2nd try

2nd try
Originally uploaded by stephsk8r

National Drive Your VW to Work Day

Friday, June 22 is National Drive Your VW to Work Day. Phoebe will be looking pretty, as we washed and waxed her this past weekend with my dad in preparation for our Roswell/Route 66 trip.

Radish serving

Radish serving
Originally uploaded by stephsk8r

The radishes are ready to eat! That's salt in the middle of the plate.

They were the most intense radishes I've ever had. I wonder if they lose their intensity as they're shipped around the country to grocery stores. Seriously, they made my nose run. They were very tasty, though.

Radish preparation

Radish preparation
Originally uploaded by stephsk8r

Here they are after washing and trimming.

Radishes!

Radishes!
Originally uploaded by stephsk8r

I pulled six actual radishes from the ground. There are more, but I thought we'd leave them in the ground until we were ready to eat them.

Radish plant

Radish plant
Originally uploaded by stephsk8r

The package said they would have 22 days between planting and harvest, so I thought I'd check them out tonight. Some of the radishes were peeking out of the soil!

Radish plants in garden

Radish plants in garden
Originally uploaded by stephsk8r

We planted radishes for the first time this year. I was hopeful that we would grow a few.

AfterEllen's Hot 100

After reading the AfterEllen Hot 100 list and Maxine Dangerous's response, I had to blog my favorites. Here, in alphabetical order by filename of the picture, are my top ten from the Hot 100. (Sorry, numbers 11 through 19. You're hot too.) I did not base my choices on the particular photograph AfterEllen had (although those were the ones I used); sometimes I didn't like their photo at all. In any case, here they are.

Kristen Bell

Deanna Casaluce

Guinevere Turner

Jennifer Beals

Lauren Graham

Lucy Liu

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Amelie Mauresmo

Salma Hayek

Tina Fey


I have to say that I'm surprised at some of the choices. Only one athlete? What happened to Annika Sorenstam? Maybe the whole TomKat debacle has prevented Katie Holmes from making the list. And has everyone forgotten Mary Stuart Masterson? I haven't.

New places to recycle corrugated cardboard in Indy

Recycle Indianapolis has added two dropoff locations for corrugated cardboard:

Sam's Club, 3015 W. 86th St.
Eastgate Consumer Mall, E. Washington St. and Shortridge Rd.

Find more information about places to recycle various items at Keep Indianapolis Beautiful.

We've found Indianapolis Recycled Fiber at 1775 S. West St. to be the best option for most of our recycling. They take paper and cardboard as well as plastics 1 through 7 (the Keep Indianapolis Beautiful locations only take 1 and 2), and you don't have to separate the plastic anymore! We take glass and steel to the recycling container behind the downtown O'Malia's, and we're still in search of a non-scary scrap metal place to sell our aluminum.

Steph's birthday

It's Steph's birthday today! Happy birthday, honey!

If you like, you can visit her blog and wish her a happy birthday. She hasn't decided yet whether she wants to go out to eat or eat at home tonight.

Caturday; or, I am queen of the chair.

I am queen of the chair. I will push you out.


I am queen of the chair.


OK. I am queen of this chair, then.


I am queen of the chair.


Ha! I am queen of the chair!


I am queen of the loveseat.


No! I am queen of the loveseat!


I am still queen of the chair.

NYR update 6

1. Floss: Still flossing consistently.

2. Lunch: Went out twice this week.

3. On time: I got to work early once this week.

4. Flip: I haven't been skating enough recently. Moving to the new rink has been a challenge because it's farther away from home and work and because the rink is usually really cold.

5. Save: Our upcoming Route 66/Roswell trip is going to put our savings on hold for a little while.

6. Recipes: I haven't tried much in the way of new recipes lately.

7. Trans fat: Doing pretty well. Almost out of microwave popcorn.

8. Perfume: The level in the large bottle is going down fast!

9. Compact: I'm having to buy some new shoes because I have to wear orthotics now and they don't fit in most of my old shoes. It sucks -- I have one pair of shoes I can wear to work in the summertime. I had just gotten to the point where my shoe collection was almost perfect, and now I can't wear most of my shoes most of the time. Unfortunately, I still need to keep most of them for the times when I don't wear my orthotics because otherwise I won't have any shoes that match most of my clothes. I'm supposed to wear the orthotics 90% of the time. It's going to be difficult to find shoes to take to Roswell.

Electric mower

I have a Ryobi cordless electric mower that has served me well for the past eight years and is still going strong. Unfortunately, they don't make it anymore, but here's another option: the Neuton. It provides only a 14" cut rather than the 18" that my mower has, but it has several desirable features that my mower doesn't have, such as an available extra lift-out battery.

Either mower (as well as a corded electric mower) will pollute significantly less than a gas mower does. Mowing with a gas mower for an hour produces the same amount of pollution as driving a car 50 miles.

Funny discussion

While looking for another article, I came across an MSN discussion board thread on the topic of best and worst wedding gifts. Some of the worst gifts are hilarious, and many of the best gifts are touching. It's adding some levity to the whole wedding planning thing.

Dadblogging: Articles and brochures

Instead of mailing me stuff, my dad brought it with him last weekend.

* Brochure from Anthem on physical activity
* Chicago Tribune article "A lot rides on damaged alloy wheels"
* A diagram he drew of something that may have to do with water pipes
* A printout of a Yahoo article on Constellation Energy Group
* A Jim Mateja review of the 2007 Saturn Aura Green Line hybrid
* Some Toyota promotional material from England
* The official guide from the Chicago Auto Show
* A savings card from the auto show for 10% off at Firestone
* A CD sampler from Scion
* A cool metal Scion keychain (mattindy77, it's yours if you want it)
* A GTI pen holder (like the Beetle ones) complete with a set of stickers to customize it
* Honda, Toyota, and Scion promotional material
* Chevy Volt and Corvette promotional material
* Saturn and Chrysler promotional material

Sour beef

When I was growing up, my parents would sometimes make traditional Czech foods. One of them that I enjoyed was sour beef and dumplings. We only ate it a couple of times per year because it's pretty time-intensive to make.

My dad came to visit last weekend and brought me a couple of servings that he'd frozen. (He makes it a lot more often now that he's retired again.) I was more than a little concerned that it might be the kind of food that you had to eat while growing up in order to stomach, let alone love, but Steph liked it a lot. I didn't take a picture because, well, it's not the most attractive-looking dinner.

I don't have my dad's recipe yet, but I Googled the phrase last night and found a few, none of which look like they're the one our family uses. I also found information about some restaurants in Baltimore that serve it. The Czech word for dumplings is spelled knedlicky; it's pronounced KLED-neek in my family. Most people seem to make small individual dumplings, whereas we make large ones and then slice them.

My Czech vocabulary is very small, and I have difficulty locating the correct spellings of the few words I do know because they aren't phonetic. A number of years ago my cousins and I compared the Czech words we knew from our dads, and we discovered we knew different ones. They know the word for mashed potatoes, for example, while I know the words for facial hair, pacifier, and tail (as in "dog following you around," not "appendage on the back of animals."

Art car v2.2

My first and second visions for turning my 1993 Honda Accord into an art car have proven to be unworkable, so I have a new implementation of an old idea: I'm going to decoupage quotes onto the car and seal it with some sort of acrylic or polyurethane sealer to make it waterproof.

My second plan was to use letters cut from bumper stickers to make the quotes, but there just aren't that many free bumper stickers out there, so it finally occurred to me to cut the letters out of magazines, ads, and other found objects and decoupage them onto the car. The background for each quote will be a different piece of colored or patterned paper so that observers can tell the quotes apart. Last night I bought some scrapbooking paper at Costco, and then I came home and started cutting out letters. I'm sorting and storing them in a many-sectioned tool organizer. I've been collecting quotes for some time, although I'll probably need more than I think I will. Feel free to suggest your favorite quotes in the comments.

long time no blog

That day of silence turned into a week and a half somehow. Oops.

A day of silence

Our tree

Yesterday at Earth Day we were given a free tree. It is a black oak that will grow to between 90 and 100 feet tall. We planted the tree today in front of our house. Here is our tree:



Here is us with our tree:



Yes, it's the tiny little stick-like thing at our feet. Today is our anniversary, so we thought we'd start a tradition of taking our picture with our tree every year as it grows. It's our anniversatree.