Merry Grinchmas

So I'm not sure if I'm feeling Grinchy from the lack of winter vacation snow, lack of funding around holiday time, the fact that Christmas seemed to sneak up on me, the lack of Tobby or a combination of everything. I have managed to make quite a few batches of peanut brittle, bake a loaf of bread, make chocolate crinkle dough, take a delightful Christmas card photo and prep my garden for the spring. I have plans for more baking tomorrow, it's been almost a week and I can see most of the floor in my room (removed 2 full trash bags of trash and 2 trash bags of clothes to donate) and I have to finish Christmas shopping. When is Christmas? Saturday, yikes.

Fall Quarter

This past quarter at school was supposed to be my hardest quarter yet. Not only is the quarter 2 weeks longer than the other quarters, but I took 20 credits (my last 3 quarters will be 18, 18 and 10 respectively). In addition to being at school for physical class time, I was also at school working. My internship that I had over the summer turned into a work study position so I was getting paid to get experience (bonus!). Somehow I made it through but my g.p.a. went down. Jeremy seems to think if I turned in one of my assignments (the only one out of 4 classes that I "didn't feel like doing") I might have gotten a better grade. Can I object on the grounds of speculation? Here is my final tally:

Unix/Linux 4.0

Intro to data recovery/forensics 4.0

Wide Area Networks 3.8

Operating System Principles 3.1

Winter Gardening

So this past 'sprummer' (late spring, early summer), Jeremy and I attempted to create a garden. We spent the better part of one evening trying to dig up grass on a 10 x 6 plot in Jeremy's back yard. We only got about a foot border dug up before we called it a day and subsequently quit the whole process. Our plan was to plant peas, Roma tomatoes, beans, peppers, multi-colored carrots, strawberries and perhaps potatoes. Well, we did "plant" my Roma tomato plant naked in the light of the full moon. Well, technically I was in a swimsuit on my deck putting it into a topsy-turvy with the deck light on, but it was still a full moon! The strawberries ended up getting planted in a planter on my deck. Neither the tomato plant nor the strawberry plants turned out to be fruitful.

Skip ahead a few months and it brings me to November when our teacher decided it was more important for us to attend a seminar during "Green Week" at school than to learn about 'wirtualization.' I learned a few things at the seminar I attended, Urban Agriculture, which was put on by Seattle Tilth (go to their website!). I learned that planting garlic in the winter is just fine because it'll "hang out" until spring when it is time to sprout. The second thing I learned (and I found most interesting) was how to prepare your garden for spring. See my layered word diagram:

burlap

compost/leaves

newspaper or cardboard

grass

The cool part is the newspaper/cardboard will kill the grass and the compost/leaves will start to make new soil on the disintegrating paper product. The burlap is there to not only protect the under-layers from flying away due to wind, but keep moisture and heat trapped underneath. So Sunday after the Seahawks "game", Jeremy and I put down newspaper, leaves (mixed with some random grass clippings) and put burlap over the top. Now we wait.