09/25/09 09:19 - 53ºF - ID#49851
p.s.
Permalink: p_s_.html
Words: 36
Location: Buffalo, NY
09/25/09 09:14 - 53ºF - ID#49850
we DID get robbed
What frosts my buttons, besides the fact that the dude just straight-up stole from us, is that the TWO customers who WITNESSED this happening SAID NOTHING. Both of them took their prints they'd been waiting for, walked out to their cars, drove home, and THEN AND ONLY THEN did they call the store to say "Hey that guy took something." When it was WAY too late to do ANYTHING about it.
Williamsvillites. Wouldn't it have been more useful to tap the shoulder of the clerk who was at the photo kiosk working on something (and thus not watching) and whisper discreetly to him, if you are so averse to confrontation?
Oy. I love the suburbs.
Permalink: we_DID_get_robbed.html
Words: 163
Location: Buffalo, NY
09/11/09 03:19 - 67ºF - ID#49746
boo
Who is going to Music Is Art tomorrow?? (e:Zobar) and I are going to try to make it there! I have to work and he has to lug his remote Baltic kinsman around, but we think if we can make it happen that the festival would be the ideal way to entertain him.
Also my back is still hurt and I am very bummed about that.
I had something to post here and can't remember what it was, but one day I will remember.
Permalink: boo.html
Words: 103
Location: Buffalo, NY
09/03/09 06:23 - 78ºF - ID#49693
oh yeah my new job
Oh yes-- the chain is no longer locally owned. Used to be one family that owned allll the stores. Well, a number of factors contributed, but largely, as I found out today, there was a tragedy in the family-- I believe the daughter that was to inherit died young or something awful-- and they sold the chain instead.
They sold it to another independent family-owned chain down in Philly, and so now we *sort of* have corporate overlords. But not really. The district manager, who has been in place for about fifteen years, runs the place in the way that seems best to him, and our two little stores make a reasonable living. His philosophy is openly that his employees are his most important asset, which is kind of nice. The pay is negligible, but there are no stupid rules, there's no stupid dress code, and what's most awesome is that if a customer is being unreasonable, the management will totally back you up. You just have to be reasonable yourself.
So I like working there. I feel like it's useful work. I'm helping people, I'm doing something meaningful, I get to be a little artistic (unlike Rite Aid or Walgreens, we actually manually color-correct every print, so they come out as nicely as they can; there's no automatic setting. The downside, if you're a weirdo, is that we do have to look at every one, so when we're printing someone's fetish pics or whatever, I admit, we do snicker a little. I haven't seen nearly as much sausage as I anticipated when I started, though). Mostly, there's a refreshing lack of bullshit to the place.
And our prices on cameras and lenses are extremely competitive. We don't get the profit margins Best Buy does, since our distributors don't get to do nearly as much volume and so don't give us those margins, but Best Buy, believe me, doesn't pass their savings onto you. They charge the same amount we do, and get a bigger profit. But it's OK, because we're not spending a thousand dollars a day on advertising either. We're not a real high-profit company, but we're an institution. And it's nice being involved in that.
I just wish *I* made a little more money.
Oh, hey, for you photo and arty types-- DCV's running a promo contest thing with the Music Is Art festival. Send them your photos from that festival and you can win a nice camera. Also, friend the store on Facebook, or become a fan-- it would warm the cockles of my manager's surprisingly un-evil little heart. For some reason he likes that kind of thing.
Permalink: oh_yeah_my_new_job.html
Words: 544
Location: Buffalo, NY
09/03/09 10:20 - ID#49689
No robbery
Permalink: No_robbery.html
Words: 80
Location: Buffalo, NY
09/01/09 04:43 - 70ºF - ID#49674
Finally!
Edited to add: What, I get no love?! That's a moblogging milestone, that is!!
Permalink: Finally_.html
Words: 27
Location: Buffalo, NY
08/31/09 10:20 - 59ºF - ID#49671
?
Permalink: _.html
Words: 40
Location: Buffalo, NY
08/10/09 04:06 - 79ºF - ID#49499
Pennsic
One of (e:zobar) in garb
And one of me, in garb!
It was a good time, if the pictures don't make that clear. Along with (e:zobar)'s description. Which is approximately correct.
Permalink: Pennsic.html
Words: 90
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/01/09 11:05 - 55ºF - ID#48554
gardening
So I busted sod, thrashed roots out of dirt, made German mounds (where you make a mini-compost-stravaganza underneath where you're going to plant a plant), and went to town out there. From 8 am until 1 pm yesterday, I was a gardening machine.
I am being daring-- the guaranteed frost-free date isn't until May 17th. But we've had such warm weather for so long that I am gambling, recklessly, that we won't have another killing frost. (A light frost, I think my seedlings can weather-- I have plastic milk jugs with the bottoms cut out that I plan on using as hotcaps should the worst occur.) One year I gambled and then there was a frost, but I threw blankets over the tomato cages and all was fine. I'm being pretty reckless, but I don't think it's unjustified.
So I planted out a few cherry tomato seedlings, and two jalapeno pepper plants. And a basil seedling. I also repotted more tomatoes from little seed-starting cells into bigger pots.
The rest is seeds:
spinach, lettuce, marigold, radish, turnip, beet, snap pea, pole bean, muskmelon, cucumber, acorn squash, zucchini. I wanted to plant basil but couldn't find my seed packet! So annoying.
I heard that basil and tomatoes are mutually beneficial companion plants, so I want to try that.
Anyway. The upshot is, I have planted out three cherry tomato plants, which is as many cherry tomatoes as I can reasonably expect to go through with three people in the house, one of whom doesn't eat tomatoes and one of whom is moving out in August during peak tomato season.
And I have like six nice healthy cherry tomato seedlings left. Maybe more.
There's a big plant swap somewhere local, I saw it on the GardenWeb forums, but I just thought I'd ask if anyone wanted a cherry tomato plant or two-- I don't think I'll have time to go and attempt a swap. Months ago on here I theorized that we ought to have an (e:strip) plant swap, but again, I don't really have time. But anyway-- they're Burpee's Super Sweet 100 cherry tomato hybrid. Indeterminate, so they'll get pretty big and need staking or a cage.
And one other random announcement: Last roller derby bout of the season is May 9th. I'm playing. It'll be fun.
If you can't make that, May 15th is my team's fundraiser, and it's at a pool hall with great drink specials. They're running a pool tournament for us, which is cool. More info here:
So either come watch me skate, or come play pool with me! I can't shoot pool at all so I don't know how that's going to work. But whatever. It'll be fun anyway.
Permalink: gardening.html
Words: 496
Location: Buffalo, NY
04/01/09 02:13 - ID#48256
compost
Did you know that coffee grounds make fabulous compost?
They're basically potting soil as-is! They are very high in nitrogen, which plants need for lush foliage and good fruit production. (Phosphorus is better for flowering plants to set flowery blooms.)
So even if you're not the sort of person to have a compost heap, you can just dump your coffee grounds into a container and when it gets full, sprinkle the grounds in your garden or on your lawn or around your shrubs. Keep 'em out of the trash! Throw less stuff away. (Just use a thin layer; grounds may clump together and prevent soil respiration unless you spread them out and mix them into the soil. And too thick a layer at once might shock or burn the plant, so keep it light. Try raking them into your lawn! Better than commercial fertilizer. Try it.)
And if you've ever thought about composting, it is so easy. It can easily go wrong, just like any gardening thing. But by "go wrong", I mean, not work, or smell kinda funny.
Those black plastic composters make it basically foolproof. That way, even if it doesn't work, the odor doesn't spread much, and the mess is self-contained. But you can also just set up a circle of chicken wire held up with garden stakes with a big stick in the middle that you wiggle to aerate the pile.
Basically, compost is made up of "brown" matter, and "green" matter. You want approximately four parts of brown matter to one part of green matter. Too much green, and everything will go slimy and smelly. Too much brown, and it will dry out and nothing will change.
"Brown" material is anything rich in carbon. Chopped leaves, dry sticks and stalks, wood chips, sawdust, straw, and even cardboard and paper are good brown materials. Coffee filters count too.
"Green" material is anything rich in nitrogen. Grass clippings are a fantastic source of nitrogen. Weeds you've pulled (though be careful if the weed has gone to seed-- a small compost pile won't get hot enough to kill the seeds). Food scraps-- carrot peelings, squash guts, wilted lettuce, celery ends. And coffee grounds!
When you make your compost pile, just remember to add more brown than green. You can either layer it, in the "lasagna" method-- a big layer of brown with a layer of green on it, then another brown, like a sandwich only repeated until you're out of material. Or you can just mix it all evenly.
Either way, whatever kind of enclosure you've got-- a wooden box, a cardboard box that eventually composts itself, a black plastic one that keeps it tidy so your neighbors don't complain-- all you've got to do is make sure it doesn't dry out (water with a hose until it's as damp as a wrung-out sponge), make sure everything you put into it is in small pieces (run leaves over with a lawnmower, chop sticks up small with a shovel, slice your vegetable castoffs smallish, crush eggshells with your hands), and turn it with a pitchfork or shovel once in a while. The turning is optional if it's well-mixed or properly layered; it just goes faster and is more complete if you turn it.
If it's stinky and slimy, add more brown and mix it in. If it's too dry, water it, but maybe it needs some more green too. When you turn it, try to make what's on the edges go into the middle, since that's where it's hottest and things break down most quickly.
In the summer it'll only take maybe 3 months until what you pull out of the pile basically looks like potting soil. Compost is the perfect planting medium or soil enrichment. It's cheaper than buying topsoil and fertilizer at the garden center. And it means you didn't throw away a whole lot of stuff that would wind up wasted in a landfill-- landfills don't have proper composting conditions so things are basically fossilized there, plus it's all contaminated with chemicals.
If you don't want to compost, give me your leaves and grass clippings. I don't get enough from my tiny yard with no trees-- I had to steal a big garbage bag full of leaves from my parents' house 300 miles away while I was home for Thanksgiving. My soil needs the help!
This year I'm trying something new: I'm setting up a horizontal compost "heap" and gardening straight onto the top of it. Look up "lasagna gardening" in Google and see what you find. That's what I'm doing! Much less back-breaking than cutting sod and chopping out the established weeds in some of my garden beds!!
That may be something you could try if you don't think a compost heap will fly with the neighbors-- they'll never know you're composting! Just get some kind of edging for the bed so they can't see the layers at the edges, and they'll never know you didn't have tons of expensive soil trucked in.
Permalink: compost.html
Words: 845
Location: Buffalo, NY
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On the compose view, if you click on the "my media" button - its the first button in the string of formatting buttons, a pop-up window shows you thumbnails of all the photos/videos/sounds etc that you have uploaded. You can view this list by month using the dropdown list also in the same pop-up window. Clicking any of that media thumbnails puts a link to it in the post you are composing in the main window.
But today I'm just trying to upload from the regular post-new-journal page, in my browser (Firefox on a Mac), and it uploads the file but won't put it into the entry, and I can't figure out how to fix it. I've had that problem before and I vaguely recall manually typing the tag in, but I can't remember how it was composed and can't find an entry I was successful at doing it to.
I'm not whining, just explaining why I don't seem to be able to post things I've been asked to.
The one you have on file is XXXXXXXXXX@mms.mycingular.com. Each one of the Xs is a number that is your phone number. Is that really the mobile email address you send the pics from on your iphone? Seems like an old address?
I want that toilet shot, you hear me?
If you want inspiration *and roll around in slightly grossed out laughs* --> :::link:::