DIYnot

I’ve been doing Matt’s haircuts at home for years.  It’s very easy to do with the clippers, and he’s not that particular anyway, so I’m not too worried about messing it up.  It’s convenient and saves money.  The one thing that doesn’t always work out so well is hair getting all over Matt.  What I should really do is just make one of those nylon capes they have at salons.  It would be very easy to make one, but of course takes a little bit of planning and doing.  Planning is not our MO on the haircuts - usually we do it when Matt’s hair has been getting out of control for a while and it finally gets to the point where one of us decides it has to happen.  So Matt is always complaining about the hair getting all over him, and occasionally trying something to mitigate it.  If he wears a shirt, the hair sticks to it like glue, and that’s not so great.  I suggested a plastic trash bag, but that was rejected as too hot.  For the most recent haircut, Matt tried a new thing: paper Macy’s bag.  It was quite the sight.  We had a good pre-haircut laugh about it, plus several bouts of during-haircut giggles.

Matt folded up the bag to save it for next time, but I don’t know if I can handle it.  Maybe the thought of it will finally motivate me to make that cape after all.

-Kelly

Sarah invited some friends over last weekend for another fun crafts party.  Sarah’s family has a tradition of decorating hollowed-out eggs, which her 101-year-old great aunt hangs on an Easter egg tree.  Since they’re hollow, the eggs can be saved from year to year, and new ones are added to the collection.  To make your own, wash the eggs with soap and water, use a sterilized needle to carefully poke holes in the tops and bottoms, and gently blow the albumen and yolk into a bowl (you may need to break the yolk with your needle).  Save the egg innards and cook with them.  Sarah made a delicious frittata.  Once your empty egg shells have been rinsed and dried, they’re ready to be decorated.  Use dye, paint, markers, ribbons, sequins, beads, feathers, stickers, and any other accessory you like to decorate the eggs.

Here are some of the finished eggs made at the party:

The Vegas showgirl, feathered-octopus-with-heart-mouth, and plain sequined are among my favorites.

I also really like the one with gold ribbon and googly eyes.  Sarah and her sister didn’t seem to think their great aunt would be hanging it on the tree, but I like the wacky ones.

I experimented by gluing seed beads all over an egg (far left).  It was looking good, but every time I handled it, ting-ting-ting (that’s the sound of beads falling off).  I managed to salvage it by wrapping it carefully in cellophane and using a hot blow dryer to shrink it onto the egg. 

I wonder which ones will make the cut to be showcased on the tree this year.  What a fun tradition.  Thanks for sharing, Sarah!

-Kelly

When we go camping, I always bemoan Kelly’s persistent requests (read: demands, LOL) that we put up the canopy in case the weather “might” bring rain.  And, with a sigh, and maybe some protest, I dutifully get out the tarp even though I “know” it’s not going to rain.  But it does.  On my pride too.  Fortunately, my ego is usually doing just fine because somehow I’ve managed to get that loose film of plastic we call a tarp to stand tautly above the picnic table. 

Nowadays, there are pop out canopies that one can set up in a few minutes.  Perfect if you have lots of space in your rig, weight is not an issue, and you’re ok with the relative costliness of these systems.  If you do in fact have these constraints, then you’re probably going camping and not to a tailgate party.  Because in all my experience, when you’re going camping… the car will be full.

2007, Summer

Despite my protests, I’ve come to really dig my blue tarp canopy.  With some practice, getting the poles and guy lines set is pretty easy.  Lengthy guy lines provide you with significant flexibility in securing the canopy.  Best of all, the tarp can be super handy for the 98% of the time you don’t require a canopy because you live in a house.  Leave it in the car.  Got bags of compost from the nursery? Throw ‘em in the tarp.  Got dirty clothes, potted plants, or wet clothes?  Throw ‘em in too.

Char diggin’ her not so dusty elevated bed.

2008, Early Fall

For (hunting) camp in the Fall, 2 to 3-season tents and a canopy are sufficient for sunny days and most weather.  With this configuration, I wouldn’t want to sit in the rain for 3-days and I probably wouldn’t give you odds that my sleeping bag in the tent is going to be dry after a thunderstorm’s downpour.  But the forecast was good so keeping the fire pit out from the tarp lets you gander at the stars and not worry (at least too much) about catching your wild house on fire.

2009, Late Fall

Forecast: rain, sleet, freezing temps, snow.  Fu-ghet-about the picnic table.  All the stuff you’d want to put on it would either blow off or you wouldn’t want to sit at it with the wind blowing across your face (mainly from right to left, W->E).  Plastic containers keep goods dry and serve as a table.

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“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised.”

“Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.” - findingada.com

I’ve always been interested in biographies of scientists and also historical fiction about scientists, and for some reason the ones I’ve gravitated toward are usually (but not always) about physicists.  [I highly recommend all of these.]  Maybe physicists are fascinating because they spend their lives trying to figure out how the universe works, smashing atoms into each other, thinking about particles that are also waves, parallel universes, and what happens if you travel through space at the speed of light.  A person has to be both brilliant and strange to be a great physicist.  Physicists invented the atom bomb (and some later regretted doing so) AND the internet (contrary to claims by Al Gore). 

Women physicists are rare.  I think it’s partly due to a difference in most women’s priorities and the near-singular focus required to pursue a career in the field.  Worse, women have historically faced discrimination in the physics world and in the sciences in general.  That makes it easy to overlook the contributions of women to the field, but they are there.  Two women have won Nobel prizes in physics.  Many others have worked in obscurity and contributed to the body of knowledge. 

Mileva Maric helped her husband, Albert Einstein, with much of his important work, but the extent of her role as collaborator remains unknown.  “As the jigsaw puzzle that was Mileva’s life is pieced together, an image emerges of a young woman whose great scientific promise ran up against the formidable institutional and social barriers that kept all but the most resilient women, at the turn of the twentieth century, at the margins of science or out of the lab entirely.” - PBS, Einstein’s Wife  Here’s to you, Mileva.  I hope we are on the road to breaking down the remains of those barriers that stifled the potential of countless women scientists.

-Kelly

p.s. Check out another blogger’s ALD post for much more information about the life of Mileva Maric.

My cousin has a three-week-old baby girl.  I’d been dying to meet the little one, and on Friday evening the stars aligned and Matt and I paid a visit.

[my new baby cousin!  She fell asleep while I was unsuccessfully trying to burp her.  So precious.]

We live very close by, so I suggested that we bring over a home cooked meal as a small help to the new parents.  I decided on a nutritious meal that was quick and easy to make.

[lentil and tomato stew with carrots, celery, some random spices - hold the garlic and onions for nursing mama, as this may help avoid colic for baby]

[quinoa, a fast cooking substitute for the usual grains - we put the lentil stew on top]

[big salad with lots of stuff in it]

Everyone enjoyed the food and we had a great time.  Thanks for having us over! 

Matt’s early spring haul from the garden.  Leeks, parsnips, kale, and rosemary.

I love it when he brings home a big basket of fresh produce.  Yum!

-Kelly

We got a couple suggestions to mix cayenne pepper in with the bird seed, since capsaicin is an irritant to mammals but has no effect on birds.  Matt filled up both feeders with seed plus all the cayenne we had in the house.  We’ve since seen several squirrels chowing down on the big feeder and some haven’t seemed to hate it.  One didn’t eat a lot before leaving the yard, but bounded away in the usual squirrel fashion.  I did not witness it, but Matt saw one squirrel snack on the tainted seeds and then proceed to stick his face into the compost pile and roll around in it, but then promptly went back to the feeder. 

Both feeders are still pretty full, so I suspect that the pepper is deterring the squirrels somewhat.  I hope it hasn’t made any squirrels sick.  They are fun to watch and we actually like having them around, as long as they don’t gobble down all the food meant for the birds.  The best is when two squirrels chase each other up and down the trees.  I’ve also always thought a squirrel could make a great pet - I think it would be very satisfying to hold a sleeping one in my hand.  They’re so nimble and seem to be very smart and fun to train, too.

-Kelly

We have two bird feeders hanging from trees in the back yard.  Every day, squirrels help themselves to the bird seed, despite several attempts at foiling them.  Once, a squirrel actually knocked the larger feeder off its wire and really had a picnic. 

Matt hung small trash lids (painted green) over the feeders.  The squirrels just climbed right down over them. 

Then he found a plastic half sphere to replace one of the lids.  That seemed to help, but then the squirrels figured out how to jump higher.  And climb down from the tree branch. 

This Old House magazine says it’s better to put the feeder on top of a pole with a squirrel baffle just under the feeder, but we don’t really want poles in the yard right now.  Does anyone have a (cheap) solution that keeps squirrels from hanging feeders?

I admit it: I use all of these.  I lack the motivation to run outside in the cold and rain, or even on the 1/9 mile indoor track at the gym.  Doing my cardio on these babies gives me an excuse to watch all those magnificently frivolous cable channels I voluntarily gave up at home, and that gets me moving.

Usually I think nothing of it, but occasionally it strikes me as ridiculous that when I work out, I use machines that consume electricity.  Why don’t they make human-powered cardio machines, so that when you perform work, it charges up a battery that powers the timer and TV?  You’d have to maintain a certain activity level to create enough power to keep the TV on (motivation!).  For that matter, the resistance on all the machines in the gym could feed batteries to run the lights and other electric needs.  A few enterprising people have done something similar with stationary bikes, so why not the machines at the gym?

Sometimes I also question my justification for exercising indoors when I live in a pretty mild climate and a city full of beautiful parks and paths, several of which are within walking distance of my house.  I don’t have any physical conditions or other good reasons for working out indoors; I just like the comfort and convenience.  This past weekend was gorgeous and all the trees are in full bloom (this could be problematic as it’s turned cold again since), so Matt and I enjoyed a long walk-run around the neighborhood and a nearby park.  It was pretty great.  So maybe when Matt graduates this summer and we get booted from the fabulous university gym, we’ll ride our bikes, run through the park, and snag a few free weights (from freecycle!) instead of a new gym membership.  Maybe.

-Kelly

[cardio machine photos from amazon.com and globalfitness.com]

Growing starts for the garden is pretty easy to do if you have a nice sunny window and a good sill or shelf beneath it.  In a small house or apartment, having both doesn’t necessarily come easy.  Maybe it can get too hot or not hot enough for long enough; maybe there’s just not enough real estate for all of the containers you want to grow in, not to mention their respective drainage collectors (cottage cheese/yogurt lids work well); or maybe you’re just too cool to have a bunch of plastic containers line your windows indefinitely (once you become a gardening addict).  Maybe these are all reasons why I’ve decided to try artificial lighting this year?  If you have some room aside a wall for a couple of shelves, then I think my artificial lighting setup could serve you well.

The tomato sprouts are pretty happy under the lights.

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This year, I’m not fooling around: full spectrum and noon-brightness fluorescent bulbs, timer, heat mat, visquene enclosure.  The heat mat makes all the difference.

The first couple of weeks of growing starts I didn’t have heat.  Then my heat mat arrived.  Within days, germination baby!  Buttoning up the plastic sheeting really warmed the space up too.  Good thing cause the garage is cool.

Tomatoes, corn, celery, sunflowers

Sunflowers grow fast.  Notice the shells getting popped off.

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…in case anyone has suggestions, questions, praise, or criticism.  Any of those (and more) are welcome as long as they are expressed with respect for others.  In short, be nice.  We will be nice to you, too.  Thanks for reading!

-Kelly

[the entrance to the crawl space]

Matt spent many hours in the crawl space under our house last summer and well into the fall.  He drilled holes and fished wires up into the walls, cut galvanized steel pipes and soldered copper ones.  Fortunately, there’s pretty good clearance under there so that you can squat or bring something to kneel or sit on.  Some crawl spaces really are only crawlable.  Even so, I’m thankful to Matt for doing most of the work under the house.  I ventured into the crawl space several times, and it actually wasn’t that bad, but it was still nice to be the above ground half of the team.  It’s not something I ever thought about before we started working on the house, but having a taller crawl space has made a huge difference in our ability to run wiring and work on plumbing.

[Matt decked out in PPE (personal protective equipment) - safety first!]

We’ve been on somewhat of a hiatus from major home improvement projects since December.  (Though Matt has been very active in the yard and I’ve been working on some small projects.)  Now that it’s spring, it’s time to get going again on some of the big things.  We have oh so many projects lined up.  And recent visits to friends’ houses are helping me imagine how nice it will be.  I just have to keep picturing that, because it’s going to be a while.

-Kelly