My co-worker Martha has a daughter that has decided to take a year and travel. Her name is Leah. She and her friend Brent are currently in Romania backpacking and staying in hostels and crazy stuff like that. What’s really cool is that they’re keeping a blog! I’ll ask them if it’s okay before linking. I think that’s probably good manners.
The page says “Leah wanted to see the world, and I didn’t have anything better to do, so here we go!” 
The most recent entry talks about a scary spider bite while they were in the middle of nowhere.
Later that night, while preparing my sleeping bag, I was bit by spider. Pretty scary considering we had no idea how it would affect me. There we were in the middle of nowhere, in the darkness, and my hand was feeling numb. Leah, immediately captured the spider in case we needed to show it to someone later. We laid there under our tarp, on the bed of pine needles for the next couple hours waiting to see what my hand was going to do. Turns out, everything was fine. My hand felt ok a couple hours later, and we got some sleep.
They took pictures of the spider. (shudder)
And I thought going to Amsterdam was adventurous.
Ah, the joys of city living. I have rats in my back yard. Mostly they just bother me because they dig holes by the fence. But they also bother me because, you know, they’re rats.
My neighbor and I have both put poison out. Yesterday, I saw evidence that the poison is working. A smaller rat must’ve eaten some, then dragged herself to the base of my newly-planted Himalayan banana tree, then died. Good-bye, rat.
I’m a little worried about my neighbor’s dogs because she says they eat the rats, but she doesn’t seem to mind. They didn’t get this one, in any case. I buried it under the deutzia bush that I like to call “The Octopus Bush”.
Yay! I finally got to work in my garden yesterday.
First, I brought out the potted plants that have been over-wintering inside. It’s always a challenge to keep them alive when they aren’t outside: Will there be enough sunlight? Will the red spider mites get them? I’m proud to say I did not have a fatality this winter.
Next, I planted some things that arrived in the mail over spring break. The first thing was a musa sikkimensis, or Himalayan banana tree. I had already decided to get this back in January. It was hard to decide where to put it. I eventually settled on putting it near the entrance to my back yard garden. I think it will be a nice gateway plant to introduce the whole “tropical garden” look I’m doing.
For now, it’s still quite small.
And lastly, I planted some lily bulbs that came over spring break as well. These were a little bit of an impulse buy, but I just had to see what they looked like in real life. They are oriental lilies, so that means they’ll smell good, much like Stargazers. These are called Sumatras. They are supposed to be a dark, dark red. I want to see if they live up to my expectations. So that I wouldn’t forget where I put them, I took a picture of the planting site:
I ended up sleeping more than I thought yesterday… about three hours. I started sleeping at one and got up at four. Well, the day’s pretty much shot at four, so I didn’t go out to the garden. I was hungry though, so I went to the grocery store.
I decided I’d try to grill something. I got some tilapia. I also got all kinds of other things to see how they tasted grilled. I got a sweet potato, onions, beets, and pears. The fish was good. I used a marinade recipie I found online. I burned the onions and sweet potatoes because I didn’t turn them. I ate the tops of them. They were okay. I got red onions. I think I might prefer sweet onions next time. The beets weren’t cooked long enough. They were still too crunchy. I didn’t grill the pears. Maybe I’ll try that another time.
While I was at the grocery store, I got some other necessities: milk, Pepsi, detergent, etc. The bill was a hundred bucks. I thought that was awfully high for such a small pile of stuff. I think I’m buying things that are too small. I think that maybe in the future, whatever else I need, I will also get things like large packs of toilet paper, cases of canned beverages, and watermelons. That way, my pile of groceries will look like it’s worth more.
Here’s the pitiful pile of groceries that I spent $103.66 on. Good thing I had that stupid card they make you use to get a discount. Otherwise I would have spent $5.15 more!
There was another lock-in last night at school. This was for someone who won it at our auction last year. We were a little overdue in delivering it. This was a group of twelve seventh grade boys. It was a lot of fun!
They dragged each other down the hallway in sleeping bags:
They had a TP-mummy competition:
Of course we were in the gym a lot. They played basketball and dodgeball, but the big game of the evening was floor hockey:
Most of them conked out around 3:00am.
(I took this picture in the morning when there was more light.)
But there was a group who were committed to staying awake. Five of them made it to 5:00 or so, then three of them made it to 6:00. Finally, it was only two that made it to the morning. Congrats to them!
I got a couple of hours of sleep in a couple of naps. I’ll be sleeping later today I’m sure, but it’s so nice out I hope I can work in the garden a little before Sleep takes me.
