Zucchini update

He weighed in at 4 lbs. 1.5 oz.
He's tall for his age: 15"!
I don't really have a basis for comparison on this measurement, but he's 12.5" around the thickest part.

We didn't cut him open yet though. Giving him a little more time to enjoy this world in one piece.

My Zucchini Monster is Bigger than Yours

Behold what my sneaky garden plot was up to while I was busy packing up the old apartment and moving to the new one.

What an impressive beast. In the picture below, it's hiding most of my right thigh. But truthfully, the zucchini is actually closer to the size of my calf in thickness.

A little bird told me that there was a giant zucchini sitting in my plot and that the neighbor gardeners were buzzing about it. I saw it for myself last night when I went to water and after taking the necessary photos, I snipped it from its mama. My hunch was that because of its size and firmness, it wouldn't taste very good. Also I figured it was probably eating its siblings to death - meaning, the plant was ignoring the other budding (now shriveled) fruits by putting all of its energy into this one star child. Imagine if human families actually did that? haha.
So I cut it loose in the hopes that the rest of the plant would recover enough to give me some edible squash a little later.

Today at work I found this helpful article that only confirms my suspicions:

"Because summer squash develop very rapidly after pollination, they are often picked when they are too large and overmature. They should be harvested when small and tender for best quality. Slightly larger fruit may be salvaged by hollowing out and using them for stuffing. These larger fruits may also be grated for baking in breads and other items. Do not allow summer squash to become large, hard and seedy because they sap strength from the plant that could better be used to produce more young fruit. Pick oversized squash with developed seeds and hard skin and throw them away. Go over the plants every 1 or 2 days. Squash grow rapidly; especially in hot weather and are usually ready to pick within 4 to 8 days after flowering."

Tonight's plan:

• Weigh and measure the monster
• Cut it open.
  
• Decide if it will be reincarnated into zucchini bread.
• Gloat some more to PrincessSara
  

Not a master update

Most of you are pretty caught up on the blog-worthy things in my life right now. Let's say I try a new format where I DON'T try to cram everything into a master monthly post w/ bullet points and photos... I don't need that kind of pressure.

By far the biggest thing on our plate right now is moving to a new apartment. After a draining 3-week apt-hunting process, we found our new home in my old neighborhood. It's a few streets down from where I lived from 2004-2005, before Erich moved to DC. The new place is kind of a trade-off.
This is what we're gaining:

• guaranteed private parking (we're currently in Kalorama. Some of you realize what that means in terms of parking)
• a ginormous deck!
• gas fireplace
• huge new kitchen
• jacuzzi tub
• an extra room (they call it a bedroom, I call it a den*...)
• sorry, I guess I couldn't quit the bullet points cold-turkey.
  

And the trade-off part:
The neighborhood. Right now we live in a beautiful oasis of a neighborhood, walking distance to a bunch of friends. The new neighborhood is a lot rougher (but probably more colorful and interesting) and will make it tough to have spontaneous meet-ups with friends.

While it's been bittersweet packing up our belongings in our first home, we're really excited about the new place - neighborhood and all. And I've grown an unhealthy attachment to the deck. Since the new bedroom is on the small side (put that under the trade-off category), I've decided I'm willing to camp out on the deck. Although, I don't think the alarm system covers the exterior so Erich may not like this idea.

I'm feeling very lazy so I won't be putting any pics into this post - you've seen them all already since most of you probably realize that I update flickr way more than blogger. Oh, but I will draw your attention to a fantastic example of how deep my dorkiness goes.

Thanks to Google Sketchup we've managed to waste an obscene amount of hours constructing this 3-D model of the new apartment, complete with our furniture arranged the way we think we want it. Why did we learn this free program from scratch, measure most of the dimensions in the new apt. as well as almost all of the furniture we own? Well, I imagine that, "because we wanted to make sure everything fit" wouldn't be a sufficient answer. I think a closer approximation of the truth would have to include the word "addiction". I should also add that there was even an excel spreadsheet to store all those measurements.
Yes, we both became hopelessly addicted to this program. Thank god I can't come up with many more uses for it other than playing around with furniture arrangements and apartment layouts.
I expect similar levels of dependency to develop once I get my invite to Ravelry.

We're picking up the moving truck on Monday, probably on the way home from the airport after we fly back from a weekend in Rhode Island. I miss the ocean!

* We also call this this room the brewery, study, craft room, and guest room

Another Installment in the Things That Annoy Me series

It's been awhile since I subjected you to one of my rants.
I'll start with the good news.
I was glad to see on my 3rd trip to Miami in March that a Dunkin Donuts-Baskin Robbins combo was about to open in the SAME building as the office I work in down there. They were open for business on my last trip a few weeks ago.
The other good news is that they're starting to get my drink orders right.

The bad news is that in the 6 times I've been there over two trips they haven't managed to get a single order fully correct. Last time, they used cream instead of milk, added sugar when I ordered equal on the side, made an iced latte instead of an iced coffee, used a bagel instead of an english muffin, and added cheese to every breakfast sandwich among other things. I think many of these errors stemmed from their system which seemed very inefficient. I'd place the order with the cashier. And then she would yell to someone in the back area (I think there's a slight language barrier between them too). And then she would move on to the next customer. So in every case I never knew who to talk to after my incorrect order had been left on the counter for me.

Anyway, this week they got the drink orders right! And the person who took my order also filled the order. I like that system. The medium iced hazelnut coffee with milk and equal on the side was great. However my breakfast sandwich was a creative interpretation of what I ordered.

It's not that I'm THAT picky. Even when they get the orders wrong, I'm still pretty happy and everything tastes fine. But having worked in several coffee shops over the years, it bothers me when I see so much sloppiness and it makes me want to teach them some tricks if only because they'd get more tips if customers could depend on accurate orders. Wow, that's sounds really arrogant!! That's ok, in this series I'm allowed to sound whiny and pretentious.

Lost sailors on my mind

My mom called yesterday to ask if I recognized the name of one of the sailors reported missing off the coast of North Carolina after their 54-ft. sailboat sent out a distress signal on May 7th.

I did recognize her name.

Christine Grinavic and I had all of the same classes in middle school when I lived in Cumberland and shared some of the same extracurricular activities. We were never best friends, but I remember working on a school project at her house and how she was one of the most intelligent people in every class. I haven't seen her since I was 12 so I'm a little surprised that the news of her disappearance is affecting me so much. The last time I heard what she was up to, she was involved in an archaeological dig in Israel. I didn't know that she graduated from URI or that she studied English. Articles about the missing sailboat and crew have mentioned that she's traveled to New Zealand, Peru, the Caribbean, and Israel. Coverage of the story by the Providence Journal seems particularly poignant since she has written for the paper several times. What an interesting life she's been leading.

I'm struggling with the realization that reports of tragedies like this don't seem to affect me very strongly unless I feel a personal connection to the people or circumstances involved. It's probably a very normal, human response that we find it hard to really empathize with complete strangers. The shootings at Virginia Tech seemed much more real and gut-wrenching once I heard that the first victim was an R.A. in a dorm.

The father of one of the other missing crewmembers said that he's holding out hope that everyone is safe and that the boat may just be drifting somewhere out of power. “That’s a huge ocean out there,” he said. I'm holding onto the same hope.

Where do I begin?

How bout somewhere warmer? Like Miami. The trip was full of productive worky things, a rally/protest/march through Fort Lauderdale, a nice morning stroll on the miami beach boardwalk, and a Portuguese Man o' War.

Seeing about 10 of them washed up on the beach made me suddenly a little gladder that I had forgotten to bring my bathing suit. Frankly I don't know how anyone could stand to swim in the same water that a school of men o' war (man o' wars?) are inhabiting. My brother had a nasty run-in with one when he was 7 in Melbourne Beach, FL. The thing stung his whole right leg, then he panicked and tried to wipe off the tentacles with his hands making it twice as bad.
I'm going back to Miami on Tuesday and I AM bringing my suit so those Iberian, war-mongering jellyfish* have 2 days to clear the area.

I'm going to skip ALL of the time between London and Miami and instead talk about this past weekend. I spent most of it in the garden! I was notified about a month ago that I had gotten a
plot in the community garden I signed up for in August.
Here is a 'before' picture. My garden-neighbor Juan told me that the plot hasn't really been used for 2-3 years.

I've had 3 intense weeding sessions in the last week and as such have discovered new muscles I didn't know I had. This is especially good cuz they seem to be in areas of the body that could use some more attention - generally speaking, the back-side. I don't really know when I can start planting things. Many of my garden neighbors have delighted in giving me advice on how to get things done since I'm a newbie. This is much appreciated because I really don't know what I'm doing, however, if I were to follow ALL of their nuggets of wisdom, I probably couldn't start planting until August. I guess they all have different ways of preparing their plots and I'm going to just have to pick a method and stick with it if we're to enjoy any home-grown veggies this year.
Here are the nominees for things I might grow this year:

• tomatoes (a must)
• peppers - green or red, I'm not particular. My stingy self is leaning towards red since they're much more expensive than greens at the store.
• cucumbers
• green beans
• radishes: shout out to mika.
• zucchini
• basil
• a leafy green: romaine? lettuce? spinach? I haven't decided yet.
• cinnamon basil: the National Arboretum sale was out of regular basil so I got 1 cinnamon basil for kicks.
• Annual Honesty/Money Plant: also purchased at the Arboretum. My mom grew this in her ginormous herb garden when I was little and I remember thinking the seed pods were cool.
• Stevia/Sweetleaf: from the Arboretum as well. I've never heard of this herb but the tag said the can be used as a sweetener (it's 300 times sweeter than sugar) and is commonly used in Paraguay and Brazil. I'll be trying it in tea.

And finally, a reward for the knitters who are getting bored of this very unyarny post.
My needles were busy in March and April. First is a pair of armwarmers I started for myself sometime in winter. They had 3 purposes: use up stash yarn (free from a swap!), practice fairisle and pattern-making, trial run for a gifted pair of armwarmers in the spring. I like them and wore them throughout DC's last gasp of winter, so mission(s) accomplished.

These were followed by a baby cardigan I made for a former coworker who just had her baby last week! She knew she was having a girl so I was excited to use this purple/pink elann cotton that bought last year. Although there are better baby wrap-cardigans out there, few are free so I went with this pattern from Crystal Palace.

The mom lives in El Salvador so I was hoping this mercerized cotton would be cooler than most of the wooly things out there. And wouldn't you think a wrap cardigan would be more breathable? I'm not sure, but I went with it.

Finally, the gifted armwarmers - I used Cheryl Niamath's pattern for Fetching from Knitty.

My friend lives in Philly in a basement apartment. So even though her birthday was last week, I think she still might get some use out of these this season. Knit in the same yarn as the fairisle armwarmers above. Thanks to the SnB DC yarn swap!

Currently on the needles is sock #2 for Mr. Beta. I've never knit him socks and rarely knit him anything. Even though I've barely turned the heel for the 2nd sock, I think they'll be done in time for his birthday this week especially since I'll be spending time in a plane and a couple airports. I did get him other things (not giving away any surprises here though cuz he's nosey!) because knitted socks are really more fun for me than for him. They're my first experience with Lorna's Laces (Shepherd Sock) and I loves it. Colorway is camouflage to help boost the manly factor.

And once again I've created an obnoxiously long post and given myself blogger-burnout. Ugh. Luckily, I know someone will remind me when too much time passes before the next post so hopefully you won't have to wait too long to hear about my pathetically domestic spring endeavors. I wish I could stop feeling guilty that my list of leisure activities includes cooking, knitting, and (now) gardening. *sigh*



P.S. YES, I am STILL reading the same book. I'd like to lie and say I just haven't had time to change out the sidebar. Reading Lolita in Tehran is good - but my new job is closer to home so I ride my bike every day; I haven't figured out how to make up that lost reading time from bus rides. And now that I've added gardening to the list of things I try to squeeze in on weekday evenings, I'm afraid the libraries around here may start to feel the sting of my decreased patronage.


* The Portuguese Man O' War is not actually a jellyfish. It is (according to Wikipedia) a siphonophore - a colony of specialized polyps and medusoids. I learned something new :)

Bienvenido...

...a Miami.
And so begins part of the chorus of Will Smith's famous song "Miami". I'm going down to Miami Beach tomorrow for the 2nd work trip - this time for 4 days. And much like the last time, I can't get that stupid chorus out of my head.
...Welcome to Miami | Bienvenido a Miami...

This 1930's boutique hotel will be my pad for the next few days.

Yes, work trips to Miami are a good thing. Especially when they follow freak April snow in DC.

I still plan on giving updates on the following sectors of my life:
* knitting
* Londonium
* visitors

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Unrelated Note: cubicle life is amusing. This is a new experience for me having always worked in smaller, cubicle-free, organizations. Today I heard a new sound effect wafting through the purple-padded cubes....nail clippers. I'm going to assume they were fingernail clippers rather than toenail. It went on for about 6-7 minutes. These kinds of things aren't bothersome really, but they're a funny distraction.