Oh man. I made the blackberry pie of blackberry pies, from berries I picked by the river. Wish I could be sure of duplicating it.
I don't know why, but "Jersey Tomatoes" sounds like a euphemism for something.
Maybe bald guys with sunburned heads?
I may simply stop emerging from the bathtub.
When your voices tell you to just relax today. (Hard to see, I know there are better George Booth bathtub cartoons, but cannot find any online.)
2: "If only I had shown him my heirlooms."
As for the being-super-hot thing, I went for a run yesterday in DC and was having serious trouble cooling down afterwards, despite really cold AC and water. The solution in the end? Heebie's ice-chewing trick! Worked like a charm.
I wonder sometimes if Stormcrow has an incredibly well organized box of index cards near his computer.
Being hot apparently makes me want to make hot foods. I just put the recipe for what I made for dinner tonight on the wiki. It was delicious, but it made the kitchen so hot.
The solution in the end?
Not running.
7: I used to, but I outsourced it to Google (and my wife would guffaw at the the thought that I could have anything "incredibly well organized").
On heat and tomatoes: I've discovered now two perfectly lovely tomatoes turned to melty rot on their plate on the counter, a pool of tomato water under them, no doubt due to heat. What to do?
I'm putting everything else, pretty much (i.e. pears, bread) in the fridge, but I have a real *no fridge for tomatoes* thing drilled into me.
What to do?
Go see a really bad stand-up comic? I mean, there's no reason to let the things go to waste.
You could take yours to this remarkably orgy-like event.
I just hide in the air conditioning all day.
When life gives you rotten tomatoes, make rottentomatoade.
14: Me too. It's getting on my nerves. I'm, like, planning my life around air conditioning.
Had a nice day at the beach today, followed by a trip to my air-conditioned office. It was pretty hot today but nothing too unbearable. It would be nice to have a really good tomato, though.
I can't believe you guys aren't more excited about the tomato-throwing festival in Spain I linked above. I'm thinking about booking a ticket.
It looks like hell. That would be my hell.
Huh, I miss being in Spain at the right time by 2 days. Not that I would rearrange my trip in order to experience AWB's hell.
It really does look pretty hellish, doesn't it? Like some Bruegelian nightmare vision.
You guys are all like mineshaft, mineshaft, transgressive sexuality, blah blah blah but when it comes time to step up to some actual group homoeroticism, it's all "woah! that looks like hell!"
I'm onto your game.
I'd rather go to an actual orgy than get punched in the face, have wet underthings, and smell like food all day, yes. And I have turned down all invitations to orgies.
My last reaction, in extreme weather conditions, is "I would like to spend this time in a crowd."*
* To be sure, I have huddled with others for warmth on very cold nights.** It doesn't work that well, really -- it is incrementally less miserable than being alone.***
** The coldest of which I spent wondering, sincerely, whether I would lose my feet to frostbite.
*** And hugging a tree stump. Don't judge me.
We're into week four or five of our garden tomatos. Where by "garden" I mean "large pots placed in the driveway in the only spot that gets light", but it's enough. Sprite, Sungold, Legend, Lime Green Salad, and Stupice. Beefsteaks are boring.
What? Huddling with others for warmth in conditions of extreme cold works better than, well, than stalking off by yourself.
Tangentially: you've read "How to Survive in the Woods", right?
Our garden tomatoes have only now started coming ripe (stupid cold wet June), but I had a fresh sungold the other day and I can be patient for that kind of goodness.
It's quite pleasant here in middle country. Y'all should come visit. It's been hot enough for my wife to complain about it, but that start at like 80 degrees, so...
27: If I wanted to read, I'd go to school. I have not read it, but I've read some similar books (like The Jungle Is Neutral -- titles that make one wonder why women put up with men's pompous braggadocio, even as one indulges in it) and taken field courses along similar lines. As a rule, the back of the book never mentions that one of the tricks is the ol' T.E. Lawrence/G. Gordon Liddy "not minding it."
You've got to be fucking kidding me. You people have tomatoes already? We're lucky if the plants are even flowering.
Insanely late end to the rainy season has screwed up everything, and worse, it brought mosquitoes. One of the first things I noticed when I moved here was that people didn't need screens on their windows. Imagine it! But now the mosquitoes are everywhere. All is ruined.
In MN they're saying the wet is causing mosquitos eggs from two years ago to hatch (relatively dry the last two years), so bumper crop.
Also apparently this year represents a renaissance of earwigs, but I haven't personally had the pleasure.
On the bright side, my neighbor whose garden I've been watering for the past two weeks has returned and given me a bottle of 12-year-old single malt Scotch. And do you know what it's called? Tomatin. That's so plate of shrimp.
I don't doubt that your field courses were excellent. I've never taken such things, and am a total amateur. I just had a moment of sympathy, and thought of a bit in "How to Survive" which explains that IF you can build a fire, and IF you have boulders or a cliff-face around, you want to situate yourself and the fire in a counter-intuitive way: build the fire against the cliff-face, with yourself facing it.*
Do not put yourself back against the rock wall with the fire in front of you. That's dumb.
* See, that never would have occurred to me. So the book is okay.
33 to 29.
I knew of a band called Plate o' Shrimp. That phrase actually means something?
33: That makes sense. Also, and this advice has filled me with fear since I first heard it, when you pick a campsite, you have to select not only for protection from the wind but from the danger of trees and rocks falling on you while you sleep. I have never felt at all confident about that part.
35: Hm. Where are we camping again? I can see not setting up underneath an overhanging rock or something, but the trees? The trees are in danger of falling? What is wrong with these trees?
Sorry, I forgot you might not be able to see that. Did you finally upgrade your internet access, or are you still in beep-boop-krsch mode?
It's been in the 70s and sunny across the bay during the day. Too bad that's not where I live.
Here at Chaco it got up to 100 degrees today. But it's a dry heat.
It's been cooler here. But a lot wetter. And windy - my washing line got broken.
KR and Fleur had awesome tomatoes at their house last year. I want to go again and eat them. And sing karaoke!
Yesterday BF was very wonky from the weather, and we have AC.
I went to the beach at Memorial Day, and it was gorgeous and hot, but the water doesn't warm up (outside of Nantucket and the Vineyard) until August. So, I was hot, but it was too cold in the water to cool off comfortably.
Jesus,
My aunt used to live in your area, but she now lives in Ashland. I think that their growing has gone well.
Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk on the American Tobacco Trail, the southernmost part of it where it crosses over from Durham County to Chatham County. It's a stretch of graveled and/or paved trails through the woods with a bridge over a large creek and occasional glimpses of the homes of extremely wealthy people who have gone to great lengths to let the rest of the rubbish know where their properties begin. It felt blazing hot when I started but then thunderstorms started moving in and bringing some really amazing breezes with them. That cut my walk in ~half though it never actually rained on me; I chickened out due to big booming thunder. Either that section of the trail is woefully underutilized or not a lot of other people decided to defy the weather report, as I saw maybe ten other people in the two hours or so I spent walking. When I got back to the car I experienced air conditioning like never before. Amazing.
Oh, fuck to oboe, I just channeled bob.
Off topic, but this bears on the story of the $800 repossession from a few weeks ago: trying to collect a debt that doesn't exist, from the wrong person, by seizing property belonging to another person who is also the wrong person.
That story is insane, Alex! Would make a good law school final question: identify each and every potential cause of action and defendant arising out of the stated facts.
I'm a little sunburnt from walking across snowfields on Saturday, but otherwise, nothing to complain about in our sweet short summer.
What's been really maddening about the heat is that I haven't been on my bike for three weeks. Combination of the heat, vacation, a bad cold I brought back from vacation, and it's just been ages.
Oh LB. Your bike loves you. It will wait for you patiently. When you are reunited, things might be a little awkward for a couple blocks, but then the two of you will make beautiful music take a magic carpet ride get going pretty good together.
Once upon a time, every US schoolboy and girl knew that there were truck farms in New Jersey. We didn't quite know what a "truck farm" was (like a junkyard?), but NJ apparently was the place to find them.
From a release by the NJ Agriculture Dept:
New Jersey ranks 2nd in the nation in blueberry production growing 38 million pounds of berries each year.
The state is also 3rd in the nation in cranberry production and 4th in peach production.
And it does pretty well in bell peppers, too.
52: Maybe from this kind of publicity?
Interestingly, Wikipedia says the term basically means vegetable cash crops, and "truck" doesn't mean vehicle (or didn't).
"Truck" in "truck farm" means commerce -- it's the same usage as "have no truck with". A truck farm grows fruit and vegetables for sale to consumers.
And there's a reason they call Jersey the Garden State. It's a shame about all the suburbs sitting on good farmland, but there's a still a lot of farmland left.
We still call vegetables "row crops" or "truck crops", and people understand that to mean something pickers would harvest for purchase at the grocery store. (I had always thought it came from being loaded on trucks, so I was wrong about that.) Grains and feed are "field crops" even if they are also planted in rows.
Now I'm thinking about canning tomatoes, which are clearly truck crops, but are picked by big machine harvesters and don't go straight to the grocery.
23: For what it's worth, I would totally engage in homoerotic tomato hurling with you. Or pretty much anyone. Peoplez.
56: I don't know if I'd like large-group tomato hurling, but it seems like it could be fun among friends. That's how I feel about a lot of things, though I can't think of a way to write that sentence without implying "laydeez" should end it.
||
Finally just saw bad photos of the 16-year-old I was asking about. He's clearly tall, his feet are huge, and he's not ridiculously think. Since he doesn't have aggression problems, I'm not worried about being so much smaller than he is. He seems great. But thank you for all the help when I was trying to figure things out!
|>
but the water doesn't warm up (outside of Nantucket and the Vineyard) until August
Buzzard's Bay was already warm enough for swimming in June this year. The wind picks up in the afternoon, though; the water can be bathtub warm in the morning and a little too cold for comfort by 2pm.
but I have a real *no fridge for tomatoes* thing drilled into me.
Abslutely, if you're going to eat them cold might as well buy the styrofoam varieties they sell at the store. Which means that when the tomaot crop comes in big i have to do things like make huge amounts of gazpacho, which of course can go into the frig or even the freezer for later eating. When my farmer boy father in law's garden is hopping there's about 3 weeks where I don't eat anything but fresh picked corn and tomatoes/gazacho. best time of the year.
Unfortunately father in law is now 92 and not gardening much, I'm too lazy, and wife's tomatoes have caught some type of blight. The thought of a 2nd year without fresh tomatoes (last year weather was no good, rained all June here in CT) means that i will have to face the end of summer - and start of a new school year - without the great consolation of summer's end.
I find it amusing that the 'local' table at the grocery store has lots of flies on all the tomatos, where as the regular tomatos from a greenhouse in montana or wherever has no bugs on it at all. reminds me of that 'mcdonalds terminates composting program because its food won't decompose' story
last night the power was off, and not having a big fan made life almost unlivable. it was very weird though, there seemd to be like 5volts on the mains, since anything with an LED would just flicker constantly.
I also wish my apartment was smaller, though they don't make smaller in america (at least outside manhattan or maybe next to a beach). two window ACs and they still don't do much during the late afternoon.
Oh, to be in Jersey, now that tomatoes are here.
LA near the ocean turns out to be not that bad, but oh my Lord was it ever hot at the amusement park on Saturday.
OT: OK, last time I bother you guys with this. Which one of these phones would you get?
LG?
Bb1?
Bb2?
OK, nevermind. I just picked one. I don't know what half these words mean; I just need a global phone that I can email on.
Why wouldn't you get a fancy android phone?
64: Aaaah! I was just writing a long rambly comment about the relative desirability of keyboards vs. screen space and the utter evil of the MicroSoft Corporation.
I'm sort of cheap about phones. I know everyone is sword-fighting with their iPhones and Androids these days, but I can't be compelled to give a shit. I've just gotten whatever came free the last four times I've gotten phones, every two years.
The LG one looks ugly and it looks like it squeezes text on the screen in a barely-readable way.
Of course, I have an iPhone, so I am a brainwashed zombie who thinks aesthetics is the only consideration.
I got the Bb Storm one. At least it doesn't look as douchey as the ones with buttons.
blackberries seem like the sort of thing you only get because your company requires you to get it
actually the only thing i really wish my (almost smartphone that is coming up on replacement) phone had was some way to load txt/pdf files to have some reading material for waiting rooms/waiting for lunch partners etc.
That was the attraction of the LG phone--it has Adobe Reader and Word on it. While I'm traveling, I have a lot of research to do.
66: I was just writing a long rambly comment about the relative desirability of keyboards vs. screen space and the utter evil of the MicroSoft Corporation.
Then you're the perfect person (not really) for this "pre-review preview" of MS's Windows 7 phone form TechCrunch (the reviewer luvved the keyboard--different strokes I guess).
While lovely, Windows Phone 7 has an absolutely ridiculous mountain to climb. Microsoft is returning as an underdog in an arena where they once reigned as champion -- and they're an underdog with weights tied to their feet and a reputation of being too old to fight. They're miles behind the competition, both in timing and functionality.
I'm surprised the Blackberry doesn't have a built-in PDF viewer. Looks like it's possible to download and install one, though.
Wow, an underdog with weights tied to their feet and a reputation for being too old.
When Polly's in trouble I am not slow,
It's hip, hip, hip and awaaaaay I go!
I don't even really know what a smartphone does except give cokeheads something to do rather than make eye contact, but I guess my stereotypes are several years out of date. It also allows Bave to tell me where things are when I can't find them, and ends fights during Scrabble games.
From all reports the Storm kinda blows. Would cheerfully accept being proved wrong on that.
I turns my friends into less interesting people who can't maintain focus or remember basic manners.
the Storm kinda blows
Leave the weather forecast alone, pal.
79: Was this posted by the smartphone itself? Not only smart but self-deprecating? Have I already been rendered obsolete?
81: In retrospect I realize the stupid and self-deprecating niche was still mine.
You are stupid. I am not self-deprecating.
Asshole blackberries are the ultimate low-hanging fruit.
Asshole blackberries
Klingons, I think they're called.
I know everyone is "sword"-fighting-fencing with their iPhones and Androids these days
Fixed.
88: There's another meaning to "sword fight" you might want to consider.
58: Singing beach in Manchester was not warm enough.
Can you get to Buzzard's Bay by commuter rail.
Crane's Beach is also accessible by commuter rail and shuttle.
Raising the bar on Windows Phone 7 stinker reviews.
The LG phone in 63* looks a lot like my Canadian phone. If it's the same size, the screen is kind of small, but it's possible to adjust the text size. The description says it has a slide out keyboard, which I don't have, so I can't comment on the wait, and I don't have a smartphone, so I can't comment on anything else either. I've been more or less happy with it, but I'm still going to see if I can upgrade to a smartphone.
*btw, fuck you Verizon for forcing me to enter a zip code, but I guess since I don't even know where 22222 is, jokes on you)
since I don't even know where 22222 is
The People's Republic of Arlington, VA.
||
Some Washington Post dude opines on Elizabeth Warren for the new consumer protection agency:
There are two questions in play in evaluating candidates for this, or, frankly, any high government job. First is whether their ideology would lead them toward decisions that are good public policy....
On the first point, the new consumer financial protection regulator will need to balance the protection of consumers from unscrupulous, exploitative, or dangerous loans and other financial products with the benefits that come from financial innovation. We want a world in which fewer people end up in way over their heads in debt or face ridiculous financial fees. But we also don't want a world in which only rich people can buy a house, middle class families can't handle unexpected expenses by putting them on a credit card, and the 21st century equivalent of the ATM will not be invented because a regulator stands in the way.
Whta is he talking about, o people who understand finance? Is this even remotely a realistic risk, or is this like saying "OMG we can't have a a Consumer Product Safety Commission because then people can't put lead in children's toys!!!"
(His second point, about managerial experience, seems more fair to me.)
||>, or not, as you please
96: They just want to be sure that the stupider consumers can still be fleeced enough that Post reporters don't have to pay fees for checking.
What is he talking about, o people who understand finance?
He's saying Elizabeth Warren will cause interest rates to shoot to the moon ('only rich people can buy a house')!
"OMG we can't have a a Consumer Product Safety Commission because then people can't put lead in children's toys!!!"
s/b OMG we can't have a a Consumer Product Safety Commission because then people can't feed their children lead.
Seriously, this is nonsense. Even in 1949-1979 when regulations were as tight as they ever got, people bought houses and had credit cards. Putting Warren in charge is not going to cause finance to stop lending money. It might lower their profit margins though, which is why they're unhappy with Warren. I read this as a banking lobbyist push to get Obama to knock Warren out early.
max
['Just the usual sleaze this is.']
Yay, max, I was hoping you would be around. Thanks; now I can write my letter to the editor in good conscience.
['Brackets are back! With British quotation marks. {Or possibly inverted commas. Silly phrase}.']
Thanks; now I can write my letter to the editor in good conscience.
Ah. Go for it. The argument he's making is the same argument everyone made against any kind of reregulation, back before FinReg got off the ground - ANY regulation would somehow 'stop financial innovation'. Somehow stopping 'financial innovation' always results in banks not lending any money anymore (no credit cards, no mortgages, no nothing) which means, heh, all the banks then promptly go out of business. Never happened before, no matter how big the regulatory hammer used.
Damn, that's a stupid argument that guy put up. The more I think about it the more annoyed I get. WTF gets rid of the 21st century equivalent of the ATM? Except a regulation that says, 'the 21st century equivalent of the ATM is banned!' Sheesh.
['Brackets are back! With British quotation marks. {Or possibly inverted commas. Silly phrase}.']
People get confused when I don't use the brackets. They also get unhappy when I DO use the brackets.
max
['Damned if I do, damned if I don't.']
though really i think the main problem with 'payday lending' etc is that people have shit incomes to begin with (and to borrow against), not anything specific about those people vs. chase/boa/etc
96: The editorial is 100% bullshit. Does he think that in '60s and '70s, before regulation, only rich people owned houses?
This is so awesome: I don't even really know what a smartphone does except give cokeheads something to do rather than make eye contact.
101: Seeing as how 'financial innovation' is what tanked the economy in the first place, I have no problem with stopping it altogether. ATMs aren't financial innovation anyway, they are technological innovation. Financial innovation is finding new ways to conceal fees and penalties.
106: It's also finding new ways to conceal risks in things banks are selling to people, and if they get innovative enough, to conceal the risks in their own side of the trade from themselves.
To be scrupulously fair, in some cases regulations can have an impact on innovation (I understand some microfinance in India is burdened by regulations on financial institutions), but nothing in megaphone distance of FinReg, or even, say, what Bernie Sanders would impose if he were temporary dictator.
The only reason Elizabeth Warren shouldn't head the consumer agency is that she should be secretary of the damn treasury.
110: Who is going to be the other co-dictator? Zombie Karl Marx?
Though I would consider other nominations.
We could use someone smart and self-deprecating, peep, IYKWIMAITYD.
But, thanks to financial innovation, I can have a picture of a cat on my credit card so that when I go to McDonald's I can say, "You're buying, but I get to eat the cheezburgur."
We'll be voting this fall on a referendum to limit interest for payday and title loans to 35%. Innovate that!
117: For purposes of this loan, one year equals 7 days. Calculated as such, the APR of this loan is only 25%.
I can innovate anything that doesn't increase social welfare.