More Digging

Contrary to the first assumption by my User Friendly buddies, I am NOT digging holes in the back yard for the purpose of burying bodies, tempting though that would have been after the weekend I have had. In the past 30 hours, I have, instead, planted 24 shrubs, moved some sod and planted my entire vegetable garden. For good measure, I also trimmed off the freeze-damaged parts of two trees.

My garden consists of the following plants: eight tomato plants (six regular and two cherry tomato), four red bell peppers, two jalapeno peppers, and 3 cucumber plants. For seed, I planted sunflowers, Swiss chard, acorn squash, zucchini, romaine and mesclun lettuces, radishes, basil, peas, green beans, dill, cilantro, tarragon (not true French tarragon), oregano and nasturtiums. That should keep me well supplied with veggies this summer. I would like to be able to eat almost exclusively from my garden. I think that would be fun. Don't you?

For giggles, I poured a quart of dill seed over the poison ivy corner. If I'd had that much mint seed, I've have planted it in mint instead. I am going to plant mint and once it takes over, I'll be certain to move some of it to the poison ivy corner.

Things left to plant: four more holly bushes (around the non-code electrical line to the pool pump), some monkey grass from a co-worker, plus lavendar, snapdragon, and morning glory seeds. To plant the seeds I will need to finish digging up the front flower bed. I might manage to get some of that done this week after work. Once things start to sprout, I'll take a photo of the veggie garden.

The rose bushes on the north side of the house are developing some sort of fungus thing. I have cut down one of them completely. I may dig up the three remaining ones and plant them in the far end of the poison ivy corner. That way they'd be out of the way (so I can't snag myself on them any more) yet I'd still be able to look at the blooms. I could let the hostas take over the north side of the house and maybe put in some hardy ferns. It would also work to mix in some of the irises. Actually, I think I'd like to put the hostas next to the garage where the irises are now. I think the irises are a bit out of control there. Heck, they're growing up underneath the siding!! The hostas would spread, but would be easier to control in a small space. In a week or two the irises will quit blooming and I'll move them to the north end of the house.

Gaming
Tried to find the gaming group to play Asheron's Call today. There had been e-mail earlier in the week about getting a session together and I specifically asked for a head's up when people started gathering. I heard nothing. I logged in just to see if anybody was there, but nobody was playing. Since I can't tell if that means someone is coming in later or the whole deal has been called off, I logged off and went on with things. I will not spend the afternoon logging in every 15 minutes to see if people are playing or not. So I logged in around 6:45pm and found everybody starting to log off for dinner. It would seem they played most of the afternoon. Knowing my luck, they started about 10 minutes after I checked and found nobody in the game.

The comment was made that I'd make more points "if I'd start gaming again". That pissed me off. I *do* game. I'm in the game a couple times a week. I simply never manage to log in when anybody else I know is in the game. I am ABSOLUTELY UNABLE to guess when other people might be gaming. In fact, I seem to be pretty darned adept at gaming when NOBODY else is in the game. Yet it is once again my fault that I wasn't gaming at the right time with the group today, despite the fact that ALL OF THEM are in a single location and I am 700 miles away. I am magically supposed to know when the gaming starts without anybody bothering to make a phone call or send e-mail. Somehow it's all my fault. Funny how they'll tell me they really want to game with me, yet they ALWAYS "forget" to tell me when they're gaming.

If it had happened just once or twice, I'd believe it really was being forgetful. The problem is that it happens EVERY FREAKING WEEKEND. That's not forgetting that's intentional exclusion and rudeness. Do NOT tell me that I never game. I just don't happen to game with you because you make a point of never telling me when that might be, even though I ask very politely if you might make a 30 second phone call. Thank you ever so much for once again treating me like shit. I needed that little kick in the teeth.

On the Website Front
I am the volunteer webmaster for website of a non-profit agency. For some time now the site has been going to change hosts. Apparently that happened during the night on Friday. Saturday morning I got error messages from the listserv and when I tried to correct the problems found out that I no longer have access to the website or listserv. I also discovered that the site was about 98% broken. Whoever was in charge of moving the site doesn't seem to know how to move a site seamlessly. I cannot imagine how someone would think it would be wise to just move a site live and NOT test the set up at the new host BEFORE changing the domain redirect. The site still isn't working properly and I have found several errors on it, which I have forwarded on to the "server administrator". I figure it will be mid-May before I have access to the site, if it happens at all. I'm really not impressed with how this is being handled.

Can you identify a theme here? Where people are INCAPABLE of giving me information I need to do what needs to be done? It happens at work and elsewhere in life too. The people with the information I need either get pissy if I ask for the information and/or blame me for not knowing what they withheld from me. I just *love* getting blamed for things I have no control over and being expected to know everything, including things I have no possibility of knowing. Yes, that's an unreasonable expectation. I know that. However, just because it's an unreasonable expectation doesn't mean people don't still expect me to be able to do the impossible. When someone asks me a question or asks me to do something, I am absolutely incapable of not answering. That comes from getting in trouble for saying "I don't know", even when I didn't know the answer. I actually feel physically ill if I don't answer a question. This may explain why I can't stop learning new things and end up actually doing the impossible on a relatively regular basis. This, of course, simply trains people to tell me even less and expect even more.

In the meantime, I'm going to pour myself a nice glass of hot tea and knit something until it is time for bed.