What I'm doing this weekend.

Well, the tomato plants I ordered from a local school are here, so I'm planting tomatoes.  I've been fretting about my garden for weeks.  I got it turned over and the cages dug in weeks ago, so I've been waiting, which is pretty much killing me.  But it has been so cold.  The days are in the sixties, which is just barely enough if you're running or in the full sun.  If the daytime temperatures are only in the sixties, I don't see how the soil temp can be in the seventies, which is what the tomato plants want.  It'd make sense to wait, but the other gardeners in the community garden have their tomatoes in, and I suffer from envy.  Comparisons only ever make the situation worse, and how much more true that is when you're comparing yourself to people who've already got tomato plants in.  I could probably wait a couple more weeks even, and will for the eggplants and cucumbers.  But my tomato starts are here, so I'll plant them.  I love the smell of tomato plant leaves as much as I love anything.

[UPDATE:  Why do all my trips to the garden have to involve near-handfuls of black widows?  I swear, I've seen at least one on my last four trips. 

Got the tomato plants in.  Twelve plants, just to keep me in tomatoes.  It won't be enough.  I'll still have to supplement with tomatoes from market.  My dad puts in 60 plants for a family of four.]

Then I'll head over to the gym.  There's a powerlifting competition today that I'm not in, which I am just fine with.  I'll probably end up plateloading, probably for deadlifting.  That's the hardest, because the bar is on the ground, so you're moving all those plates from a kneeling position.  And it is a lot of plates.  The big guys can deadlift hundreds of pounds, and those hundreds of pounds have to get on the bar somehow.  Last time I loaded for deadlift with Perfect Mike on the other end of the bar.  Perfect Mike is not just strong like an animal and a fantastic spotter.  Perfect Mike is also fast and accurate when he loads the bar, so we got compliments on how fast we worked.  It is true.  We got a lot of lifters through the meet fast.  I liked that when I look over at Mike, we are very often mirrored, reaching for a plate at the same time, or clamping down in unison.  After that I'll be tired, so the evening will be mellow.

Tomorrow, I don't know.  Market, of course.  A party for friends of mine whose apartment burnt down.  Man, I just purged my house so ruthlessly.  I put everything I hadn't used recently out on the curb, so I don't have back-up stuff to give to people.  I was thinking of picking out lamps for them, because people need lamps.  Actually, I need lamps, and I saw some adorable ones that don't match my house.  But I wanted to get them anyway and this would be a good reason.  Except that maybe they should be able to pick their own lamps.  I should get them a gift card, right?  Normally I'd say those aren't personal thoughtful gifts.  But this might be the time when they just want to be able to pick out the stuff they' need.

I should hang up lights on my porch, because I came up with an elaborate plan for lights and lanterns on my porch.  But that sounds like work.  I can't do work until the days warm up and I don't have to spend all my energy battling the cold.

Maybe Pub Quiz after, if dw and Jean-Michel want to go.  I haven't been to Pub Quiz since we won the third place prize, porn.  Once we'd won that, I felt like I'd completed all my goals and my life was satisfied.  But now I'm remembering that it was fun just to go to Pub Quiz, without trying to win porn.  It isn't always about the prize, you know, even when the prize is porn.  Sometimes the journey is the prize.  It is good to be reminded of that.

Comments

[PG]

I find it almost unbearable to throw usable things away, so I make large drops at the Salvation Army about twice a year. Books, clothes, towels, bedding, electronics, furniture. Maybe they throw some of it out as worthless, but I'm not there when they do, and there's a tax deduction.

We got our apartment already furnished, and after we'd lived there for a year and had a massive stack of china and glassware from our registry, I said, "We need a china cabinet in the kitchen, and it will only fit if we get rid of the breakfast table." The breakfast table was an adorable green-glass round-topped tall table with matching stools that had padded white leather seats, and we had actually had breakfast there exactly once. It was a table for the kind of people we wanted to be (people who ate breakfast, together, at a table not in front of a TV or computer screen) but our apartment is too small for aspirational furniture.

My husband and his brother took it to the Salvation Army, and before they'd even finished unloading it in the parking lot, a woman rushed up to them and said, "How much?" My brother-in-law was going to try to make the sale, but my husband felt that it was unethical to use the SA as our garage sale, so he directed the woman to the SA employee on duty.

I figure that if everyone takes all their excess stuff to a charity store, then that community has a constant supply of used furniture for when people need to furnish their homes quickly and cheaply. Plus, the sidewalks here are too narrow for a two-way stream of pedestrians, AND the regular trash that gets dumped there for pickup, AND loads of old furniture.

[doctorpat]

I was thinking of picking out lamps for them, because people need lamps.

In my experience, only female people need lamps. They are like cushions in that respect.

Whether this applies to your friend or not depends on both ta's sex and how closely ta follow Australian engineering stereotypes (which everyone should, but not all do)

(Using ta which is the non-gender-specific personal pronoun from Chinese which english so desparately needs to steal.)