Daily Garden Update – Some Serious Sprouts…

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garden_20130212

So we’ve officially passed the ONE WEEK MARK and I’ve gotta say that I’m a little surprised that, well, things are actually growing in that cute, little green terrarium of mine!

According to the instructions, once they get a little bigger I’ll need to start adding some plant food to the mix and when they’re about 5″ tall, it’ll be time to transplant them to something a little bigger. Seeing as how my plan didn’t completely fail and this whole scheme might actually work, I’ve started doing some research on my options … I’m thinking that the most viable might be to try my hand at container gardening, which would basically see these little guys just transplanted to one or more bigger pots and then they’d pretty much live there going forward.

It seems like a good option because our backyard is pretty minimal and doesn’t really have room for beds of any kind. Plus if I can find some decent containers that we actually like, my little vegetable garden might help to lend a bit of color out by the pool, which would be nice. If this ends up working all the way to fruition (vegetable-ition?!), I wouldn’t mind trying a few others as well … I’m honestly not that big on cucumbers and tomatoes, but I do use peppers a bit when I’m cooking, and strawberries might be fun during the summertime, too.

I’m sure that there’s still a lot more to read as far as seasons for different vegetables, how long they take to grow from seed to veggie, and then obviously … what happens next?! Do they just keep on growing or do I need to plant more seeds, etc… – probably seems like a simple question, but frankly, I’m still a little in shock to see any hint of green at all peeking out from behind those terrarium walls!

I need to go container shopping…

Random Life Updates…

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More Home Improvement Fun
Been tackling a handful of new projects around the house again, several of which have been on my list for a while now but were deferred due to either bad weather or a lack of the necessary parts. Replacing a handful of broken boards in the fence, resurrecting our sprinkler system that’s had a leak since the week after we moved in, installing the first of so many shelves that are needed to hold all of the crap that  we have around this place … and yet I swear for every one thing that I finally cross off the list, another three miraculously pop up in its place!

Still, it’s definitely fun seeing things start to take shape around this little home of ours – I guess I just wish we had a little more free cash lying around so that it could all happen a lot faster. Seriously, we need so many shelves between the family room, our bedroom closet, bathroom, etc…

Turning a Blind Eye to Politics
So how am I doing so far for February?!

I know I’ve said it about a million times – I find myself drawn to politics because I think there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in this country that needs to change, and at the same time I often times watch myself getting so wrapped up in some of these issues that it feels like it starts to cut into some of my creative efforts … and that’s bad. I honestly don’t write that much about politics as compared to everything else.

If it’s between politics and funny stuff, I’d much rather write jokes than rant about the Tea Party, so being as busy of a season as this is turning out to be, I’m trying my best to avoid the crazy so that I can focus all the more on creating stuff that’s actually enjoyable to read… 🙂

Missing Mickey Mouse
And lastly for this update, 2013 hasn’t seen very much Mouse thus far, though for reasons not to be disclosed February has been “hectic,” to say the very least! At this point our last trip was spending Christmas Eve at the Magic Kingdom … we had talked about maybe trying to spend New Year’s Eve there as well, but being our first holiday in the new house, we weren’t sure about how our new neighbors like to celebrate and Cleo doesn’t do well with fireworks – especially when she’s locked inside her cage… 🙁

If nothing else, we’ve got reservations in March for the brand new Be Our Guest restaurant in New Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom … it seems like just yesterday it felt silly having to make them so far out in advance! We also really need to find the time (and money) for a slightly longer vacation over there – it’s kinda crazy to think that it’s now been over a year since we’ve spent even a single night on Disney property … not sure how that slipped through the cracks last year, but hopefully 2013 will be a little more kind to us in the necessary departments to make a long weekend more of a reality!

book thoughts – The Wisdom of the Shire

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I’ve always felt a little bad that as a writer I honestly don’t really read that many books. Let’s try to change that! 😉

wisdom_shireThe Wisdom of the Shire is a fun, little book that I picked up at the book store earlier last month while my wife and I were in the middle of watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy for her first time. Barnes & Noble had a huge display of Tolkien-related material out because The Hobbit was still in theaters, and after skimming through all of the random titles that they had gathered, I ended up walking out the door with this one. I guess it stood out to me because it was a relatively short read – important for somebody who really doesn’t read books these days! – and it also seemed to do a lot of relating hobbit life to human life, which was something that intrigued me…

You could probably say that I’ve been sort of romanticizing the Shire ever since watching those movies – I dunno, I guess it just seems like hobbit life might be a little simpler than this crazy one that I’m surrounded with these days, and thus as it’s not exactly feasible for one to pick up and move to Westfarthing myself, the next best thing seemed pretty appealing throughout this book in comparing and contrasting the two worlds and finding little ways to make this crazy, human world just a bit more relaxed and hobbit-like!

Things like taking the time to stop and enjoy your surroundings, welcoming time with family, and learning to deal with the negative forces in your life. Peculiarly enough, it’s where my whole bizarre gardening kick sprouted up from (see what I did there?!), and in a way I guess it was just a nice, simple read pointing out the obvious that more often than not most of us nonetheless take for granted.

At the end of it all, I think the essence of being a hobbit is simply in making the best with what you’ve got and enjoying every last morsel of it. Life doesn’t always have to be fast – every once in a while it’s important to slow things down, whether it be with a pint of beer, some smoke rings from a fresh bit of pipe weed, or even just a good book.

Next on deck is The Fellowship of the Ring … me thinks it’s going to take considerably longer to make my way through that one’s tiny print as compared to this read, but I’m also really looking forward to revisiting the original trilogy that got me hooked on Middle Earth more than 20 years ago just the same… :mrgreen:

Is Somebody Singing? … a song co-written and performed FROM SPACE!

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I think  we can go ahead and add this to the list of 101 awesome things that Chris Hadfield has done in space recently – here we see the ISS Commander performing a song that he co-wrote with the Barenaked Ladies … catchy tune, and just plain cool  to think that they collaborated on the song while Chris was orbiting the Earth on the ISS!!!

Here are a couple of other great articles about the making of the song – these are the kinds of things that get people excited about the next generation of space exploration. 🙂

First World Problems Are Not Problems

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It’s ironic that just before watching this myself, I was sort of complaining about having to carry around multiple cell phones … you know, because just one globally connected, pocket-sized computer isn’t enough! 😯

I pretty much felt guilty enough to buy half a dozen portable water filters for people halfway around the world with actual problems on the spot. You should watch it and then give some money, too, because having clean drinking water is definitely more important than getting too many pickles.

Revisiting SOPA One Year Later…

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Remember a little over a year ago when over a hundred thousand websites went dark in opposition of SOPA, that horrible excuse for legislation attempting to curtail copyright infringement on the Internet?

Here’s a little video that someone put together showing the impact that our collective voice had against SOPA – a great reminder of the power of community across the web!

Although if I had known that Justin Bieber could’ve gone to jail over SOPA…

Nah – just kidding, even that wouldn’t have been worth it!

…for the most part, anyways… 😛