Life, the Universe, and Everything

We ordered 10 yards of crushed stone a couple of weeks ago, so that we could fill in under the deck that we're rebuilding, and under the foundation that's holding up our carport. We finally got the last of it moved out of the way today, so now we can park the car in the carport again. I hate having it parked on the street.

computers

It seems as though my Dec 3000 server isn't capable of running Linux, and the Evil people from my last place of employment stole my copy of OSF. Currently, it's got OpenVMS 7.1.2, but no TCP/IP packages. I guess my other option is one of the BSDs. I'll have to look into compatibility.

TV

The Sci Fi channel is putting on the FarScape series from the beginning, starting tonight. I've liked the snippets of the series that I've been able to watch before, but seeing it from the beginning gives the story a lot more cohesion. I'm hoping to be able to watch the rest of it, but I think I'll have to video tape it a couple of nights, so that I can go biking.

Persons

I was attempting to navigate the trexlertown (search google, if you don't know) website today, to see if there are any races coming up soon. That is, big races, and not the weekly things. I'm not sure, since their website isn't very good, but I think that RSN will be the end of the American Velodrome Challenge. I know that Emily is leaving town on Wednesday for PA, so maybe this is what she's going for. It certainly sounds like it's just a "visit", since she didn't sound like she was saying good-bye to anybody. I hope she does well, and even more hope that she comes back soon...

Biking

Tomorrow, I think I'm going to drag my mom out to look at heart monitors. She's been training for her vacation (8 days of hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire), and I'm sure she'll want to keep training after she gets back. I need one because I'm having a really hard time judging how hard my workouts really are. I used to run in High School, and I could pretty easily tell how hard I was working. With biking, I have a much harder time judging how hard I'm working. I can bike for a much longer time than I can run. A 2 hour bike ride has me slightly tired afterwards. 2 hours of running, even easy running, had me completely wasted for the entire day. Anyway, I want the heart monitor so that I can try to keep my heart rate where it needs to be, rather than just going and riding. I -really- want to be much improved when the racing season starts next spring/summer.

Food, Fruit, and

Last summer, we had to cut down one of the big apple trees in the back yard. It was still pretty solid, but we were terracing the yard, and leaving it there would have killed it. Now we've got a rather large section of the back yard that's un-shaded. This is sort of OK, because there are blueberry bushes planted along the wall, in the really high-sun area. These aren't those big fat watery cultivated jobbers either, but some moderate to small, really flavorful berries. Anyway, I think I'm going to try to talk people into putting in a second row of blueberry bushes in the back yard. I don't think we've got enough bushes yet, and they look a lot better than all that grass. I think I also want to see about putting in a smaller tree in the top corner of the yard, to provide some shade back there, as it gets really hot.
We've still got a pear tree, and another apple tree that are actually in our yard. They're both bearing plenty of fruit this year (LOTS of pears, pretty average crop of apples). Last year, we picked hundreds of plums from the tree that's in our hedge. This year there are almost no plums on that tree. I guess it's just one of those cyclical things. I don't mind too much, we've still got a few jars of dried plums left, and those are really good.
We let the blackberry vines grow out through our hedges, and pick lots of blackberries. There always seems to be a huge crop of these, and they taste really good. We usually run them through our juicer to remove all of the seeds and skins, then boil it down to about 1/2 volume, to enhance the flavour a bit. I love to make ice-cream out of the sauce. It's a custard ice cream, so it's not too healthy, but if you add the right amount of sauce, it becomes a REALLY incredible ice cream, almost on the edge of being sherberty. Mmm... I can't wait until I've frozen enough water that I can make some more ice cream. I Scream/You Scream/We All Scream/For Ice Cream/.