Movie thoughts

I like to let my creative juices stew. I am thinking that I am going to add mostly sound effects rather than music to the movie. And I need to find a few places where I can slow down the mad rush forward - when I put in large groups of pieces. Yes, this is going to take time. It is all in the editing. Though lots of good footage (which I don't really have) helps a lot. Static camera does not a compelling project make - in my humble opinion...

I was going to get a lot accomplished today - at least that was my plan. Didn't quite work out that way. My friend from Syracuse came and spent the day, mostly hanging out with mom. She did, though, inspire me to take the Christmas tree down. Needles, needles everywhere. Luckily my friend was handy with a vacuum cleaner! And the vacuum cleaner worked (thanks to my tender ministrations a while ago). Yay.

Next step, get the compost out to the composter. Despite the warming trend and the pleasant temperatures, there was still a good amount of snow between me and the device. It took a couple of trips, but all of the stuff is in there now. It is getting really full. I wonder how to actually get dirt out of the thing. Hmm. Maybe I will wait until the weather is really warm to figure it out. Anyone out there have experience with my sort of composter?

Lunch was tuna melts - tuna salad containing mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, celery, chopped green olives, ground pepper and a little bit of garlic. I used some of mom's Jarlsberg cheese. Yum! Dinner was feta, onions, green pepper and mushroom omelettes, bacon, tater tots and frozen waffles. I think we all had too much food. I am still full at this point (it is 9:50 pm as I type this).

Now mom and I are watching PBS - Selfridges was on. I don't know what else will be. We shall see.

I heart my composter

I have, as some of you know, been jonesing (keeping up with the Joneses?) for a composter. I almost bought one last year. But didn't. Too expensive at the time - our finances weren't as robust as they seem to be just now. I thought about maybe having two even - I am still debating the little inside home one. I wanted it for two reasons. One - to get the fruit flies out of the house - if there was nothing they liked to nibble on, they might just up and leave. And I can use the garbage can in the house a lot less. Yay! Years ago, we had a compost thing in the yard - near the "barn" or garage. I think my brother made it out of a few door pieces. And it seemed to work. He then went off to college - mom worked very hard and didn't spend much time in the garden and heaven forfend that I find myself actually "grubbing around in the dirt." Nope, not a gardner, am I. Doubt I ever will be. Yes, I like to see things growing - I just don't like to do the work myself. It did make a good amount of dirt. And I think I actually at least shoveled it out into our "garden" area. But that was along ago and it is no longer there. Though the earth is higher there. Hmmm. Where was I went I tangentialized? Oh, yes - loving my composter.

When I have a little pile of compost, I zip outside, twist the lid on the composter and toss the pile inside. My composter can rotate. Why does my composter rotate? I haven't rotated it yet. I just read about making compost. Who knew there was a method to it? Browns and greens, and the right level of moisture? Eeek! I just wanna put stuff in and wait a while and have dirt or something like dirt come out! Is that too much to ask? And rotating seems to help. Who knew?!

On a different subject - A long while ago - I think I remember blogging about it, so it can't be longer than a few years ago - I bought a pair of drain snake things 'cause a couple of drains in my bathroom were being slow to drain. They came in the mail and I was underwhelmed. They were two pieces of wire with some velcro (the hook part) glued on the ends. Silly in the extreme. I tried one down my shower drain and it did manage to help with that. Flash forward a year later (yesterday). My sink drain in my bathroom has been draining verrrrrrry slooooooowly lately. I know I had tried at least once before to take the stopper out without success. Some sinks it is easy to do, this one, not so easy. I was about to shave when I noticed the snakes sitting in the cabinet. I thought - what the heck, what have I got to lose. A few minutes later, gobs of gunk (mostly Augustus hair - facial and top of head(ical?)) were sitting on the edge of the sink. Lo and behold - ala kazaam - the sink drains happily again. I guess that was $10 well spent. (I think it was $10 - might have been $14 - who knows - I know they must make 10,000% profit on each one they manage to sell...)

On the mom front - she seems to be moving more into a changing pattern of waking and sleeping. She is much more wide awake at 1 in the morning than she seems to be at one in the afternoon. Joy.

Writing Geyser

It seems that my pent up writing has gushed out all over the place. Those who got a bit wet, I apologize! I have been writing up a storm for the past couple of days - yesterday being no exception. I Today I will post two blogs - this one and a relationship post. Both are "must reads!" Ok, not really. Still, better than radio silence, right?

Lots of stuff percolating in my head - yesterday we had an adjunct aide - well not really, just gotta groove to the alliterativeness of life sometimes - who came to train with Jenny. Mom was not amused. At all. Not even a little bit. Oh well. Grrr and all that. Apparently she is following Jenny all week. (Insert rim shot sound here)

I got the coolest things in the mail yesterday - they came registered mail for some reason. I don't like registered mail. If you like me at all, you won't send me anything registered. Bad juju. These came all the way from China, so they might not work - but they are still cool. They are thumb drives - flash drives that actually look like thumbs! How freakin' cool is that? I ordered them so long ago, I can't recall when or why - but they are here now. Woo hoo!

Oh, I think that I got my composter while I was otherwise distracted! Yay! More on it later! Just wanted to say, I love my composter! (Ok, maybe there isn't anything else to say...)

More Guilty Pleasures

What a great phrase, "guilty pleasures." Anyway, I do have a bunch of them. Like playing games on the computer and on xBox. Yes, I do play xBox and would play other game machines if they happened to appear before me. On the computer, I play a lot of bridge. Much more fun to me than solitaire. True, I am playing alone (I have had some less than optimal experiences playing online bridge and other card games) so it is still sort of like solitaire. And I am playing a Facebook game called Garden of Time - a hidden object game. For which I need to harass my friends to join me in the game so that I can continue it. Or fork out money, which, as many of you know, can be a challenge. And there are other guilty pleasures, but those are all I am going to fess up to at this point. (So, if any of you are a) on Facebook and b) like hidden object games, please become my friend and neighbor - soon. Thank you.)

Mom and I had errand day again! We went and picked up the mail, most of which was pretty useless. I did get the three Wheel of Time Audio Books that I had ordered. Yippee! That brings the total that I have to 8 (of fourteen, I think). What is very, very weird is that one of the books costs way more than any of the others. Book 9 costs $120 while the most any of the others cost is around $50. What is that about? Anyone? I sent a message to the company, asking them, and if I hear anything, I will probably post it. We went to the library and got out a book that Marlo Thomas wrote. Then to the supermarket where we spent quite a bit on groceries. Our supply of vegetable matter was quite low due to our recent trip. Lastly, we went to Lowes to look at composters. I am not sure what to do about that. Any suggestions are welcome.

At one point, while checking my mail, as I do fairly frequently when I am procrastinating, I found a message from one of the three young Turkish women that I met a couple of weeks ago. Yippee! We ended up meeting out and discussing various subjects, including their desire to do more than hang out in Geneva. I am hoping I can help them to explore some of the attractions around the area. We shall see.

I am looking for 5-10 people to proofread the next draft of Diary of a Plate Addict - these need to be people with attention to detail - who will notice when there is a missing space in a sentence, when a graphic looks badly cropped or just doesn't seem to fit correctly on a page, when a sentence is too mangled or bizarre or out of place and needs to be fixed. Anyone?

Can anyone believe that I have made it this far, taking a picture a day and posting every day for 181 days! Woo hoo!

Pictures from June 30, 2011:


Aren't they pretty?


Oops, still haven't gotten 'round to neatening my room after emptying the containers of stuff from Clayton.


Aren't they pretty? No, wait, I just said that. I meant, um, oh, right, that is what I meant...