Daily Archives: April 6, 2008

Friends, General, Weather +Climate

Slicing and Dicing. Chopped. Simmered.

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46  br steady 29.67 2mph ESE dewpoint 44 Spring

                     New Moon (Growing)

A light, but steady rain falls.  A cold rain.  The pre-emergent and the cygon I applied yesterday will get a chance to work themselves thoroughly into the soil and around the Iris rhizomes.  As the rain melts the remaining snow, I will have a few spots left to hit with the pre-emergent, but not many.  I’m ahead of the curve this year and hope to stay that way with regular, not too lengthy garden sessions.

A full stomach is a great aid to grocery shopping.  The list and only the list, so help me Martha.  And so I did.

Back home I made lunch, watched the first episode of Battlestar Galactica’s last season (I recorded it Friday night.  Love that DVR) and loaded the dishwasher.  After lunch I got out my Golden Plump chicken, read the directions for CNS on the back, and then began slicing and dicing carrots, celery, onions.  Saute the veggies.  Then 10 cups of water, Paul Prudhomme poultry seasoning, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for an hour and a half.  Underway.

While doing that, I also made a green salad since I had the carrots and celery and onions out already.  A few strawberries bought a week ago had that soon to rot look, so I chopped and diced them, too (I was in a rhythm.) and put them in plastic containers with a cutup orange each.  So there.  Domesticman to save the day!

A nap  now.  Naps on rainy days, cool rainy days.  A wonderful thing.

Art and Culture, Friends, General

Bloggers Need Union?

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51 bar steady 29.68 2mph SSE dewpoint 36 Spring

                    New Moon (Growing)

Don’t know whether you caught the article in this morning’s paper about bloggers.  It seems bloggers are the new cottage industry, working at home at piece rate, grinding out post after post after post in a grueling 24-news cycle that, this article claims, often leaves little time for sleep or food.  In fact, the premise of the article was that there might be a new cause of early death.  Blogging.  Yikes!

Here I am, doing two to three posts a day most days, eating and sleeping and exercising, plus living a life.  Not to mention that I blog for free.  In fact, I pay for the privilege since Kate and I rent webspace from the nice folks at 1&1 Internet.  There’s also that 6.99 a year for the domain name, ancientrails.com.  OK, the price is cheap, especially for what we get, but still.  This article said some people make as little as $10 a post.  As little.  I could pay my entire internet overhead with 3 posts, maybe 4.

Oh, well.  If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing cheaply. 

This is more of a point than I make it sound.  The garden.  My novels and short stories to date.  Touring at the Art Institute.  None of it pays a dime, at least so far.  Yes, I did make $80.00 last year doing tours after hours at the MIA, but that hardly counts.

None of this discourages me, but it does make me wonder if I could find a nice patron who’d like to hype ancientrails and pay me, too.  Wouldn’t turn it down.  Unless it interfered with my editorial prerogative, of course.

Paul Douglas, who mentioned this website in a recent Star-Tribune weather column, got released from WCCO.  Several people wrote him notes.   He deserves it.  He’s a creative guy and a Minnesotan through and through.  Doesn’t sound like he’s gonna line up for unemployment either.

Groceries this AM, then making CNS (Jewish penicillin) for my ailing docent colleague, Bill Bomash.  He’s the guy who broke his femur in five places.  The class will provide a few meals for him and his wife over the next few weeks.