Things That Aren't School

[rax]

Maybe I'll try to do one of these "things that aren't class notes or tasklists" posts a week.

• So far, new housemate is awesome, and there's ample space in the house so I don't feel trod upon but there's someone else to talk to periodically. That's basically ideal. (Also, I think his alarm is going off at... 11 AM. Damn, crazy nightshifted people. (edited to add: I think he turned it off and went back to sleep. :P )) A mutual friend of ours is considering taking the remaining room --- I'm trying not to get too excited but it would basically be perfect. 
• This weekend featured great conversations with people I hold dear, which is always excellent. It may even feature more, although I expect today to be mostly homework with a side of housework; I spent more time yesterday on social than I had initially budgeted.
• I tried to run errands this morning, but stores aren't open at 9 AM on a Sunday. I guess everyone else is either hung over or at church. Well, I wanna buy some stuff! Come on, people! (In particular I am out of soy sauce and do not wish to pay Bloomingfoods prices when I could just go to the Asian grocery. I wil stop by on my way home from class in the next couple of days, I guess.)
• My Pokédex is now at 441; if I have time this evening I will be making a list of everything I need, and how I can go about getting it. I'll probably post that here just in case any of you are curious. I guess when I hit 493, I... stop? Or I could do a Nuzlocke run (you can read the rules here since Nuzlocke.com is down right now) which for those of you unfamiliar with pokemon is basically like doing a NetHack conduct run, which as you may know I have some history with. I'm still proud of that NetHack game. Orrrrr... has anyone heard anything about whether the new Final Fantasy for the DS is any good? (Old-style RPGs seem to be really good for my sanity in small to middling doses. I don't ask questions, I do the things that make me not lose my shit.)
• Spent last Thursday night and Friday in Ohio for work, and worked like 18 hours or something while I was there; have to do it again this week but with more hours (probably like 22-24). On the plus side that means anyone who calls me on Wednesday can kindly fuck off speak to another representative. And I should be able to get ahead on homework this week which will be awesome.
• Leaves are starting to change, and I should probably buy a rake. Potentially dumb question: Do homeowners rake and dispose of all of their leaves, rather than letting them degrade into the soil, for appearance reasons? Or is there a good reason to make them go away? Also uh I should figure out how to go about being an adult who has a fireplace. This is not a skill I have ever learned. I can start a fire --- I did go to MIT after all --- but I'm not good at things like "keeping it contained in a fireplace" or "having it go out without the use of fire extinguishers. (I even managed "starting a charcoal grill without lighter fluid because furries are not prepared for things" a couple of months ago, although we didn't really get it to meat-cooking heat until someone brought lighter fluid. By that point I had eaten, go team vegan.)
• I should also buy a snow shovel, so that I don't get caught without one when everyone else is trying to buy one. I do have an electric snowblower, but something that's not terribly effective.
• I think for the time being "not drinking" has changed from "I don't seem to be doing this anymore" to a rule; I dunno if it will stick or not. I'm pretty sure this is the opposite of what one is supposed to do in grad school, but so is having a tech job, and so is owning a house, so whatever.
• A coworker got me listening to Kate Miller-Heidke, who has less bass in her music than is usually my preference but an amazing voice and a great sense of timing. Here's a link to one of her songs I'm fond of --- sorry for the boring video but I couldn't find a non-live version. As a side benefit, having iTunes do the Genius thing with her is finding stuff I had forgotten about but really like (is "Little Boots" your fault, Rik?). I have no idea how said coworker can like Miller-Heidke so much and hate Kate Bush, though.
• Speaking of music, have you all heard the new Of Montreal album? I found it much easier to get into than Skeletal Lamping (or even Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse) but a little more heavy-handed or less nuanced or something? The tracks with Janelle Monae are particularly enjoyable, and I should track down some of her stuff. I have not been listening to it non-stop to try to get it like I did with the two albums previously mentioned, but it was hardly a waste of $5.

Comments

[kelkyag]

Do homeowners rake and dispose of all of their leaves, rather than letting them degrade into the soil, for appearance reasons? Or is there a good reason to make them go away?

Depends on your yard (and your neighborhood, I suppose, on the appearance front). Lawns tend not to like being covered in leaves -- they want the light and don't need the mulching, and tend to smother under wet leaves. Flower and vegetable beds may have other opinions depending on what you're growing. "Disposing" of leaves could mean composting them (goes well with kitchen scraps), if you want to do that.

"keeping it contained in a fireplace" or "having it go out without the use of fire extinguishers"

Keeping it contained is mostly a matter of not building it up too big for your fireplace, and perhaps using a fireplace screen. You'll learn it fairly quickly with practice.

If you want to put the fire out, the easy and slow way is to stop feeding it. You'll have hot embers for a long while, but if they're safely contained in the fireplace that's probably fine with minimal supervision. If the fire is still quite active or you're in more of a hurry, you can start disassembling it -- move the logs apart so that they can cool off, and there's no spot where heat is contained in a small space between multiple logs. As the embers are cooling, you can also rake them or turn them over so that the still-hot embers are exposed rather than insulated under a layer of ash, but be careful about not throwing ashes and sparks into the air doing that. And you can apply water.

[rax]

Thanks, that is useful!

Do you have recommendations for a way to learn how to compost? There was a class in Bloomington but I went to bed early instead. :/

Also, uh, how do you get logs? I have lots of twigs and branches because I have trees that shed, but I don't really want to cut any of them down.

[kareid]

Composting is pretty straightforward (stuff likes to decompose.) A couple things to keep in mind are: you want a mix of types of plant matter, so all leaves is not ideal (kitchen scraps are great,) some air, and some water. I handle this by not covering mine, so it gets rained on, and having a container for the pile with partially slatted sides. It also lets the birds eat the large bugs. You can stir it occasionally to make it go faster.

If you're willing to read some, an excellent book on composting is 'Let It Rot' by Stu Campbell; it's not too long. Some of the useful things I got from it were ideas of what should and shouldn't go into the pile.

[kelkyag]

What kareid said about composting. I've only ever helped take care of someone else's compost pile, so I've never done a lot of research on it myself.

I think most people anywhere near a city in the US wind up buying firewood, which could mean anywhere from buying little bundles good for one or two fires at the grocery store to having someone dump a cord of wood off in your driveway, depending on how often you plan to have a fire going and whether it is an important part of heating the house.

[chagrined]

Apparently the leaf-raking also depends on the type of grass: http://landscaping.about.com/od/landscapecolor/f/why_rake_leaves.htm

The more you know!! I certainly knew none of this about leaves, heh.

[summerrose]

Leaves are your composty friends! Leave them where they are over the winter (or spread them out somewhere in the yard that the neighbors won't object to on aesthetic grounds, I don't know what your neighbors are like) so that they break down a bit, and they'll be awesome compost 'browns' in the spring.
I'm just starting out with composting (I've been doing it for a couple of months), and I found that a really good guide for me (that doesn't assume you know about gardening) is _The Complete Compost Gardening Guide_, by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin. They do a really good job of explaining things (compared to the other literature for beginners that I've read). They're also really big on low-effort ways to get things done, and not lugging stuff around the yard when it's not necessary, which I really appreciate.

[rathdei.livejournal.com]

I do not know about the new FF game, but Etrian Odyssey (http://www.amazon.com/Etrian-Odyssey-III-Drowned-Nintendo-DS/dp/B003S55EX2/ref=pd_sim_vg_2 since I can't link up the text and am too lazy to figure out if LJ does html or if it has some sort of code on its own) still claims my soul like the first two did.

Re: starting a fire: it's not as hard as you think. If me and a bunch of boy scouts under the age of 16 could do it without killing ourselves, my hyper-intelligent MIT graduate sister and whatever furries she's rooming with can probably figure it out no trouble. They didn't have google in the woods.

Homeowners in places like RI do, don't you remember how we had to rake and bag all all the leaves constantly? Now I'm sure there are hippies who have other better ways of disposal (perhaps compost to turn it into fertilizer? I'm not sure) which you might want to look into. Maybe I'll ask my NH friend. Well, sort of friend. More like Girl-I-Haven't-Talked-To-Since-August-And-We-Kind-Of-Hooked-Up-And-I-Kind-Of-Left-While-We-Were-Angry actually I don't think I will ask her.

Re: of montreal
the highest rated comment makes me giggle. The music is still very silly, and I have to be in the mood for it. I'll definitely pick it up, though. Or steal it. Well, hey, I don't make a Real People Salary yet so I can get away with those things.

[prisminawindow.livejournal.com]

My impressions about these things are somewhat second hand in that I was never very involved in yard care growing up, but my impression is that even if you like/don't mind the way the leaves look now, they'll be more problematic later. Crisp, fresh leaves are cute; a lawn of mushy, half-decomposed mess will probably be grosser (and will probably make things difficult when you want the grass to grow again the spring, etc.). Also if you care about these things, not raking may annoy your neighbors.

FYI, your town may have some kind moderately helpful leaf collection system (e.g., at one point when I was growing up, we lived somewhere where we gathered our leaves into a giant pile by the side of the road, and the city sent a truck to collect them later. My father was often indignant about them picking times that were inappropriately early or late for the collection).

[prisminawindow.livejournal.com]

should say "some kind of moderately ..." -- sorry; there's a word missing there

[twitch124.livejournal.com]

The kind of leaves we have in New England will partially decompose over the winter and look bad, plus the decomposed bits will change the soil chemistry in a way that makes it harder for grass to grow.

I think it's related to the composting thing about leaves are brown materials (carbon) and grass is green materials (nitrogen).

[twitch124.livejournal.com]

You may be luckier in Indiana, but I don't think the chemistry changes too much.

[(Anonymous)]

Depends on how many trees and how big their leaves are. I have poplars, so the leaves are pretty small. I can keep it under control just by mowing over the leaves with a mulching mower every two weeks or so. It shreds the leaves and then over the next few days the pieces just sift down to the soil.

[paxed.livejournal.com]

Like prisminawindow said. Don't leave the leaves on the lawn to decompose.

Over here most homeowners compost the leaves in their own composting bins. Other options are: dumped into woods (usually under cover of darkness), burned (requires a hard-to-get license), or taken to a place which takes compostable garden trash (not every city has these).

[eirl.livejournal.com]

At least in our neighborhood, the trash collectors collect the leaves and take them to a composting facility. You have to bag your leaves separately from trash and they are collected for free. You don't want to leave them on the lawn because there will be too many of them and it will kill the grass. Something would probably sprout up through the rot, but it might not be really desirable-- ragweed or the like. Or it might just be baby trees. But probably also ragweed.

[rax.livejournal.com]

We have a yard waste service, but it costs money, so I am trying to find alternate solutions. (I also like being lazy, but I don't mind composting them if I can find a way to do it that doesn't leave me with no free time at all.) I don't think we get ragweed here, but I have seen some stinging nettle in the back yard... wheeee.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

Re: fireplace: you absolutely must make sure your flue is open and clear before you try to start a fire, unless you enjoy a smoke-filled house and CO poisoning. Clear anything flammable away from the fireplace. Get a screen if you don't already have one. If you're really worried about the fire spreading, get a bucket of sand or a fire extinguisher and keep it nearby. Actually, you should probably have a fire extinguisher for other reasons, too :P.

The best way to let it go out is simply to stop feeding it and let it fade on its own. Again, a bucket of sand may be useful if you must put it out ASAP, but then of course you'll have sand in your fireplace.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I will take this new term "flue" and start from there and hopefully get somewhere. ;)

[occultatio.livejournal.com]

It would probably also be a very good idea to at least find out whether your chimney needs cleaning. If the previous owners used the fireplace regularly then they may have kept it in good shape, but if it's been a while since its last use then you will almost certainly want (if not have) to get it cleaned out first.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Janelle Monae has like one and a half albums and they are fucking awesome; the three-fourths of her "Metropolis" cycle she's released so far (part 1: "Chase Suite", parts 2/3: "The Archandroid") are pretty solid pieces of work telling a pretty complicated story about a lost android woman.

Also Of Montreal shows up on one of the tracks in part 3.

[anacoluthon.livejournal.com]

Oh! I should hear that Of Montreal album if it has Janelle Monae in it. <3 I am SO EXCITED to see her at the end of this month, and I think the Of Montreal part will be fun too (it's just not a band I know very well).

[rainfae.livejournal.com]

I like this new Kate. I would guess that your roommate prefers her more mainstream construction of rhythm and melody. Kate Bush is so much more bizarre.

[sprrwhwk.livejournal.com]

Of Montreal and Janelle Monae?! Two great tastes! To the music machine, Mr. Peabody!

[baniszew.livejournal.com]

Decomposing leaves on your lawn would probably not only kill the grass, but they can become a breeding ground for mold, mosquitoes, and other undesirable things.

My parents used to compost their leaves until the compost pile took over the entire side yard and became a mold-breeding ground of its own. If you actually use the compost, it's probably a good idea, though. My dad has this leaf-shredder device to make the leaves less dense before we added them to the pile. It was basically a big funnel with a weed whacker built in at the bottom. Put it on top of a trash can, shovel leaves into the top, and you end up with a can of compost where you would have had ~8 cans of unshredded leaves.