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a sketchy mink for sketchy rants |
2/28/2000: It is 46F and bright sunny this morning. The high is supposed to hit up around 56F, yet another spring-like day. Makes it so hard to come back to the office after lunch. Plants are really coming up now, thick masses of green where bulbs have been multiplying for years. May mine get like that someday... my bulbs are coming up too!
2/24/2000: It is 55F and cloudy this morning, it stormed last night. Today's high is supposed to hit the upper 50s F.
PLANTS ARE COMING UP!! Yes, I have actual green shoots coming up next to my house!! Happy day! It's the stuff on the south side of the house, where I took out paving bricks and put in dirt.
2/23/2000: It is 50F and sunny this morning. I'm only wearing one pair of pants, the air is mild, it really really feels like spring. The high might hit the low 60s F today! Problem is, it's also supposed to rain and thunderstorm. Now, I personally like stormage, but I've somehow managed to lose my umbrella. I hope I left it at Espresso, but if I can't find it, I am going to have to buy one of those cheesy UIUC umbrellas at lunch. Heck, I guess it's a good enough excuse to get a folding umbrella for those days when it just might rain but might not - my regular umbrella, which is awesome awesome and has really q00l cloudscene on the inside of a nice black outside is great for those days when it's already pouring and will be in use all day, but tends to get itself lost on days when I'm just carrying it (or not, after a while, that's the problem!) around. Anyway, they better have cheap umbrellas without the Chief on 'em.
It's one of those days when I'm enthused about planning and learning stuff.
In other interesting news, this summer is shaping up to be good vacation time. I'll be heading to Branson, Missouri sometime in July (how? I have NO idea! But it's a popular tourist destination these days, so there has to be SOME kinda transit). Then, a truly crazy idea to be sure, so wacko that I don't really know how I started thinking about it seriously, but some friends of mine and I are thinking of taking a trip to Japan. I don't know when that would be exactly. It's been over 8 years since I set foot over there. But wow, that would be so absolutely great. For some reason I never really think of it as even within the realm of possible vacation destinations, but it is, if you buy tickets early. I've always just thought of it as either I'm living there, or not. Still. Wow. We could go sit on the beach in Hayama and eat squid and drink ramune.
2/22/2000: It is 51F and cloudy today, the sort of warm cloudy greyness that means spring is definitely on its way. Heck, you'd think it was here already if you didn't look at the date. Green shoots are starting to come up in places, and I'm starting to really look forward to crocuses. Those bright yellow ones on a sunny day, well... a feast for the eyes and it makes me happy happy.
This Thursday at 7PM at the Illinois Terminal (our new intermodal transit station) there is going to be a big town meeting about the Living Wage. I will be speaking at it, presenting some data and the results of our candidate survey.
Speaking of candidates, last Thursday I went to a candidates forum at Jumer's and asked some nice non-scripted questions that the candidates didn't want to be answering, and managed to get them bickering while the rest of the room cheered. Woo hoo. Remember folks, the primary is coming up on March 21. The people we elect this year to the Illinois General Assembly get to draw the new voting districts for the state of Illinois after the census this year, so we gotta try not to pick bozos.
2/21/2000: It is 49F and cloudy this afternoon. I took the morning off to do some programming-related reading. More later.
2/17/2000: It is 24F and mainly sunny with wispy white streaky clouds this morning. However, we have a Crappy Weather Advisory out for this evening and tomorrow. They were saying snow, but now it's worse - snow, changing to freezing rain (can you say ice storm?) and then back to snow. The good news is, temperatures will be rising after so it should melt off fairly soon.
This evening is happy hour with the AAP at the Bread Company (the local shop, on Goodwin, not the chain) and then a candidates forum at Jumer's Castle Lodge, which is across from the library about 5 blocks from my house. It should be good, they said open questioning, so hopefully they won't screen it all into pablum like what you see on TV. Feelin' the need to rabble rouse.
2/16/2000: It is 32F and cloudy today. Supposedly tomorrow afternoon/night there will be snow.
A very happy birthday to Mommy Mink! While I'm at it, a very happy belated birthday to Daddy Mink, writing the date on today's backup tape reminded me of both...
2/15/2000: It is 31F with white cloudy skies this morning, that are straining to achieve the palest blue. It is going to become bright clear and we should see near 50F. Definitely a spring feel day. The snowdrops are out more and there's also some shoots near there of something else now, also in my yard something is coming up next to the back stoop. I think it's those pink flowers where the leaves come up in spring and never flower and then go away, and the in the late summer it makes a stalk with flowers and no leaves, I think it's one of those since it's where those were last year. I'm a bit worried though, I see what could be dig holes in the garden and I think maybe the squirrels are having a buffet with all the bulbs... it can't possibly be all of them, I guess, but the ones that were shallower... I just don't know. Sigh. I suppose the ones they do eat, I can put in again next year, after the ground cover is more established, making it harder to dig them up. They're cheap, after all... but still.
In other garden news, Mike says he knows a guy who knows all about horticulture stuff, and might be able to help me make the big plan for essentially terraforming the area behind the house. I'm willing (and wanting!) to do the work, but such a large project needs to be planned out first with the help of someone who knows what grows and what they will end up looking like, particularly the larger bushes and vines type deals. I'm hoping I can mix some vegetables in with my flowers, too, certainly I should be able to put some peppers in the front garden and no one should much notice. It's getting time to start worrying about it, I'm getting seed catalogs in the mail... it's also getting time to go buy this year's PCSA share (where you put in a lump sum at the beginning of the season, and get dividends of organic vegetables, whatever comes up on the big PCSA farm from week to week). The Sunshine Grocery half a block from my house is good for veggies too. That place is the most amazing thing, to have a market half a block from my own house that is WAY cheaper than any of the big chain stores, has better vegetables, has Chinese ingredients, gets the Chinese newspaper, the owners know me, and they will order stuff if I need it. I can get all the ingredients for dumplings right on my street now. Simply fabulous. For locals reading this page, Sunshine Grocery is where the old Pizza World used to be, right at Race and Washington where Race St. makes the jag. Check it out. There are still a few things I need to go to the big market for (toiletries and such, mainly) but I can now go there much more infrequently, which saves walking/hauling time. Pretty much all of my day to day needs are met by Sunshine, Strawberry Fields, the Common Ground Food Co-Op, and Am-Ko.
Speaking of supermarkets and drugstores, for quite a while now I've been somewhat interested in supermarket consolidation. You might recall some discussion of how Jewel-Osco and Lucky-SavOn are the same store, owned by American Stores, well, it turns out that American Stores has now been bought out by Albertson's. Consolidation, consolidation! The overall number of supermarkets has declined (by 0.3%) from 1987 to 1997 (national data, quoted by the Davis, CA planning agency considering building a new market, and taken largely from the Food Marketing Institute's 1997 Industry Report). At the same time, the number of chain supermarkets increased by 13 percent while the number of independent supermarkets decreased by 16.7 percent. The number of small grocery stores (less than $2M annual sales) decreased by 42.6 percent. Utterly amazing. The average size of stores has been getting larger too (makes sense with the decline of the little guys) with the average going from 31,000 sq. ft. in 1990 to 39,260 sq. ft. in 1997. More ominous, however, is that the median size for NEW stores in 1997 was 52,441 sq. ft.. What this means is, of course, the big chains are closing their smaller markets in town in order to build larger behemoths on the edge of town. Right here in C-U we saw the Jewel stores (both of them) fold so that the Osco half of things could get insanely large, leaving no supermarket serving downtown Champaign. Students at UIUC (and some of us staff, too!) would love to see a new market with real food (as opposed to a convenience mart) open near the campus, but apparently no national chains are interested, because they refuse to build anything that is less than roughly 40,000 sq.ft. At least now there are buses up to Strip Mall Hell and the Meijer's up there, but the main result is still that more people drive around.
2/14/2000: It is 30F with flurries this morning. Saturday was absolutely gorgeous with bright blue skies and in the mid 30's, but Sunday it drizzled the whole day, very much goth weather with that dampness that makes everything seem cold. Funny how it can be that grey, drizzly, damp, foggy, misty weather at even 45F or so, and it will feel colder than it does when it's in the 20s and sunny. Plus walking around outside, it's not raining enough for an umbrella, more like the drops are just suspended in the air, but my glasses get covered with tiny little droplets so I can't see anything and rubbing them off does no good, only smears it around. Sometime at night it froze and now it's getting a little dusting of snow on top of it. But tomorrow it's going to warm up to the upper 40s F.
It's Valentine's Day, and that means that it's exactly ten years ago today that we had the huge Valentine's Day ice storm in 1990. There was 12 million dollars of damage in Champaign County alone, and most of town was without power for a week. Woo.
The rotating dinner was much fun. There were about 20 people in the kitchen at once, all cooking. The one bottleneck was the single stove, everyone was needing to use it... Carol made my life easier by bringing over a food processor. I made dumplings and they turned out pretty good. I gotta say that buying a food processor is looking mighty appealing.
Saturday I spent reading and going to Jane Addams Book Shop downtown. It's three floors of used books, all sorts of wondrous things. I got extremely lucky and found a 1988 architectural design magazine that was completely devoted to discussions of the John Hancock Center in Chicago. It is really great, it even has floor plans of apartments in it. There were even efficiency apartments in there, although now that the apartments have been converted to condos, I wonder if those are still there. Still, I bet the rent was a fair sight higher than on my own efficiency apartment here in Urbana. Every so often I find some book or magazine that's just tailor written for one of my strange interests... While I was there I also got a little pamphlet/book about the Illini (hint: They definitely didn't look like "the chief") and also a book on labor history in Illinois and finally a book all about dialect differences in Japan (written in Japanese) that's fascinating because it has maps showing what parts of the country use what kinds of speech. I suppose it's not all that surprising that I definitely speak Tokyo dialect, including that parts that are non-standard from "common Japanese written language," like the sh/h thing and "tyau" and all those. I am also firmly stuck in the eighties but that's a whole 'nother topic.
2/11/2000: It is 27F and cloudy grey this morning, although it's supposed to clear up some and maybe hit 30F before snowing a bit this evening. Definitely a change from yesterday's weather. The old snow is just about gone, all the sidewalks are dry for once, and walking in to work was quite easy. I hear the snow will only amount to an inch or so as the storm is heading more south. Cool. However, Sunday night we're forecast to get more precipitation, which is likely to be right on the ice line, so that means snow plus sleet and the big evil, freezing rain. Ew.
This evening is the rotating dinner, this time to be held at Aunt Barbara's house. I'm supposed to cook, I'll be making Chinese boiled dumplings (jiaozi) but with TVP instead of meat, if I can figure out how to work it. As usual, it's one big great experiment. I'll be doing the cooking at Babs's so that people can learn how to make it.
Quote of the Day: "Business speech is not subject to the same protections as political speech. You can't say whatever you want about a company." by John Roberts, a "Minneapolis attorney who specializes in cyberlaw." You might like to read more about the absolutely disgusting context in which this quote was uttered.
2/10/2000: It is 41F and rainy this morning, with a high forecast to hit a whopping 55F. Definitely a peek ahead to spring. I've hauled the umbrella out for the first time in a while, I'm wearing a hooded sweatshirt over my usual sweater, rather than a huge jacket, and I even saw some snowdrops (!!!) coming up in the yard of the house on Nevada and Busey. A nice grey day to spend inside at the office... Almost all of the snow is gone now. As my friend Colin put it, "the white nice snow is all washed away but the grey and black heaps of snow remain." Supposedly we might get more snow this weekend, however. Something will fall, anyway, be it snow or sleet or ice. Odds of pure rain aren't high as it will cool off again.
2/9/2000: It is 32F and sunny with a few high level wispy clouds this morning. Supposedly it will hit 48F both today and tomorrow. Already the 32 feels delightfully warm, and the wind is definitely from the south, it smells like crap (literally). Walking in was slippery as there is still ice around (still wide areas completely covered in snow, but footprints now melted down to grass, and grass around the edges) but it's wet ice, which is the most dangerous. Lots of places the ice was refroze from melt with big crystal spikes and struts in it which MUST be stomped on, dunno why it is but I have to stomp on those. Ooooh. It does start to bring on thoughts of gardening and radically reforming my yard.
According to the News-Gazette, there is going to be a new Wal-Mart Supercenter built in Savoy. Savoy, for any non-local readers out there, is the "third city" to the south of Champaign-Urbana which is rapidly blending into C-U (see map, taken from MapBlast). I'd like to know why in the hell do we need a Wall-Mart there? Why do I ask? Well, for starters, there is already a regular Wal-Mart up in Strip Mall Hell, otherwise known as the North Prospect Avenue area of Champaign. No more than a block away from there is a Sam's Club. That makes THREE, count 'em THREE, Wal-Marts in an area of less than 200,000 people. According to industry spokesmen, these babies are each designed to serve 500,000 people. As if that weren't enough, no more than a block or two away from the existing Wal-Mart, also in Strip Mall Hell, is a Meijer, yet another "all purpose grocery and general mart" type place, also designed to serve 500,000 people. Proceeding about a mile down Neil St, one comes to the Super K-Mart. Market Place Mall, meanwhile, which handily sucked up the downtown business back in the mid-70's, is now losing business to the box stores. Making the whole scene even more idiotic is the fact that transit doesn't currently serve Savoy, and yet the proponents of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter wish to target the student market, which will only serve to increase car usage on campus, something which the Campustown 2000 organization is trying to discourage.
Of course, it's possible they are aiming the pitch at the students they hope will live in the new Sterling University Fields "Collegiate Residences" being built in Savoy. This is yet another of the large out-of-state (from Texas this time) conglomerate-owned "luxury housing complexes" designed specifically for students. This particular firm operates in 11 states. Locally, they are the third such group to move in on the rather limited action - the other two, of course, being the Melrose Apartments (owned by Integroup Inc of Jacksonville, Florida) and University Commons (owned by Capstone Companies of Birmingham, Alabama) developments on North Lincoln Ave in Urbana. University Commons, in particular, has had some problems with its construction, back in 1998. Now, last I heard, Melrose in particular was only 60% rented. Fact is there are way, way, waaaaayyyyyy too many apartments in this city already. They are all chasing the wealthy student market, while there is actually a shortage of low-rent apartments, particularly housing willing to accept Section 8 certificates. That's what happens with the invisible hand, I guess, some people end up getting the finger. It's not what we need, it's "can I steal business away from the other firms chasing the same lucrative bets?" Time will tell. In the meantime, the overabundance of student housing, plus the fact that the University Residence Halls runs room reassignment in January (meaning that students need to decide if they'll move off campus at that time), leads to a situation in which all the landlords are afraid to be left holding the empty apartments, and the students want to start looking for apartments in January. The landlords start running ads in the Daily Illini, and the end result is that landlords start pestering tenants to commit to renewing their leases as early as November. Utterly insane, given that the vast majority of leases run from August to August. Of course, if you don't renew, and someone else wants your apartment and signs a lease in January for it, you're out on your ass in the street in August. Utterly insane. So people sign leases for apartments up to 9 months in advance, only to find their new apartment trashed by the time move-in day arrives. Ain't the market grand? Of course, the new "luxury" places (you can charge more rent if you slap a pool and tennis court on) tend to be located a fair piece from campus, which encourages students to bring their cars with them for the school year. Once they do that, of course, they might as well drive everywhere, to the bane of the Campustown 2000 people.
Not that the Campustown 2000 people are beyond the reach of peeves. No, they've come up with the grand idea to put a four-story building in the 600 block of East Green St. in Champaign (actually financed and owned by JSM Property Management). Why is this annoying? Well, the main reason is that the rest of the buildings in that block are two-story buildings, designed to flow together into a solid block. A new building towering a full two stories higher than the rest will make the rest of the block look horrid. Even the gawd-awful Follett's building on the corner (the neon has gotta go) isn't that large. Then, they think that high tech businesses are going to flock to this new location (why? who knows... there's tons of office space open in nicer, less congested areas downtown, and it's probably cheaper to rewire an office than build a whole new one!) so they are naming the place "600 Technology Plaza". Puh-LEEZE. Can you say "insufferable hubris?" I knew you could! Plus, the building is modelled after Beckman, which IMHO ain't so great looking. Since when do all "high tech" buildings have to be light brick and green glass with goofy crystal-looking pointy glass towers? Apparently there are prospective tenants, but I don't know that any of them are actually "high tech businesses" - last I heard, Campustown 2000 was trying to lure "national clothing chains". Gotta give 'em their Abercrombie and Fitch, I guess. As a final touch, the building will also contain - you guessed it - more apartments. Woo-ha. I don't hate Campustown 2000 by any means, but this particular idea just seems more than a bit overblown.
2/8/2000: It is 14F and brightly sunny this morning. Supposedly the high will reach 35F today. The snow has sort of melted away from the edges of some lawns, and is melting and refreezing on cement so that the roads are all dry and the sidewalks are a patchwork of dry cement and solid frozen ice at this point, but pretty much everything is still covered with snow and the land is white.
The Amazing Dream Dimension Movie 2000: Scene 28: I was counting up some cash to deposit in the bank for the Living Wage Campaign (small bills, unmarked!), when all of a sudden due to circumstances beyond my control I was with Ben and someone else (Aunt Barb?) walking/running along the side of a road covered with snow and slush (in Chicago?) on the way to an Art Museum, which we were to visit before attending some other event scheduled for the afternoon. I'd had to pay for other amusements we had done in the morning, but I got into the Art Museum for FREE, since it turned out I had a year's membership, as evidenced by the stamp on my hand. I'd gotten the membership a few months earlier when I'd stopped by the museum on the way to yet some other Important Event, possibly my sister's wedding. At any rate, the Art Museum was HUGE, a big modern all-open space with metal girder roof and no internal supports, kinda like McCormick place, but overlooking the lake (or was it an ocean?) and floor to ceiling several-stories high glass walls on all sides, overlooking water as far as the eye can see, to the point of vertigo, nothing but solid dark blue water, far below. (N.B: this tends to be a theme in these things...) Perhaps the building was on a cliff? It rather reminded me of the inside of Narita Airport, that same girdered ceiling and glass wall, split level inside so that there were some stairs up to a coffeehouse/restaurant overlooking the main floor, and up there was a bride, in full regalia, having a tantrum about something or other before her own wedding that afternoon. Back on the main floor, it seemed that most of the museum was taken up with items for sale, specifically wearable art - the exhibit was mainly on textiles, and one could buy sweaters, and huge shirts made of various and sundry thick papers, mainly off-white, some of them having muted patterns in greyish colors. The shirts were arrayed in metal "page flipping" frames, rather like posters. Ben was particularly interested in the pattern on a sweater with a red stripe on it, but it was absolutely huge. Did it remind me of George Washington, the muted colors? No. While I was giving my opinion, a slight whine and movement (would you like cheese with that?) out the corner of my eye caught my attention.
A pig was flying toward the window outside, soaring over the water. It was fairly large, and not live - rather, it was a large pink stylized piggy bank, with little black dot eyes, no mouth, aiming right at the window. I held my breath, and watched the pig crash through the window to the collective gasp of the people gathered on the floor. However, "crash" was for the most part a sound effect - the pig came through the window, broke it, some shards fell, but the entire window didn't fall - only the small piece where the pig flew through was knocked away. The pig continued on in a straight line, passing high up in the room, and crashed out the window on the other side of the room in similar fashion.
Sighs of relief went up from the crowd, and people resumed their shopping, wondering aloud what the pig had been, some sort of freak accident good gracious don't let that happen again, at least the window didn't fall can you even IMAGINE? ...and the whine resumed.
The pig was back, retracing its earlier path. It flew in the out hole, back into the room, but this time trailing a long banner grasped in its mouth, the sort of banner you might see trailing from planes over the stadium on football Saturdays. It was white, plastic, flapping, proclaiming "Buy Now, Macy's All Day Sale, 70% Off." It flew across the room, steady speed, staying on course, right out the in hole and out over the water, where it disappeared to a microscopic pink dot, at which point the crowd came alive, this time with enthusiastic gushing, wow, that was the best ad campaign I've ever SEEN, Marge, did you see it? Flying? The font on the sign, the graceful flight, what firm was responsible, really, this is a new AGE, can you even IMAGINE?
2/7/2000: It is 25F and lightly misty this morning, though with a generally clear sky that is destined to turn bright blue. The snow has been melting off, and will continue to do so today, with a high of 38F. Thing is, it all refreezes every night, making for some interesting pratfalls in the morning. Three separate people fell right on their butts outside the Espresso while I was having coffee this AM.
Friday I went to rotating dinner at 705 S. Race which is one block from my house, in the upstairs. It's a nice apartment up there! This upcoming week, I am making food for the dinner, I'm planning to make dumplings but vegetarian so I'll be experimenting with TVP (textured vegetable protein, Yet Another Form Of Soy). Supposedly you can reconstitute it into a ground meat substitute pretty easily. I'll be using mushrooms for the meat too, but I don't want to go only with 'shrooms as they are flavorful and expensive, and I don't wanna overpower things. Should turn out good, though. At the rotating dinner I met Liz who works at Caffe Paradiso. We saw each other all the time there but never really sat and had a chat, so it was way cool. I also had some fun sitting on the floor and blowing a really thin translucent black scarf around, and other people joined in. Blowing up into the middle makes it fly upwards like a jellyfish, which looks quite interesting.
This weekend also I got a blue aluminum cup which is destined to be my new favorite cup, and I measured my room for shelves, vaccumed, and did a lot of reading.
2/4/2000: It is 24F and snowing this morning. Total whiteness. Extra fun is because underneath the new snow is still the flat slick ice from yesterday.
Today I will be having some free lunch which is pizza from Papa Del's. Our building is starting up some monthly lunch gathering for staff. Last night I had some free dinner at the School, and then tonight once again I'll have some dinner at 705 S. Race. Group travelling dinner is a wonderful thing. Last night we had some soup that had various greens in it, like potato greens and squash greens and stuff, plus squash and various vegetables and polenta and all sorts of stuff. Quite tasty.
On a snowy day like today you might like to read about Wilson Bentley, the guy who took lots of snowflake pictures, or cut out some paper snowflakes for yourself.
2/3/2000: It is 32F this morning with a bright clear sky. Quite the warm up! However, before dawn we had some freezing rain which, while it didn't melt the snow (just made it somewhat crustier) did deposit a nice invisible ice layer on the roads and sidewalks, making walking to work a nice adventure. Worst was outside the Espresso Royale on Oregon St, there's a curb cut there (so, slope down to the road at the corner) that might as well have been teflon-covered. Ordinarily, no big deal, I can remain on my feet and slide down to the street. Problem was, there's a huge muddy thick brown water puddle with ice in it there at the street corner which I was aimed right at... luckily I was able to grab a little metal pole at the top of the slope and haul myself out of imminent pants-soakage. Things are safe now though, by the time I came out, they'd salted. I'm quite enjoying the warm weather though. We're supposed to see 40s F by Monday!
It seems the school is having community dinners again. I'll definitely have to stop by this evening. I need to go to the supermarket too, to get stuff to run the crockpot. Lately I've subscribed to a nifty crockpot mailing list and gotten tons and tons of amazing recipes. The good thing is these recipes use actual raw food. I hate it when recipes call for all sorts of expensive pre-prepared stuff... though I gotta say, when crockpot recipes call for precooked chicken, I've never had a problem with just tossing in a whole chicken, I mean, it's gonna cook for 10 hours anyway!! You get a little more liquid, but that never bugs me.
Why I need a porch Peeve: Icicles have dripped off my roof (not too many, I did clean my gutters after all) onto the welcome mat, which is now frozen to the stoop in some sort of treacherous decoupage. Hopefully a porch will be happening in May or thereabouts.
2/2/2000: It is 7F this morning with a white-grey sky, apparently caused by some kinda high-level mist. The high is forecast to hit 29F this afternoon. Tomorrow it will actually get above freezing, which means that some of the snow will start melting. We had snow 2 weeks ago Wednesday and it's not melted off in the time since, then this past weekend it snowed the whole weekend. This coming weekend it might even rain, dunno. There are huge icicles everywhere, particularly on houses where people didn't clean out their gutters. Over at OJC we broke some off and had swordfights with them. Last year there was so much ice on one of the lamps on the outside of the building that it fell off. The ripply texture is really neat, it's exactly like stalactites and stalagmites inside a cave, only they develop in a few days rather than millions of years.
Today is Candlemas, also known as the cross-quarter day. Right now the slope of the daylight amounts graph is at maximum, which means that right now the increases in daylight from day to day are moving very fast. We should be able to obviously tell the changes from one day to the next. Ben and I have already been noticing the longer days, when it's 5:15 and still light out. Moving towards spring! One of my favorite days in the whole year is the first Sunday in April when the time changes back to CDT, and in one day darkness goes from 6:30 to 7:30 PM. It's great to sit outside on that day when it's warm and I can wear a short sleeved shirt maybe.
It's time to order seeds and it looks like some of us might be going in on some heirloom seeds for our gardens, tomatoes and peppers and the like. I don't know if I'll have ground ripped up on the south side in time, but if not, I can probably mix some plants right in with my flowers.
2/1/2000: Amazing and Amusement!! I have finally resumed updating this lame page! Unfortunately I'm doing it after work tonight, and I need to go run and teach CLAM, so more excitement will need to wait until tomorrow. But I'm no longer sick, and things should resume their usual schedule o' updating.
