice. I’ll be checking out the RE-Store soon. Prediction: I will find about eight zillion pounds of neat stuff that I can’t live without. But if I can keep out of the ironwork section, I should be okay.

Much of the garden stuff has been on hold because of the water situation. No, not that water situation. One of the west (up-hill) neighbor’s sewer pipes is crushed and it’s been spouting greywater into our yard. Fortunately it’s just from the washing machine; fortunately, she uses biodegradable soap. That’s all the “fortunately” I can come up with. We’ve got some claypan under the topsoil, so we have a nice wee aquifer of our own now. From digging around our yard, I think that the claypan is tipped slightly to the east, further encouraging her waterlogged soils to drain in our direction.

It’s very wet. Josh took out the forsythia bushes there a couple of weeks ago; water puddled in the holes. A week without rain or laundry-water, and it was still soggy. In fact, it’s soggy now. I don’t quite know what to do about it. I am not exactly a dab hand with a pickax. I’d dump in some compost, but I’d rather not get it soapy, even if the soap is supposed to be biodegradable.

No idea when this’ll get fixed. The neighbor has gone in for a hip replacement, so I’m certainly not going to push it. (Boy, is she having a difficult Spring.) But I do hope it happens soon.

For Other Josh, because he’s had a hell of a time lately: