Over the hill

Got off to a slightly slow start this morning, but eventually got on the road to HMB with both phones and did the test. Bottom line is both phones had a telephone signal on the beach, but the Sprint phone's signal was not as strong and it had no data signal, where AT&T was fine. So I will be switching.

While on the beach, the AT&T phone delivered email from my youngest sister, her husband had been in a bad bicycle crash, broke a femur, and now has pins and wires holding him together. So when they visit me next month the planned bike race is not going to be part of the trip. Two surprises - the bike was not hurt, and the surgeon is an Olympic medalist in crew and an avid bicycler, and the clinic is called  Olympic Medical Physicians, since it's on WA's Olympic Peninsula. Brother in law was biking down Hurricane Ridge at the time of the crash. Some other good news is all three vehicles stopped to help.

While I had her on the line, I asked her about compost, and she said that yes, I needed to put my food scraps in a blender or the food processor and add those shreds to the recycle center compost and let it heat up. And she also was surprised that there are no worms in the soil here, so I will see about buying some. She lives in a rain forest, so the concept of concrete-solid clay soil with no worms is foreign to her.

Sprint phone couldn't load email because no data signal. :-(

Relaxed on the beach, though it was difficult with the screaming children. Who teaches them to scream? Bloodcurdling ear-piercing screams, not shouts of joy.

The sun never broke through, so there were no bikinis on display, and it didn't start to get populated until I was getting ready to leave at around 3.

Stopped off at the More-or-Less for cheesy poofs and diet Coke. Also stopped off as planned at the succulents nursery, bought a pair of aloe plants (different varieties) and a couple of those brightly colored ball on top ones. The latter to add to the basket which I took down when they painted, in which most of the plants had died. The aloe will probably go in the front garden near the lilacs.

Home, plugged in the car, had fried rice and BBQ pork for dinner. Watched the second half of the Seahawks game. They did okay, but dropped balls and overthrown passes kept them from winning. They have a pretty good 2nd string QB and a couple of running backs who almost replace Beast Mode. Something which impressed me is when two of the defensive players were given headsets and interviewed by the announcers, they spoke proper English.

8:45 pm headed out to Saratoga for Ted's birthday pizza party. He actually holds one every other Friday for theater folks to gather. Mostly people are coming from a performance to unwind and balance the adrenalin with pizza. It was quite a crowd, and also included co-workers of his from Apple, and I finally found out what he does for a living. He's one of the project managers for the spaceship building project. Also finally met an actress I've been a fan of for a long time but never worked with or met before, so now we're FB friends. Also friended one of Ted's co-workers.

Left a little before midnight, got lots of hugs from friends.

Home, had some fruit and a thin mint ice cream patty.

Plans for tomorrow:
Start a compost project. Find worms.
Take the camera out to Don Edwards park, a place I have never been but have passed by a lot of times. It's a nature preserve.
There may be a football game to watch

Late --> Early

That was a very late night, and I slept till 10:30, if you ignore a couple of pee breaks. There was a lot of stuff to do online, so instead of going to the nature preserve, I was still at the computer researching composting worms at 1:30. None of the local garden places seem to sell worms, just worm casings (which apparently make good organic fertilizer). I found two places, though, both in SJ. The Worm Dude runs a mail-order business, didn't even have his address on the web site. I filled in the "contact us" form and asked if he allowed in-person pickups, and got a quick reply that he's only open by appointment on weekends, and to call him after 4:30 pm on weekdays. He gave me a list of the few things which could be ordered to pick up, two of them are possibilities.

And then I found a tiny fishing supply store in Little Saigon, way south SJ. They had small batches of night crawlers & redworms for cheap. So that was plan A. I drove down there, had to park a couple of blocks away. It isn't prejudice if it's learned from experience, so I'll say this: If you want to see the worst drivers and most insane way-too-small parking lots, find yourself a neighborhood which is half Vietnamese and half Latino. And then give most of them BMWs and monster pickup trucks.

I bought four sets of worms-in-a-plastic-tub. Two with a dozen big night crawlers and two with 25 each small redworms, packed in composted soil. On my way back to the car, I saw three massage parlors in that strip mall, and they were advertising half the price of my local ones. Next move was drive to the nearest BofA and get some cash, then back to the shopping center, which by now had some places to park. Had a very good massage from a Vietnamese woman who spoke pretty good English. She started off by saying that if I just wanted a massage, she would do that, but if I wanted "something extra" someone else would have to take her place. I stuck with her, and it was not a mistake.

Went straight home, took the worms inside, watched some football, and started thinking of all the places I would have to contact to change my phone number if I went with my original plan. It took three tries to get the right number, but I called AT&T and it only took about 10 minutes for them to port my number over to the new phone. Wiped the HTC phone, took some pix of it, and will eBay it soon. Will probably eBay the Verizon phone as well.

Dinner was steamed ha gow, sui mai and cha sui bow. One scoop of ice cream because I'm cutting back.

After 7 I watered the front garden, then plopped the contents of the worm tubs into four well composted places in the front garden. The theory is that they will burrow and eventually help break up the hard clay. But this was clearly just a start, I'll need the kind of quantity Worm Dude offers to make a good go of this.

A lot of the seeds I broadcast out front are germinating. Looks like bee's friend, but also at least two other flowers. Not seeing poppies yet.

Plans for tomorrow:
Lowe's, Home Depot and/or OSH to put together a composting project. My sister suggests steer manure and shredding my organic scraps, adding both of those to the "compost" from the dump. I'll need a container for the kitchen and another to sub for a compost pile since there is very limited space by the house for that. Probably where the tomatoes were,  but I'll need to level that space somehow.
Coffee with Janice in MV