Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Can you see the double rainbow in this one?

In this photo you can see my sunflowers, beats, dill, spinach (going to seed sadly), zucchini, and radishes with plenty of seed pods to pick for my crop next year.

I was really impressed by Dion’s lunchtime speech today (aside from his ESL grammar of course). He certainly was showing some charisma, and was putting Harper’s games playing in context for the media. It’s clear that soon again Harper’s Conservatives will attack Dion and Green Party leader May for a “backroom” deal in their respective riding contests, but Harper is willing to wheel and deal with Dion over the PHONE on the fate of the current parliament!

CTV has the video.

It’s not hard to see why Dion scoffs at Harper’s claim that other parties are preventing parliament from working. The Conservatives are the ones who are preventing parliament from working, because it’s busy weeding out Conservative corruption (In-and-Out, Cadscam) and ethical problems (10%ers, Bernier). Scott provides a link to why an early election call is preposterous if Harper wants to save face.

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Yesterday was quite different. After I had the afternoon off anyway, and no plans, I called up some friends and we went 5 pin bowling for a couple hours. I averaged about 176 after 44 frames, with a couple of >200 games. My car appears to be sucking gas, so either a Grand Prix sucks (likely) or someone is siphoning my tank and that’s why it gets just 18MPG in the city driving I’m doing. I could almost see the needle going down yesterday while driving between the library and bowling alley. Then it went back up again. Accuracy is not important in gas gauges, just as it isn’t for toner cartridge level meters or progress bars.

We wrapped up the night of cooking an unintentionally vegetarian (almost vegan) meal partly from my garden (and mostly from Superstore) at my place, with “Mission Impossible III” [9/10].

I picked my only kohlrabi on Saturday. I ate some of it raw, and tried frying the rest. It’s not my favourite veggie, but it helped fill me up for supper. I didn’t remember the top leaves are edible if cooked, so by the time I found out by surfing the web, they were already left behind in the garden.

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I finished watching “Mousehunt” [7/10], and saw “Mission Impossible II” [8/10] for the first time on Friday. For Saturday I went for a long bike ride, stopping at several garage sales to haggle, and picked up a selection of some very useful stuff [Brita tanks, camera memory, exercise ball-tube, book] for under $8 in total. (And yes John, I did end up blogging about my new Brita tanks like we talked about Saturday.)

Along the way I stopped at Jesse’s and watched Olympic volleyball, then finished my ride with a stop at the dragon boat races just before they wrapped up. The team names are hilarious, including the “Civil Serpents”, “Soggy Bottom Buoys”, “Wascanimals”, and I think I even heard the names “Ship Kickers” and “Dragon Your Assets”.

My remaining evening at home could be described as cooking, cleaning, and TV watching. Oooh, exciting.

The Little Tree Nursery is a business in Saskatchewan that another blogger has been raving about, so I thought gardeners might like to take a look at Zach’s post about it, and his planned plums.

In my garden I’m picking peas, purple beans, beats, zucchini, spinach, lettuce, radish seed pods, and could dig up some potatoes but I’ll let them get bigger first.

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And speaking of zucchini, I heard a funny story about someone the other day bringing a business a few of the dreaded veggie to reward them for a job well done. Some of the zucchini was of course politely refused. You have to be careful in Saskatchewan this time of year, and make sure your car is locked or you might end up being given some while you’re not looking!

-Quite tasty raw even

I meant to post this yesterday, but constant thunderstorms kept my computer off for most of the day.

There’s a need for rain again, after a few 30+ days.

This is the Trans-Canada Highway on the way out of Regina on to Moose Jaw.

The rain when it does come doesn’t last all day, it just pours for a few minutes and dries up. The clouds in the photo didn’t bring any rain to my community garden, where there were dozens of people nearby it visible from the highway, working their gardens in the hot air as I drove past at 100km/h.

I took in two different movies tonight around a bout of weeding and watering the garden. That’s why it’s a thunderstorm right now, don’t you know?

Anyway, I wouldn’t bother seeing “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay” [4/10] because the first one is really funny, and the sequel is contrived, forced, and barely funny. As I said to Brien, “It’s too much Rob Cordory, and not enough Jon Stewart to balance him out.” It’s a bit like the feeling of a painful SNL sketch.

And speaking of painful SNL, “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” [6/10] has painful moments, but at least it’s funny in many parts. The animal cruelty segments could have been left out, and there could have been about fifty fewer Adam Sandler penis jokes, but it wasn’t unbearable. You really have to accept that it’s comic book humour and isn’t supposed to make sense, or you just won’t enjoy it.

I’m anticipating munching on some radish pods, using the ones I grew on my balcony for pods and seeds rather than eating the more well known root. I picked a handful from my real garden today, along with some onion tops. I didn’t take my camera along, so no photo today. Despite the rain the last few days, the ground is still cracked and dry. I also killed a few potato bugs that were taking a liking to my baby potato plants.

- Albert Street in Regina

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Last night I made some yogurt. It’s an experiment, and I’m really hoping it turned out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a flop since I used the temperature guesstimate method instead of a thermometer.

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Sunday I biked over to Canadian Tire to pick up a clamp, and a Presta valve adapter. I find it moderately hilarious that “Canadian TIRE” doesn’t have a Presta tire valve to Schreader valve adapter. I also encountered a garage sale with a free golf club bag (perfect for my set of mutt clubs that have been bagless for so long). In fact, the bag was better than free, since it contained a dime in a pocket - canceling out the dime I spent on the only other item I picked up at the sale.

I went to the dollar store, hoping to get some cheap superglue to fix my sunglasses. I had a little bit of trouble parking my bike, since there was no lock within a block, and no metal signs even to fit my lock around. The cashier inside was naturally only politely disinterested in the dilemma for cyclist customers. Also a little off-putting was that the Dollarama had 9W CFLightbulbs, but there was absolutely nothing on them indicating that there was mercury inside. Not on the bulb, nor the packaging. They looked to be made by Sunbeam especially for the dollar store chain. I suppose when shopping at a dollar store, it’s important to remember that toxic metals are the rule, not the exception.

ADDED: I’ve heard of cheap hotels, but the former Howard Johnson is just ridiculous: