may 2007
may 31 2007 6:48 pdt back home in oregon. i'm still waking up on east-coast time when the light comes into the room. the days here are getting very long now- the sky is light by five, and there is still a distinct glow in the north-western sky at ten pm. according to the official numbers, sunrise is 5:30 and sunset is 8:45 so we're well on the way to a 16-hour day.
lots of pollen in the air now. you can see it drifting around when the sun catches it just right. there is no smog, really, but the air in eugene this week seems like it is as bad as it ever was when i lived in la. that can't be true of course- there were summer days in pasadena when the air was like milk, and you couldn't see the mountains that were only 3 miles away from campus becuase there was too much brown air between you and them. the air here is clear enough to see through, it's just filled with large quantities of drifting particulate matter. anyone coming to visit us should be prepared for their allergies to kick in with a vengeance.
in other seasonal news, i saw a cicada yesterday. took me a minute to figure out what it was. i haven't heard any of them singing yet, so i can't use it to forecast when the first frost will be, but it's interesting to know that they're out and about.
may 28 2007 7:53 edt at the airport now, waiting for our flight to chicago. can't wait to get home.
may 22 2007 11:21 edt grand tour east continues today. some new pics up at right, mostly from the boston aquarium, but also one or two shots of the old north church and the bunker hill monument... it's an inside joke, i guess. some shots also of the whale-watching cruise we took on one of the aquarium boats- there's one cool shot of a whale right up next to a boat that we weren't on. we're going to try to spend a little time at the beach today, seeing if we can get the kite to fly.
may 13 2007 21:23 pdt flew the big kite this afternoon. it was great! that thing sure can pull. definitely going out again next time it's windy- and i'll remember to bring the camera so we can take pictures.
may 13 2007 12:26 pdt yesterday we drove past schreiner's iris gardens on the 5, on the way to portland for dinner at pambiche. the irises are all in bloom now, so as you go by, there are waves of purple and yellow and orange as far as the eye can see on either side of the freeway. mark your calendars for next year: may 4th is the day they open the gardens to the public, and may 19th (this year) is the annual iris festival. since we'll be busy for the next two weeks, i doubt we'll be able to make the trip again soon, but next year we can plan ahead and make a day of it.
may 11 2007 14:42 pdt did a little digging in the backyard today. the compost bin is full, so if i want to have somewhere to put grass clippings when i mow the lawn, it looks like i'm going to have to dig some of the stuff out of the bottom and see if it's "finished." when we lived in ec, i had a big plastic bin where i was keeping homemade potting mix, for bonsai and plant propagation purposes- it was 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost, and the rest was sand and red volcanic gravel. it worked pretty well for starting seeds and rooting cuttings. now that i have a little more time on my hands, i'm starting to think about all the things i used to do back in california, and wondering why i couldn't try to do some of them here too.
i will have to be more careful about propagating plants, becuase the winters get much colder here. all of the jade plants i brought up with me in pots died over the winter. some of the other transplants i brought with also died before spring rolled around.
i've noticed that lots of folks have big spreading rosemary bushes in their yards that seem to have survived the winter just fine. my two little transplant pots of rosemary were starting to look pretty sickly, even though it's warm now, and i've been watering and fertilizing them in what seems like an appropriate manner. i replanted one container in the ground about three weeks ago, and it's greened up nicely and sending out new shoots. so today i dug some holes, cut up the root mass of the other container, and replanted that one in the ground too.
now i'm going to make some calls to figure out how/where to dispose of dead fluorescent tubes, and then head to the dmv to see if i can finally get myself some oregon plates.
may 6 2007 22:31 pdt things got pretty hectic there for the last three weeks of the term. everyone must have known that all of the students scatter to the four winds after the last final is done. my finals went as well as could be expected, i think- but at this point it's all entirely subjective as of course the grades aren't published yet. or privished for that matter. nobody knows for sure yet how anybody did. subjectively, i think i was much better prepared this time around.
may has been a funny month so far. the temperature got almost down to freezing the other night- 34 or 35 degrees at 3 am. the heat came on at 6 pm becuase it was only about 50 degrees inside the house. today, it was 74 degrees and overcast for most of the day.
lost a heartbreaker game of ultimate frisbee this afternoon. our team had no subs for the whole game, and we played the crucial last 10 minutes down a man. we were certainly the better team, and we were a point or two ahead for most of the contest- but their extra man made the difference in the end.
