Eighteen Seconds. Oh my sweet jeebus.

I should really start blogging.

doctor sez i gotta have a backiotomy

So, poor Erik’s busy healing his broken neck up these days. If you haven’t heard, he got three cervical vertibrae fused after getting run into by a crabby scab at a union strike line… sounds like something that would happen in a Bruce Springsteen song, but, alas, no. He’s doing a really, really good job not being super-pissed, imho. He’s in a lot of pain still but, from what I can suss out, it’s better than it was.

st. paul snapshots

I actually really, really like St. Paul. This is good, because as far as I can tell, we’re going to *die* here. If I’m going to be totally honest, it’s a little hard for me to admit that I like it here in this rather small city — part of the NYC snob coming out in me I suppose, even though I’m not originally from there, either. But, I do. Here’s one reason:

At the post office the other day, mailing off my eBay crap. Ahead of me is a 60-something year old Ojibwa granny with a heavy duty, Jherri-curl like permanent in her hair, dressed head to toe in hot pink Spandex, listening to her iPod. She even had a hot pink bum-bag. Also:

20-something year old Hmong Target employees bitching to each other in Hmonglish at work: Huy banh bun tuy the fuckin’ manager ty reh quan, youknowwhatimean? *Love* it. And:

All the Somali women employed at the junkshops I haunt, Goodwill + Savers and so forth. These are the nicest people on the planet. They are loud and friendly and will grab your elbow when they’re talking to you. A lot of them have this bumpersticker on their cars that says SOMALIA 2020 COUNT ME IN that I’ll have to ask one of them about one of these days. Does it mean that some of them are committed to emigrating back home in 12 years, no matter what Somalia looks like? I don’t know. Furthermore:

Arts & Crafts Movement architecture. You can’t spit without hitting it in our neighborhood. I’m really surprised the city’s not more famous for it, particularly since it’s got the Prairie stuff as well as a number of other vernacular substyles.

do the collapse

I’m pretty freaked about the $700 billion bailout. I’m not really sure your average American knows what it means. I’m not even sure I really know what it means (700 billion is kind of a large number), but what think is happening is this: the dollar is going to be worth less, and things are going to get more expensive, so there will be sudden shortages of essentials like gas and food and work, and then stores and banks will shut down, and anyone who doesn’t have cash on hand isn’t going to be able to buy anything. It makes me very, very thankful that we bought this house when we did (4 months ago), for two reasons: it means that we can’t get thrown out into the street by some landlord (provided we pay the mortgage regularly), and it means we have land that we can turn into food production. This whole situation makes me want to turn the yard into a permaculture garden yesterday.

We’ve been working on it bit by bit this past summer, but we’re pretty cash-poor at the moment. We compost like mad, but there’s no way we can make enough soil in the next few months, over winter (slows down decomposition.) We have a pretty specific plan for the land at this point, though, with Erik even having worked up a map. I look at the lawn at this point with some derision — it’s as wasteful as a golf course, why wouldn’t you grow food on your land? If the fit really hits the shan hard, we can even turn the garage into a stable for a couple of goats, some chickens…

Also on the list: learn canning + smoking, get together a reserve of grains in rodent-proof containers, set up rainwater collectors…

Love, Leah

Check out the new photos (over there! on the right! at our flickr page!), from our weekend at Balsam Lake with Meimei and Pompom. A quick selection of my favorites:

<snip>

Available in an easy-to-find-and-open bottle, the new shampoo is also guaranteed to give children a “healthy dose of reality.”

“You’ll notice a difference after just one use,” said Michelle Baker, head of new product development. “Whether it’s your newborn’s more hardened appearance, the way he now approaches people with guarded skepticism, or just that look on his face that says, ‘Oh wait, maybe life isn’t all hugs and kisses and rainbows. Maybe I need to get my fucking act together.’”

Added Baker, “Johnson & Johnson will kick your baby’s ass into gear.”

Just sayin’. [via the Onion]

Very weird. Too bad we didn’t capture more of it, but you can see at the very beginning he’s singing a few lines from his favorite song, Lou Reed’s “Vicious,” off of ‘Transformer.’

I’m not the only one who sees the resemblance, right?

Well, don’t you? Here it is.

Now, check out this video response from a couple of guys on youtube.

Dooood.

Thank You For Not Douching Out

Originally uploaded by xeni

My new favorite thank you card – I have sooooo many uses for this one, many more than the normal ‘thank you’ card. It can be used non-ironically, to thank people (like my wife) who have courageously stuck to their guns, been supportive when it would be easier and more comfortable to do otherwise, &c.

Or, it could be used ironically, sent to someone (definitely not my stalwart partner) who has a habit of douching out, and surprisingly didn’t in some recent situation.

Thanks boingboing.

Strawberry Pickin’

Originally uploaded by erik.w.davis

We went with the classes at Freeman’s daycare center to a strawberry picking center in suburban Saint Paul for the morning. Good fun! Boy, do kids love picking strawberries!

First, a forty foot extension ladder is really, really heavy. Even if it’s made of fiberglass.

Second, I need to rent either a small chainsaw or a good carbon-steel saw, to take down some branches that overhand our roof.

Third, I sweat. A lot (all right, I knew this one).

Fourth, my daughter is freaking adorable covered in mud, trying to help out.

Yes, that’s right. In an attempt to clean out the gutters of the second floor of our house, we rented a forty-foot fiberglass extension ladder, got it home on top of our hooptie, and managed – with an astounding amount of effort – to place it properly against the top floor. I was only able to complete one full side of the house (I did the lower porch gutters about a month back), but also managed to clear a substantial amount of the limb overhang that was causing the problem in the first place (there’s a large branch that will require a good saw, which I don’t have).

We’ll have to rent another ladder some other day in order to finish the other three sides. I’m hopefull the 27 foot ladder at the store will do the job, since it will probably be considerably more manageable.

But next weekend, we’re building a rocket stove in our back yard! Whoo hoo! (something to do with all that new twiggy goodness lying all over the place!).