THREE by THREE

Some moments from Karen’s baby shower

alisa — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:34:34 +0000

Audrey wanted to say Hi to the baby

Audrey's photo editing skills are coming up sharp

A gift for Karen’s baby

alisa — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:34:15 +0000

Baby Brontosaurus

Baby Brontosaurus with Noms

Squishy dino

alisa — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:24:28 +0000

My nephew turned 11 this month. For his birthday, he asked for money so that he could save up and buy an iPod. We obliged. However, you and I both know that no matter how nice it is to get money for your birthday, there’s something irreplaceable about having a physical present. And so Mr. Brachiosaurus came along.

I picked him up in the museum and almost squealed when I realized he was a beanie dino. He was squishy and bendy and almost elastic. The nephew wasn’t the only one having fun with him. We all took turns squishing and squashing and pulling and playing.

The cleanest my trunk has ever been

bobbie-sue — Sat, 19 May 2012 20:18:17 +0000

The cleanest my trunk has ever been, a photo by bobbie-sue on Flickr.

Or ever will be.

While Mike was biking to buy a new car battery, I finally tackled the disaster that was the inside of my car. When we moved, my car became the storage place for open bags of serviettes, plastic cutlery, and paper plates. They managed to escape their bags over the past 2 years. These are now coralled in the cargo net at the back.There were also BS papers from our wedding gift registry. If it wasn’t important enough to bring into the house, why let it live in the car for 3 years?! Also a million parking receipts.

Garden update

bobbie-sue — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:20:12 +0000

We built a 4′ x 8′ raised bed a few weeks ago. We had overwintered kale and leeks, and the garlic that I planted last spring seems to have come back from the dead. We did a little rearranging, but the giant things in the middle are kale.

Leeks and garlic. The biggest leek was salvaged from a friend’s garden when they moved.

The snap pea sprouts are all a few inches tall now, so it was time to build them some support. We stretched a length of laundry line across the top of the raised bed, then laced twine up and down between the laundry line and nails that we put in the fence. Bottom left is a lazy parsley. A few inches in from of the peas you can just see the row of carrots starting to come up. I thought they might have been duds, but they finally germinated.

On the left are teeny spinach seedlings. On the right are Roma tomatoes. I hope to harvest some spinach before the tomatoes get huge and shade it out. That spinach gave me no love last year. I’m hoping the fresh rich soil will yield better results.

I’ve done tomatoes in these planters for 3 years now. This year we have 2 romas and a cherry in each, with a volunteer lettuce in the corner of the closer one and room for basil in the far one.

Along with the cherry and pear tree, we also added 2 blueberry bushes to the side yard. This one has an encouraging number of blossoms!

Behind the smaller blueberry bush are some invasive weeds: garlic mustard. Picked early enough, the leaves are fairly mild with a garlic-like flavour. I used some in a veggie pot pie that I made earlier this week, but we have tons left that we need to yank before they go to seed.

The asparagus crown that I unceremoniously removed from a friend’s garden seems to be settling in nicely. I will have to amend the soil around it because very little likes to grow in that spot. I’ve had no luck with seeds of all kinds there.

2 little salvaged strawberry plants are enjoying the company of the black currants that I transplanted from my parents’ yard last summer.looks like no currants yet this year. On the right is a large bit of currant that we transplanted without roots. It didn’t survive the dryer parts of last summer. Time to yank it out and replace it with a new cutting.

Rhubarb looking dramatic in the evening light. I’m hoping to harvest a stalk or two this spring/summer. Grow baby, grow!

Last week I thought about shooting the fiddleheads all over the back yard, and already they’re fully fanned out and gorgeous.

Up on the deck we have two hungover jalapeños and volunteer lettuce. We harvested some lettuce for today’s lunch. I need to put the sprouted edamame in that pot between the lettuces.

These strawberries were all runners that originated from a very sad little plant in a container of bad garden soil from our old house. They seem to like their new fertile home much better, even if they do have an unexpected lettuce for a neighbour.

Sad cucumber. I know that cucumbers are very susceptible to transplant shock, but this is so discouraging. Last year I started pickling cucumber seedlings 3 or 4 times before a plant survived. I ended up with only 4 cucumbers that all ripened at different times. Ok cucumbers. I give up. I’ll use the planter for green beans instead and get farm fresh cucumbers for pickling.

We inherited 5 large containers with grape vines in them. Three of the vines are already covered in these tiny fruiting clusters. If all of these take, we will have a lot of grapes this summer! Right now the vines are only loosely supported by thin bamboo canes. I can imagine with the weight of a dozen clusters of fruit we’ll need to beef up that support pretty soon.

Royal Ontario Museum

alisa — Sat, 12 May 2012 04:18:19 +0000

It will take more than one sitting to finish this drawing

Canadian museum...

Flowering shrubbery beside the train tracks

alisa — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:43:51 +0000

I did a pirouette on the rug

bobbie-sue — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:32:36 +0000

I did a pirouette on the rug, a photo by bobbie-sue on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
while working at my standing desk.

I like that the standing desk let’s me keep my legs active while I’m working.

Achievement unlocked: PMP!

bobbie-sue — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:27:37 +0000

So I passed the exam

I probably over engineered my prep routine. For the 3 days leading up to the exam, I ate the same breakfast, studied all morning, ate the same lunch, biked 3.4km (the distance to the test centre) at 12 noon, then wrote a 200-question, 4-hour practice exam. One day that practice exam was made up of 89 questions I had gotten wrong during studying and 111 other questions, randomly dispersed, and I carefully analysed why I got any of them wrong after that. The day before the test, I took an online practice exam and had my laptop completely freeze up on question 187. I had to hard reboot and my progress was lost. I couldn’t learn from any mistakes.

I’m really glad I had the luxury of all that time to prepare. 4 hours is a long time to focus and I noticed that I went through the second half of the questions much more slowly than the first, but because I had done timed practice exams, that didn’t worry me. It also turned out that I was allowed to stop and get food and drink from my locker. Food just wasn’t allowed inside the exam room.

In the end I’m glad I put so much effort into preparing. I could have stopped studying when I was “good enough” to likely pass the exam, but I really found the material interesting and relevant. I feel like the thorough understanding of the material will serve me better than just the credential on my resume.