My So Called Life

Exciting Garden News (speculation only)

/ Shane / 1 Comment

As reported in our local newspaper (I would post a link but they only have the latest issue, so the link would be inaccurate in a week) our Alderman suggested the empty lot that is more or less across the street (sort of kitty corner, but a little farther) from our house as a potential new location for the garden.  This would be great for two reasons, 1) I didn’t think the garden could possibly be any closer, but across the street is pretty dang convenient, and 2) that lot is currently full of trash, broken bottles, etc. so it could only be improved.  The downside is that the lot is much smaller than where the garden is now, so we could potentially be pushed out of a spot. However, with such a convenient location, I would think we could wait as long as it takes to get a spot.

So perhaps something that seemed so dire could actually be a benefit! Clouds with silver linings and all that.

In tasty hamburger news, CNN had 5 Tasty Burger Joints Worth Visiting and good ole Triple XXX and the Purvis burger made the list! For those of you not in the know, Triple XXX is a sort of hole in the wall, iconic Purdue restaurant and the Purvis burger has peanut butter on it. That sounds kind of gross but it is surprisingly good. I usually got something else, but Sara was fond of the Purvis burger. Still, I can’t deny it exceeded my expectations.

Woody Harrelson gets attacked by zombies

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And apparently often, since he mistakes regular people for zombies. Although, something tells me it’s not the first time he has mistakenly think he was being attacked by zombies. Which leads to the obvious question, if a zombie ate Woody Harrelson, would he get high? And should Matthew Mcconaughey be on the lookout for the undead?

Last Thursday I was in D.C. for a software demo and two funny things happened. First off, right as we were about to begin loud sirens began blaring over the phone and a voice announced “Emergency, emergency! Please exit the building!” as if there were some kind of bomb scare or something. I think the guy was trying to tell us that he would call back when he could, but since we couldn’t hear him over the sirens, he just stayed on the phone forever with this message repeating endlessly. I guess it’s not like he went to the bathroom during the demo, but it certainly was interesting.

The second thing that was funny was this guy was giving his part of the presentation and it was B  o  r  i  n  g with a capital B. Everybody was doing the heavy eye, head-bob thing trying to stay awake. Suddenly he stopped talking and then said, “Hold on. My computer fell asleep.” My co-worker almost imploded trying not to laugh. Apparently even technology is not immune to his monotone voice.

I don’t know where she gets this stuff from, but how did I end up with a daughter who asks for her ear drops to be put in her ear and the thing she is most excited about from her Easter basket is her Elmo Toothbrush. She made out pretty good from the whole Easter thing, as Sara said, “She got as much as a normal person should get for Christmas.”

Why they shouldn’t take away my garden

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Just when I start hearing all this talk about “recession gardens”, we have to deal with the bittersweet-ness of working on our garden for the last season. Over the course of a few weekends, we managed to get the old junk all cleaned out and get phase 1 planted, which consists of some lettuce, spinach and carrots.

A couple of details have come out about the reasons for removing the garden, and two points really bother me.

  1. The building which is being built is not actually being built on the site of the garden. Instead, the garden will be the “staging area” for the construction crews working on the new building. This is kind of annoying because you are removing this nice fixture of the neighborhood for something that is inherently temporary. At least if they were putting the building on the site of the garden I could come to terms with the fact that they really just needed that space.
  2. There is quite a bit of irony in the fact that the new building will be designed as a “green” building. So they are destroying a unique urban environment so they can build an “environmentally friendly” building.

I even heard somewhere that the occupants of the new building were told it was a nice location due to the close proximity to a community garden, though I can’t prove that. Oh, the irony.

Anyway, here is a nice article about the garden, including a lot of history.  Of particular note, check out the slideshow of garden pictures. These pictures remind me of how awesome the garden is in summertime and are what kept me going when I was standing in the cold, seeing my breath and breaking up dirt to get ready for planting.

Oh well, it is what it is. At least our garden will rock this year.

Er, the End of a Dynasty

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So, the long running series ER came to an end last week. I never considered myself a hardcore ER person (in fact, in truth, in the beginning I preferred Chicago Hope) but when I stopped to reflect I realized I hadn’t really missed an episode in about 8 years. That is a long time.  Sara, the one who really got me watching regularly, estimates that she has been watching ER for 15 years, which is over half of her life. So the series finale ended up being a bigger deal than I anticipated.

I personally thought they handled it really well. I really loved how they went back to the original intro, even (I’m assuming) shooting footage to insert the newer characters seamlessly. They also went for some odd, dated looking camera work towards the beginning of the episode as an homage to the origins of the series. I also appreciate how they worked in all the old characters over the season. I was really glad that George Clooney made a (brief) appearance in appreciation of the show that launched his mega career. And Julianna Margulies, of course, in appreciation of the show that ultimately launched Ghost Ship.

But by far the best part of the series finale was the re-inclusion of the Eriq La Salle random karate move into the opening credits. This is far and away my favorite part of ER. It was just so unnecessary and unrelated to the show and perfectly timed to the music. I remember when he left ER I said sadly to Sara, “Does this mean they will remove the karate chop from the intro?” Of course eventually they removed the intro all together. So when they showed it in the series finale, I almost jumped out of my chair in joy. No joke! I think I gave some sort of involuntary double fist air pump with a “YES!” when it came on. The rest of the episode went down hill after that.

For some reason it was hearing the music that really meant something to me. They just never play that ER music anymore and hearing it really brought me back. The only thing I didn’t like about the episode was the very, very end when they all like ran outside in this pose like “we’re ready to take on the world” and stood like they were going to take a group picture or something. That was a little cheesy. But overall I enjoyed it and I have found myself thinking about it many times since then, more than I ever guessed I would have.

So, ER, good on you, thanks for the memories.

Huzzah!

/ Shane / 6 Comments

Sara got wind of a joint service project that our old chapter of ΑΦΩ was putting on with another chapter in Valparaiso, which is much closer to us. We decided to attend, figuring that it would be nice to get out and do something and also to let Evie run around outside for a while and get a chance to get outside of the city. Also, we invited Nathan and he caught the bus down and then hitched a ride to the project with us. He sort of bridged the gap since he still knew some people there and also helped take a turn wrangling Evie.

It has been a long time since we have participated in a service project and it really felt good to be out there using the old muscles to help out. We mostly hauled logs and moved brush piles, though some other people helped build a shed type thing and others split logs. Scouting projects were always my favorite projects because they always involved some sort of manly manual labor as opposed to say, visiting at a nursing home, which is also very important but an entirely different sort of service. I also enjoy the longer projects.

Our trip started off very badly since there was an accident blocking like 100 feet of road directly in front of the highway on-ramp. We somehow missed the entrance that was supposed to be in 5 miles and had to continue on to the next one. So, for the next 40 minutes, we were picking a meandering course through the towns along the highway, crossing periodically under the highway saying, “Hey, there it is!” It certainly wasn’t the best start to the morning (although, despite our lateness, we still beat every Purdue person there by like an hour!)

Anyway, Evie had a blast on our “adventure” running around through the woods, finding paths, pinecones and a feather and looking at the geese. She didn’t seem to get tired at all, she always wanted to go, go, go until we left around nap time and she crashed with her head on Sara’s shoulder standing in line at Culver’s.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. It turns out that this wasn’t your average scouting project. The area we were clearing and the “shed” we were building was in an area used by Kanarak, a Live Action Role Playing (LARP) group.

 

I don’t know that I’ve seen all that many areas that are used exclusively by LARPers, but I would think this place would put most of them all to shame. Lots of woods and paths, a large wooden palisade, a nice looking building with what looked like gas lights on the front and which which I believe was being made into blacksmith’s shop and another building going up along side of it. This was some serious backdrop. Two of the LARPers were there helping and they were very nice.

Now, I am not one to make fun of such a thing. Lord knows that if certain events in my life had gone one way or the other, I could very easily have found myself running around in the woods with a cape. Furthermore, if you laugh in the face of a man with a sword, we shall see who laughs last. And, lastly and quite honestly, my brother and I did spent a bit of time on Sunday trying to figure out a way in which we could find ourselves sometime in the future beating on people with duct-tape wrapped padded broomsticks. It would be far from the first time for either of us, although we mostly just used to beat on each other.

But my problem is this: how was this related to the boy scouts? When I came out to volunteer my time, I sort of imagined I’d be helping set up the camp so some little kids could have a fun time out in the woods, the way I did when I was a youngster in boy scouts. Now instead I found myself moving firewood for 40 year old accountants with a lot of free time. If you can spend that kind of time and money on a costume, then you aught to be the one out there clearing trees. It’s your hobby after all.

I dug around a little on their website and I found out they are indeed affiliated with the BSA as a venture crew. So I guess in a way we were helping scouting, however, in order to be eligible for the venture crew you have to be 14 – 21 years of age. That means we might be talking about boy scouts who were older than some of the volunteers! And looking at some of the pictures and videos, I’m not sure there are all that many people involved who are actually scouts. Most people looked older (though I freely admit I am a poor judge of age). On top of that, their forum boasts 104 members, which means that their organization is roughly 5 times larger than the chapter that set the project up. Perhaps they should be volunteering for ΑΦΩ instead of the other way around!

So that sort of didn’t sit right with me. It just seems like time would be better spent helping people who need help. But, nonetheless, I had a good time doing some work and being out doors and so did Evie, so I guess you can’t ask for much more than that.

I also had fun dominating Nathan in Marvel Scene-it, though most nights we went to bed too early to play many games. We were supposed to work on the garden on Sunday, but after working outside all day Saturday I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to anymore.  My arms were a little sore. Well, guess what? I got my wish because we got a big snow storm on Sunday morning. It’s almost April!

In other news, one of my favorite quotes over the weekend from Evie was actually this morning when we were reading a book and she said, “The epilogue is hiding!” Clever girl.