Garden Update

Last year, I had an extremely successful garden. Kate gave me a ton of supplies for my birthday and was supportive of the entire endeavor. This year I started my garden inside again, so my seedlings have enough time to grow before it is safe to put them outside. I have a ton of pictures from last years harvest that I wanted to put online before this year gets going with too much intensity.




This picture shows a cat that Kate would always take care of. It also shows the ground after I tilled it, but before much has grown.


My garden was mostly vegetables, but I had a number of very pretty flowers in pots around my small apartment. Kate picked out the flowers with some suggestions from me. We also purchased some tomato cages, chemical fertilizer and other supplies.

















In addition to the flowers we purchased, my land lord has a rose bush I took care of. Here are some of the roses the bush produced.




I really thought these peppers were pretty interesting looking. I enjoy spicy foods, but lack any discriminating taste towards peppers. I shared many of these with my coworker, Erik Lee, who is insanely interested in hot foods.




Here are some tomatoes pretty early in the season.




Take note of how small this morning glory looks climbing up the fence post.





My luck with the sunflowers was not that good, I think I received about 2 or 3 heads of seeds.














Some baby birds nested around my apartment as well.


At the start of the summer, I was very successful with squash.









Here my cousin and I prepare some of my squash for the "Stinar Burrito Factory"






My hand is a bit messed up from a bike wreck south of Albuquerque, but the garden is still going strong.



I really liked these "Anasazi Beans". They have a very pretty white flower and climb over everything.






I really like using morning glories to cover up walls. I'm going to go for this effect at my new place. I would like more beans that produce something other than pretty flowers in the mix though.





Everything became kind of crazy past this point. The morning glories made operating the gate difficult and started climbing up trees and my house. It was really pretty.





I planted way too many tomatoes in here.























This is the view from my neighbors yard.

















I like this one with the sky.


This bug was huge!














These are the Anasazi Beans in their pods.























This was the annexed garden behind my house. Everything back here seemed more scotched than the side of the house, but I was still able to get some tomatoes and squash from the earth here.




My plants didn't do so well with the frost.









I made a TON of fried green tomatoes.

I'm pretty happy with how my garden turned out this last year. For the upcoming season, I totally want to have about 3 times as many plants.

I was hit by a truck while biking.

Today I was biking from my work to the University of New Mexico and I was hit by a truck. I had the right of way, since I was going straight and the lady in the truck pulled out in front of me, but I consider force = mass * acceleration a stronger law than that of right of way. Either way, I'm not too messed up. Here are a couple of pictures of everything that's going on.

My spokes may require some truing.

Nothing is broken luckily!

My friend Oleg was nice enough to bring my laptop, my cell phone, a bunch of chargers and hang out at the hospital for a bit. Thanks Oleg! Now I can work on some cool stuff instead of joking around with other messed up people at the E.R.

Last Full Day in Hawaii

Today was Oleg and my last full day in Hawaii. Due to Oleg's awesome booking skills, we spent as much time as possible in Hawaii with staying the fewest nights. We flew in really early the day we arrived, and we're flying out really late the day we leave (tomorrow).

Most of the day today I felt like doing something productive, so I looked up a bunch of I.T. companies in Hawaii and sent off emails asking them if they are interested in contracting with the company my friend Aaron and I formed. It's really low probability that I'll hear back from any of them, but that's better than the zero probably of accomplishing anything hanging out on the beach. This vacation has been really, really nice but 9 days is a long time to chill out. After this short post, I think I'll hit the hotel gym for an hour or so.

Other than sending off emails, today Oleg and I went on the Oahu Ghost Tour titled "Orbs of Oahu." The tour was pretty interesting and fun. The guide (Uncle Joe) did a very good job of telling creepy stories about (probably) historical events related to Oahu that resulted in things being 'haunted.' Unfortunately, Oleg and I did not see any ghosts, which is the outcome I was expecting due to my extremely skeptical viewpoint towards ghosts. The tour guide did a good job on explaining, in a very supernatural way, orbs present in pictures people were taking. All in all, I think this tour was very fun, kind of creepy, and a nice way to see some of Oahu at night.

Probably the best thing related to the tour happened yesterday. Oleg and I were scheduled to go on the exact same tour one day earlier, but I gave him my ticket so he could go with a girl from rural Idaho. I thought it would be really cool if the girl became scared and Oleg had to protect her. Since neither one of us actually believe there would be anything to protect her from, issuing protection should be relatively straight forward and possibly involve a lot of physical contact. Unfortunately, things did not quite turn out that way. The girl was actually extremely, extremely religious (Roman Catholic) and deathly afraid of ghosts, demons, evil spirits, leprechauns and especially demonic possession. During the initial stages of the tour, the guide requires everyone to sign a liability waiver in case of any injuries on the tour. I considered this reasonable, since there was a bit of hiking through wet terrain during night and slips and falls could easily occur. The girl Oleg was going with did not want to sign the waiver, since she wanted full legal recourse available if she was possessed by a legion of demons (or perhaps only a single demon) and an exorcism was required and a herd of swine was run over a cliff by demons.

I am not joking about her fears; this girl was seriously afraid of the Hawaiian guide chanting to protect her from the spirits. She considered it against her religion and 'voodoo.' I didn't want to correct her, telling her voodoo primarily a Caribbean religion with African roots, and we are in the Pacific. Such subtleties would have been lost. As a result, she got off the bus before the tour began and started walking back to her hotel. Oleg, being a nice guy, got off the bus as well to make sure she made it back safely. You might be asking yourself "Brian, you weren't there. How do you know what happened?" To answer such a question, I talked with the girl on the phone directly after she left the tour since I was hanging out with her brother while he was driving. She sounded very scared and shaken up on the phone, and wanted to talk with her brother. After her brother safely parked the car (I'm a big fan of non-distracted driving) she spoke with him and I could hear his side of the conversation. Oleg, her brother, myself and her all went to dinner together after the event and they filled us in on bits and pieces. Oleg also filled me in on the details of the story once we were alone later.

Initially, I was kind of pissed at the entire ridiculous situation. I dropped about $45 per ticket and some back country yokel girl let her superstitions get the better of her. After watching a movie, calming down and thinking about it I realized that there was nothing to feel bad about. Ninety bucks isn't a big deal - my friend and I were hanging out in wonderful Hawaii where everything is beautiful and perfect. I started to feel gratitude in my heart that I am no so superstitious, my friends are not and neither is my family. In addition, I now have a funny story to tell. To further remove any motivation for negative thoughts, Oleg spoke with the tour organizers today and we were able to reschedule at no additional cost.

All in all, everything turned out great. I am having some technical issues related to the videos I took for the guide chanting - I really wanted to incorporate the audio into some sort of multimedia presentation, game or something. That might work out, but if not, there are some really awesome videos about the ghost tour on youtube. We didn't have a digital camera with us, so no pictures.