Holiday weekend

The screens on my windows at work are in bad shape, but I'm on the third floor so it isn't like I can just go outside and take them off. I thought the landlord was going to replace them, but they haven't yet. I've thought of just opening the windows and tearing out the screens, but this week I'm glad I didn't do that.

A robin discovered them and has been visiting all week, pulling out strands to use in his nest, I assume, although Bob says it's late for that. The screens are fiberglass (I think), not steel or whatever regular screens are, and they're kind of shredded. The robin comes and hangs on, and pulls out a half dozen or so strands, or whatever he can get, flies away, and then comes back a little while later. It's fun to watch. I wonder where his nest is?

We had a really nice, quiet holiday weekend. Bob was off all three days, too, so it was a nice long weekend for both of us. On Saturday, I got my hair cut and went to the nursery. I wanted to get some geraniums for the front porch, which I did, but I also just wandered around and looked at everything, which I enjoyed a lot. I also bought some birdseed and filled the birdfeeders when I got home.

The birdseed must have been some great stuff, because there were birds out there all weekend. Some of the highlights were a really cute Downy Woodpecker, a red-breasted grosbeak, and lots of pretty finches.

On Sunday I stayed home all day reading; Bob went out and shot traps with a friend, then they had lunch, and he got home mid-afternoon. I had been reading on the bed, and he came up and laid down, and we both ended up sleeping for a couple of hours, which was lovely. When we woke up we went out to Chipotle for burritos. A nice, long, lazy day.

He played golf on Monday, and I stayed home most of the day, watching a squirrel raid the bird feeder--I tried to take pictures, but he was too far away to see well--talked with a friend in Second Life, fixed pasta for lunch, then went out and bought potting soil so I could re-pot the geraniums, which I have yet to do. I also bought pots for the plants at work, but they haven't made it out of my trunk. We went out for ice cream Monday night as a decadent ending to the holiday weekend. And back to work yesterday, which was fine, too.

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Cute couple

Last night Bob was out in the garage getting ready to consolidate the trash into bigger bags, but we were out of large bags. He said he was going to go get some, and I said I'd go with him. I had already changed out of my work clothes into a big t-shirt that I intended to sleep in, but I changed into some sweatpant capris (about as attractive as they sound) and a different t-shirt. He was wearing lightweight sweats and a t-shirt, too. I stuck my feet into flip-flops and we headed for Target.

We always laugh about it when we do that, and comment on what a cute couple we must make, schlepping to the store basically in our night clothes. When he goes out by himself to pick something up, he usually says he's going out "to pick up chicks," and I said, "Good luck with that." One night last week he had to go get gas or something--I don't remember what--and I went with him even though I already had my nightgown--okay, another big t-shirt--on.

We wandered around Target, picked up trash bags, Cheddar cheese and mixed nuts (how appropriate!), then headed home. Once home, he stayed out in the garage and bagged up trash to carry out to the curb.

Once I'd dumped my purse in the house, I went back out to the garage to help him carry the trash out. It wasn't until I came back in the house the second time that I realized I'd worn flip-flops from two different pairs, one with light blue terrycloth on top and the other lime green and white vinyl. So I was even more put together than I thought!

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iPhone Apps

I keep thinking I should write about some of my favorite iPhone apps. I know that not everyone has an iPhone, but there are several people I know who do, and they might find it useful. (That's my current iPhone wallpaper to the right, made from a Second Life screenshot.)

Pocket God - I mentioned this one the other day. It's my current favorite game. There's a picture of a little island with a palm tree and a tiki god head, and you push a little plus sign to add villagers to the island. You can have up to five at a time, and you can name them whatever you want. Then you can torture them in various ways, like knock them into the ocean, make lightning strike them, or call a vampire bat to bite them. You can get all your little guys back just by pushing the plus sign again.

If you're a benevolent god, you can gift them with coconuts (the coconut seems to always hit someone on the head, though) and a fishing pole so they can fish (although about half the time they catch the shark instead, which doesn't end well).

They do an update about every two weeks, and the one before last dropped a tyrannosaurus egg on the island. The current update introduced the egg's mother, and, of course, a new way to torture the islanders -- crack open the egg and mom shows up! (Ooh, didn't see the association with Mother's Day until just now!)

A total time waster, but fun.

Momo -- Momo (Memo to Self) has both an iPhone and a web component. You can type memos on the computer, then sync to the iPhone, so you don't always have to type on the itty bitty iPhone keypad. I keep recipes there, my dream record, knitting patterns -- just basically just all kinds of things that I want to keep track of. You can tag your memos so they can be easily retrieved.

Kindle -- Amazon recently released the Kindle for iPhone application. I already had eReader, which I've been using to read ebooks for years, and the Kindle app is very similar. The cool part, though, is being able to request short samples of books before you buy them. I went through my Amazon wish list and requested samples of almost everything -- that's the one thing that I struggle with when I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy something if it isn't from an author I'm familiar with. This way I can get a taste of it and decide whether it's something I want to read or not.

A friend of mine who has a Kindle has decided to sell it, because he says he prefers reading on his iPhone. For one thing, it's easier to hold and read in one hand, and for another, the Kindle requires light to read, and the iPhone is backlit. Neither of them are perfect, I guess, but having compared the two, he says the iPhone reading experience is better.

QuickVoice -- There are LOTS of recording applications out there, and I think I've tried them all. I was originally looking for an application that was simple enough to pick up the phone in the car and record something, just so I wouldn't forget it. I chose Voxie, but didn't end up using it all that much. I had tried the free version of QuickVoice, but liked Voxie better. Then last week QuickVoice Pro went on sale, and I heard great things about it, so I bought it and tried it.

The cool think about QuickVoice is that you can record something, then email it to yourself (or someone else) in text. It transcribes your message! I tried it twice; it didn't do too well when I was in the car, apparently the road noise was intrusive. But when I recorded something and there wasn't a lot of outside interference, it transcribed it perfectly. I'm thinking I might use this one quite a bit.

QuickWord -- This one is new, and pretty expensive for an iPhone app--$12.99. But it's the first application (I think) that lets you actually create and edit Word documents. There are a lot of apps that let you view them, but not edit. You can also, by mounting the iPhone as a drive over wifi, drag and drop so that you can share and edit documents between the iPhone and desktop.

iBird -- On Sunday I looked out my window and saw a beautiful bird on the bird feeder, one I couldn't identify. I looked for a bird book, and couldn't find one, although I knew I had one somewhere. I got online, and wasn't successful in searching there, either, since I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. But while I was searching, I saw an ad for an iPhone app called iBird (of course!), so I checked into it.

There are several different versions, but I bought the cheapest one, "iBird Yard." It has about 150 birds in it. I'm not sure whether I found my bird or not, but it was fun to play around with. I went out to my parents' house in the afternoon--my mom is a bird lover--and she had me play the audio of all the birds she could think of. We decided the bird I saw was probably a grosbeak. They have one of those, too -- he was absolutely beautiful! He sits on their bird feeder most of the day, they said. Greedy little guy.

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Weekend

It was a pretty low-key, quiet weekend. I made jewelry, read a little, cooked, and watched the rest of Twilight, along with all of the extended content. I liked it a lot, I will definitely watch it again. It seemed to capture the book really well, and while I wasn't crazy about the casting when I first read about the movie, it kind of grew on me. I didn't start reading the book until after I'd seen promotional stories about the movie, so I think that helped, since I didn't have a pre-conceived version of the cast in my head. The only one I pictured differently, if I pictured them at all, was Charlie, Bella's father.

But all in all, I enjoyed it.

I've been trying to cook more, and to use Bob's term, utilize existing resources. He was out of town a couple of weeks ago at a friend's place at the lake, and when he did his grocery shopping he bought a whole bag of potatoes since they were on sale, and cheaper than buying individual ones. But since he was by himself, he came home with basically a whole bag of potatoes.

Last weekend we were thinking about what to cook for dinner, and, looking at the bag of potatoes, I said, "We should cook something with potatoes!" So I made scalloped potatoes. We had baked potatoes a couple of nights during the week, and tonight I made scalloped potatoes again, along with hot dogs and deviled eggs (using up the last of a dozen eggs I bought when they were on sale at Easter). Bob's friend Phil called while we were eating dinner, and said it sounded like a picnic.

Pretty much everything I cook, I just "wing," i.e., I don't really use recipes. For scalloped potatoes, I just peel and slice a few potatoes and chop up a small onion, and layer them in a casserole dish with pats of butter, sprinkle them with flour and salt, and pour milk over them. Then bake until it looks like they're done.

Deviled eggs are easy, too -- halve hardboiled eggs, scoop out the yolks, and mash them with Miracle Whip, a quarter teaspoon or so of sugar, and a drizzle of sweet pickle juice, then mound them back in the halved eggs and sprinkle with paprika.

I went outside this afternoon to take pictures of the new jewelry I made this weekend, and there was a scruffy little bird sitting on the side of a dish that I leave sitting outside with water in it for the various wildlife. I hadn't cleaned it out yet this spring, so it's full of fallen leaves and other debris, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.

I thought he would fly away the minute I stepped outside, but he didn't. I had the camera in my hand, so I turned up the zoom and took his picture, in face, I took about half a dozen pictures, and he didn't leave. I figured he must be hurt or something. I went ahead and took my pictures, and pretty soon he flew away. Just a rest stop on the journey, I guess.

I made a bunch of bracelets this weekend, and put them all up at the Etsy shop.

On a whim, I laid them all out side by side and book a picture, and it was so pretty that I made desktop wallpaper out of it. Just click on the link for the one you want, and it will open up in the browser. If you're on a Mac, you can control-click and choose "Save as desktop background." If you're on a PC, you're on your own. ;)

1280 x 960
1024 x 768
800 x 600

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Miscellany

I get Rob Brezsny's horoscopes in my email every week, and I usually just skim them and don't pay a lot of attention, but this one struck my imagination last night. It isn't even my sign, it's for Capricorn:

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): From an astrological point of view, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to start a band and record an album. Your creativity is waxing, your attunement with the right side of your brain is especially sweet, and you will benefit immensely from anything you do to become less of a spectator and more of a participant. To jumpstart the process, go to Wikipedia and click on "random article." That's the name of your band. Then go to en.wikiquote.org and click on "random page." The last few words of the last quote on that page will be your album's title. Finally, go to tinyurl.com/9ydjk and choose a photo to be your CD cover. Or, if you don't like what's there, click on the link for "Get more interesting photos for the last 7 days." (My band is Widemouth Blindcat, our album is "More Time for Dreaming," and our cover art is a spiral staircase from here: tinyurl.com/c89rt7.)

So I did the exercise. Mine:

Band name: To Traverse Water (an opera by Tasmanian (Australian) composer Constantine Koukias)
Album name: Collecting Happiness (Quote: When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness. - Vincent Starrett)
Album Cover: This image

Apropos of nothing, my current favorite song that I forgot about for awhile: "California Stars," written by Woody Guthrie and arranged and performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco, from the album, "Mermaid Avenue."

Current favorite iPhone app: Pocket God. I had seen advertisements for it, but it didn't seem all that interesting. Then on Saturday morning I was browsing the App Store and saw that they had dropped the price to 99 cents, so I went ahead and bought it. It's actually pretty fun, and very clever. You get an endless supply of "islanders" that you drop on your island, and then torture in various ways, like dropping them in the ocean to be eaten by a shark, striking them with lightning, etc.

You can also be benevolent and give them a coconut (which usually bonks them on the head) to eat, or giving them a fishing pole so they can fish (and about half the time they catch the shark, which tows them off the island).

You can change the weather, cause the sun to set and come up, cause violent storms; at night you can call a vampire bat to bite an islander, then that islander bites all of the others. It's actually a lot of fun. With the latest update, you can name the islanders, so it sort of takes on the aspect of a voodoo doll. Completely pointless and a total time waster, but fun.

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