Pictures from the Weekend

Plants Need a Little Less Water, Man

Too bad Sesame Street didn't educate me about the dangers of overwatering plants. This is what remains of my old roommate Micah's aloe plant. This poor little guy sat on Micah's desk for years and was constantly in danger of dying due to Micah's neglect. As soon as Micah moved out, I took possession of the plant and moved it out on the deck so it could get more sunlight. Within a few weeks that thing was flourishing and beautiful. However, we had a string of three misty/foggy days in a row in October and I didn't bring the plant inside, and it just devastated it. The aloe tendril thingies were so full of water you could pop them with a pin. I have spent the past few months trying to bring it back to health, but it never recovered from that short span of overwatering. Yesterday I finally admitted to myself that it was too far gone (it had started to grow mold) and I finally threw it away. Sigh.

Muffin Pie

This week I snatched up two graham cracker pie crusts simply because they were super-cheap on manager's special. I, man of no pie experience, hit on the idea of instead filling them with muffin mix, but when I mentioned my idea to some friends before baking it up I met with unexpected skepticism. While the finished product wasn't exactly an unqualified smash that I'll add to my regular rotation, I think it was better than the doubters imagined. It came out a little dry, but served à la mode it's just fine.

Peter's ER Adventure

This morning I awoke at 5:00 a.m. to the sound of pounding on my door. Peter had been sick in the bathroom all night and it bad become so severe that he was throwing up blood, so he called the on-call nurses at University Health Services and they recommended going to the ER. So I grabbed a pillow and a blanket and drove him down to the hospital. They admitted him rather quickly, but he must have been pretty low down on the triage list, so we waited forever. I tried to sleep in my chair but that wasn't working, so I finally sprawled out with my blanket on the cold hard tile and managed to get a bit of sleep when there weren't nurses stepping all over me. They gave Peter an I.V., some anti-nausea medicine, and told him that he should be fine. We got back home about five hours later. All in all it was a lot less dramatic than my last trip to the ER, which is a very good thing.