Random Thoughts

I have just been gardening at night again, due to having purchased shrubs at the store as the sun went down.  It seemed like a good idea to get them in the ground without delay, so I put on my headlamp and headed outside.  I quickly discovered that my headlamp is not as bright as it once was.  This should come as no surprise, because, get this, I have never changed the batteries before.  I got the headlamp at a Christmas party just as I was finishing up at UVSC, so december 2005, and have used it intermittently since then, all without ever changing the batteries.  I thought it probably had some weird type of button battery, but no, just 3 AAAs.  Yay for LED bulbs, is what I have to say about that.   I have also had good success saving money on my electricity bill with fluorescent bulbs, and they pretty much never burn out, which is awesome.  The exception to that is the time in Cleveland when we had a weird half level of electricity available, which made a couple of them die.  They aren't designed for dimmers or odd levels of power.

I also had good success with the covering up the ugly countertop idea.  I got some rolls of what is basically contact paper, but its the brand they happen to have at Lowe's, and it has a light pattern and a little rough texture instead of the yucky smoothness of contact paper, which was honestly going to be my biggest concern about the whole plan, so that worked out well.

This is a before picture; ugly countertop, right?  No way to tell if its clean or not, so its never going to look clean.  And just not really the right look for a cute little older house with no pretensions towards being all fancy.  

A close up of the ugly granite.  Also not smooth to the touch.  

After being covered with the sticky paper.  A huge improvement, in my opinion.  

Both sides of the counter done and back in use, with a bonus shot of Patty-cake's back.  Welcome to my kitchen!  Very pleased with how this turned out, though there are a few little bugs here and there to work on.  

My last work week on, I had a slightly more relaxed time, and its hard to tell if it was because I actually had less-sick patients, or if I've somehow managed to dial down the agonizing about every decision; possibly a combination of both.  Either way, it gave me a little extra time to think about things, and I came to a deep conclusion that I was going to share, but have since forgotten what it was.  Oops!

We are removing the last remaining trace of the crazy land lady from the house.  She is very anxious to get her broom, her golf-themed crap from the upstairs bathroom, and a can opener, which is not here, since I packed up all her kitchen crap when I first moved in.  I am fairly certain that I could leave the golf-themed crap on the front porch without any concerns for it being stolen.  There are actually other things throughout the house that aren't mine that I have become aware of as a result of the crazy lady's fear of not getting her broom back, and the result of that is that she will be getting a lot more back than she counted on.  More crap out of my cute-but-little house is always a good thing!

I recently went to Florence, Italy for a long weekend and had a really good trip; I plan to share more details, and pictures from this trip and from earlier in the summer at a later date.  Tomorrow if I get all motivated.

I've had a pretty good crop of tomatoes in the last couple of weeks, which is good considering it took me awhile to realize that I was going to need to fertilize more, which led to a delay in significant growth.  I planted two pots, with three plants each.  One took off and is now producing nicely, the other started strong and then completely petered out.  I'm not sure if the location just isn't as sunny as I thought or if there has been another problem that I failed to recognize.  Even with the failure of one pot, I've had a decent crop, and expect to still have more, since this is North Carolina and its still pretty warm.  Yay for tomatoes from your yard!