Sign of the Times

The former Dain Rauscher Plaza:

One Side of a Conversation …

… that I had yesterday afternoon with a co-worker:

Thanks! Yep, Ann Taylor. I just got it. No, I literally just got it, like five minutes ago.

Because I was walking outside on the way back from lunch and a pigeon pooped on my sweater.

No, I’m dead serious. It was in two places on my sweater and all over my wallet.

But did you see what I was wearing earlier? It was a green-and-white argyle sweater, and the poop landed on the white part right in the middle of my chest. And I’m not sure I knew this before, but pigeon poop is not white. It looked like I dropped a Hershey bar on myself. Even just in the four blocks back to the office people were staring and I really didn’t want people staring at my chest all day, so I had to get this.

Oh, sure, I love an excuse to shop. I’m not denying that.

You’d think, but this isn’t even the first time. When my husband and I went to visit his folks when they were living in Dallas, we went to the aquarium there and in the rainforest exhibit, a parrot or a toucan or something pooped all over my sweater then, too. And that one was cashmere! I was so pissed.

No, you’re fine -- it’s totally funny now. It wasn’t funny when I was walking around wearing pigeon poop, but it’s funny now. See you later!

Anniversary

Because M is an incredibly good sport, we spent last night -- our fourth anniversary -- at a Twins game. The tickets came courtesy of Tom, one of the outside counsels used by M's company and an all-around mensch who helps M keep his sanity at work. Turned out to be good seats, too!

The cute couple next to us, who took the picture above, have been married thirty years.

The All-Star ballot. Had to vote for some current Twins and my former boyfriend.

Home-town Joe.

Shortstop Brendan Harris. Pros: He wears the short pants, which we likey (the long pants look more like pajamas than baseball). Cons: His performance at bat.

The Good Doctor, Justin Morneau (the best thing to come out of Canada since the round meat on eggs benedict), just before he homered up to the second deck. Boom!

Ladies and gentlemen, closer extraordinaire Joe Nathan.

And on the walk home from the train, we saw two bunnies and six kitties. It was a good night!

P.S. We were especially tickled to be sharing June 17 as a wedding date with some very happy couples in California.

Do NOT "Suck on This"

Last year, I documented here how much I like my business line within the company. It’s small, it’s entrepreneurial (compared to the other business lines here), and the people are just great. Proof of that: a bunch of them are big fans, as I am, of “The Office.” This is why there’s a Schrutebuck and a photo of a Support the Rabid bracelet posted in our common area.

I’ve also documented here how crappy the systems-conversion-slash-merger was this year. The fallout is, well, it’s still happening, but things calmed down for me around June 1. Before that, it was pretty bad. One of the things that helped was knowing I could come into work on any Friday morning and, say, open my Outlook inbox to see an e-mail from our associate general counsel reading "Fashion show at lunch!" or "It's just noise coming out of an ugly scientist."

On a particularly ugly Friday (it might have been the Friday before our annual conference – the same Friday I actually broke down in tears during a phone call with our CIO, Jeff), Tammy opened my office door, slipped her hand in, and slapped a huge Post-it on the back of my door. It read SUCK ON THIS. I laughed so hard that I almost fell out of my chair. (If you saw the episode, you know Michael’s going-away present to Toby, his nemesis in the office, is a Post-it reading SUCK ON THIS wrapped around a rock. If you missed it, go here.)

That was at least three weeks ago and every time I close my office door, I see the Post-it and laugh. I thought a couple of times about taking it down, but then Tammy will come into my office for something-or-other and see it and laugh, and I’ll decide to leave it up some more. You know, for office morale.

Well.

I just met with a very nice person from Compliance (which, you know, is like Legal and HR – they’re not the department you want to mess with in a corporate environment) whom I'd never met before. The meeting was in my office. John came in, introduced himself, was very cordial and pleasant, and sat down. I got up to close the door and as the door was 90% closed (really, it was like it was in slow motion), I realized that the giant neon Post-it reading "SUCK ON THIS" was still there. I froze.

John saw either the Post-it or the horror on my face (which made him then look at the Post-it) and kind of looked at me.

"Um, do you watch ‘The Office’?" I asked.

"Sometimes, but not often," he replied.

"Oh, see, this is a joke,” I said feebly, “because one of the characters… you know, it's probably not the best thing for me to … anyway, I'll just take this down now."

He didn’t say anything else about it or reference it on his way out, but I sorta gotta wonder whether I’ll get the call from HR.

This Year's Peony Blooms

Storm Damage?

Given everything going on in Hugo, Austin and Iowa, I have very little to complain about in terms of storms these days. That said, I wasn't thrilled to walk out Sunday morning and see this.
The storm that passed through on Saturday night was quick, but very intense. Even with all the windows closed, the wind just absolutely howled. (It put me in the mood to watch "The Hound of the Baskervilles.") Sunday morning revealed that our grill cover was blown off, my watering can had been picked up and flung across the yard, plenty of birch limbs were down in the front yard and -- bummer! -- three of my four tomato trellises had been blown over on top of the tomato plants.

I was pretty worried about the plants, which looked crushed by the trellises, but after I carefully untangled them and propped them back up, they seem to be doing okay. Guess we'll see after a few days whether they truly weathered the storm.

Exterior Makeover in Progress

When we bought the house five years ago, we did a lot much in terms of fixing up the interior of the house (painted all the rooms, laid new carpet), but nearly nothing to the exterior. It's finally time, for some practical as well as aesthetic reasons.

• In terms of the practical, quite a few of the storm windows had rotten wood and we weren't sure whether the wood of the actual windows (under the storms) was rotten, too.
• Another practical point: plenty of the screens -- especially on the front porch, where they're a necessity for enjoying that part of the house without bugs -- were rusted or had holes in them.
• In terms of the aesthetics, the stucco is a bit dingy, and the off-white trim alongside the off-white stucco is soooo boring, as evidenced below.

So over the past few weeks, we've done things here and there to lay the groundword for really re-doing the windows and trim. (Dingy or not, the stucco will have to wait -- it's about a $15,000 investment. That would finance several trips to Europe, which we'd rather do than worry about the stucco right now.) Ron and M discussed how to handle the rotting wood on the storms, we took the screens to the hardware store to get them re-done, and M and Tim took down various storms.

We discussed new color (yay! After years of living in white apartments, I get so excited about adding color to the house) for the trim, and settled on the idea of black trim (hoping the contrast with the off-white stucco will make it look a little less dingy) and red doors. I think I originally got the idea from a house featured in one of my gardening magazines, but the color scheme is illustrated nicely by the weird little shed below.

So, Saturday morning, I picked up the paint from Home Depot (had a horrible retail experience -- more on that later) and we got right to it. M handled most of the scraping/sanding of old crackled paint and I followed behind with primer. When it came time to paint, we decided that I'd do the "cut-in" (the outlining) with the black because my hands are smaller and could more easily get into the crevices around the windows without making a big mess.

We moved at a snail's pace on Saturday -- it takes a while to get into the swing of these projects, plus you have to be pretty careful when using black paint against a white background. The kitchen windows took me a couple of hours just to cut in. We gave up around 7:30 p.m. -- still plenty of daylight but we were exhausted.

Up at 8:00 a.m. the next morning (great weather and a wonderful temperature for being outside), we knocked out the second coats on the side windows pretty quickly. M went in search of a taller extension ladder than the one we had, while I started working on cutting in the back windows. (Sooo glad we started with the side windows -- which are much less visible than the front or the back-- because I felt like I knew what I was doing by the time we got to the back.)

Here's the cut-in in progress:

And the finished product around 6:00 p.m. that evening:

Honestly, my first thought when looking at it was, "Aw, it looks like a real house." :)

Next up:

• Tonight, I'll paint the windows in the "treehouse" (that's the second story in the back, where we sometimes put out folding chairs and get a bird's-eye view of the backyard), which M sanded and primed yesterday.
• Then we'll move to the second story windows in the front, which we can access by crawling through the bedroom windows.
• After that, it's on to the second story windows on the side of the house (for which we need the biiiiig extension ladder), and finally the porch windows, which we're saving for last because they're so visible from the street and so much work.
• Oops, and then the garage windows, too. That'll do it for the trim.
• We'll finish up by repairing the front and back doors, and painting them red, along with the two doors to the garage.

Whew! Glad we got this started -- it's going to take a while.

Veranda Rug

Toward the end of last summer, I read an article in the Strib about backyard trends: what was "in" and what was "out."

Tangent: While I understand that there are trends in home decor just as there are in fashion, they strike me as even more stupid. I might drop $30 on a pair of trendy shoes that will be "out" next year, but I'm much more likely to spend more on something that a) has a bit more longevity and 2) that I like regardless of whether it's in. Given that housing projects generally cost exponentially more than shoes (at least, on my budget), I tend to scoff at the idea of making, say, my backyard "trend-right."

Back to this article from last year. I generally enjoy the "House and Garden" section of the Strib (particularly the Greengirls blog -- love them), so this stupid piece might have been a fluke. Among the things that were declared "out" were outdoor rugs. Stop trying to make your backyard look like your living room, the author scolded. Enjoy the grass instead of a rug under your feet.

Um, excuse me, but I've never tried to make my backyard look like my living room. And who the hell puts an oudoor rug on grass? There is a perfect good reason for us to have an outdoor rug: the spot that I romantically refer to as our "veranda" is, in truth a concrete slab. Without some serious help, it's ugly as all get-out. Plus, it's not terribly comfortable on the feet.

Last year, I found a big square of tan indoor/outdoor carpet (if you can call it that -- it felt like plastic) at Lowe's for about $30. Cut to size, it definitely took the edge -- visually and under-foot -- off the concrete. But after leaving it out all winter (my bad -- I really didn't do any pre-winter backyard prep last year. Stupid conversion.), it was pretty mildewed. Plus, even before then (as shown in this photo from last May), it didn't really add much.
So after quite a bit of looking, I found this terrific tan-and-blue one online. It's recycled polypropylene, feels incredibly soft underfoot, and really adds a little something to the erstwhile concrete slab. So much for trends -- thanks anyway, Strib.

Despite the Squirrels ...

... the dwarf sunflowers seem to be doing well, now that I've moved them to a new location. They've set a number of buds and open up a little more every day.

Ready for a Close-Up

A few weeks ago, we got a new camera. For quite some time, I'd been continually frustrated by my inability to take non-blurry close-ups in the garden, as evidenced by this shot from last summer.


Some of that it definitely my fault: I've got extremely limited skills in the photography department, plus my hands tend to shake just enough to affect the outcome (although this never seems problematic or even noticable unless I'm holding a camera). My own shortcomings aside, our previous camera was about four years old, being a wedding gift M and I gave to each other. It worked fine, but as happens with most "consumer electonics," camera technology has really improved in those few years.

After reading an NYT article about the newer optical stabilizing features, I did a little Consumer Reports research and picked out a camera that I thought would do the trick. The bad news: I didn't really think about how inconvenient a camera that uses standard batteries (even when you take rechargeables into consideration) would be. The good news: National Camera Exchange is awesome and let me swap out the initial purchase for a slightly better model that includes a lithium-ion rechargeable battery: the wonderful Olympus Stylus 1010.

The result? Photos I never could have taken before, including those below. Click on any of them to see just how crisp the detail is.

Oh, and in addition to providing fantastic customer service, National Camera Exchange includes a voucher for a free photography class with every camera purchase. Between the class, which I'll take sometime this summer, and the new camera, I'm really tickled about what's in store for photgraphing the garden this year.

Work-Day Twins Outing

Whatever Aeric's selling, L1 isn't buying it.


We didn't plan to order this much tequila, but it was two-for-one with a game ticket!

The Finishing Touches

Not to suggest that I'm done making changes for the year, but for the most part, the beds in the backyard are done!

Back Bed

Here's how it "started" (after I cleaned it all up) this year.

A few weeks later (you can tell by how much bigger the perennials got), here's how it looked after rearranging some things (according to the nerdy garden plan) and adding a few new items.

Here's the final (for now) version, after adding the alyssum edging.

Tomato Beds

These are pretty much the same as last year, but with more teepees (so each tomato plant gets its own support) and alyssum edging.

Front Bed

By the end of last year, the stachys (lamb's ears) had completely taken over the front bed. They looked really ratty by mid-summer and then just kept getting bigger until they almost swallowed up the nearby annuals. M's take: "Looks like you got ten pounds of sh-t in a five pound bag." (He's so eloquent. But he's right -- look below.)

So I pulled it all out and gave half of it to Seza ...
... making room for a totally different approach.

Here's what was left after the clean-up.

I added a mix of annuals and perennials, following the nerdy garden plan and emphasizing contrasting foliage and butterfly/bird appeal.

Got a little excited while doing the planting and thought, "What the heck -- I'll expand the bed a few square feet."

Here's the "final for now" version, complete with alyssum edging.

So am I done for the year? Not even close! Now come all the new projects (pending budgetary approval), including:

• A more permanent pathway between the patio and the hammock (last year's path was just some hardwood chips on the ground);
• A pathway around the side of the house, leading from the front to the veranda, edged by some interesting ornamentals;
• Installing a shade garden (I'm thinking Looking Glass and Jack Frost brunnera, Ghost and Japanese painted ferns, and maybe some space for flowering annuals like torenia -- definitely no impatiens) under the pine tree to make it prettier and reduce the amount of lawn we have;
• Moving the lilacs, currently languishing in the shade to the south of our patio, to a sunny spot next to the front porch so they can really do their thing;
• Something with the shady part of the back fence (virginia creeper? short reed fencing?);
• Putting in a bed of drought-resistant plants -- anchored by tall ornamental grasses -- outside our dining room window, giving us more privacy and less lawn;
• And, come fall, expanding all of the backyard beds so I can have more space for edibles, a small walking path through the beds and, again, less lawn. :)

Is all of this going to happen this year? Not likely (it's certainly not all likely to make it through the budget review process), but it's nice to dream.