free scoop night
Today from 6pm-10pm was Baskin Robbins "Free Scoop Night".
I ran over to the one in Redwood Shores after work with a friend, then to the one by home. After getting a rocky road, I felt slightly guilty for eating bad things, so I got a red raspberry sherbet after dinner.
bah drawstrings
The instructions for the drawstring on my pants pattern said, simply, "Turn RIGHT SIDE OUT. Press."
And so I tried. And tried. And tried. And after four hours (having finished watching Strawberry on the Shortcake, a load of laundry, and a few episodes on FoodTV), only a quarter of it was right side out. Finally, I stopped being stubborn, tried a different method, and finished the whole damn thing in 20 seconds.
Notes: You're supposed sew the edges of this incredibly long and skinny piece of fabric, leave the edges unsewn in the center, and turn the whole tube inside out. For the first four hours, I was trying to do this by jabbing a chopstick through the open center to wiggle it inside out. BAD IDEA. The much much better way to do it, is to start at the end, and squish the chopstick into the end, so it turns inside out onto the chopstick. Then all you have to do, is pull the chopstick through the inside out tube and all the way out the center.
old mini-comic
I was going through my stash of old projects looking for portfolio-worthy photographs, and I came upon an old mini-comic created while I was at Microsoft. It was a very unproductive summer. Just for kicks, I uploaded it here: a Resolution, mini-comic.
yellow pear tomatoes?
Last year, I attempted to grow a tomato plant (celebrity). It got an accidental amputation when I moved apartments, then received infrequent watering on the back patio before producing two mealy bland tomatoes. After that, it received no watering at all.
THIS year will be different! I'm going to try growing a yellow pear tomato plant (more fruits and yummier taste) and it's placed by the front door where I will be more likely to water it. Even with less light there, I think it's probably a better option than enough sun and no water. Because I know I won't if it's in the back.
a promising beginning
aphids
Did you know that ants cultivate aphids? The ants carry around them around like little pet cows.
Evidently, aphids like hanging around the nice new shoots of any plant and sucking the life out of it. My tulips look like this now. Gross.
I also found out they were the reason my rose bush stopped growing. Since then, I've been zealously picking them off the plant. Sometimes I squish them with my shoe, and sometimes I just flick them into the driveway. But last night, I fed three of the little buggers to Spider. And gleefully watched him drag their tiny wriggling bodies back to his lair.
itsy bitsy spider
A squat little spider moved into my watering can. He has set up shop quite nicely, spinning webs across every available opening.
Twice a week, I terrify him by sticking his home under a faucet, running water through his webs (and making big holes in the process), and shaking it around while watering the plants.
He is very tenaciously staying in that spot. It must be because he is getting fat from all the aphids attacking my tulips.
It's nice checking in on him when I water -- like having another pet. Aww.
it lives!
After a few months of thinking about a blog for my projects and random thoughts, Pushpin is finally alive! (I had a hard time thinking of a name, and therefore could not create the directory to store it in until an appropriate one had been found. Other candidates: frumpy violet, leafy greens ... um, right.)
This blog has aspirations to document fun projects and their progress and will hopefully not devolve into a melodramatic self-contemplative chicken-soup-for-the-soul piece of crap.
Pretty templates to come soon.