Garden Bug has bitten

So we had a whole week, well, 5 days, of honest to god real rain. This gave us the most glorious weekend with cool, fresh, damp air and snow covered mountains under clear blue skies. Despite the lengthy lists of projects and chores that are underway or waiting to start, I decided to take advantage of the lovely weather to pull the dandelions out of the planter of succulents in the back yard. It is our only spot of green in the cement and rock wasteland of our backyard. Pools are fun, but a little hard looking. Also, the previous owners seemed to hate all plant life.

The dirt is all loose, damp and inspiring. The jade plants are weed free in no time, so I just keep going. There are yards more of weeds, going along the abandoned built in planter with the saddest, sandiest, debris filled soil. There are ten feet of planter before it drops down a level. I think I'm just clearing out the weeds, but the digging is so easy and that is so rare, I just keep going. The top six inches of the whole upper level is gone. The first four feet, I actually dug a whole foot down and pulled the dirt out of the planter.

If I can get the other 6 feet removed before it all dries and hardens, or more rain comes and I discover I have built a water feature, I could have started my often dreamed of vegetable garden in a timely manner. I already had potting soil in the garage, so I picked up compost and a soaker hose. Next stop, reading up on vertical gardening and planting schedules.

The kid has been making vegetable garden noises. The timing seems good,but maybe we'll put his cauliflower in the earthbox and save the planter for peas and cucumbers.

Yay Winter!

So the rain has begun and it is supposed to go for the next 5 day. Hee! The natives will be cra-zy by the end of the week. I, the exile from the land of weather, will be as happy as can be. January, this is what I'm talking about!

Series 2 Season Pass List and solutions

So we have 3 TiVos and 2 TVs. This is the Season Pass list for our older TiVo, it lives in the bedroom. It has the shows Y was vaguely interested in, so he could watch while he gamed, like How I Met Your Mother or The Big Bang Theory, or shows with more adult content in order for them to be viewed more discretely when the kid is around, like Graham Norton or SNL. It also was the third option for network choke points, Mondays last year come to mind, and I tend to let the BBCAmerica shows linger, because I rarely know when a new series (in the season sense) is going to pop up. MI-5 I'm looking at you.

How I Met Your Mother - cbs.com & iTunes
The Big Bang Theory - netflix...eventually
The Office - hulu & iTunes
30 Rock - hulu & iTunes
Eureka - hulu
The Graham Norton Show - still looking
Gossip Girl - cw.com & iTunes
House - hulu
Waking the Dead - still looking
Cycling on Versus
Endurance - cancelled
Mad Men - iTunes
Torchwood - still looking
Law & Order Criminal Intent - usanetwork.com, but everyone except Goldblum is leaving so it may be time to let it go
Friday Night Lights - hulu or maybe just wait for netflix
Law & Order (original flavor) - iTunes or wait
The Daily Show - hulu, comedycentral.com & iTunes
The Colbert Report - hulu, comedycentral.com & iTunes
Saturday Night Live - hulu
Wire in the Blood - cancelled & netflix
College GameDay - doesn't matter 'til next fall/college football season
Countdown with Keith Olbermann - iTunes
The Rachel Maddow Show - iTunes
Leverage - tnt.tv
Burn Notice - hulu
Sports Reporters - more habit than anything else
The Rachel Zoe Project - probably bravotv.com but we are in between seasons

Other than my British TV habit most of it is available online

Can I Give Up Old Media TV?

So we've been hating on our cable company for the last few months. Nobody ever likes their cable company, and certainly felt cornered into the choice by our love of TiVo, which doesn't work with any other content provider available locally, no AT&T U-verse, no DirecTV. Some software update seems to have put TimeWarner and our Series 3 TiVo into conflict and channels have started randomly vanishing, destroying the one good thing about our cable, it was a least reliable. Apparently it is time to re-evaluate our media choices.

Now a little context, I'm a TV junkie, I read a lot of television criticism and industry coverage. Junkie, but not mindlessly watching. As a stay at home, I have it on for company a fair amount. I own more TiVos than I do actual televisions.

The discussion has commenced about going without cable. In the past when it has come up, Y dismissed it out of hand, which annoyed me, because he watches very little of the TV. We haven't pulled the plug just yet, we were waiting for the end of college football season and we are considering waiting for the Winter Olympics. This gives us a month or so to find new sources for all our old shows.

At the moment we are completely bundled, if we pull the plug we will let the landline go with it and just have broadband and cell phones.