My idea of making a few creative batches of bones has sort of taken over. I have been making bones every day - more than my girls can keep up with. I really enjoy doing it and experimenting, so I decided I may as well try to support the habit. So, I have started an online dog bakery. I put up a website and an Etsy shop (thanks Michelle for the suggestion). When I get a chance to write the code, there will be online ordering at the store and bones on Amazon as well. For now, give it a look - and buy your pooches some bones if you like!
I haven’t done any real projects for a long time. Instead of trying to fit them in with the end of the semester madness, I’m making plans for the winter and early spring semester. Some of these involve Cabinet Guy, so needless to say, I’m not anticipating the list will be completed.
Sand and repaint all the moldings. They are all chipped, showing green and pink and blue from many years past.
Patch and paint the holes left by the PO’s baby gates on the stairs
Finally fix all the spots on the ceiling where I got wall paint during my initial painting
Paint the pale green ceiling in the office dormer
Maybe maybe if Santa wills it, I will get the doors for the one bad cabinet in the kitchen and get that installed ? I emailed Contractor Sal to bug Cabinet Guy about this today, so we will see what happens.
Install the rest of the trim in the kitchen (again, assuming it arrives)
Buy and install blinds/shades for the kitchen windows
I’d mentioned in many posts this summer that I was crazy busy with work. Thankfully, I’m about to be back to normal-busy. All my pressing deadlines were Thursday and everything got done.
Most of what I do is of interest to other academics in my field. Sometimes I start talking about details to my poor SIL Michelle and I can her her eyes glazing over on the phone even as she struggles to stay interested.
However, of the dozen big projects I had going, one caught the attention of the general public. I did a study of how people in Congress use Twitter (along with a PhD student an undergraduate student). In short, we looked at about 6,000 posts and found that Congresspeople use Twitter for self-promotion and talking about where they are and what they are doing (e.g. “I just had lunch at a great restaurant!”). They generally don’t use it for sharing new or helpful information, or as a way to improve the access people have to them.
I could tell you all about it, but the Washington Post wrote about it and did a nice job explaining the part people care about. You can even find it in the print edition today (Saturday).
It’s been a lot of fun to get something we’ve done mentioned in the press, and the reporter did a great job with the article.
So there you go. The Washington Post talking about what I did on my summer vacation. Maybe some house work will come next.
I am not a cleaner. I like my house clean, and I do the basics to keep it somewhat fur free and in acceptable form, but it is nothing like my Gramma’s spotless, sparkling house. I often look around and think she would be mortified if she happened to stop by.
The deeper cleaning - real floor washing, baseboard cleaning, tub scrubbing, etc - that I rarely do. When it gets desperate or when guests are coming, I’ll do it, but the time between those activities is measured in months. Seasons, really.
Thus, I decided to hire a cleaning service to come in once a month to do all that. The owner came by last week and, after scoping out the house and giving me a price said, “Well, I can see you need us now, but when would you like us to start?”
While she was here, she gave me a list of cleaning products to buy that I didn’t have. Nothing major - just comet and some scrubby pads. I stopped by the local hardware store today to get that and discovered Mrs. Meyers cleaning products.
It is not tested on animals. It’s all very eco-friendly and green. It smells amazing. It has that cool retro cartoon woman on the packages. I was intrigued. I sniffed around and decided to try some counter top cleaner and laundry detergent. The latter is an especially big deal since I have been a dedicated Tide user since I started doing my own laundry, but the basil scented Mrs. Meyers seemed really good, so I decided to give it a try.
And now, I am in love. I went back and picked up basically the full line of cleaners - scrubby stuff, all purpose cleaner, glass cleaner, dishwasher tabs, etc. It makes me want to clean. Not so much that I will cancel the monthly cleaning service, but enough that I suspect things are going to start smelling like Lemon Verbena pretty soon.
All you eco-conscious types should check this stuff out if you don’t know about it already. It works great, smells amazing, and has a very happy ingredient list. Perhaps using it will make me more like their cartoon ladies around the house.
π, K, and I arrived home today from a 2 week trip to Chicago. My front yard looked like a jungle. My vegetable garden was primeval. Within half an hour of pulling into the driveway, I mowed the front lawn so my neighbors wouldn’t be mortified at how neglected the place looked. I had to take the weed whacker between rows in the garden. One of the tomato plants had leaned over and created a nasty rotten tomato mess.
Other than that, the biggest problem is that fruit flies have invaded my composter. I will be picking up some organic fly spray tomorrow to take care of that. Thankfully, during our time away there was no repeat of last year’s fridge incident.
So, we’re settling back in and, by tomorrow night, everything with dogs and jen should be back in order. We missed you, house!
MOM and DAD gave me a bike for Christmas. It’s pretty awesome.
I put this together myself in January, but last week finally took it to a bike shop to make sure it wouldn’t fall apart as I rode it. Since then, it’s been great to run my errands this way. My most frequent trips downtown are about a 5 mile round trip. I make more stops now than when I was driving, because it’s just a lot easier to lock it up than to navigate the traffic and find parking.
It’s also brought me closer to a few neighborhood establishments. CakeLove is one. Ah, CakeLove. Life is so much better with cupcakes.
When my SIL and nieces were here a few weeks ago, we also discovered Living Ruff, a dog boutique which opened last fall. They are great. There’s tons of snacks of all varieties, a bakery case of dog treats, and some very nice people.
The girls love the cookies they have in the bakery case. Their noses go right for my bag and try to sniff them out when I get home. Here are some purchases from last weekend: the dog flag and the bee.
For scale, the bone flag cookie is about 5 inches long.
So now, it appears that once or twice a week during my bike rides, I’ll be picking up treats for all three of us.
I have been a dedicated fan of Pitchmen since it began this season. I had always thought Billy Mays’s commercials were entertaining, but really came to like the guy watching the show. He seemed to be a sincere, funny, and generous guy. He had one twitter post earlier this month that said “Just went to our favorite pizza place. She burnt the pizza so she DOUBLED the offer!” Another said “Hi, Billy Mays here for Twitter. Are you tired of not knowing what I’m doing? Then follow me on Twitter. It’s free! No s&h charges either!” Totally the personality he displayed on the show, and really funny. Plus - he has introduced us to all kinds of home improvement products!
So, it was very sad news to hear that he died this morning. Poor Billy and his family. I usually don’t care about celebrity issues, but I was quite upset about this. My favorite comment I saw about it did make me smile: “Heaven will shine a little bit brighter today…now that is has the power of OxiClean!”
This week I got my first delivery from my CSA. Check out all this veggie goodness!
Boston lettuce, asparagus, scallions, flowering thyme, and pea sprouts. So tasty!
It is a good complement to my garden that’s starting to produce more than strawberries. I accidentally killed one of my pea plants while weeding today, but it did yield some peas. The zucchini plant has its first baby zucchini. I’m also about to get a mountain of white mulberries from the tree in the back. I picked about half a pound today, and most of them are still unripe. The second harvest this evening was almost as big as the bunch I picked late this morning.
Orkin Guy came today. He sprayed for ants, left me some Orkin literature, and, as he was leaving, spent about 20 minutes telling me about how God had returned to earth in a remote village in Africa. He told me about how people would be making pilgrimages there and how if God chose me to see the spirit I would know. Then he pulled out a few pamphlets for me to read and asked me to call him if I had any questions. These pamphlets are titled “Purity…the key to God’s kingdom” and “Celibacy: It’s religious support”. Perhaps my 3-year-old marathon t-shirt was too provocative???
I’m deeply in love with South Mountain Creamery, the dairy that delivers my milk each week. I’m can’t fully express how excited about their new venture, South Mountain Veggie.
This is a Community Supported Agriculture project; you sign up for a share and each week for the 24 week season you get a box of organic veggies, greens, fruit, and herbs delivered from a bunch of local farms. I know there are other CSAs around, but until now every one I’d checked into only had family-size shares. The weekly box of veggies is enough to feed a family of 4 and I am only a family of 1 vegetable eater. Happily, South Mountain Veggie has several share sizes including one for single people.
Plus, they have an added benefit - you pay per week, rather than per season, so you can change the size of your box or skip a week if you’re on vacation. They also will be delivering year-round, with greenhouse veggies in the winter and early spring. This crop that will soon start arriving at my house is also leading into another project, and I’ll post about that soon.
If you live in Silver Spring, please sign up so we’ll have a lot of demand and get on their route!
All together, this means I will have very little grocery shopping to do starting in June. I’ll have milk, bread, eggs, and juice from the creamery, and fruit and veggies from the CSA. Since I’m a vegetarian, that’s about all I need (other than chocolate)!
