Promo

My bosses are leaving until December. I'm the head honcho as of tomorrow afternoon, when they take off to far flung place (across the ocean). We got tons of new equipment in that we need to organize. The access to it must be regulated in a way that (hopefully) ensures accountability of the students who use it. I've been setting up that junk while learning how to fill out tax forms/pay bills/any of the other million tasks that a small business owner has to do. Thankfully the internet has meant I only need to learn how to do the bare minimum (deposit paper cheques!) because my bosses can do lots of it from wherever they are. Oh, and we moved labs. Again. The construction was supposed to be done in March, we got sick of the noise&dust during the summer and moved to a teaching lab. Of course construction isn't quite done, yet the students are about to descend, so we needed to move into yet another "temporary" space.

Enough about work. At home, the ripening yields of harvest overflow. My arms are scratched up from picking blackberries. I've got a few cups of red gooseberries from my weekend trip out of town. The august apples from our orchard are ready to be preserved into jelly (this time with agar-agar-it WILL set, dammit!). I've made one batch of mustard pickles so far and another will be complete later tonight. Our garden is producing enough green beans and potatoes to feed us several times a week. I'd like to blanch some green beansfrom our garden and freeze them this year to see how that works. I've got ten pounds of blueberries frozen so far, twelve bottles of strawberry jam put away and I'm working on filling my 1 L mason jar with dried spearmint leaves from our yard. I'm hoping they make great tea.

I bought Firefly DVDs at a yardsale for a pittance a few weeks ago and have been watching those for the first time while I muddle in the kitchen. I've read "girl with the dragon tattoo" and "girl who played with fire" in the last few weeks, now I've only got the third book to round out the trilogy.

And finally: the dog got fleas while we were away last weekend and probably our indoor cat too. I've never had to deal with these pet-things before, so hopefully I just need to treat them, wash the dog's bedding, vacuum the floor and be done with it. It is a shame the dog succumbed while we were away...couldn't catch it before it got really bad for the puppy. Scratchy floppy ears. But alas, this is what it will be like having a dog. Better get used to it.