Movin' Blues

I haven't been posting much lately, mainly because I've got the movin' blues.  Not a song, just a condition of life.

Moved my office across the parking lot to a temporary location while the main building had major work done.  Then moved out to have the floors re-done; got moved about 3/4 back in.  Then one of the kids moved stuff back in while taking off on a new career elsewhere.  Holiday Break!  Go on a road trip (pack, unpack, wash, rinse, repeat).  Then moved back to the main office building, and into (yay!) a new and bigger office.... after first moving the previous occupant's crap out of it.  So then I moved in...  Then the other kid over in New Orleans moved across town.  Now I'm back to moving in/unpacking that last 1/4 of the house, but I've got no energy or enthusiasm for it.  But I want to get to my stuff, so it's going to happen over the next month.

I'm not planning on moving again anytime soon.  Operative term is "planning."  The reality may prove to be quite different.  But if I see a U-Haul anywhere near me in the next few months, I may need medicinal help.

As seen from space.

Or, more likely, a Google-stamped photomapping plane.  Either way, it shows up pretty well in the parking lot.

We don't need any steekin' new Star Wars Movie!

Well, at least not like any of that crap like what Lucas has put out since '99.  What we need is a space opera with some good writing, directing, and acting.  You know, like Firefly had.  Analysis over at Slate.  RTWT.

Garden Start, 2013

Had a couple of nice weather days so it seemed like time to lay out the garden for this year.  Here's how far I've gotten:

The paving bricks had been just laying in a stack since I re-bought the house; I was glad to finally find a use for them.  Used all of the stack but about 15, it was a closely run thing.  Turned over the first few inches of soil to break up the grass, spread out about an inch of compost over that, layered on a plating of corrugated cardboard, mulched over the top with leaves, and finally wet it all down to get things working.  Total area is about 150 square feet, in three 2'x25' strips.  Should give plenty of room to work between rows, and cut down on the pest migration between plants.
What to plant?  Well, that's a month and a half away, but the current plan is for tomatoes, watermelons, peppers, and maybe some cilantro or whatever else random stuff I can find.  Strawberries too, but those will go into a separate off-the-ground pot(s).  Doodlebugs eat the fruit otherwise – or at least, that's what happened last year.
So much more to do: soaker hoses, more-more-more mulch, a short chicken wire fence to keep the rabbits at bay, and of course actually planting.  But the heavy lifting's done, and the rest is all the fun parts.

WLCY, Undead Edition

So after last week's post about former-great WLCY, I had to see if its successor station WWMI "Radio Disney" could be received in the daytime half a Gulf away.  It took some fiddling with the radio and loop antenna, but there it was, the whiney voice of Miley Cyrus ground waving it across the salt water from St. Pete.  The fading was so bad that it wasn't really listenable – OK, for more than one reason – but nonetheless, there it was in all its disgusting undead glory: Zombie WLCY.

No luck getting WWMI at night via skywave though.  For some reason, the station broadcasts omnidirectionally in the daytime, but fires a beam to the south-southwest at night:

Perhaps it's a dastardly plot to add to the misery of the Cubans. For what it's worth, here's a view of the transmitter site:

NB: this post gets the radio tag, but most definitely does not get the music tag.

A Quick Look at 2013's Big Movies

Over at Rotten Tomatoes.  Very brief: a splashy photo, the title, and a one sentence description for each movie.  You can flip through the whole thing in five minutes.  From the looks of it, 2013 will be at least as good as the year just past.

Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men?

Man Jailed for allegedly beating another with a Christmas tree.
Read all about it in The Echo.