wraithkiss

Hello again,

So time to be productive and document a chunk of my life again. I've decided that the most efficient way to stay in touch with people and keep up with my emails is to start making some real posts online here and then treating the posts to a chop shop mentality and part em out for various emails to family and friends, as the shit applies to them. Ever efficient and practical huh?

Well life recently has been pretty solid for me. The biggest thing going on in the last while is that I got my roof replaced on my house. Real sexy huh? But its been a biggie hanging over my head since I bought my house 3 years ago. I've been dreading having to deal with it and shell out the bucks I need to get it done proper since I bought the house, but I had bigger fish to fry initially with my windows, since of course my windows were still original windows from 1924 in 80% of my house, and of course the last couple windows around otherwise were still just single panes that worked about as good as my original ones. It was just too damned cold to leave em, but man that made me nervous about my roof, since I knew that needed replacing asap and I stretched it out as far as my original home inspector recommended. But I officially have a great 50 year, steel tile faux slate style roof now in slate gray. Its almost as green as I can get too. Even if the house gets torn down in 30 years or 80 years they'll still recycle the roof. Its not quite as good as aluminum roof would be, but aluminum would have been about 4 grand more (50%) and the coatings on the steel and aluminum are exactly the same, its just the aluminum tiles would have had a much better chance of making it 100 years than my steel ones. But now even if the house get sold in 20 years I wont have to give any allowances for the new buyers to get a new roof. I basically paid twice as much as I could hve for a cheap crappy roof for a roof that'll last 3-5 times as long, look better, be recyclable, and wont contribute to landfill from my old roof being scrapped. Damn good situation and well worth the extra inital costs. I got expensive taste, what can I say?

Otherwise I finally damn near got a date out of my co-worker after months of gentle picking at it and my infectious charm actually doing some mother fucking infecting! ( I'd like to be a little more direct, even as romantically retarded as I am but no being pushy with co workers that's just playing with fire too much ). So I've been asking her to come over and let me cook her dinner for awhile, and she's always basically blown me off, but we've been on good terms and still friendly, just nothing romantic I could bank on, and only a little flirty since I always have big brother watching me at work..... or potentially watching so gotta play extra nice. I've nudged and wanted to take her to my fave little italian place, or at least bring her over and let her try some of their l33t pizza, but denied. I've offered to make her my from scratch buffalo spaghetti with crusty toasted garlic bread..... I've nudged nudged for her to try my thick fluffy buttermilk pancakes made with riccotta cheese and covered with glazed apples and pears..... which got me 'ehhhh *shrug* I just like my pancakes plain'. I've brough her a slice of my chocolate orange cheesecake with glazed strawberries and gotten a 'yeah well it was alright.... but it didnt really need the orange'...... The orange was the POINT woman..... sheesh! nice rich chocolate start (80% pure cocoa content chocolate used) with the sweetness of the strawberries and then when you've about finished the bite you get this nice bright orange flavor for the finish. I mean c'mon! its one of my best dishes!...... So I went and busted out the big guns when I went down to Pike Place a couple weeks ago to go christmas shopping and bought some Truffle Oil! (Along with a couple pounds of really nice salmon I cooked for myself with a nice buttermilk sour cream roasted sosano peppers sauce). I lured her in with one of my most well rounded dishes, my buffalo (bison meat not hot wing spices) stroganoff with fresh mushrooms finished with truffle oil. BAM! Finally I get a positive response outta her and practically had things lined up for her to come over to make grub.... and its the holidays and her friend is about ready to go into labor and she's gotta be there to help her out.... for reasons I didnt go into cause I was both happy she finally started to cave and annoyed I was denied again! But the truffle oil was my turning point and now I just need to work up to doing another truffle dish and I'll be all set...... and yes I made my buffalo stroganoff anyways and it was my best batch ever. The great truffle fragrance got me slobbering mightily and the flavor wasnt real powerfull so I was a little worried with the red meat, but the truffle finish was nice and smooth and and clean earthy goodness. Truffles are kinda the clean mushroom intensified without the dirty earthy aspect, if you havent smelled or tried it before. Soon though! Soon busty-cute-girl from work may be mine! .......

So otherwise in orchid news I got almost all my orchids repotted a little over a month ago, except for a couple of mine I had blooming or with a new flower spike starting and i couldnt afford to shock them. I put my worm farm to good use during the repotting too. I caved a bit and am pulling away from the pure moss play and moved back to what everyone else uses for orchids: bark with perlite and some charcol. I hate using bark, since bark isnt really harvested in a sustainable way, but cant really argue with what my orchids love and need to grow and be happy perky orchids, so bark they get. I tried to be a bit more green for em, but performance just never really got where I wanted. The my worm farm will help me make up for that a bit though I'm hoping I have a worm composting tower in my back laundry room now that breaks down my organic kitchen scraps and old pizza boxes (which are usually too soiled with food stuffs to be recyclable) and it makes just uber black rich moist compost in record time, a hell of a lot faster than a standard composter that uses only microorganisms to break it down. A worm will eat half its own weight in organic matter every day, so if you produce like 7lbs of organic waste a week, from old lettuce and bread and noodles and carrots etc, you can sustain a 3lb colony of worms in a composter, and since the worms eat the food as within a few days of being presented with it you dont have that decomp smell that'll build up, only a clean earthy smell from the moisture of the compost and the little bit of dirt you put int he composter on purpose (to seed the composter with the micro organisms that the worms need to help break down the foods). So basically I added like 3 or 4 spoon fulls of worm compost on the top of my newly potted orchids to help give the newly shooting roots somethign easier to grab onto when they start digging into the potting mix, and to trickle the really really rich fertalizer through the rest of the potting mix as it leaches down. And without any further adieu here are a couple pictures





Lotsa Love