The Short and the Long.

Saturday we treated Finn to her first IKEA visit, venturing down to College Park in search of picture frames and some other minor items. Even though she was disappointed at the lack of merchandise in the downstairs marketplace (they’re remodeling, so there’s about 1/20th of the usual stuff available) she bounced up and down excitedly in the cart and flirted with everyone she saw.

Sunday I took her shopping with me right after her morning nap, and we hit a grand total of five stores before it was time to head home. We shopped for gel repellent to combat the infestation of tiny ants we’ve had since the rain started, bought some small items at the Home Depot, hit two different auto parts stores to find a fuel hose for the Scout, and the grocery store. Everywhere we went, she got smiles and laughs and waves, and she was content to bounce in the backpack, sit on my shoulders (and eat my hair), or simply ride on my hip while I took care of business.

Our garden is coming along nicely. We’ve got three healthy broccoli plants bearing fruit, our cukes are all flowering and climbing, and we’ve got tomatoes coming in. The asparagus seems to be doing well, although the first trench we dug is flooded completely. We took some time last week to pinch the tomato plants back drastically in the hopes that they won’t get leggy and grow out of control as in years past, and it seems to be working. We also took some time last night to wrap the grape arbor in netting to prevent the birds from feasting; it looks like we’ll have another bumper crop of grapes this year.

In the afternoon, I replaced the aforementioned fuel filler hose on the Scout. After some wrangling with a balky hose clamp, I got the new one in place and took it for a test fill in the afternoon sunshine: success.

Follow-Up.

I’ve not been around here much lately, because I may or may not have had something to do with this sign in New York City.
More info here.

Out for a walk in Easton

Here’s a picture from two weekends ago with Finn and I in Easton. This was about 7:30 AM, after we’d covered a couple of miles in a fruitless search for coffee on a Sunday.

I’m Still Here.

There’s been a lot going on around Idiot Central lately; too much to list here. Suffice it to say we’re all fine and running as fast as we can to keep up. More later, promise.

the power of twitter

One of my Flickr photos suddenly jumped from 5 hits a week to 1,000+ in a day. A little sleuthing, and I found the reason: PostSecret linked to the photo group on its Twitter feed..

The Curse of Genetics

Han Solo, P.I.

Han Solo, P.I. Genius.

Reverse-mount a prime lens

Reverse Mounting Your Prime Lenses for Affordable Macro Photography Wow, this is awesome. i had no idea a reverse-mount even existed. This is a $12 future purchase to be sure.

Deadwood recap.

The Onion A.V. Club started a TV Recap series on Deadwood. Let the time-wasting begin!

Unreasonable Expectations.

Wow. So we had a couple of people inquire about internships here at the office this summer, and apparently they were vetted and culled down to a few likely candidates. I heard yesterday that all of them have withdrawn, which isn’t all that surprising, but the story that gave me pause was the candidate who found out the internship wasn’t paid, and thus dropped out.

At the risk of sounding ancient, internships during my college years were always unpaid, and usually somewhere distant, which meant we had to drive to D.C. on our own dime (or catch a ride in someone else’s rattletrap car) to reorganize someone’s flat files or clean out a utility closet and find a way to eat Ramen noodles quietly in the back room without messing up one of two good dress shirts. Nobody I knew was actually designing anything. The whole point was to make connections and get a foot in the door somewhere, anywhere.

We’re in the middle of a recession, you dumbass. You’re not getting paid to be here.

Now get off my lawn.