Tomatoes and cucumbers growing – Garden – Mid-July 2009

Here are a bunch of garden shots from the past week. I ended up installing a bunch of the aluminum watering rings that I made last year. Right now I’ve got some sage and basil ready for a light picking, as well as a lone green haberno. As for the tomatoes, there are only about 4 to 5 small tomatoes and about 3 to 4 cucumbers that range from barely 1″ long to about 4″.

Misha the Cat

You’ll never believe it, but my folks got a kitten while they were in town helping with my sisters garage sale a couple of weekends back. We were driving around town after the garage sale, collecting all the signs that my sister posted around town. As we were driving back home, my sister and mom wanted to stop at this garage sale to check it out. (I know it doesn’t make any sense, why would you go to a garage sale. If you were just done having one.)

While I was waiting in the truck with my sisters husband. Curiosity got the best of me, and I had to check out this garage sale (but it was more like a yard sale, since the sale was in there front yard and not the garage in the back of the house.) Well it turned out that not only were they sell junk in the front yard, but they were also giving away kittens on the front porch.

Turns out that my Mom just couldn’t resist a free kitten. She ended up picking out this 4 week old gray cat with blue eyes. There were a bunch of different cats, but the gray one was the youngest. Which is probably for the best, since mom wants her to be an inside only cat.

We sent quite a bit of time on Saturday, trying to come up with girl cat names. Since the cat is gray, I threw in my two cents to name her Kimball, but no one else was liking it as much as me. Turns out that the cat kind of named herself. During our brainstorming session we stumbled on Misha, and it just kind of worked for her. So here is Misha the cat.

Holding off on upgrading to WordPress 2.8

Well I tried to upgrade from 2.7.1 to 2.8 and it didn’t go well…..pages not loading, scripts not working, plug-ins stalling. I ended up having to re-install wordpress 2.7.1, just to get things working again.

It looks like they might not have gotten all the kinks out of the beta releases for 2.8 (which I thought about test installing for miia monthly, but now I’m glad that I didn’t) before shipping out the production release. I don’t mind working with software on the bleeding edge (Mozilla/Firefox in the early years), but not when it totally crashed right from the get go.

Off for the weekend

I’m taking a break this weekend for a little R&R…..yeah just kidding. I’ll be busting my ass most of the weekend helping out my sis with her garage sale and general repairs around her house. But don’t worry I do have a couple of posts in the pipeline that I’m wrapping up and will post next week. Here are the draft titles:

-Weeding the garden – Week 2 June 2009 – Johnny Storm style
-Making the Hershey’s Kitchens – Ranch Style Shrimp and Bacon Appetizers
-Cinder block smoker or compost bin?

Later gang.

Off for Memorial Day

I was out of town for all of Memorial Day and didn’t get back into town until 11pm on Monday night. So here are some snacks until the next post in a couple of days.

It ended up raining on and off from Sunday to Wednesday, so it looks like the rain killed off more of the seedlings that I left outside over the holiday weekend (basically all the ones I just started two weeks ago). The big ones (over 6″) seem to be ok, but the ones under 2″ were basically killed off by the heavy rain. If I were running a subsistence farm, my goose would be cooked right now.

I also did some grilling this holiday weekend. Saturday I made rubbed pork tenderloin on the grill with mashed potatoes & cauliflower. Then on Sunday it was beer brats and onions. Monday was rained out so no boating. Just an afternoon at the Indian casino/family fun center arcade (you’ve got to teach the kids to work those one arm bandits while they are young.)

I do have a couple of posts in the bullpen, one for salad with chicken (not chicken salad) and another post about my experiments with making ciabatta bread.

Quick miiamonthly update

This is just a quick update; on the behind the scenes stuff going on here. I’ve been trying to put out a couple of posts a week, with one of the posts being of greater length then the others, so that has been going smoothly. Right now I currently have about 15 posts in the pipeline, so I still have plenty to write about.

We also have a new contributor on the site, my sis Cupcake. So expect to see some of her stuff on the site in the near future.

As far as the pictures that I sometimes include with posts, all of them are shot at 9 mp which works out to about >1.9 mb per photo. What I do is basically create an 800×600 thumbnail to upload into wordpress for the image source. Which will then generate the thumbnail grid. If you want any of the full size pictures which have a resolution of 3456×2592. Just let me know and we can figure something out.

As a couple of you already know. I ended up getting caught in a short squeeze because one of my houses didn’t sell at the beginning of the year as planned. So with that I ended up getting a real job for the first time in my life last week, FTE and all (no more co-op or contractor job titles, which is a strange turn of events for this “hired gun”). Even with the “recession” that way that it is, it probably helped me that I have a specific skill set that is in high demand from the mortgage sector of the economy right now.

So with that, I’ll try to keep the posts coming on a regular basis, but if you notice more shorter posts in the future or more being posted on the weekends, you’ll now know why.

Grilled BBQ chicken thighs

Last Friday was a beautiful day, so I thought that it would be a great day to grill out. Last week I had placed two packages of chicken thighs in the refrigerator to defrost. I personally like to use the slow defrost method, instead of a rapid method in cold water or the countertop. To paraphrase The New Making of a Cook one of my go to cookbooks regarding technique and cooking science. By defrosting in the refrigerator, the meat will remain juicy and lose almost no juices at all. Compared to the rapid method, in which the meat will lose all of its juices in the freezing bag and taste dry and unpalatable after cooking. So take the time to thaw meat the right way, your taste buds will thank you. Continue reading

The River of Information – Part 2

More French Workers Kidnap Factory Bosses – Manufacturing.net

Obama’s Spending vs Obama’s Spending Cuts in Pictures – The Heritage Foundation

Monsanto Sues Germany Over Corn Ban – Manufacturing.net

Harrison Ford Joins Private Pilots Against User Fees – Airport Business

Self-Assembled Nanowires – Product Design & Development

Decline in Trade Impacts L.A. Basin’s Industrial Sector – LoopNet

Brooklyn’s Starrett City Aims for $500Mln Refi – LoopNet

The River of Information – Part 1

As an homage to Dr. Charles W. White’s “Visions” class, here is the first part of many parts of the “river of information” that I found interesting this week.

Chicago Legislators Get a Taste of the Worst of Transit System – Mass Transit

UAW Urges Members To Lobby Obama – Manufacturing Net

3 more states add deposits on water bottles; Goals are to raise money, cut litter – Packaging Digest

World corrugated-box demand tempered by global recession – Converting Mag

As Costs Fall, Companies Push to Raise Internet Price – NYT

The crisis: Timing strategic moves – The McKinsey Quarterly

Off for Easter

I’m heading down to Ottumwa for Easter weekend. I’ll post more gardening and cooking stuff next week. Especially an update on the seedlings, since I ended up killing some of the flower seedlings from over watering.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Easter.
Later