one point twenty one jiggawatts!

All 3 Back to the Future movies are playing today on the Space channel and it was Michael J Fox's birthday yesterday, so,  I feel like telling the story (it's short) about why I love Michael J. Fox so much, since I have no gardening or other news today, so here goes my first post on Things I Am Obsessed With:

It all started with the fact that my dad used to take me almost weekly (from what I remember) to a local video store called Bandito Video and we would both choose movies to rent and watch together. Everytime a new Michael J. Fox movie was there, i would rent and re-rent it a few times. My dad told me that even when I was just out of toddlerhood I would obsessively rent Teen Wolf and any other Michael J. Fox movies I saw there. I have no idea why I loved him, probably a combination of the fact that we watched Family Ties on tv and that his movies were very kid-oriented. As I grew up, my love for his movies never waned.

 There was also a "play place' type area in that video store that I would play in while my dad chose his movies. I also loved the staff because they were so friendly. So much so, in fact, that I never forgot what one patron looked like (the store closed when I was a teenager, and I had already stopped going there in preference for Blockbuster's cheaper prices and larger selection -how horrible!) and when I went into labour at 26 years old, the woman who did my intake was this very patron and we had a conversation about the store and how nice she was to me as a child and that I had never forgotten her, as I was having contractions and signing paperwork, haha! She said to come and show her my baby before I left if I remembered to and if she was working, but I totally forgot until a few weeks later.

So, since then, I have been slowly collecting his movies on DVD and memorbilia such as a '45 record soundtrack from an obscure movie he did with Joan Jett that I found at my husband's place of work- a used goods store called The Rad Zone !
And I got a tattoo of the delorean because portraits are almost always creepy and/or dont look good..although i toyed with the idea of getting the teen wolf movie cover image of him all hairy in the letter jacket. In the end I thought the car was better and found a really cool sketch of it online that my cousin adapted for my arm. So its not just a tattoo for Michael J Fox but also for memories of my dad and a happy childhood and my love for art and movies and the escapism they provide.

this is for you terr haha (inside joke about how i side eye her all the time)

I have finally admitted to myself that I have failed horribly at Jillian Michaels Body Revolution. I stopped halfway through the program at the end of April and never really fully picked it back up, doing workouts here and there. I have decided I will start over this week or next and add in some Insanity workouts to stave off boredom, since thats what a lot of women report doing in a Jillan Michaels group on facebook I am a part of. I like how everyone is supportive of eachother and offers solutions and opinions on the Body Revolution program as well as other fitness programs or videos. I know that I shouldn't NEED these strict programs to just eat healthy and get regular exercise but I like being on a schedule and she decides that for you with the program. After the program I will be much more fit and able to just go for runs or do other things to stay fit, and the healthier eating will slowly become natural.

In other news, I actually went out last night, to real bars with real people! And this is the first ever picture of me in instagram!

I remind myself of a bunny....thats what i get for talking when they were trying to take a picture. We went to a bar that is largely frequented by...erm..older people...needless to say i was laughing so hard i was reduced to tears a few times watching people dancing up a storm. Let me clarify, I wasn't laughing to be mean, i just never ever was a person that could dance, and in a way I am jealous of other people who can just let loose on the floor and do silly things. I love to watch it at weddings and things.

day 1 of experiment

 all three of my zucchini plants have started. i think i will give one to my mom since you really only need one plant for a small family

 Cucumbers were over with the carrots and I thought they were a weed until my mom told me what they were hahahaha . I must have mixed up the seeds I planted. I cant believe I still have a cold, have had one since I planted these things!

 Lettuce and spinach

 Leeks

 Onions

The tomatoes in the pots outside look better than the ones in the ground....

Evan's jalapeno plant is flowering!

his new favourite thing to do

The data sheets for my experiment

The room I work in...yes thats a garbage bag curtain down there to block out light

The stimuli and the control of distilled water

One of those light detectors that tells you how low or high the light is...usually used by photographers and cinematographers

It is illegal to keep or rerelease invasive species so they are quickly and humanely euthanized and disposed of

thank david suzuki (my version of god) things are sprouting!

 passing on my love of Coleoptera!

 poor guy was on his way out

 first time i saw him want bites of a sandwich so i just gave it to him! his taste in food changes drastically from week to week

one of the 3 zucchini seeds i planted has started! all i need is one!

I noticed the seeds on the ends of the baby shoots and i think these are the spinach rather than the lettuce.  the smaller round leaves could be the lettuce. oo i just googled it, it is the lettuce!

some of them are quite large already

these are carrot seedlings and that big thing might be a weed again...

put some eggshells down around my tomato plants..supposed to provide nutrients and ward off slugs. my poor tomatoes...not sure how many are going to make it. i didn't "harden them off" properly...they got bleached in the sun. i was leaving them out too long too soon. mostly out of forgetfulness and being busy and scatter brained. i still have a couple in pots inside that i can try again with if these all die

leeks

onions

then i saw a few flying insects landing on the garden...and decided to get my tulle out to protect at least some plants. the wire was from the dollar store and this stretch of tulle was 8 bucks so I think I will get 3 more for the other rows and cover them all like this

I start my experiment tomorrow! We are still doing it, just without the tanks. Instead we gave the ammocoetes a refuge to hide under and sectioned off the tank so that they can either swim around in this small area or hide under the refuge. The swimming time and their behaviour before and after the stimulus is released will be the deciding factor as to whether they can be behaviourally controlled by chemical repellents

after running trials with tanks and no refuge and sand and no sand and lights on and lights off we finally came to the conclusion that this was the best way because they felt safe under the refuge AND we can see them, which was a problem in even 2 cm of sand...they would dig in and completely disappear.

I will most likely be defending the fact that this experiment is artifical and not what they do in the wild, but all we are looking for is a VISIBLE response to a chemical repellent, and this is the only way to find out. Many experiments have tested animal responses in artifical environments and been published, such as one my professor showed me about crabs and their response to predators, which was conducted in a large plastic tank with no substrate.

its JUNE?!

Damien is catching my cold, poor guy. I guess I should have been limiting my physical contact more than I already was. I took this when he was already ill. 

Got through an over 30 hour work week this week, my cold is fading slowly, and I still don't know what I am going to be doing for my honours experiment. My professor said he is "thinking about it." If I don't do the one he originally had for me I think I will get to do one based in a stream and deal with animals in the wild, which would be interesting, but I don't want to get my hopes up. Also, it would be a waste for my prof because he spent a chunk of grant money on a failed experiment.

 He loves doing everything himself, including self shots with my phone.

He made me a heart

The view over his cat, Nancy (she is named after the main character in Nightmare on Elm Street. My  cousin and I saw the remake together as huge fans of the original series and were so disappointed we were angry! I usually like any horror flick to a degree but this one was terrible. So sad too because I love Kyle Gallner, who was one of the stars in it. Anyways, I ended up visiting my husband's cousins with him later that night and they had kittens to give away. Of course, I came home with one. Damien was only a few weeks old.)

More lettuce or spinach is slowly sprouting. Since applying the garlicy spray, the cayenne pepper and coffee grinds there have been no more dog prints in my garden

When my radishes are finished coming up I will have to move them into better spacing patterns

Work fuel

Yes, like so many other people these days i suffer from mild panic attacks. I have read the first half of this book called "discovery" which solidifed my suspicions. reading the symptoms and realizing i was finally diagnosed was a relief. i have always been a "worry wart" and somewhat of a "negative nelly" in that i imagine the worst almost in an effort to prepare myself for it if it is going to happen, instead of looking on the bright side of things. i was having panic attacks at night. my mind would race thinking about something negative that happened that day, bad news, or money issues and my heart would start pounding, i'd get chest and stomach pains and would have to sit up in the living room, exhausted but full of adrenaline, trying to take my mind off of what was bothering me with late night food network shows. one time it was so bad that i was up until 5am, frustrated and crying because i could not calm myself down and i didn't even really know why i was so upset! they have actually decreased since i bought this book and simply realized i was one of many with this problem. i haven't even read the "recovery" section yet for how to deal with it, but am finally finishing it now that i have some time.

This book is full of real life examples that this doctor has collected over the years and is helpful because every child is different and there are so many little tips in each individual story that you can try with your child if you hit a snag training. There is no set way to train and i think this book covers everything, including what NOT to do, how to train developmentally challenged children, children who attend daycare or are cared for by multiple people or households, and ways that busy parents can fit in training. I am personally going to start doing the steps for busy parents. Damien will soon begin wearing underwear with no diaper for 2 hours a day, and visiting the potty 2 or 3 times during this period. You then slowly increase the amount of time spent in underwear if the child responds well.

Damien is 2 and a half and definitely in his terrible twos.

I bought this book a year or more ago as I have been wanting to start a garden for quite some time but always had school or summer jobs to worry about which took up all of my anxiety ridden time haha. It has lovely drawn diagrams of plants and how to do gardening activities from planting to propagating cuttings to transplanting trees to maintaing and pruning, to planting hedges and building things like cold frames, rock gardens, and installing trellis'. Very interesting and easy step by step instructions with diagrams.

A lot of books I buy have mostly common sense explanations that many people wouldn't need books for, or things that you can find on the internet but I prefer having my own hard copy that I can refer to and remind myself with.

germination!

I will be spending a few hours this week absorbing everything on this website. I am sad I didn't find it sooner!! I found it through these guys who are also awesome!

I just checked on my "soil patch" and it has officially become a garden! germination has begun!

 Radishes

 I think this is a weed...will know soon lol. Reminds me of "feed me" ..the plant in Little Shop of Horrors haha

 Cayenne pepper and used coffee grinds...supposed to keep animals away..we'll seeeeeeee

 Either lettuce or spinach..my mom said probably lettuce

 Cayenne border and between the rows. Should I have put it right ON the rows? Dunno.

Same thing we do every week Pinky...

So I'm not sure if its the coffee I just downed or if I actually feel a little better today. I have been at work for an hour and haven't a single customer yet. I love Sundays.

Tomorrow I am going to meet my teacher at the sea lamprey (DFO) building and change our experiment. After building those tanks, he decided we cannot use them because the visibility of the animal is not consistent. Making the tanks any thinner would just reduce their normal behaviour to the point where the experiment would be criticized and not publishable. Sooo RIP tanks. The only good thing about the situation is that I can say "we tried this approach" in case we get a criticism of our NEW way of doing it, which I am not yet sure is going to work either until tomorrow.
 He also told me I need to be a veritable EXPERT on sea lamprey so off I go to read about them.

Reading all of the news lately of violence going on in Canada (shootings in the Eaton Centre in Toronto, we have a new serial killer who mails body parts to politicians) is giving me some anxiety but also making me think about the fact that shootings like that happen everyday in big cities. Just because it wasn't in a bad neighborhood and occurred in a mall, now everyone is frightened? Including myself? They believe it was a gang issue, but don't they always just say that until they know what really happened? And this serial killer dude had a blog where he drowned and suffocated kittens for YEARS and no one did anything. We all know the warning signs that sociopaths display. Step 1. Killing defenseless animals. And this guy did it for everyone to see and even e-mailed the police and warned he was going to move on to people. I guess what I'm trying to say is society is a funny place I don't really understand, and I'm ashamed that I only start to really think about it when things happen close to home and in my little safe mall bubble.

 A favourite quote of mine from an artist and someone who speaks openly about human issues and politics goes like this:

Work, entertainment – all of the aspects of modern life – are nothing more than distractions that increase the successes of power. When you have bills to pay and mouths to feed you’re not really worried about what’s happening out there – and when you get a reprieve from it you spend your time doing whatever takes your mind off of the fact that you spend the majority of your time doing what’s required to survive and achieve. That cycle, though considered by the vast majority to be unbreakable, is precisely why societies that consider themselves ‘free’ are anything but. In fact, that perpetual cycle is what guarantees the success of manipulation. Periphery information and hearsay become largely sacrosanct rather than simply parts of a much larger puzzle worth debating and questioning, giving voice to beliefs that are embarrassingly steeped in utter stupidity. -Matthew Good

I held onto it because I want to break free from this cycle someday and hopefully make a difference. I don't know if I will ever be able to, but I want to. I applaud the protesters in Montreal that other people scoff at.

# garden prawblems

I don't use  twitter much yet and don't really understand it..but there's my first twittery blog title. i'm hip. tucka tucka tucka tucka....austin powers.....no? nothing? ok.

I have decided to spend MORE money on this gardening venture by ordering a Scarecrow Motion Sensor Sprinkler because even despite having plastic on my soil to protect my seeds from frost there are dog foot prints and small holes in my garden. I shouldn't be surprised, as stray dogs are a HUGE problem in my community. It's a reason I don't bother having a dog because even if i tied him/her up in my yard from time to time, the animal would not be safe.

Here is the sprinkler in action. i hope it works. I got it from http://www.costco.ca/

Then I got lost in the garden centre of the costco website and am currently drooling over mini greenhouses that are about $400. I can't buy anything permanent until I know what and where I am doing/going after I graduate from my honours degree. I am not so sure someone that rents this place would even use a mini greenhouse if we move away. 

So cayenne pepper, coffee grinds, a natural pesticide spray and now this sprinkler are all I am going to do to protect the garden.

On the long term weather forecast, it looks like the overnight weather will dip down to 5 degrees celcius again around June 4th. So my plastic will have to go back on again.

 The anticipation of whether or not I'm going to see anything germinate in the next few weeks is killing me!!!