Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Squirrels Love to Waste Tomatoes

Here is the lineup of tomatoes I'm saving from the squirrels. As you can see, a few have been molested, but I'm trying to save them. The one under the plastic bowl is in intensive care, due to fruit flies attacking the bite marks. The one just beyond that also has bite marks, but they've closed over. These will be ok for cooking, if they can get ripe before they get rotten!

It so maddening to find a good tomato on the ground in my garden with just one bite taken! The squirrels have been terrible about that this year. For every two good tomatoes, the squirrels have had their way with one. I'm feeling murderous.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Gift of Reading

The other day at the library, I had just checked out two books that were begging me to take them home when it struck me (again) how happy I was to enjoy reading so much. It has been a continuing joy to be able to hear people's stories - from their experience and from their imagination.

The two books (which haven't made it on to my sidebar yet) are both novels about California, and they couldn't be more different! One is Donald Duk by Frank Chin - about a 12-yr.-old in a California Chinatown somewhere who hates his name and being Chinese. The other is The Nowhere City by Alison Lurie - about a young couple who move to LA because of the husband's job transfer. He loves the unpretentiousness and freshness of California, while she hates the lax standards for behavior there. It will be interesting to see if the ideas about California from a book written in 1966 still hold true now.

I hope I never stop feeling excited about getting a new book. Set me on an ice floe if I do.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Miscellaneous Interesting New Websites

Spreety.com lists all the sites for watching FREE online TV! This includes PBS and lots of other commercial stuff. Haven't tried it yet, but it *sounds* good. Librarians love good organizers like this. Somebody let me know what you think!

Wordle.net is pretty useful - and fun! Take the characteristics of someone you know and love, then create a poster/birthday card/?? using all the words arranged in a word cloud with artsy colors, etc. You have to go to the Website to see what I mean. Again, I didn't try it myself yet, but I saw one that my cubicle partner did - really nice!