This n' That

It’s been sunny and warm — bordering on hot — for so many days in a row now that today’s gray skies and slight chill caught me off guard. It’s put me in a weird mood, sleepy and just a little grumpy. Here’s what’s on my mind today:

• Yesterday I went to the garden center and bought three hibiscus plants to replace the one we planted last fall that did not survive the February freeze. I also bought a dozen bags of mulch, which sank the back end of my car quite nicely for the ride home. I already had 4 bags at home that we never got around to using last year, so you can do the math and see that’s 16 bags of mulch. Sixteen! I thought that would be PLENTY for both our front yard and back yard but not so much. I needed 2-3 more bags for the front to finish the flower beds, and 2 for the back for our crape myrtle and satsuma. (The satsuma tree was hit pretty hard by the freeze, despite our efforts to protect it — but I’m happy to report that it is coming back nicely and has sprouted dozens of new leaves.) It took me about an hour to put down all the new mulch in the front. All the bending and squatting left me with sore hamstrings and sore fingers, and although it was a nice day outside, it was humid enough that even yardwork had me soaked in sweat — and it’s only March! The yard looks a lot better though.

• This morning on my way to work, I thought about photography. I’m not really sure why. It just occurred to me, out of the blue, that I used to take a lot of photos, and now I don’t. (And the photos I do take are with my iPhone, the worst camera in my arsenal.) This makes me a little sad, especially because I’ve been feeling like I’m a hobby rut right now. I’ve been thinking about bringing back my photoblog, but I don’t want to maintain it separately anymore. It seems to make the most sense to incorporate it as part of this blog, but that will require some redesign on my part. Now, a blog redesign is very sorely needed — I dislike this stock template — but redesign  means I need to learn more about how WordPress works behind the scenes. And it’s hard to justify spending time on that right now when I have other design projects on my plate that are higher priority. Hmm.

• I was supposed to Moscow for work in May, but due to miscommunication between a few people, I won’t be going. I’m bummed, but I can’t do anything about it. Therefore, I’ve decided that Jose and I should go somewhere anyway! Not Moscow, but somewhere. I was looking at tickets to London, and one site told me the fare was $350. “$350 to London?” I think to myself. “That’s fantastic!” So I click, click, click…and then the site adds $650 of taxes and fees to that fare. Yes, the taxes and fees were almost twice the fare itself. Ridiculous.