Category: Life

Sometimes, I feel the need to talk about me (imagine that).

Though not many, there are times when I miss living in an apartment. These times usually coincide with my having to mow the lawn after letting it nearly go to seed. When we bought this house with a tiny yard, <strike>we</strike> I decided it would be best to get a Reel Mower. That way we wouldn’t have to spend money on gas or oil, plus the maintenance costs would be lower and as a last added bonus we’d get more exercise pushing it around the yard.

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Yes, yes, you can stop laughing now.

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No really, stop laughing at me.

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Bastards.

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Anyway, we got one and before winter hit we used it maybe twice and it still seemed like an excellent idea. Now that summer is here I’m really beginning to feel that added bonus. Especially when I’ve had a cold for a week. A cold that had me coughing up huge chunks of flem, keeping me from going out and mowing the lawn in bits & pieces as I meant to do this week.

Instead, I just spent several hours fighting my lawn which had patches a foot or 2 high. Those of you with powered mowers are probably thinking “so what?”. Those of you with reel mowers are (hopefully) thinking “you poor bastard.”

You see, oh users of powered mowers, when you run across patches this tall a reel mower tends to bend the grass stalks down into the rest of the grass so they pop back up after you pass by the taller bits. To mow patches like this with a reel mower, you either:

  • run at the patch, lift one side above the height of the tallest piece of grass at the last moment, and drop the spinning blade on top.
  • or you use hand shears and chop it even more manually than with the reel mower (or you cheat and just pull the tall bit out).

With only one or 2 spots like this, it is not much of a problem but when you get to half the lawn it becomes a much bigger issue. Add in upper 80°, 50-60% humidity and you’ve got yourself a long, painful evening a head of you. Or at least I did when I started around 6:30 this evening1.

Still for all my complaining, once I finally finish with the lawn I do get a real sense of accomplishment out of doing all the work. And I’m meeting more of our neighbors than Ariesna because I’m out working on the lawn every week2. So when we attend neighborhood functions, more people tend to recognize me as that idiot nice fellow who was out working on the lawn. This seems to irk her a bit, but I don’t mind. 😀

1 I finally gave up the fight around 9:30 with only 1 long patch of grass left to mow.
2 When I’m not sick. Usually. Ok, I’m out there at least every other week. Or so. *grin*

Not sure what kinds of fun you lot had with your Memorial Day weekend but my was just a barrel of laughs. To make sure I kicked the weekend off right, Friday morning I used the screen door to rip a chunk out of the back of my foot. Saturday, Michelle & I ran errands and did a bit of shopping1. When we stopped at the bookstore, I was getting out of the car and started to kick the door open a bit more with my foot. Only I goofed and hit the car door with my toes, breaking back part of the toenail on my big toe. Fortunately it didn’t hurt2. Unfortunately it was bleeding. So here I am hopping across the parking lot into the bookstore behind my wife. Only she’s so focused on getting inside that she’s doesn’t hear me complaining about my toe on any of the 3 times I tried to get her attention before getting inside. Even then when we did get in the store it took a couple of minutes to get her attention. *seesh*

Sunday was a better day though. We drove out to Davenport to visit with a friend, as she invited us out for a bit of a BBQ3. The BBQ was very nice, though everybody else who’d talked to her about it cancelled on her (shame on them!). After we ate, we sat around chatting for a good, long while. Though he add to move away from her brick oven/grill as the wood was popping/crackling and spitting bits of hot ash out at us. Later we went out and caught a movie (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End). It was a fun movie, but not good. Over the night, Michelle had multiple coughing fits and finally around 3 AM this morning I gave up trying to get any sleep. I dinked around for a while and then ended up mowing the lawn in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t fun, but it needed to be done. On the bright side, I did make some progress on my super-secret decorating project (more on that when I finish it) this weekend, which is a very good thing.

1 Some gardening books for her, some paints for my super-secret decorating project.
2 At least it wasn’t hurting at the time.
3 And unlike other people issuing invitations to get together, she actually replied when we contacted her.

I can think of few things less appealing. I’ve eaten a lot of mix-in ice cream over the past year, a task that has seemed increasingly penitential as it progressed. I ordered simple French vanilla from Cold Stone; from Maggie Moo’s, a concoction called Better Batter Cake Carnival (cake batter ice cream, Twix bars, cookies and fudge); both were unfinishable. Whereas a visit to Ben and Jerry’s or Häagen-Dazs leaves me wanting more, a visit to Cold Stone leaves me wanting a salad and a shower.

Taken from What happened to plain old vanilla?

I have to admit that I’ve visited the local Coldstone Creamery a couple of times and kind of enjoyed the ice cream, but hated the store. I’m really a DQ sort of guy1. I like to be able to go in, get my ice cream and get out. At Coldstone that game plan does not work as well due to the staff singing their bloody songs and trying to make being in the store as pleasing as eating the product. Unfortunately for them it just does not work; especially as it does not distract me from how large a price they’re charging for their ice cream.

1 Actually, I am a Ben & Jerry’s fan but they do not have any scoop shops in my area. So I settle for DQ as being cheap, quick and tasty.

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Over the weekend, Ariesna and I met a bunch of friends at the Amana Ren Faire for an afternoon of frivolity. Overall, the faire was… decent. A few interesting vendors were there, notably: The Scots Dragon, Noble Bee Honey and the Royal Chocolatier1. On the down side, the Roast Beast sandwich from previous years had been replaced with something… else. I don’t recall what the faire folk called it, but I called it crap. It was an extremely fatty beef sandwich of some sort and throughly nasty. If more places at the faire accepted the dominon of Lady Visa, I probably would have chucked the sandwich and gotten something else. I saw a few things in the merchants’ tents that I wouldn’t have minded bringing home, but nothing in my price range. We wandered the faire with Cath and Bryon. And Laura when she eventually showed up. We watched some of the shows, though most were very lame. The joust was the highlight of the shows we watched, though it wasn’t one of the better performances I’ve seen of the joust at this faire. Later in the afternoon of the Amana Ren Faire Laura, Michelle & and I were sitting at some tables. We noticed some loose cash lying on the ground under a man wearing a fantastic Scottish outfit (see Ren Faire Attendees). Laura pointed out the loose cash to him. He thanked her and then came over to chat with us. It turns out he actually is Scottish (from Inverness) and was visting family in the area. He pointed out this pin on the edge of his kilt. He joked in Scotland, sheep are more than just a hobby. *Heh* He was a really nice guy, though with his accent2 and all the noise, I had a hard time understanding everything he said. And I’m not just saying he was nice due to the whee nip off his flask that he offered me. Though it certainly didn’t hurt my opinion of him either. 😀

Update: I forgot to mention, you can view some of my other photos of the day in my photo gallery under Ren Faire.

1 Man that was some seriously good chocolate!
2 Mind you, the Scottish accent is fabulous to hear. Just sometimes hard to understand. Especially with bouncing, screaming children nearby.

John Scalzi @ Prairie Lights

Tonight, John Scalzi made a stop at the Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City, IA for his book tour to promote The Last Colony. Michelle & I got there wicked early1 and chatted with a couple of store employees briefly. Fortunately, they were cool with me bringing in my own copy of The Android’s Dream to get it signed. *whew*

Then while we were looking around the shelves near the area for the reading, they said we could go ahead and purchase a copy of The Last Colony while we were waiting so we wouldn’t have to wait in line later. Schweet. Then I noticed they had copies of The Sagan Diary. I was most pleased by this as I was a bit strapped for cash when the pre-orders were announced for it on Mr. Scalzi’s blog and I’d heard the complete print run had sold out. Naturally, I grabbed one of the 3 copies they had left. 😀 Then we went into the coffee shop3 and grabbed a drink. I had their cafe mocha, while Michelle had a brewed butterscotch toffee coffee, which she promptly ruined by using soy milk for a creamer and adding sugar to it. Then we went back over to the reading area and found Mr. Scalzi had arrived. He was chatting with the few members of the audience4 and with the various members of the staff.
As Mr. Scalzi’s visit happened to be part of the Live from Prairie Lights. This is a local radio program that is recorded live and then later played back on a local radio station, as well as the UofI‘s school/public access TV channel. So he also spent some time talking to the host of the program prepping for the show.

Then just before the show began, he addressed the audience letting us know he’d start off by reading the first chapter of The Last Colony, go into a Q&A session and then he’d be happy to pose for photos. Naturally, that’s when I decided to snap a quick shot. Heh. I also took a couple of photos later, but they weren’t as amusing as this one so they’ll remain offline for now. The reading and Q&A were quite fun to listen to. Not being a writer, I didn’t join in and ask any questions (plus my caffeine buzz was wearing off). After the recording was over, Mr. Scalzi kindly offered to sign any books people had. I quickly stepped into line with my brand-new copy of The Last Colony — specifically purchased at Prairie Lights this very evening to support them, since they brought Mr. Scalzi in for us — and my slightly dog-earred copy of The Android’s Dream.

Side note: Yes, I realize this entry is rather disjumbled. This is partly explained by me having a caffeine-crash headache, partly by me staying up till 1AMish to write it and partly by me just not being a writer.
Side note 2: The quickie post following this will explain part of why the heck I’m still up writing this.

1 Mostly due to somebody’s lead foot2.
2 Said lead foot was not a Men’s size 13.
3 In his opinion on coffee, Mr. Scalzi is quite wrong. Coffee (especially good coffee) does not taste like ass.
4 Around this time, Michelle mentioned to him The Android’s Dream was her favorite book and he said it was his as well.