Sunday, Aug. 04, 2002 – 10:35 p.m.
2002-08-04 10:35
Grass as high as an elephant’s eye
I mentioned earlier that I needed to do weeding in the roses. Well, Saturday was the day. I got out there pretty early, before the sun was shining on the beds, and found that the grass had gotten pretty high in one of the beds. Ok, I know the quote is “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye…” (I saw a production of Oklahoma over the 4th of july holiday) but I couldn’t resist. Anyway, off I went to do battle with the weeds. It took me several hours and by the time I got done, the beds were in full sun. I weeded all the rose beds and managed to fill up not just a paper yard-waste bag (we have to put yard trash in big brown paper bags and not plastic bags. That way they can just run the whole load through the shredder and compost it.) but also one of the 35 gallon trash cans (it is acceptable to use a regular trash can… as long as the only stuff in it is yard trash.) That’s a lot of weeds! I would have put it in my compost pile but my pile doesn’t seem to work at top effeciency so it probably would not get hot enough to kill the weed seeds. In addition, there were a number of dead rose leave amoung the weeds. Since most of these leaves were victims of blackspot, disposing of them should decrease the amount of spores flowing around. This would be the last thing that I want in my compost pile!
As it was, I had to buy some additional pine straw because a fair amount came up with the weeds. I had had one bale left over from the last round of mulching but that wasn’t sufficient so Home Depot (or is it “Home Despot”?) was on my list of shopping stops.
Shopping Hell
As I prepare for Pennsic, I have been building a list of things that I need to get. More batteries, Rubbermaid totes, sunscreen, CD-R (so I can make some mix CDs for the trip), etc. So off to various stores I went. Well, this weekend was a “Sales Tax Holiday”. Last year, the state legislature has passed a law that the first weekend in August is a sales-tax holiday on “back to school” stuff. There was a list of stuff that was “tax-free”, mostly stuff like clothes, sports equipment that could only be used for sports (stuff like cleats, skis, and swimfins but not tennis shoes), and computers & educational software (but not office productivity, programming, or games…) Anyway, it was like going shopping at Christmas. Long lines, whining kids, overworked cashiers, etc. Ack!
Pennsic Prep
Yes, I am in that mode as well. Unlike many, I am not madly sewing (not having a sewing machine puts a big damper on that… Something I am going to have to address in the future….) but that doesn’t mean that I am not in a frenzy. I had to finish up some poles but unearthing all the camping stuff from the “barn”. I did get a professional pet sitter to come in and take care of the boys so that was one thing off the list. I also tracked down all the books that I have had checked out of the university library. Because of the budget difficulties, the library has changed their return policies. I could no longer just renew them. If I didn’t return them within 10 days of their due date (aug 7), they bill for the replacement value of the book. Ack!! That’s the LAST thing I want over my head when I get back. I had a WHOLE bunch of books out (like about more than 30), some here at home, some at the office. I loaded them up in bags and went by the outside deposit bin. Yesterday it was FULL so I ended up driving around with them for another day. Today, they had emptied the bin so all the books would all fit this time. I still have three books and several CDs out. One book I did renew (Staff get one renewal on each book), another I need to get back from a guy at the office who had borrowed it. The CDs can’t be dropped in the outside bins so I will have to drop them by the Circ. desk tomorrow. The third book is a book by Jimmy Carter. I had been given a signed copy for Christmas but rather than read the valuable copy, I checked the book out of the university library. It is not a very long book so I figured I would read it before leaving for Pennsic.
Time for bed…