What my weekend is like...

I'm gardening every minute that I can. Just stopped for lunch. So far, today and yesterday, I've planted 16 tomato plants, 2 eggplants, 8 sweet peppers and bunches of winter squash seeds. Still left to do are all the various beans, tomatillos, scallop squash, and ground husk cherries, which we're trying for the first time this year because they sounded very interesting. Oh, and cucumbers! I'm really hoping for a good cucumber harvest this year because the last two have been awful and I want homemade pickles!

Previously this season, I've planted 160+ onions, some garlic and shallots, some leeks (which were actually planted last year at this time from seed), basil, carrots, dill and cilantro, and of course, marigolds in strategic areas to help keep away pesky bugs. And I've had to relocate many earthworms away from the areas in which I'm working so I didn't accidentally injure them. I love that almost every time I so much as scratch the surface out there, an earthworm appears. It's as it should be! I can't wait for the lady bugs to start showing up... Probably as soon as it warms up. Right now, it's still on the chilly side of things, but that makes for pleasant gardening weather.

Pictures to follow as soon as things start coming up and will make nice images to share...

The usual...

A random update...

• I've been a little sick for a week or so... I thought at first that it was the crazy wet and cold weather we had last week, and then I thought maybe it was the weather and/or indoor allergies, which would be unusual but not unheard of, but it was just too annoying and persistent. It's probably a sinus infection, according to the nurse at the clinic... and now that I have antibiotics, I think it's getting better. I'll know better by tomorrow afternoon, as I've only been taking them for 24 hours and while I think I feel better, I couldn't say for 100% certainty.



• We just heard today that my brother is moving home from California to go to school. He'll be here on Monday. Not totally sure how I feel about that yet... I hope he does well.



• Meanwhile, I've been preparing my application for the Graduate Certificate program I want to do to get certified. It's due by March 15th. I have everything finished and together and sitting on my desk in an unsealed envelope, except the letter of interest/statement of purpose. They are quite vague about the requirements for it, and in fact, somewhat contradictory in the instructions, other than the very limited "250 words or less" specification. I've emailed the program requesting a clarification of instructions, but I have yet to hear back.



• I'm loving work... I find it rewarding and enjoyable and I feel valued, competent and helpful. I think that's important.



• I've been knitting a little bit. I just need to finish up a few decorative touches and I'll have two baby hats done for a friend who is expecting. She's a Firefly/Serenity fan, so I've made her a Jayne hat, as well as a hat for which I just happened to have yarn in my stash. I've also given her booties... Next is a blanket, but I haven't completely decided on a pattern yet. I have until mid-April. Other than that, I want to work on a few things for myself. I need a new pair of fingerless mitts. I think I want them to be a little longer than the Fetching mitts that I have already. The only problem with the Fetching mitts is that they aren't quite long enough to cover my arms to where my coat sleeve ends whenever my arms aren't just hanging at my sides, you know? I might make cuffs too. I also want some anklets, and another hat.



• I need to send my Hitchhiker to be converted into a double-treadle. I keep forgetting to pack it up and send it...



• I want to spin. My unspun fiber stash continues to grow unabated and is so very tempting. I'm running out of room for it too... I can't wait until I'm able to get to VA to try out a Mach II. The more I think about it, the more that little number is #1 on my list of potential new wheels.



• I'm obsessed with Star Trek again. I'm a Trekkie. I'd never deny it, just like I would never deny being a huge and hardcore fan of Jane Austen and the works of JRR Tolkien. I liked ST: Voyager for a while there, until it started to get silly toward the end. DS9, since it ended, has been my favorite ST series for the execution of the overall story (frankly, I thought it was masterfully done)... I remember using the philosophical concept of IDIC in some capacity in a paper during my sophomore year of high school. Never watched Enterprise because I thought it wasn't very well done. The writers of that show just weren't particularly interested in going along with previously established canon and just made things up as they went along if it served the story - lazy, tsk, tsk. And I was never into TOS very much until the new movie came out last Spring, but now I've watched every episode of TOS on YouTube (it's up there under CBS's shows) and I would be lying if I didn't say that I want to get some Vulcan ears and go to conventions. It's a sickness and I don't want the cure... Couldn't make it to DragonCon this year, when Shatner, Nimoy, Stewart and Mulgrew, among others were all there. It was unfortunate, but it was just too expensive for me. I'll get there eventually though.



• The garden needs doing, but the weather was awful for a while there, so I'm behind on that work. Hopefully, this weekend, I'll get a lot of work done. Can't plant things yet, but I need to redefine the planting beds and put in the soil amendments and figure out what I'm going to plant.



• I can't remember if I've written about it yet, but I'm taking Hebrew lessons on Wednesday evenings. I really like it and it's about time I learned...

Yes, I think so...

Inspired by my friend Ilana, I'm making a few New Year's resolutions I think I can at least try to keep:

• Blog more! LOL! I'm woefully disappointed with the number of posts I made last year, and none at all in the month of December! For shame!


• Loose the 7 pounds I managed to gain since last summer and then some! To this end, I have bought a pedometer.


• Knit more! And knit for myself more! It's not that I don't like knitting for others, but I have worn out several cold weather items and I really need to make new ones for myself, and if I don't make it a priority, I know I won't do it. And I inexplicably feel like I knitted hardly anything at all last year, even though I began and completed 18 projects and mostly completed 2 others in 2009. Lately, I've been getting lots of inspiration for accessories from Gilmore Girls of all places...


• Continue to eat healthier and find ways to continue to refine what I eat (this will never, however, include cutting out bagels... they are my Kryptonite in the best sort of way). I splurged way too much on sugar during the holidays...


• Go to at least 1 reenacting or living history event! In costume!!!

As an FYI to those who might be interested: all the knitting projects I worked on toward the end of 2009 now have pictures up on Ravelry (viewable only to members). I have the same username there.

Busch Gardens on Thanksgiving

My family had Thanksgiving on Wednesday rather than Thursday like the rest of America...

On thanksgiving, I went to Busch Gardens...

I has sum peekchurs... Mostly animals and the park, none with me in them. Someone else was taking those and I haven't gotten those from them yet.

Enjoy...

Weekend projects...

My friend Joe and I planted fruit trees on Saturday. My mom has been wanting a yard full of fruit trees for the better part of 30 years and something has always happened, either to them once they've been planted or to prevent trees from being planted at all. But now we have them. An Anna apple tree, a Dorsett Golden apple tree, a papaya, a mango, a Florida Hass avocado, a Meyer lemon tree, a Persian lime, a Key lime, a Valencia orange, a Hamlin orange and a Brown Turkey fig. It was quite a day, filled with digging and hauling and peat moss. We already had an Anna apple, a Brown Turkey fig, a pink grapefruit and a lemon tree. The lemon tree and the pink grapefruit both used to be orange trees. They died back in freezes back in the 80s, their graphs died or something, and when they grew again, they started producing other kinds of citrus fruit. I think this is the neatest thing about citrus trees. Both are much more than 30 years old now because they were here before the house was built in '79 and the land was still an orange grove.

I took the subject area exam on Saturday as well. I'm confident that I passed it and will be very surprised if I didn't.

Today, I went to the yarn shop but forgot to take along the notes about projects that I want to get started on soon, so I didn't get any needles or yarn for planned projects. I did get some yarn though. I can't go there without picking up something. I got some Qina in Wisteria and some Angora yarn in peacock green.

And then this evening, I made banana bread. I hope that it will be delicious and strongly suspect it will. I should post the recipe. My mom has been using it for about 30 years.

I've been working constantly this month. There have only been two weekdays the entire month of October when I haven't worked. So very busy. It's good because more work means more money, but it's still been quite a lot of work and I'll be glad to have some time off. This week, I know I'm working Monday and Tuesday, but I'm not sure about the rest of the week yet.

Edited to include recipe:

My Mom's Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3/4 cup mashed very ripe bananas
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Cream the sugar and butter together in a mixing bowl. Add vanilla and eggs. Beat together as if you were making scrambled eggs. This will help the bread be lighter. Add bananas. Stir until well mixed. Add all dry ingredients, a little at a time, stirring together in between. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan and pour mixture into it. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes. The very center of the bread will probably still be a little moist and the corners will look like they are too dry when it's done.

He's okay...

At about 11:20 this morning, my dad got into a car accident. If he wasn't wearing a seatbelt, he probably would have been killed (everybody, always wear your seatbelt!). Someone who was speeding ran him off the interstate (and they didn't ever stop), he lost control of his car, hit another car (apparently driven by a nice young woman who goes to USF - she wasn't hurt but her car was pretty badly dented on one side and it spun around on the shoulder of the road), went off the road, and then his car flipped over and landed on the driver's side against a barbed wire fence next to a cow field. He climbed out through the passenger side window. He's got a bruise and cut on one elbow, a cut on his forearm, and a cut on the top of his head, where he must have hit something, although he doesn't remember doing that, and his knee that he injured almost two months ago while working in the garden got banged pretty good against the driver's side door and now it's as bad as it ever was again. Poor Daddy... but no concussion and he's okay and glad to be breathing.

We don't know if the car is totaled yet. It's been towed to the Toyota dealership he bought it from back in '01 and we'll hear tomorrow or the next day from the insurance adjuster as to whether or not it will be declared "totaled."

The school secretary tracked my mom and I down in the teachers' lunchroom about halfway through our lunch period to tell us. Scared my mom half to death. Luckily, my dad had called the school and there was a phone in the teachers' lunchroom, so she got to talk to him right away. I was going to leave school and go get him to take him home, but my dad's cell phone died before he could tell her exactly where he was (isn't it awful when that happens? Like, that's what people have cell phones for, but sometimes they just die right when you really need them), and Mom didn't want me to go on a wild goose chase up and down the interstate trying to find him because he had been at the dentist in St. Pete and might be anywhere or might be picked up by the tow truck before I got there. He had said before the phone died that AAA was sending a tow truck to get his car, and that if his phone died, he'd call her again when he got to another phone, either the tow truck driver's or when he got to the Toyota dealership, if he couldn't get a ride home and needed me to come get him. However, (again) luckily, the tow truck driver very kindly offered to drive my dad all the way home even though our house is about 8 miles away from the dealership and he didn't have to do that, so Dad called once he was home, not much more than an hour and a half after the accident happened.

A Sunday of randomness and gardening...

Gardening first... It was supposed to rain this afternoon, but it's 4pm and it still hasn't. Maybe tonight... But I've been out in the garden off and on since about 9 this morning getting as much done as I could. I moved bricks around to line the edges of the vegetable bed, and I planted the yellow summer squash seedlings in with the mustard greens that are going to seed right now. I also watered everything, thinned the parsnips, which seem to be just starting to really grow, and picked about 4 gallon-sized bags worth of mustard greens. We've got so much of that stuff, but it's yummy, so that's good. I also threw some annual seeds in the dirt of the flower beds in the front yard. With luck and water and sunshine, in a few weeks, there will be some marigolds, cosmos, zinnias and calendula coming up out there. I like those flowers because they do very well here and pretty much take care of themselves, freeing up more time for me to spend on the veggies out back.

On to the randomness:

• I got my first paycheck on Friday. \o/ Not a fabulous one, there was only one day's worth of work on it and the next one will be much better, but still, paycheck! *dances*


• I ordered myself a pair of handcarders today. Schacht brand. Made in the USA with some really nice features for longevity. I figured I'd use my Christmas money and a few dollars from my first paycheck on them before I forgot that I had Christmas money sitting in my account with a directive from my aunt to "buy something frivolous." Useful but unusual and expensive was about as frivolous as I could get. LOL!


• When the handcarders get here, I'll finally be able to start tackling the four pounds of raw llama fiber my friend Tareena sent me. YAY! \o/


• I'm annoyed with Lane Bryant. They sent my the clothes I ordered to Virginia, even though they had said they had fixed the address label and the order was certainly being sent to Florida before it left their facility. They obviously lied. Supposedly, it has now been forwarded through the US mail, but it still hasn't arrived and it's been more than a week. There were some really cute outfits in that order for work, and now they've sold out of my size, so if this is lost in the mail, refund or not, I'm S.O.L. Grrrrrr...


• I want to make strawberry jam. This sounds like the most wonderful idea to me.


• I haven't worked on Jensen's socks in days. However, I did make myself a steering wheel cover for my car. I finished it last night. Pictures will eventually be forthcoming.

YAY!!! Finally!!! Something!!!

So. My application with the county has been processed and sent to the department that handles the hiring of substitute teachers. I just got off the phone with that department. I had called to see if I needed to send a copy of my resume or set up an interview or anything like that. No, the woman said, they don't take resumes or do interviews for sub applicants. All they do is review the application and then send a letter to the applicant as to whether or not they're hired. (That they don't even meet the applicants face-to-face before hiring them seems awfully strange to me, but whatever...) The woman was very nice, and took my application number and checked her computer to see when I could expect to hear from them. She said they have a large number of applications to review right now, but that they should get to mine by the end of this week and I should receive a letter from them sometime next week, if they're able to contact my references in a timely manner. Woot!! :D It's taking forever to get this done, BUT! It is moving forward, and that makes this little Capricorn ridiculously happy. *stops to do Shawn's Snoopy dance from last week's Psych*

Also, on a similar front: My GKT scores came in the mail on Friday. They were waiting for me when I got home from marathon shopping. I passed all sections of the test! WOOT! I have no idea what my scores were precisely because they only report the actual score if that section was failed, if it's passed all it says is "PASS." So, yes, YAY!! Now, I need to apply for my certificate of eligibility and get cracking on my grad school application. *is giddy, dancing and going with it*

So... that was awkward...

I went to lunch with my friend Maria today. We went to the mall because it's near her work and it's fast and she only has an hour for lunch. After we ate (because it doesn't take a full hour when you get your food in 10 minutes or less), we walked down to Old Navy really quick. They have a coat that I want and I wanted her opinion on it as I don't trust their mirrors. Just as soon as I get some more money in my account, I'm going to snap it up. It's cute. I kinda love it. (Picture here.) I'd love it more if it were lined in cotton or bamboo or really any natural fiber instead of polyester, but until I have several hundred dollars to spend on a designer coat or I get good enough at sewing to make my own or the McFashion industry starts using things other than petroleum synthetics to line coats, I'm going to have to grit my teeth and bear it... Maybe at some point I'll be able to rip the lining out of it and replace it with something better... *hopes* Anyway, Maria approved of the coat.

On the way back to my car, as we were talking and having a nice walk through the mall, we were accosted by a nice but still kinda rude young woman... And this is where the awkward that I can't help but be amused by for some reason today happened... This girl was younger than us, going by her unfortunate overuse of eyeliner and mascara and her Abercrombie & Fitch attire. She wanted to tell us about Jesus and pray with us and get us to verbally say we accept him as our savior so that she would know we would go to Heaven when we die... You know... *cocks eyebrow*... Now, Maria is a Christian, but she finds proselytizing extremely and uncomfortably distasteful. And I, as we all know, am a heathen Jew. LOL! So she asked us how we knew we'd go to Heaven when we die. Maria didn't speak at that point, I think it was too awkward, so I did because it's automatic at a certain point and I can't stop myself... Like I said, awkward... Now, I could have gone off on a shpil of what I really think about such a question... about how we don't know and neither does she really because there might be a Heaven or there might not, none of us can prove or disprove it, and really why does it matter all that much when there's so much we have to be doing, indeed so much that we are obligated to be doing, while we're alive anyway... But I didn't, because we would have been there half the afternoon, so I just said the very simple, "Because God loves us," as if it were self-evident because I figured that was an answer she was probably looking for, and she certainly seemed to think it was a good answer and heartily agreed with me. I interrupted her at that point and told her, in hopes that she'd leave us to our business, since she interrupted our conversation by coming up to us as if she knew us in the first place, that we were leaving the mall because Maria had to get back to work right away, but she refused to take that hint and said she would walk with us. o.O Right... 'Cause that's not creepy at all... So she fell into step beside me, and prayed aloud that God would allow us to accept Jesus so she, personally, would get to see us in Heaven, as she so ardently hoped she would. Honestly, I had to check myself not to laugh out loud. As it was, I know my lips twitched of their own accord into a very amused smile. I couldn't look at Maria because I knew if I did, I would have started laughing. And then, in a tone as if she were talking condescendingly to children - a tone I've heard many times from people such as her and normally it makes me want to tell them where they can stick their Bible, but this time it did not, this time it was just too amusing - she asked us to repeat after her, "I am a sinner, but I love God and I accept Jesus Christ in my heart as my lord and personal savior." (Or something to that general effect and I'm sure she would have capitalized that sentence differently...) I very-- I'm not sure what my tone was... I guess I was too amused by her youthful, zealous naivety to be pissed like I usually am at proselytizers... Anyway, I said to her, "Oh, I can't say that. I'm Jewish." And shrugged at her. She looked so very, very genuinely disappointed... I can't quite convey it in words. Just really, so disappointed that that was my answer. I have to laugh remembering it. And then she looked to Maria. I said, because Maria had such a look on her face, like she didn't know what to say to this girl, "But she could say it, if you want her to." And Maria just kinda shrugged and said she already had said it because she's a Christian. I'm not sure what the girl said or did at that point, other than she finally left us alone, but I think she was reasonably pleased with that answer. As soon as she was out of earshot, I said, "Well, that was awkward." And Maria added, "We really need to learn not to talk to people." It's true, we so do need to learn that. Gets us in trouble every freaking time... I felt compelled to add that at least we know better and don't give money to people who beg for it on the street. So that's something... And that launched us off on some reminiscences of times people begged us for money and/or we saw pickpockets in Europe. *nods* That happened to both of us a number of times over there. Way more than in the US...

So that was my day so far... LOL!

So...

I went to Shabbat services tonight. Alone because no one else would go with me. I'm glad I went though... although there was no one there who I knew. There were people whose faces are familiar, but none that I'd say are close friends or that were at one time particularly close friends, but one, who is the mother of a boy I went to preschool with. Thought that quite strange. Perhaps many of them, like us, don't usually go to Friday night services anymore, now that their kids are grown and have moved away. That none of the kids were there surprised me too... None of the kids I grew up with, that is. Many of them are in college or grad school, and if they go to services, it's likely they go to the Hillel at school here, or wherever it is they are, rather than to a synagogue, and of course, several have moved far away.

There were, however, lots of children there, including the rabbi's daughter who is a toddler. Several of them ran around and played quietly in the corners and in other rooms during the services. I find that practice of our synagogue rather delightful. That kids are welcome to play, as long as they don't disturb the service. (Never having gone to another, I don't know if it's different or the same elsewhere.) It was that way when I was little too. But when I was little, we didn't meet in a synagogue, not having raised enough money to build our own building yet. We met in a borrowed-just-on-Friday Episcopal church, and they had kneeling benches (if they have a proper name, I don't know it), which of course we didn't use, but the kids liked to do what we weren't supposed to do (because if we weren't careful, they would drop very loudly and echo in the large, tile-floored room with the cathedral ceiling)... We'd unfold and lower them very carefully, as quietly as we could so we wouldn't get caught, and then sit on them, on the floor, instead of on the hard, uncomfortable wooden pews. As far as I remember, the kneeling benches were only marginally more comfortable, being padded, but we were smaller then and it had the air of something forbidden. LOL! That's one of the few things I remember about that building, the kneeling benches. The only other things I remember from that church were the tiny gruesome paintings along the walls on both sides of the room of a bleeding, thin, near-naked man being hurt by other people that I much later realized must have been the Stations of the Cross (because, of course, being Jewish and 5 - 8 years old, I had no idea what they were at the time and I don't remember ever asking. I knew it had something to do with Christianity, and I knew that the cross carried in the paintings was mirrored by the huge what must have been twenty foot high cross hanging above the alter and in front of the most magnificent organ I have seen to this day - seriously, it was gigantic and had dozens and dozens of pipes sticking up like spires all along the back of the sanctuary... These being other things I remember, obviously), and the kitchen and food hall, where we'd have refreshments every Friday after services and occasionally Passover Seders and other parties. I remember that the ladies' room was tiny and always smelled of soft soap and flowery air fresheners. It might have been yellow. I remember hiding under tables and playing with other kids, my childhood friends, laughing and running around. That's about it. Okay, enough reminiscing...

Tonight, the rabbi talked about Sukkot's pagan roots because Sukkot is this week. He talked about how the Jews were not the first to think to do a special ritual in their fields at harvest time in order to ensure plenty through the winter. His mentor when he was in seminary explained to him once the correct way to shake a lulav and etrog on Sukkot. The lulav is three types of tree branches (palm, myrtle, and willow) bound together with palm leaves in a very elaborate fashion and the etrog is a citron that smells very strongly of lemon. They are to be smelled and held together and shaken in every direction out of doors on Sukkot, to the east, south, west and north, then up and then down. This is meant to symbolize that God is in every direction and everywhere. He said his mentor said not to point the lulav downward, but to keep it upright and just lower it when it got to the part where it's shaken down. Because if he were to point it down "that would be paganism." He said he laughed because that's just how close this ritual is to ancient pagan Near East custom. And you can easily imagine similar rituals in other types of pagan religion throughout history. He said that doesn't make Sukkot invalid or a "fake" holiday as some critics have said. To him if anything it makes the festival more valid. Because here is something extremely ancient, thousands of years old, that predates the Jewish religion by hundreds if not thousands of years, and it has been adapted to Jewish belief (as have many other things). We've, essentially, made it our own and found our own meaning in it. (To read more about this ritual, you can find info here.) Indeed...

He also talked about the pagan roots of Purim (that it was like a Mid-East/Persian Mardi Gras - and near to the same time of year as the modern Catholic Mardi Gras - long before it was the celebration of the bravery of a beloved Persian Queen of Jewish descent) and speculated about the pagan roots of Chanukah... because although the Maccabean Revolt certainly happened, it's not exactly an original idea to have a holiday involving the importance of light timed somewhere around the Winter Solstice. Double indeed. It was very interesting... He also talked about not being perfect, that the festivals aren't perfect, that we ourselves aren't perfect and should not expect either to be perfect. He talked about how beautiful the weather is this time of year, and how pleasant, and about how the existence of bread is a little miracle and so before we eat it we say a prayer of thanks for it - called "the Hamotzi." (This is for bread, specifically, and this prayer is not the same as saying grace, which is said over any and all types of food.) It was a nice little sermon. I wish, as I usually do after a thought provoking sermon, that I could remember more about it, more about the deeper meaning of it, or at least get a copy of it. I feel weird about asking for a copy though, so I never do...

They're having a Sukkot service on Monday evening, and Tuesday at mid-day... Since I have nothing else in particular to do, I'm thinking of going to those too, or at least the one on Tuesday.

My other goal for the weekend is to write a resume. Next week, I want to apply for a job with a private tutoring company. Still haven't heard a thing from the county about subbing. I think it's rather rude that they ask people to e-mail to inquire about the status of their applications and not to call the office, but don't have the courtesy to e-mail them back at all for more than five days now. Could they really get that many e-mail inquiries? Oh, well, if they're going to be that way. They can get back to me when they feel like getting back to me. In the mean time, I'm prepping for the GKT, which I'll take on October 25th, and looking for other options, of which there are actually quite a few I've been quite excited to find.