The Bus Stops Here
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "the_bus" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:32 am
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Relaxing in Taipei
We've entered the final stretch of our trip to Asia this year. I'm relaxing now in Taipei with free internet access and the comforts of a nice hotel room.
The family reunion trip to Bali was fun but tiring. Bali is interesting and beautiful, but visiting with a bunch of kids during peak season is not ideal.
The street food scene near the hotel is pretty good. We passed by shops selling dumplings, buns, and one place selling stinky tofu out of an alleyway kitchen.
Not quite sure about our plans, but we expect to meet up with some relatives before we head home this weekend.
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04:52 am
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In Singapore Again
We're visiting relatives in Singapore again and preparing to head to Bali for a family reunion. Travel here was rough with little kids, but thankfully they are adapting to time here reasonably well.
The big surprise this trip is the weather. I joked before leaving that we would escape the summer heat in Austin. It turns out that we actually did! It's been in the 80s here, usually cloudy or rainy.
Mostly we've been relaxing and doing a little shopping. We'll have enough stress traveling to Bali then later to Taiwan before returning home.
Today I saw a couple of unusual things that the usual tourist wouldn't happen upon. After breakfast, we passed by a community center featuring a bomb shelter. The thick metal doors like those on safes looked straight out of the 50s.
To pass some time with the kids, we took the mass transit train, the MRT, to the light rail community train in Choa Chu Kang, the LRT. The LRT consists of single cars controlled by computer. Surprisingly, the side windows will turn opaque when the car passes a housing block. Here are couple of pictures that show this effect in the background.
Tomorrow, on to Bali!
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10:53 pm
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Garden Bean Harvest
This morning we visited the garden to see if we could pick some beans. About a week ago, I picked the first (and only large) bean from the garden. A few days ago I noticed both the pole and bush beans were starting to produce. So I hoped we'd finally have enough to eat.
We got quite a few! Here are some pictures of our garden's growth and the beans we picked.
The first bean:
Today's harvest:
The tomatoes are looking good too. We've got a couple that are ripening and a few new ones that recently set on.
Tags: garden
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04:51 pm
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Patrick's First Birthday Party
Saturday morning we gathered a few friends with kids at Central Market to celebrate Patrick's first birthday. He's just a couple of days away from turning 1! It's hard to believe that he's gone from a helpless little baby to an energetic walker and climber in just a year.
The morning started out cloudy but dry, so the kids played hard on the playground. As the sky darkened, they all gathered for cake and we sang Happy Birthday to Patrick. Sometime after serving the cupcakes, the downpour began. Even though we set up on the covered porch, we still had to move everything farther inside because the winds blew rain onto our table. Despite the scramble, everyone had a good time, and Patrick definitely enjoyed making a mess of his cupcake.
Happy birthday, Patrick!
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10:59 pm
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Strange Harvest
or The Radishes Were Tops
The radish square was due for harvesting this past weekend, so Saturday morning we started pulling them up. The first couple were all tops, no roots. Those two were growing the worst of the bunch, so I pulled up another. Same story.
We left the bigger ones in the ground to at least provide a little more shade for a couple of days while I did some research. I found that at least some varieties, such as the winter radishes we planted, do not grow roots in weather around 80F and warmer.
I also found that the greens can be used in cooking like many other greens. So this evening I pulled a few more radish plants, this time with longer roots but not fat enough to use. We added them in place of spinach in a sausage and spinach soup we like. Pretty tasty!
Hopefully the other crops will produce as expected. The beans are all growing like crazy, but no beans have set on yet. I did find a couple of small tomatoes forming up. The Swiss chard looks quite healthy, and the lettuce is hanging in there. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed for more garden bounty around the end of the month.
Tags: garden
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11:16 pm
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Garden: Three weeks and growing
It's been three weeks since we started the garden. Most of it is growing well, and I am looking forward to some mature radishes in the next week or so. The challenge in this past week was getting a "dome" of netting up and putting in a pole for the beans. I will put in poles for the tomatoes next.
Here's the new improved cover of deer netting over the garden. The pole beans, tomatoes, and even bush beans already need the extra space.
Here's a better picture of everything growing. There's good progress there in the middle with the lettuce and Swiss chard, the radishes (on the right) have grown large leaves, and the beets on the bottom appear to be making good progress.
But if you carefully, you can see only one out of four lettuce plants on the left side is growing. Three were victims of the heat, I suppose. I think only 9 or so carrots are growing in the carrot square, but luckily due to the garden move, it looks like one carrot ended up in the beet square where a beet didn't grown.
It's not really visible, but we do have a basil plant growing all by itself in its own square. Only one seed planted, and it came up! It seems to be much slower growing than the other plants.
Overall, I'm pleased with the progress. We still have about a month to go for harvest for most of the plants.
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01:36 pm
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Gmail says LiveJournal is spam
Gmail seems to think that mail from LiveJournal (from comments) is spam. At least in my case it does.
I happened to check my spam folder because I thought I might have missed an email from a contractor. Lo and behold, there were lots of LJ comment emails!
I noticed that I stopped getting these email recently, but I thought it was an LJ problem. I never check the spam folder anymore because gmail has historically done such a good job. I wonder what happened.
It turns out that LJ wasn't the only common source of email getting misclassified for me, but it was the most frequent.
Did anyone else have this problem?
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11:38 pm
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ETA on harvest
Now that the garden looks well on its way to producing vegetables, I got curious about roughly when we'll start enjoying the fresh goodness. I knew when we planted that the radishes would be first, taking roughly a month. Most of the seeds packets helpfully said the number of days to harvest. Here's the rough ETA by square:
Heirloom
Pole
Beans
6/8? | Tomato
(Better Boy)
6/26? | Tomato
(Black Krim)
??? | Pepper
(Hot Wax)
6/11? | Bush
Beans
5/29
| Leeks
early Sept | Basil
???? | Marigolds
| Lettuce
(Grand
Rapids)
5/22 | Lettuce
(Salad
Bowl)
5/27 | Swiss
Chard
6/1 | Radish
(Icicle)
5/7 | Mixed
Flowers
| Carrots
6/11 | Beets
6/1 | Lobelia
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For the transplants, I'm estimating based by taking the maximum days to harvest then subtracting a couple of weeks, so I put question marks on those. I really hope the tomatoes bear fruit earlier.
The bad news here is that the leeks may not survive the summer, so we're unlikely to harvest anything there. I just wanted to plant some kind of onion so Annetta could see them growing.
The exciting thing here is that we'll have a lot of fresh veggies around the end of May and beginning of June.
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11:26 pm
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Two weeks and growing!
It's been two weeks since setting up and planting the garden. Actually, a little less than that for the transplants, but close enough. Here are a few pictures showing the garden's progress.
The tomato squares. These are vining tomatoes, so we'll get them staked soon.
The beans squares. Hierloom pole beans on the left, bush beans on the right.
The beets square. A couple of victims of the heat are lying wilted on the ground.
The radishes square. Looking good!
Tags: garden
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10:44 pm
[Link] | Yesterday evening we all went out to the garden and noticed even more sprouts coming up. We now have 7 of the 8 lettuce plants up, and I found more beets. It looks like some Swiss chard is growing, too. The transplants seem to be thriving as well. The heirloom beans have some new leaves. Both tomatoes have grown and will need poles soon.
We'll also have to weed fairly soon. I'll wait until the vegetables are larger so I can better show Annetta what we want and don't want. On this scale, the weeding job should be pretty easy, especially with the new loose dirt we have.
Here's my irrigation system in action:
Tags: garden
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12:26 pm
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Sprouts!
Yesterday evening when we got home, I took the kids out to the garden, hoping to see some radishes coming up. And we did! We counted 12 radishes poking up out of the ground. That was pretty good, considering I planted 16 seeds. I followed the square foot gardening recommendation of putting just one seed in each hole. Not bad! This morning, I was very pleased to find two more radishes, for a total of 14 growing. I also noticed a couple of sprouts in each of the beet and Swiss chard squares. I'm not really sure what those sprouts look like, but they are right where I planted seeds. According to the seed packets, those usually take 8 days minimum to come up, but we're seeing them at 7 days. Only four each of those seeds were planted in each square, so we're already at 50% of those plants coming up.
So far, I am impressed with the square foot method. We're getting good starts for very few seeds planted. For a 4x4 garden, I probably spent only about an hour or so planting seeds, and we're spending just a little time watering every day to help the seeds start. Annetta likes watering, so it's good outdoor activity when we get home from school, and a good way to enjoy the gorgeous weather we've had this week.
Tags: garden
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11:32 pm
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The Garden Squares
Late yesterday afternoon I had a little time after getting the car inspected by the body shop before time to pick up the kids, so I planted three quarters of the garden square foot plots. So 12 out of 16 squares were planted. This evening I planted the heirloom pole beans that Art the garden frame guy gave me. I don't know what variety they are; hopefully the plants will survive transplanting so we can find out.
Here's the layout. The squares with gray text are not yet planted and show what I intend to plant.
Heirloom
Pole
Beans
| Tomato | Tomato | Pepper | Bush
Beans
| Leeks | Basil | Marigolds | Lettuce
(Grand
Rapids)
| Lettuce
(Salad
Bowl)
| Swiss
Chard
| Radish
(Icicle)
| Mixed
Flowers | Carrots | Beets | Lobelia |
The flowers squares are there so that hopefully something colorful and fun grows quickly to keep up Annetta's interest. The marigolds are also supposed to help with some pest control, although at the store we didn't know this and just bought the seeds based on the picture on the packet.
Now we just have to water and wait several days to see if anything comes up.
Tags: garden
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11:26 pm
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Hail damage update
During the past couple of weeks, the insurance adjusters have looked at our damaged car and house and given us estimates. I'm really stunned at just how much damage in dollar terms that we suffered.
Although I can't see it, the house adjuster said that our roof and everything else up there took a beating. We need a new roof, new vents and other such "accessories", a new skylight, possibly new roofs on the screened in patios, new skylights on those, and maybe even new gutters.
I finally seem to have gotten the body shop's attention and have an appointment tomorrow so they can inspect the damage. They need to make sure that they can actually do paintless dent repair on the spots where that was estimated. Hopefully they'll also order the new hood and other new body panels while I wait for them to work through their backlog. It'll be at least 4 or 5 weeks before they are ready for our car.
Hopefully we won't have a storm like that again for a while.
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11:04 pm
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Garden relocation
This evening we had some time, so we relocated the garden to a sunny spot on the west side of the house. This spot gets several hours of sun, and the grass there is by far the hardest in our lawn to keep alive, never mind looking good.
I loaded up the dirt in an old wheelbarrow and an old plastic garbage can with wheels, both left here by the previous owners. The I disassembled the frame, moved it to the new spot, and reassembled using the new longer pins I got yesterday. After a short break, we got the kids back outside to watch while we dumped the dirt back in and leveled it off. The garden looks good in the new spot.
Before picking up the kids, I stopped at Lowes and bought a 10' section of thin PVC pipe. The pipe will be the support for some plastic deer netting that our babysitter gave us. I put on the PVC pipe to test how well it bends and holds to the pins. That worked as promised by Art at AustinRaisedBeds.com.
Tomorrow I expect to plant!
Tags: garden
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10:58 pm
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Have garden, need sun
This afternoon I worked from home while waiting on a delivery, which allowed me to make a distressing discovery. This time of year, our new garden gets no direct sunlight. No!
I know this spot gets lots of direct sun in the summer. Unfortunately we need it now to help the seeds germinate and for seedlings to grow. Drats.
We do have a couple of other spots that get lots of sunlight. Luckily most of the side that gets lots of sun is somewhat hidden from the road, so I doubt anyone will complain about a visible vegetable garden.
I'll have to move it soon so we'll have time for plants to get to harvest before the summer broils everything to death.
Tags: garden
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10:44 pm
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First row sown
This evening when I got home with the kids, I quickly pulled out our seed packets and hauled the kids down to the garden. Annetta was very happy to be responsible for the watering can. Still strapped into the car seat, Patrick just had to sit and watch while we planted seeds.
Last night I developed a plan for each 1 square foot plot. We set to work with the first plot of a mix of spring and summer flowers, then carrots, then beets, and finally another plot of flowers, Lobelia. We picked those just because they are small and looked like a pleasant shade of purple on the packet photo.
I would poke the holes in the ground then show Annetta how and where to drop them in. She did a good job of helping me plant the seeds, but definitely was more excited about watering the newly planted plots.
Patrick sat and watched us pretty intently for almost three plots, then had enough and fussed through planting the last plot. Still, I'm happy we got that far.
Bed before planting:
Bed after first row planted:
You can barely tell in the photo, but the first row is the darker one at the far end.
Tags: garden
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10:35 pm
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Garden framed
This evening I put together our new garden bed frame and dumped in the soil and compost. The frame was kit that went together quickly, but I decided to level out the frame by digging a little trench under three sides. The grass and soil in the little patch of ground behind our house is pretty hard, so this was fairly tiring work. We plan to use the square foot gardening method for this little plot.
We hadn't planned to put in a garden. Yesterday we went to Countryside Austin because we heard they were having a spring kickoff sale and specials. Before this we didn't even know about the place, so it seemed worthwhile to check it out.
After some wandering around and getting a free hot dog, I took a look at a little garden on display. Turned out to be a demo square foot garden. The guy (didn't get his name) came over and started telling me all about how great the method is. I think he was trying to sell some equipment to help get started, but Annetta wandered off and I had to chase after her before he got to any selling.
Later when we walked back through the vendor area, another vendor got my attention and showed me his essentially snap together frame. Art from Austin Raised Garden Beds got us excited about how easy it would be to put together and get going on gardening. We liked the frame, so we thought why not, give it try.
So this afternoon we bought a few plants and several packets of seeds. The plan is to plant several easy to grow veggies, like beets, carrots, white radishes, lettuce, and Swiss chard, and try to grow some bigger ones like tomatoes and peppers. We even have some flower seeds to plant in a couple of the 1 foot blocks. I had only enough time to get the garden together this evening, so I hope we can plan the seeds within the next couple of days.
Annetta has done a little gardening at school, and so far she seems excited about the project. Mostly she just wants to water. Hopefully we'll get enough growing to keep her excited.
Tags: garden
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11:21 pm
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This just in - Settlers is a big hit!
I opened my copy of this month's Wired magazine this evening and couldn't believe the first article I found, Monopoly Killer". It's all about Settler of Catan and how it's becoming the world's most popular board game.
What?!? Isn't Wired supposed to be all about the hip, new new thing? I did enjoy the history of the invention of the game and other tidbits about Klaus Teuber's analysis for a game console version. But this seems almost retro for Wired.
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05:01 pm
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Pounded by hail
Northwest Austin got pummelled by hail on Wednesday at the evening rush hour, and unfortunately we suffered some damage. I was driving both kids home in our still pretty new car and got hit by large hail about a mile away from home. Luckily both kids handled that well and didn't freak out when we heard a big "thung" when a bit hailstone hit.
Even though our house got hit, luckily there was no severe damage that caused rain to leak in. We do have a cracked skylight in the house, and all the enclosed deck skylights are broken. The insurance company is flying in a team of adjusters, and I expect that the adjuster say the roof will need replaced.
Today I took the car in for an inspection by an adjuster. A storm blew in not far from the inspection station and I drove into some hard rain. Shortly after that I got hit by hail again! Luckily this time it was small, maybe the size of a marble.
The damage to the car was assessed at over $5000. The itemized list of estimated repairs includes replacing the hood and windshield. There are no cracks in the field of view, but one corner got smashed, so it's only a matter of time.
Now we have to wait for the body shop to get back to us. Fun, fun.
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11:42 pm
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Ran again. Yay!
This afternoon I managed to fit in another run at the gym. I ran for 25 minutes on a treadmill. That was about right, maybe a little much given that the random workout setting picked a lot of incline for most of the run.
I'm going much slower than I was, but I'm glad I can still run for that long. It would have really been nice to run outside today with all that nice weather, but the afternoon got pretty hot and all of the handiest courses are hilly. Not a good combination when you're out of shape!
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