griffins and kefir and bread, oh my!

well, it's been a busy few weeks for me, but before i get to that, i'll update on the bread starter experiment: it was a resounding success!

the bread turned out beautifully and had a nice taste that was halfway between sourdough and regular bread (though the first loaf was very salty because i hadn't gotten the proportions right). it was tough and flavorful and the closest thing that i've had to the bread i tried in france. jake loved it....but, because it takes so long to make, and we weren't eating a whole loaf each day, i've gone back to making bread the normal way: with a bread machine and loaf pan.

in other news, i've been needle felting more recently. jake got some raw wool for me at the ginko gallery in oberlin and the result of that is that there's a nice griffin on my etsy page (http://www.etsy.com/listing/91189045/felt-griffin-gryphon-doll-with-hand-dyed) that i absolutely love. i hand dyed the wool using coffee. very, very strong coffee that, for some reason, i couldn't convince jake to try...but that ginger, our corgi mix, loved.

also, yesterday i received something that i've been waiting for for awhile now: kefir grains! kefir is a probiotic drink made using milk and the helpful bacteria in the "grains" (which aren't really grains). i'm excited to see how the first batch turns out!

aaaaaand, my parents found some savings bonds that my grandma gave me when i was 5, 6, 7, and 8. that means we finally have money to buy the supplies to make an aquaponics (well, barrelponics: http://www.aces.edu/dept/fisheries/education/documents/barrel-ponics.pdf) system!!!

in other news, last week, we went to a city council meeting for the very first time (jake and i have wanted to do that since we got married) and tonight i'm going to be going to my very first neighborhood watch meeting. yes, community involvement.

at the city council meeting, i met a woman who has a gardening program in the city and i hope that i'll be able to work with her in the future. also, one of the other volunteers at love inc. has connected me with a christy sams, a human trafficking advocate in my area who i'm so excited to meet with!

wow, this has been a rather informational blog post; hasnt it?

there's a monster on my counter

it's really very scary. it's gooey and bubbly and it sits there all day...staring at me. yes.
and the crazy thing is: I CREATED IT!

ok. maybe it's not a monster. i suppose it's actually a pretty friendly beast. in fact, it's very helpful.

what i have in a bowl on my counter is a large dollop of living flour (a.k.a. a wild yeast bread starter). it sits there and fizzes, waiting for it's daily feeding of more flour and water. every day, i take our roughly half of the starter and add precisely 100 grams each of flour and water to the mix that remains. the roughly half that is removed can either be used to bake with (a long but surprisingly simple process) or composted.

maybe it's time for a little bit of backstory on my new pet?

well, it all started when jakeb bought me a subscription to urbanfarm magazine for christmas. in this particular issue, there was an article on making bread without yeast and with kneading. so...i gave it a shot.

it turns out that the bread that i'm currently making (the first loaf is in the "first fermentation" phase right now) only requires three ingredients: flour, water, and salt. it's simple enough, the most complicated part is caring for the starter every day, which isn't really that hard at all (so far...i haven't actually gotten all the way through making a loaf of bread yet. it takes 11 hours o_O)

the starter is the yeast of the bread recipe. i recently discovered that there is yeast that lives in flour, any flour, and you can cultivate it by fermenting (i think) the flour. that's what the starter really is; it's a yeast farm!

the yeast from the yeast farm then goes into my bread, hopefully making it amazing.

we'll see how this first loaf turns out. wish me luck!

how to build a greenhouse in 28 easy steps

so...i've been busy these last few weeks building a tiny greenhouse in my little suburban yard. i'm not sure what i'm going to plant in it yet (currently there's just some sweet potatoes in there), but it certainly has been an adventure so far. i'll go through step by step so you can gain a full appreciation for the process:

1.) decide to build a greenhouse (...why did i do that again?)
2.) gather scrap wood and make a (umm...tentative) plan
3.) discover wooden frames that jake and i failed to make a fence out of last year. perfect!
4.) zip tie the frames to our 4-5ish foot tall fence (sturdy stuff, yeah)
5.) spend a week or so trying to figure out how to build the roof
6.) spend an entire day building a shed roof (so, basically just a slanty slab)
7.) get some clear plastic sheeting and grab the staple gun
8.) cover everything you have so far in clear plastic sheeting
9.) wait for jake to get home so he can help you lift the rickety roof
10.) brace the roof
11.) put the roof on (yes! at this point, it actually looks like some sort of structure)
12.) what the heck, Giant Wind Storm, what're you doing in my neighborhood? get outta here!
13.) umm...found the roof in my neighbor's yard after the windstorm...maybe i should rethink this
14.) zip tie the roof to the fence (which forms the back wall of the greenhouse)
15.) decide to build the front wall (and door)
16.) get SO ANGRY at woodworking...nails are stupid. :(
17.) remain grumpy
18.) ask jake for help (grumpily)
19.) spend hours trying to finish the front of the greenhouse
20.) throw the hammer on the ground and storm away
21.) aaaaand...finish the front wall
22.) should i brace the door?
23.) nah
24.) attach the door
25.) rest for a couple days
26.) attach clear plastic sheeting to the back and the front of the house
27.) DONE! (and it actually works...it's warm in there!)
28.) well, for now.

changing my ways

It has been approximately 1.5 years since I've written anything on this blog. I'm not one to brag, but I think that's pretty impressive. I know you probably do too.

Anyway, feats of skill aside, I have been very distracted, and I'm sure you can probably guess why--> a man. Yes, that's right. I allowed a man to distract me from blogging. It's a crying shame. It's an atrocity. It's....it's...ah!

I hope that you'll forgive me if I tell you that I am now married to that man (and very happily married at that). Also, we have a house and a yard and 2.5...dogs (well, actually, just 2).

I can tell you're getting anxious about this. You're tensing up as you read. I can see it in your crazed, blog following eyes. DOES THIS MEAN THERE WILL BE NO MORE ADVENTURES!? DOES IT MEAN THAT THERE'S NO MORE WAYWARD COLLEGE STUDENT!?

Well, no. That's not what I said. You should be careful about making assumptions. It might get you into trouble someday. What I will say is that my adventures will not be the same any longer. I am still a wayward college student, but not a semi-homeless one. I have a sure place to spend the night and food in my pantry now (and I, for one, am very pleased with that). But I'm still in school. I even decided that I liked college so much that I would be a student of three different universities!

I'm taking classes at one, transferring them back through another, to my original place of learning. It's going to be quite the adventure.

flammable money

this is the story of a bank error and much more money than i have. so...once upon a time i walked into my bank (i know, it's crazy!). i was going to deposit a paycheck but when i talked with the teller the first thing she said was "umm...do you know about your account?" ...apparently not...

she told me that i owed about $500 and i had another check for the same amount trying to come through. yeah, i've never, ever used checks. at this point i was slightly concerned.

it was time for an expert. i ended up talking to a woman who handles this sort of thing. she called several people and sent a fax and discovered that the bank had gotten confused. they had accidentally switched the bank accounts of me and someone else who, though we had completely different names and the rest of the numbers were different, had the same last four digits in their account number as me.

the problem was fixed pretty quickly with a fax and phone call but the banker woman told me that if i didn't ever use my checks and i wanted to get rid of them then it would be best to just burn them (as opposed to shredding them). lucky, i was going to a bonfire that night.

to do list...

hello to my readers. :-) i'm sorry that i haven't written in such a terribly long time but there's been lots of things happening (like that whole business of actually living the life that i've been given). soooooo, i've decided that it might be good to write several blogs in the next few days or weeks chronicling the last two or so months of life.

these blogs will include, but are not limited to, the discussion of how i lost $1000 ish (but not really) and burned my checkbook, the continuing saga of thomas the hemophiliac, the beginnings of a very peculiar courtship, something about caves, normal life, stuff about toothbrushing, lots of driving narratives, an old story about a certain necklace and the continuing of epic deeds performed by such gentlemen, and the near-death experiences of finals week.

this blog, then, is just a list of things to write about so that i remember them later when i come back to them...and it's a trailer so that the later blogs seem more exciting and interesting to those of you who haven't been told these stories yet.

now i'm AWAKE!

today was one of those days that will go down in the history of my life as, well, abnormal. it was a learning experience. here's what i learned:

1. when you have a paper to write you should write it.

what you shouldn't do is procrastinate until the very, very last second then decide that you're too tired then go to bed at midnight, wake up at four, drive one hour still wrapped in your blanket, get to school, take a half hour nap, then start your paper.

2. when you finish your paper just in time for breakfast you should eat a well balanced and healthy meal

you should not drink a red bull and a cup of coffee with your breakfast. if you do this there are certain side effects that may occur, including but not limited to laughing spontaneously at the color of the trees and the fact that trees do change color, dancing in circles down the avenue of the eagles in the early morning, being an abnormally obnoxiously happy morning person, not being able to stay still in class.

actually, i think that's all the really strange things that happened today...everything else was classes and work with two half hour breaks (just enough to write a blog! :)

but here are some other things for you to remember not to do:

try to read the signs on the other side of the road (i'll explain this later probably)

watch a squirrel for as long as it watches you

try to catch a chipmunk

eat the berries from the trees in the quad

can you think of anything else?

(p.s. this will show up on my facebook but i'm not visiting facebook for a bit so if you'd like to comment you are most certainly welcome to and i'd appreciate it but i won't get it for awhile :)

i spoke too soon...and i forgot some things. i have a new mission! objective: brush my teeth in every public bathroom on campus. i'm so close already! mwahaha!

also, another amazing thing that happened was at work (yeah phones!) i called a guy and he picked up and started talking to me. we ended up having a twenty minute conversation about life and theology before my boss came over and told me i should ask him for the money and end the call. lol, it was wonderful but weird (he had some interesting ideas).

(i hope this hasn't been published to facebook yet...i hope it wasn't published twice but if it was then maybe it's just extra incentive to read it! ;)