Ambitious

I have some ambitious plans for this weekend and am hoping that by putting them here, it will give me some accountability to complete at least HALF of whats on my to do list.

1. Gardening
I know I'm getting a rather late start on this, but yesterday I purchased two tomato plants, one crookneck squash and one zucchini plant.
I'm going to put together a little container garden. Yes, I know the zucchini needs a lot of room, so I may actually put that one in the ground... I'll have to double check exactly big my largest container is (a half wine barrel) and see if that will be large enough.
I'm not sure what suddenly motivated me to try gardening. I've never been successful with plants in the past but I want to grow my own vegetables. Its often hard for me to get to the farmers market downtown on the weekend, and the grocery stores can be so pricey for fresh produce that is often tasteless and bland. And, theres not much that I love more than a homegrown tomato.
IF this experiment goes well, I'm probably going to put together a larger garden for next year. Building a few raised beds wouldn't be too challenging and then I could have a wider variety of produce. I definitely have the room for it, our property is close to half an acre, so if I was REALLY feeling ambitious I could, theoretically, have a more traditional garden in the back portion of the property. However, that would require things like getting a rototiller and a lot of manual labor.

2. PATIO
I SERIOUSLY need to clean up the back patio - primarily the bbq grill. I plan on having a bbq-tastic summer this year.

3. GOAT CHEESE
I'm going to be making my own goat cheese this weekend.
This idea started while brainstorming ways to deal with keeping the weeds and grass in check on our property. My brother had been coming around and mowing our back yard but totally slacked on it the past few months and the next thing we knew, Cooper was getting lost in the jungle that is our back yard. I COULD do it myself, but I can be rather prone to laziness and social obligations on the weekends. We COULD hire a lawn service, but with how large the property is, thats a couple hundred dollars a month. I'm trying to save some money here. My sisters boyfriend COULD come and do it but he's a jackass and you can't rely on him for crap (note, since this brainstorming session he has come over and cleared the jungle). Then I remembered reading how you can rent goats to come and clear overgrown weeds and brush. I looked into it, and with what it would cost to rent two goats for a day you could buy two pygmy goats of your own. I mentioned this to a friend of mine and she pointed out that if I got one that was a milker, I could also make my own goat cheese with the milk she produced. I thought this was a FANTASTIC idea. I LOVE goat cheese.
So, I did a little research and found this. Making goat cheese is SO incredibly easy! Or at least it sounds that way.
So, I was all gung ho on the idea of getting two pygmy goats. Pygmy because they don't get too terribly big (they can use a large dog house as their shelter as opposed to a barn) and that breed is very social and playful. I figured this would be good because Cooper is very social and playful and I know that if I brought a couple goats onto the property, Cooper would at least try to play with them.
Then I REALLY started thinking it over. I would have to get up at the ass crack of dawn every day to milk them, and I HATE mornings. They would have to be milked daily and I know that I couldn't count on anyone to come and milk them if I go away for a weekend, let alone a week in Europe or somewhere.
If I do end up with a larger garden next year, I would have to build a fence to keep them away from it otherwise they would eat all of my gardening efforts. If that happened I would have to invite all of my friends over for a fire roasted goat one night. So, ixnay on the oatgay.
However, the idea of making my own goat cheese stuck with me. Last night I stopped at Whole Paycheck, I mean Whole Foods, and picked up some goat cheese. If this first attempt goes well, I found a rancher up in El Dorado Hills where I could purchase raw goats milk for future batches of goat cheese. Yes, raw goats milk would be unpasteurized, but that just means that its full of probiotics.

4. PHOTOSHOP
Four weeks ago a couple of my friends got married and I photographed their wedding. At first, I just started working on the photos slowly because, they're going to be in Ireland on their honeymoon for three weeks? Pshaw! I've got plenty of time! No reason to rush!
Then I started having all sorts of dental complications and was on either valium and/or vicodin and/or white wine each night. Now, I'm confident enough to work my photoshop magic with a glass or two of white wine, but I am not going to work on a friends wedding photos while hopped up on vicodin and/or valium. Next thing I knew, they were home. Now I've got to haul ass to get the photos done.
ALSO, last weekend I belatedly took some photos of one of my younger cousins for her Senior Portraits. The kid graduated high school early a few months ago but wouldn't coordinate with me for when we could get them done. Every time she wanted to get together it was a weekday when I was working and she only wanted to spend the weekends with her boyfriend. We finally got together last Sunday and now I need to go through those photos.

5. THIN OUT MY BOOKSHELVES
I seriously have too many books. Its a sickness, really. I keep every single book that I buy, with the exception of the ones I loan out and don't get back. THEN whenever anyones getting rid of books I always take a healthy portion of them. As a result, I've got books everywhere. I figure that I'll take some to a used book store and try to sell them and the ones that they don't take I'll donate to the library or goodwill or someplace.

6. FLIRT WITH THE BUTCHER
Last weekend I decided to stop into my local butcher and support the local businesses. Can I just say that the guy working the front counter was super cute?
Now, I'm BAD a picking up on when a guy is flirting with me. My natural thought and reaction is that he's just friendly.
When I went to the butchers, I had my cousin with me (we had just finished her portraits) and when we walked out I said "WOW. He was cute." Cousin said "He totally was! AND he was totally smiling and flirting with you!"
So, I think I need to go back this weekend.


Hopefully I'll be able to get at least half of this done.

Two Places

There are two places that I should not be allowed to enter when I'm trying to budget.
Well, realistically, there are A LOT of places I should not be allowed to enter when I'm trying to budget, but heres two of them:



It all started out innocently enough, as it always does. My psych professor offered us an extra credit assignment (only 5 points, but still extra credit) of writing a reaction paper to this movie:

I'd seen the movie when it first came out, but that was a couple of years ago, but figured that it would be best to watch the movie again to refresh my memory. Why not just rent it? Theres a fair chance that I may owe Blockbuster some cash. So, I went in search of the DVD. It was not available at either of the two Walmarts I went to, so I decided to swing by Barnes and Noble, they didn't have it either but I decided to browse the clearance section. Thats where everything started to unravel. Thats where everything always starts to unravel for my budget and me - the clearance section.
It started innocently enough with this:

It was only $2.99 in the bargain bin! Jackpot! I LOVE home spa remedies! I LOVE L'Occitane! How cool could this possibly be?
I'll tell you how cool. It has such eye opening tips as "Avoid soaking in the bath for longer than about 20 minutes, or the skin will become overhydrated and look as wrinkly as a prune." and "Apply a face mask suitable for your skin's needs and leave it on for 10 minutes or as directed." Seriously? I don't know that I would have ever figured any of that out. On the plus side, it does have some good suggestions for different combinations of essential oils. And the back has a directory of every single L'Occitane store in the whole entire world.
Then I wandered beyond the clearance section where I picked up just a couple of items.
First

Atonement by Ian McEwan.
I thought the movie was fantastic, and I just finished reading another novel of his, Enduring Love, which was great as well.
Then I picked this up

I've been hearing about this series everywhere so thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. Although, I probably will save this for last since theres a series and if I like it I will probably want to go straight into the next book in the series.
Then I found this



The synopsis on the back grabbed me

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Downs syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt him all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafter story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.

How could I NOT pick up this book?

Then I wandered into the biography section and got this

The title alone is awesome:
Bitter is the New Black - Confessions of a condescending, egomaniacal, self-centered Smart-ass, or why you should never carry a Prada Bag to the unemployment office.
and then theres the synopsis on the back:

This is the story of how a haughty former sorority girl went from having a household income of almost a quarter-million dollars to being evicted from a ghetto apartment.... It's a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture: a story in which "the central character, called a tragic protagonist or hero, suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected" In other words? The bitch had it coming.

Plus, I've been reading the authors blog for a few weeks now and it sounds promising.
Just a couple of shelves up I found this

Why a novel was in the biographies section, I'll never know, but it is fitting.
I picked this up because I have been a member of the bridal party in five different weddings so far in my lifetime if you include the childhood flower girl trips down the aisle:
1 - 1979 flower girl in my moms first wedding
2 - 1982 flower girl in my youngest aunts first wedding
3 - 1998 maid of honor in my moms second wedding
4 - 1999 maid of honor in my cousins wedding
5 - 2007 bridesmaid in my oldest friends wedding
and now I've been asked to be a bridesmaid in TWO weddings next year.
The obligatory synopsis

What do you do after you walk down the aisle at four weddings over the course of just a few months - none of them your own? What's left after you've donned the must-have-not dresses of the season, forked over your case, and fake-smiled your way through countless photos? After you've dealt with the smashed guest, the mushed cake, the dashed hopes, and the missed bouquets? That's what Cate Padgett is starting to wonder, as she embarks on stint after stint on the sidelines, watching friends swap bar-hopping for baby-naming...while her own love life goes nowhere fast. But is Cate unwilling to settle down - or just unwilling to settle? And can anyone really judge her if they haven't walked in her dyed-to-match shoes?
Wild, witty, and full of weddings to cry over, Always the Bridesmaid is an endearingly romantic comedy about standing out in the crowd even when everyone's wearing the same celery-green dress...and daring to make every day The Happiest Day of Your Life.

If this novel ends predictably with the protagonist catching the bouquet, finding the man of her dreams, falling head-over-heels in love and him proposing, I will vomit.
My hand to God.
In the end, I never found the DVD I was looking for, but I think I remember enough about it to BS my way through a "reaction" paper to it.