Writing

I ate 5 tomatoes (with salt, pepper, and some bits of swiss cheese) for lunch today.

The anticipated tomato explosion has hit, and last night we picked about 20 tomatoes from the garden.  Surprisingly enough, the early producers are all heirloom varieties, and the vaunted “Early Girl” tomato plants (which were supposed to …duh…produce tomatoes earlier then all of the others) have not produced a single ripe fruit yet.

Actually, we probably should have picked the tomatoes a day or two ago, but as they are all fancy-colored heirloom varieties, we had to guess as to when the color indicated ripeness.  We spent a while waffling between “are they done yet?” and “maybe another day or so?” before actually reaching out and giving the fruits in question a squeeze to see how soft/firm they were.

I think that we were relying a little too much on the pictures on the plant tags to judge the “done-ness” of the fruit, which showed the fruits as being much different then they actually turned out to be.  For example, the picture on the tag for the Black Prince heirloom tomatoes showed the fruits as being a very dark, almost black, purple… when in fact the ripe fruits are closer to a medium burgundy.  Which was a touch disappointing as we had been looking forward to noshing on really strange colored tomatoes.

They were tasty, though.

Black Prince and Lemon Boy tomatoes, ready to be eaten

I have been looking at a lot of cookbooks and cooking sites lately (gotta find a lot of recipes that use tomatoes) and have been once again struck by the beautiful photography available there.  I want to work on that….

The latest hobby at our house is fishing.

It started when I was trying to decide what to get John for his birthday.  I finally hit on using the boat project for inspiration… something to do on the boat besides sail around the lake… fishing!  When I started to research the types of fish (trout, bass, bluegill, sunfish… river, lake…) available in the SW Ohio region, as well as the different styles of fishing (fly fishing, bait casting, spin casting) and the different weights and permutations of rods and reels and line available for just about every specialized fishing situation that you can come up with, I just started to get overwhelmed.  And I took the easy way out.  I bought him a fishing license (for which I had to surreptitiously steal his driver’s license) and wrapped it up along with a promise to outfit him with the fishing rod of his choice.

I also signed us both up for fly fishing lessons at Orvis, to see if this would be a style that we were interested in.

It turned out that both of us came away from the fly fishing class interested in trying it out “for real” and seeing if we could actually do it and catch fish that way.  We learned the basics of casting (along with the basics of knot tying and a lot of other basics) in the class, and I have to say that fly casting was a lot easier to pick up then I thought that it would be.

Okay, correction.  Picking up fly casting when you are standing in a parking lot with an empty line (no fly and no hook) and learning the correct way to flick the line backwards and forwards for maximum distance and with minimal arm/wrist movement, and no “whip crack” was easier then I thought that it would be.  I have yet to do it “for real” and see if I still think that it is easy.

We didn’t get a fly kit right away after the class.  We wanted to shop around a little bit, and Orvis would have had to order the kit we wanted, as it was out of stock at the time.

We did end up stopping at Dick’s Sporting Goods and picking up a basic spin casting kit.

The day after the class we went to the gun range to do some shooting, and to sight in my new scope (first anniversary present from John) and to try out spin/bait casting.  (We took turns with the rod.)  We had a fun, though not massively productive day.  John caught a bluegill that was deemed to be a “keeper”.  I drowned a bunch of worms and caught nothing.

Then we picked up a fly rod and some flies from Orvis, as well as a second (slightly heavier and better quality) spin casting rod from Dick’s.

Following the acquisition of more rods, we returned to the scene of the original crime (Caesar Creek State Park) and had another go at fishing.  John lost two flies, he and I lost a hook and bobber each (snagged on something underwater), and this time I was the one to catch the single fish of the trip.  (A medium sized sunfish)  Which we took home and fried up and ate.

At least we have never returned home empty-handed from a fishing trip, and I look forward to the day when we catch more then one fish per trip.

The “Push for Pennsic” SCA event this past weekend was fairly unremarkable… a couple of tournaments, a couple of authorizations, melee practice, oppressively hot and humid weather…

I also won the Midrealm Iron Ring.  The current (now former) holder of the ring (Kelvin) made a big deal about how he was donning his “target” when he was armoring up, so of course he was challenged for it pretty much straight off.  Technically, John got in the first challange, but since he was not in armor at the time, it was not a valid challange, making me the first challanger.

As was my right, I chose single sword (German style) as the challange format.

John marshaled the challenge, and declared it to be particularly “brutal”.  In one exchange, Kelvin took my legs, but being on my knees didn’t stop me from doing a full-length-of-the-blade drawcut to his neck.

I wish that we had gotten pictures of video of those fights… I would have liked to have the opportunity to critique myself…

So I won the ring.  I also have the accompanying “box of history” that goes along with it, that I intend to spend some time poking through.  It is custom for every holder of the ring to add something, some little token, to the box.  I need to figure out what I want to put in to represent myself.

I don’t think that I will have the ring for long.  I am pretty (actually 100% sure) that John intends to challenge me for it the first chance that he has.

The zucchini plants are dead.  Not just dead, but uprooted, disposed of, and the ground where they had been was “salted” with some powerful anti-bug stuff (Sevin-5).

They didn’t have root rot.  They had root borers.  (A quick conversation with a fellow gardener at a fencing practice clued us in as to the precise type of affliction plaguing the zucchinis, and it was on his advise that we took the rather drastic measures that we did.)  Hopefully the measures taken will prevent the infestation from spreading to the rest of the garden.

At least we got a couple of zucchini out of them before they died.

And the rest of the garden is still going strong, despite the overly hot and muggy weather.

The garden is doing really well.

The tomato plants have to be at least 5-and-a-half feet tall, and they are still growning

We have been eating peppers (green, jalapeno, and banana) out of it for a little while now.  We have made fresh pesto, and have been using the herbs in bread (sage and rosemary) and to entice the cats (catnip).

The catnip plant is growing wildly… much more so then the other herbs, but I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised there as it is in the mint family, and mint does tend to spread.  Maybe I should plant catnip in that “dead” spot in the front flower bed where everything else that I have tried there dies, and see what happens?

There are even a few tomatoes that are starting to blush from green to pink.

future ingredients in a tricolor salad

we are going to have a lot of tomatoes

The zucchini on the other hand…  It started out really strong.  Started growing like crazy, started to take over its corner of the plot and crowd the eggplants and green peppers, bloomed really early, started fruiting early (and started fruiting a lot!), and now… Well, now it has started to go south.  It somehow ended up with mildew all over the leaves, despite the recent hot-and-dry spell, and it looks to me like it is suffering from some kind of root rot as well.  Plus, whenever I go out to give it a look-see, there are ants crawling all over it.  Ants crawling all over it and nothing else in the garden.  Which I have decided to take as kind of a bad sign as far as the long-term prospects for the zucchini go.

Despite the bad omens, there is a truly enormous zucchini on the vine, which we plan on eating for dinner tonight.

I had the day off today (hooray for the summer hours flexible schedule) and since it was raining, I couldn’t do any of the outdoors-oriented items on my to-do list, I decided to tackle my office closet.

My office closet is a frightening mess.  There are boxes of stuff that I put in there when we moved in, and haven’t touched since.  My old laptop from grad school is in there.  I haven’t used it in I don’t know how long… since I got the first of many work-provided laptops, certainly.  My wedding dress (in a garment bag) is in there.  I try not to open the closet doors for fear that stuff will avalanche out on top of me.

I filled three garbage bags full of trash (including the long defunct laptop) and two garbage bags of stuff for the Salvation Army (how on earth did I end up with those four unused laptop briefcases and two unused laptop backpacks?  well, they are gone now) that  and put a stack of flattened boxes out in the garage for recycling.

I can see the closet floor now.  I found stuff that I forgot I had.  I found stuff that I didn’t know I had.  I threw a lot of it away.

I am not done yet, though.  There are still five boxes on the shelf that I haven’t gone through yet.  But I am done enough for now.  Those will be a project for another day.

Then I will tackle my filing cabinet.  Then my desk.  Then the bookshelves.

Happy Birthday, John!

We got all dressed up and went to The Pine Club for dinner and ate buttery, melt-in-your-mouth, steaks and drank some delicious red wine.

John and sparklers

Holidays can make birthdays fun… if you were born near the “right” holiday.

Corn dogs and cheeze fries, funnel cake, and explosions, oh my!

For all that I can be a bit down on Dayton every now and then, they do patriotism right on the 4th.  Which means a big street fair and fireworks show on or near the 4th.  The downtown show was on the 3rd this year, so we headed out with plenty of time to wander around the packed and cordoned-off streets, and stand in long lines for delicious and terribly bad for us food.  The cheeze fries were a bit of a disappointment, but the corn dogs and funnel cake were delicious.  My biggest complaint was how the organizers of the fair handled making sure people had something to drink.  The food vendors couldn’t sell beverages.  If you wanted something to drink, even if all you wanted was some bottled water, you had to go stand in line at one booth to buy drink coupons, and then you had to go and stand in another line at another booth to exchange the coupons for bottled water, or soda, or lemonade, or whatever.  Argh.  So, so, stupid… (Actually, the phrase that I used at the time was “this is so retarded”.)

Getting food and drink was about all that we could stand of the massive, seething, mass of humanity that had all piled downtown, so we headed over the bridge to secure a good viewing spot on the hill opposite the point where the fireworks are launched.

It was a good show as always.

All of the rest of the fireworks photos can be found on flickr.

We parked a little further out then we usually do, so we were able to get out and home much more quickly then ever before.  Not to self to remember for next year – a little extra walking to and from the car park equals a lot less time spent idling in neutral and waiting for someone to take pity and let you pull out of the lot and into the road.

On the 4th itself, oddly enough, we didn’t find a fireworks show anywhere close by, but then, we also didn’t look particularly hard either.  We played with sparklers and shot off bottle rockets in the backyard, and watched our neighbor’s mini-display from the back deck.

There will be more fireworks tonight in Centerville, at the high school.

Of the four “bedrooms” in our house, only one of them (the master bedroom) is being used for its intended function.  The other three are offices for John and myself, and a sewing/guest room.  It is really mostly a sewing room.  The “guest” part is a futon from my grad school days that spends 90% of its time in couch configuration with swaths of cloth draped over it.

It is John’s sewing room.  The sewing machine and tables and thread and accessories and everything are his.  He sews.  I do not.  If pressed, I might be able to manage fixing a button, but that is it.

Occasionally I have been able to wheedle him into making me some piece of SCA garb, but I have not historically had too much success in that area.

This year I have a lot of stuff that I want to have, garb-wise, before Pennsic in August.  This year, John is making me make it.  He reminded me that every so often I had been known to say something along the lines of “one of these days you ought to teach me how to sew”.  (I have to admit that I never really 100% meant that statement.)  And he determined that this year would be the year.

So.  (“sew”.  Ha.  I kill me.)  I ordered a whopping great bunch of linen, and I am making 3 early-period (14th century ish) dresses and two late-period (1500s or so) Dutch/German-style puffy pants for fencing.  I am not even going to try to make a new fencing shirt or doublet, even though I could use both, having but 2 pair of reinforced fencing shirts and a single doublet.  I think that for those I will just suck it up and go to Gipsy Peddler or some other clothing dealer at Pennsic and just buy something.

Anyway.  I am learning how to sew and that has been my afterwork project for the past couple of weeks.  Right now I have one dress finished (though I still need to clean up some of the hems on the inside and iron it) and the pieces for the two others cut out and hemmed.  Maybe I will get them assembled by the end of the weekend.

Yesterday I managed to re-fill a bobbin and then re-thread the sewing machine by myself.

The dresses aren’t so bad.  Pretty simple, pretty much all just straight seams.  I cannot say the same for the pants.  I am not enjoying the pants, and have decided that I hate doing pleats.  I am also concerned about the fit, but John says that I should just trust him, as he has made pants plenty of times before.

I don’t mind doing the dresses.  But I really wish that John would just do the pants for me.

The news on NPR this morning made me bounce with glee as I drove in to work.

There is a semi-famous (or possible infamous) statue a couple of miles south of here on I-75 that is known as the Touchdown Jesus statue, because of the way that Jesus has his arms up in an “It’s good!” sort of gesture.  Whenever John and I would drive past it, we would also throw our hands up in the air and proclaim, “It’s good!”.  (The megachurch that is associated with the statue is also semi-infamous, and I have heard rumors of drug associations and money laundering, as well as other things.)

Anyway.  It seems that the Touchdown Jesus statue was struck by lightning during a storm last night and burned to the ground.  Let me just repeat that because I think that the irony is just too delicious.  A statue of Jesus was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

Here is an article about it.

And here it is on YouTube.

I guess it went up so easily and burned so thoroughly because it was made of molded plastic and fiberglass and not (as I had assumed) concrete or something a bit more durable.

I kind of want to drive down that way now, so that I can gawk at the smoking ruins.