Bribery

A few weeks of flowers.

 

 

These I got yesterday.

Official

I am heading off the the post office to mail my rent...and to give my notice that I am moving out at the end of August.

Who knows what the next month (or two or three) are going to bring, but whatever it is I will be living closer to work for a while. Wish me luck.

P.S. To my siblings - I have not talked to the 'rents about this so please do not mention it. :-)

On the other hand

While I may get eaten alive by some bugs. Others are quite nice to have around. Here are some more (in addition to photos I have already posted) that I have seen around in the past couple of weeks.

See the mighty marigold hunter tucked in the petals of this one? It is a crab spider. I like them because I worked with them as an undergrad (so I often notice them), but also because they stay outside and hunt on flowers.

Speaking of flowers, that marigold is one I started from seeds I kept from last year's plants! They have made a bit of progress over the past couple of months along with the sunflowers. Actually, I should cut and dry one sunflower that is starting to go by now. These pictures are from tonight and have all the marigolds around the sunflowers.

This one is one of two giant sunflowers that came up (or at least that came up and lived up to its name because I planted a couple different types of seeds and did not mark them). It is well over my head!

Bug magnet

Warning: unnecessary detail about my reaction to bug bites, but also a review of what I have tried to treat them!

I few weeks ago (luckily AFTER my brother's wedding), my ankle looked like this all doctored up with calamine lotion.

(You are welcome for posting that.)

Then they healed up. Then this weekend I got eaten alive again. Or maybe I have poison ivy too?

Symptoms: My bug bites sometimes just get your average red raised bite that is itchy for a couple of days. Other times I end up with a pretty serious site reaction that gets raised, red, hot, and as it heals looks bruised. This concerns me a bit because it is almost like I get some tissue necrosis at the bite site. My third option for a reaction is dermatitis (I think), just tiny blisters and super itchy. Now that I look online, these worse reactions may be varying degrees of cellulitis.

Treatment: Two things can happen with a bug bite - an immune response and an infection. I have tried various combinations of treatments with this in mind. Usually I put some antibiotic cream on it right away. I started doing this per the recommendation of a doctor friend after her dad was reacting to a 2-day old sting, and she made the point that you never know what bacteria bugs are carrying. I have discovered that the ointments with pain relief seem to reduce the itching too! Then there is calamine, which I think is most helpful at drying them out. I do prefer the clear anti-itch cream over pink calamine for going out in public or to work. This clear lotion is less drying, but does protect the skin and reduce itching. A friend recommended applying Tiger Balm right after showering. This also seemed to work, but my skin reacted to the Tiger Balm so I figured that might not be good. Last time my bites got bad (see above picture) and hot, I kept them clean, used antibiotic ointment, and iced them. I HIGHLY recommend the ice! There is also the classic AfterBite (ammonia), but really this seems to do nothing for me. Spray Benedryl works sometimes if I spray it on RIGHT after getting bitten.

CF swears by spit. Right after he gets a bite, he puts a big ol' finger full of spit on it and does not react. He may also be less allergic to the bites, but whatever. I keep meaning to get some aloe with lidocaine. I figure that should work too.

Here is the biggest problem of all. I sprayed Off DeepWoods with DEET all over myself last night and still felt the mosquitoes biting! But CF and I went to a botanical garden where they display (with a RED sign) a huge poison ivy plant in the 'Injurious Plants' section, and today I went for a walk along a paved river trail where surely there was poison ivy too. I have some "bites" on my ankle that have suspiciously large blisters and are not really itchy, but rather more sensitive. So I either get big ol' blisters in response to mosquito bites or have poison ivy in addition to bites right now. Tonight, I stopped drinking sangria, took an antihistamine, cleaned the areas twice with rubbing alcohol, and put calamine all over. We will see how that goes...

Maybe at some point I should go to a doctor when I have a bad reaction?

Steady

And when the barn roof sagged after an icy bout
It's like how you got when you knew the truth was the only way out
But not the only way
...
Well you know the way I left was not the way I planned
But I thought the world needed love and a steady hand
So I'm steady now

I love this woman.

I wrote two letters at the end of college. And gave them to the people for whom they were intended. One person told me a few years later that it took a lot of guts to do that. The other person and I never spoke of it.

Categorization

I have worked with or around several undergrads. I think they can be categorized in a couple of ways. The combination of the below determines whether or not they are worth your time.

 

Sometimes, even if they are worth the time, you do not get a chance to work with them. Unfortunately, even if they are totally not even close to worth your time or aggravation, you still have to work with them. No surprise that if you want to abbreviate 'under-graduate', you get 'UG'.

P.S. I apparently think I'm too smart to get they're/their/there correct. Fixed in an update. 

Walking legs

Being that I am just a couple of months away (ACK!) from walking 50 miles (for the 8th time!), I figured I should train a bit. The couple of years that I walked with no real issues I was exercising regularly - some mix of walking to and from campus (~3 miles round trip), going to the gym, and regular 4 to 6 mile walks after work. Now, not so much.

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a walk that was just over 6 miles. My legs were tired by the end for sure, but not sore the next day. I think the trick will be doing a 6 mile loop 3 to 5 times a week. I also walk to and from my car every day, but that is only about 1.5 miles.

It would, of course, be nice for walking if it was not over 85 degrees when I get home after work.

Yesterday morning I had good intentions to get out on the road by 8:00. Then I wanted to make biscuits before it got closer to the predicted 89 degrees, so I did that. Then I did a load of laundry so I could hang it out before I headed out for my walk. I made it out the door around 10, and by the time I got back at 11:40, it was pushing 90. At least there was stuff to look at. This guy said hi on my way out by flapping his wings a bit. Per this website, it is a male too.

This barn is just down the road from me and on a land grant sale with the two houses next to it. Not likely a functional barn, but probably where all the barn swallows that swoop around live.

A little over a mile in, this is where I like to stretch. I sometimes do some push-ups too if I am feeling inspired and the bugs are leaving me alone. (As an aside, I get bitten even when I wear OFF Deep woods. Go figure.)

These fields are on opposite sides of the road. Either the corn was planted at different times, or this one is just a better field than the second.

 

Field #2

And that is pretty much all I took pictures of until I was nearing home and saw this killdeer, a shorebird that is oft found far from water.

It was a hot 6.2 miles, and I drank those two bottles of water I had with me...and took a nap late afternoon.

Dressin' it up

I post because surely you all want to hear about how I make something as simple as a tuna fish sandwich make me feel like I have whipped up something special. First, this is my favorite greens from the mesclun mix I have been planting. It smells a little nutty when you cut it and has a little bite to it when you eat it.

Then there is the tuna. My cat knows when I open tuna. She gets the water I drain off over her food. Into the tuna went a squeeze of lemon, chives and dill (from my garden!), carrots (shaved & cut), celery, shredded radish, and enough mayo to hold it all together. I am not going to lie. I like mayo.

It tastes way better than it looks (apparently a common theme of my dinners). Of course the melted cheese, greens from above and bacon popcorn helped too.

Mechanics

After getting my used Jetta from an unnamed dealership in the Boston area (where they did not even friggin' oil the door hinges like they were supposed to on the check list and then offered to do so if I brought the car back but I said I didn't think I would because who knows what else they charged me for and didn't do), I started taking my car to a regular mechanic. I used the Car Talk Radio website to find a mechanic. My Boston mechanic was a guy and his dad and his sister worked the desk usually and they were Brazilian and quite nice and sometimes funny.

My mechanic(s) here are likewise a good find, also thanks to the Magliozzi brothers' website. It is a Napa Auto parts, and I think I am an even bigger fan of them than the Boston place because they have a national name and a standard guarantee on their work. And I see them at least monthly for an oil change or more.

Last time I had an oil change, I remembered how the guy at the front had previously said:

"One of the guys is a Yankees fan and said he hates when your car comes in for work.

I joked back that you do NOT what your mechanic dreading your car coming in, but I understand where the guy was coming from. This is what he sees when my car comes in:

Before my last oil change (6/23 - this will be important later in my suspenseful story) I printed out a Yankees logo and taped it to my front license plate and dropped my car off. Later when they called...

"Two things.."

[Insert stomach dropping because something must be seriously wrong with my car.]

"Your car is ready to pick up. And who is the Yankees fan you live or work with??"

Hahahhaha....I totally made their day. The Yankees fan took a picture and was going to post it on FB. When I went to pick up my car, I was told again how they'd been laughing about it all day...Also, I got a free tire rotation because one of the guys was bored. I did assure them I only put the paper on there AFTER I dropped off my car. I certainly would not have driven around like that.

Anyway. I have spent a fair amount of money at this shop. When CF's car broke down on the way home from the airport and he was near my work, it was towed to this shop. They kinda know me know.

So I call today because my car has had an exhaust leak since we got back from my bro's wedding on 7/4. The guys asks for my name and then says:

"Weren't you just here?"

Not really something you want to hear from your mechanic. But, I am sure we will get a good laugh about the license plate again, and apparently I won the free oil change drawing in June.

OH. And the dates. I had an exhaust leak back in Boston, so I got my old paperwork to see what had been done. On 6/24/2008 I had an oil change. On 7/1/2008 I had an exhaust leak fixed. Coincidence? If so, it is potentially an expensive one.