Winter- Growing Season

In most places, winter is the non-growing season. Not so in Phoenix. Its true that many trees are losing or have lost their leaves and some kinds of grass are brown for a few months but almost everything around my house is still growing.

This is an agave plant. It has been growing new leaves in the center ever since we planted it and it’s growing as fast as ever during the shortest days of the year.

This is honey suckle. It’s not in bloom yet, but you can see a bunch of buds in this picture.

 

This is a variegated vine. I don’t know much more about it than that. I don’t know whether it ever blooms, but it does have new growth.

 

This is the bud of a bougainvillea plant. It really is worth clicking the picture to get a better view. I got lucky on this picture.

This picture is really good too. You can even see little hairs growing on the bougainvillea flowers. They start out green and turn white.

 

Tamara’s Fern has new growth on it.

The Yellow Bird of Paradise is actually blooming, but this picture only shows buds.

The Mexican Bird of Paradise has new red leave on it. They turn green as they mature.

 The lemon leaves also start red & go green.

This is an Aloe Vera bud. Or maybe it’s the blossom. This plant hasn’t bloomed since I’ve lived here, so I’m not sure.

We also have cute little baby Aloe Vera plants.

 

This is new growth (FINALLY!) on our Star Jasmine vine growing on the über-ugly mailbox post. Well, it’s wrapped around it anyway. We hope it will grow onto it and hide the ugliness that is our mailbox.

These pansies definitely think this is Spring time.

The orange trumpet vine just blooms whenever it wants.

And finally, after we thought they might die, (and most of the plants did) the snap dragons decided to bloom one more time. The other snap dragons didn’t die of wintery coldness. I drowned them. On accident. Several times.

I didn’t even take pictures of the Lobelia or the Lantana that we have blooming right now.

This is my Swiss Chard. Yum! Most of the plants look something like this medium colored red chard. They, at least, are supposed to grow in wintery weather.

This picture shows the dark chard on the right and the green chard in the middle. On the left is some nasturtium, which most people do not believe is a kind of chard at all. It hasn’t bloomed yet, but when it does, I will eat the flowers in a salad.

These might be daisies. I planted lots of Shasta Daisy seeds from my wedding throughout the chard garden, but I had never grown daisies before and I didn’t know what they were going to look like. So I let all the dandelions get really big just in case they turned out to be daisies. When I was fully sure that they really were dandelions, I finally pulled them. It more than decimated the garden!

All along I had been pulling anything that sprouted with really round leaves. I was sure that the daisies would not start off with round leaves because mature daisies have long leaves and the seeds were long and skinny. Well, these plants that I expect to turn out to be daisies have two round leaves under the long leaves, which means that the very first two leaves to pop out of the soil were round. I may have killed more daisies than have survived just because I didn’t know what they looked like. And I’m still not sure I’ve identified them correctly yet.

Cooking with No Food

Ok. This post is more about our cooking adventure than it is about the food. We had essentially no food in the house so it was time to be creative. I thought we should make biscuits. Much discussion ensued about what to eat with biscuits. Tamara is partial to her mom’s recipe for biscuits, so we called Andrea and asked her for the recipe. We also asked what we should have on the biscuits and she suggested Creamed Tuna. We got that recipe from her too. I used Jack-hand (not real shorthand) to copy it down. I wrote really fast.

This is my first cream sauce I’ve ever made. Please don’t notice that I’m in my pajamas. Really the sauce in this picture is ready for me to move on to the next step, but it’s waiting for its picture to be taken. This sauce starts off with a roux. I had never made a roux before either. Tamara made the biscuits without any help from me, so there are no pictures of me making the biscuits. And my pajamas stayed clean. (no flour)

Here is the meal. In the foreground you see pears in a little fruit bowl that Tamara got from her mom and dad for Christmas. We love our little fruit bowls and we’re glad to be using our nice china again because it’s microwave safe and dishwasher safe, which the Christmas dishes weren’t. To the right is the Creamed Tuna, which we put on the biscuits like gravy. It was yum if I do say so myself. In back you see the biscuits. Some are Choose the Right shaped biscuits. They were yum too.

I got my blog back!

After well over a year of having my original blog confiscated, and after finally giving up on ever getting it back, I requested one more time that they give me back my blog and they finally relented. So now I have combined the old blog and the new blog at the new address with the new layout and theme.

I really wanted to get a really cool template and theme for my blog, but it looks like most of the cool templates are somewhat girly. If I had my nice big screen that Dad gave me last year with me, then I would just create my own, but right now I'm on my little netbook. It has the power but not the screen space for doing that kind of photo editing.

I wanted to put this sunset skyline of Phoenix as the banner of my blog, but it just wasn't quite wide enough for me so I went with the other option, which does fit the color scheme of my blog pretty much anyway.

Merry Christmas

I've been having a great time at the Robertsons' house. We had a lot of fun opening presents and stockings, eating the traditional tea-ring, and drinking homemade eggnog.

New Blog Address

It is increasingly clear that I will never get my original blog back. Google has determined that I was not a person and will not change its mind, so I will cease to protest the inexorable machine that is the Googlemonster with my blog address. My blog will no longer be found at myblogwasjacked.blogspot.com. This is no longer my secondary blog while I wait for my primary blog to be given back to me. My new (and long since current) address is

http://Jack.Turner08.com

Soon, I will leave behind the depressing black theme as I leave behind the memory of what was done to my poor innocent blog who’s only crime was excessive enthusiasm for a few products that I had enjoyed and linking to websites that sold them.

If you really must have the blogspot.com address of my blog it is now iknowjackturner.blogspot.com. Personally I like the turner08.com address better because I can point that link to wherever I want and if I someday move to a non-google service for my blog, the turner08 blog address will point to that new blog without hassle.

Biscuit Men

Sometimes I make biscuits and gravy. This time I used a gingerbread man cookie cutter to make Christmassy biscuits. I did not anticipate the subsequent amputations that this would entail. I also made gravy, but I didn’t think that it would be as photogenic as the uncovered biscuit men.

Good Meal

Tamara made double cheeseburgers veggies and mac’n’cheese. It was really good. She cooked the whole box of rotini and I had great leftovers for several days.

Failed Recipe

The Blueberries were good. The cornbread was good. The Crystal Light was good. The soup was bad.

This picture was taken in June, when I made Creamy Carrot Soup. I like carrots, so I thought this was worth a try. It was a weird soup. It had grapefruit juice and all kinds of funny spices that I normally don’t use. I would never have combined these ingredients if I weren’t following someone else’s recipe.

It smelled really good while cooking, but we didn’t enjoy eating it.

Sick Jack

This is a picture of me being sick. I felt well enough to go to the gym yesterday, but not well enough to do more than 4 laps in the pool. Besides, that water was excessively cold.

I think I have the flu because I’ve been experiencing body aches and a fever, but other than that, it seems like a really bad cold. Maybe I have both.

Today I had Extreme Drippiness Syndrome (EDS) and a fever of 100.4 degrees F. I suspect it actually was higher than that, but I didn’t think to take my temperature until I was already starting to feel a little less cold.

Fortunately, the fever has been going down now, as has my EDS. I don’t feel well enough to do much, really, but I do feel well enough to get caught up on my blogging. I hope to feel well enough for attending church tomorrow.

World Robot Domination

 

I have a tendency to be overly fastidious about doing dishes in my own house. When I’m at someone else’s house, I don’t worry about dishes though. I often do dishes a few times a day.

So, the above comic depicts a conversation I had with my friend Avery, who is renting our guest room. We may not have Rosie from the Jetsons, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have household robots.

Food is More Fun on a Fancy Plate

Maybe I post too many food pictures, but look how much fun I have eating!

Jasmine Bush

This is the jasmine bush that we planted under our front window. As you can see, it has a tendency to drop its flowers after a day or two, but they smell really good. It’s not flowering right now. This picture was taken a while ago.

Cat5 Ethernet

This is a bokeh picture of a cat5 Ethernet jack that I wired. In the background, you see the corner of my monitor and the coil of cat5 wire. This jack is now installed in the wall under my desk and the cable goes through the attic. It gives wired internet connectivity to our guest room. 

I took this picture June 12. That’s when I was working on the Ethernet here.

Ginger Rubble

I don’t recall ever seeing a gingerbread house so thoroughly eaten. Growing up, we usually threw the rest of the house away when January came around. That was largely because we weren't supposed to eat it until we got close to Christmas. Tamara and I have no such rule.

This year, we’re only half way through December and the first gingerbread house that Tamara and I ever built together is reduced to rubble. I finally reduced it from being proudly displayed on a long fancy Christmas serving platter to huddling under a candy tree on a little dessert plate.

Egg à la noche

Some of us have a tendency to get hungry at bedtime. I’m not one of those, but last night I did need a snack. Tamara suggested I eat some boiled eggs because they have protein which helps stave off the hunger longer and they needed to be eaten before they got old.

Eggs weren’t so appealing just straight from the shell the way I usually eat them, so I cut them up and ground some salt and pepper onto them. They were really good that way.

He’s a Historian (FTW!)

This was my first weekend in my new job as the 944th Fighter Wing Historian. This is a huge step up for me. I went from not even having my own desk as a Ground Radio Journeyman to now having 2 desks, 3 chairs, 2 computers, 1 fridge, my own printer, a table, a bunch of cabinets and shelves, a window, and a door in my very own office.

In the picture above you can see most of the aforementioned items. You can also see me. I’m smiling because Sergeant Fine, who was taking my picture, said something funny, but also because I’m happy in my new position.There is a big wall clock strategically placed right above my monitor in case I get so engrossed in writing chronologies that I forget the time. The file folders in the foreground hold source documents for the histories that I’m going to write from Y2K to the present. They’re placed strategically on top of empty blue bins to keep the floods from damaging my documents. My office has been flooded twice in the past. Next to my shoulder is the new Blender Bottle that Tamara gave me for my birthday. It’s a happy orange color. That’s about all there is of interest in that picture.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Look what a good job Tamara did on my birthday. When I got home she had these presents laid out on the table for me (and an ice cream cake). She found the perfect card for a Jack Turner whose birthday is on Talk like a Pirate Day. I really felt like it was my birthday, even though the actual day is on the 19th. After cake, we went to dinner and a concert, where Tamara won an autographed guitar for us! It was a great day.

The Queen

I finally found out why men play chess and most women don’t. Tamara told me that when she’s playing chess, she’s not so concerned about the next move. She’s more worried about how the queen feels standing so close to the bishop, and is she sure that the knight will protect her in her time of need?

Tamara did such a great job planning our menu and preparing our meals for our anniversary camping trip. Pictured are turkey burgers, crook necked squash, zuchinni, onions, eggplant, and carrots.

Ravens

We're no bird experts, but we're pretty sure these huge birds are ravens. The tent doesn't give good perpective, but look at the bird by the chair. They must be almost 2 feet tall. They were very noisy sometimes, so much that I threw a boot at them from the tent one morning, but it was fun to see them trying to scavenge in our camp. They knew from long exposure to humans that leftovers are likely to be in the firepit.

Ladder Ball

When I went on the Fathers and Sons campout this year, one of the guys had brought a game he called Boku Ball or something. Well, I couldn't find on the game on the internet under that name, but I did find Ladder Ball, which is the same game. Wikipedia said that this game goes by many names, but it didn't enumerate them all, so I'm sticking with Ladder Ball.

I thought I would cut all 2 foot lengths and it would turn out just like Brother Hatch's, because his was homemade like mine, and I had measured with my hands and I thought that all of his lengths were 2 feet. Apparently, I didn't look very closely (or think very carefully either) because the game would have turned out 6 feet tall and his were only 3 or 4 feet tall. I ended up testing 18 inch lengths and 14 inch lengths, but I decided to go with 1 foot lengths for verticle bars and 2 foot lenghts for horizontal. It's a good thing I didn't pick longer than a foot too because I thought I had several feet more pipe than I needed, but it turned out to be just barely enough.

Tamara and I had a great time playing our new game.

Lock, Shock and...

Last week I went to the gym with my buddy, James, and as we were going to our lockers he asked me, "Hey, is that your lock on the bench?"

I was fairly sure it wasn't because I always put my lock right back in my gym bag and it had been a few days since I'd been to the gym. Surely someone would have stolen this nice lock with an easily changeable combo by now. So I looked in my gym bag and I looked a little more thoroughly. Sure enough it was my lock. I just couldn't believe it, but it had dents from dropping it on the ground and it was the right size and it was sitting right in front of the locker that I always use.

James still thought it could be someone else's lock, but I was certain it was mine.

A few days later, I was in my car looking for something in the console between the seats and I found my lock again. Now this time I was equally surprised because after a strange event like finding my lock on a bench, I would be sure to stick my lock in its dedicated pocket in my gym bag right away so that I don't risk losing it again. Fortunately I had my gym bag in the back seat, so I pulled it up and checked the pocket, and I found my lock again. ??? I had TWO LOCKS! It turns out that the one in the gym wasn't mine after all. I'll have to give one to the lost & found and if it's not claimed, I can probably keep it.

Sick Burger

My professor for two classes, Mr. Burger, is sick and will not be joining us anymore. This is especially unfortunate as one of his replacements is a woman with an intensely somnolent voice and the other is some arabic or asian dude with a really bad accent who speaks really fast so that I can only understand half of what he says when I'm paying close attention and less if I'm trying to multitask. His name is Satendra, which he pronounced Say-TEN. (no pun intended, I think...)

Probability of Being Sure

Tonight Tamara and I were at IKEA looking for kitchen ideas and I stumbled upon an interesting topic: I asked her, "What percent sure are you when you say you're 'reasonably sure'?" She said she's 85-95% sure. I then asked what percent sure she is when she says she's "pretty sure". She said 65-85% sure. I found that interesting because I am just the opposite. I'm more sure with pretty than with reasonably. Tamara thinks it has more to do with intonation than verbage.

Contact Attack!

Earlier today, my contact was attacking my eye and it was not comfy, so I rubbed my eye and it didn't feel much better. I intended to take my contacts out, but I was busy with other things, so I just ignored my vexatious eye until it stopped vexing me. Now it's all better.

There are many things that go away when you just ignore them. There are other things that don't.

Cat Names

We were discussing possible cat names. Here is a list of suggestions:
Cat
Meow
Cow
Okapi

New Semester and Web Page

It's a new semester and so far I'm ahead in 3 of my classes and the rest just haven't had any homework assigned yet. That's ok, but really I prefer that they give a list of all the homework for the semester right in the syllabus so that we can get things started early. Otherwise, I run into the problem of not being able to work on things right away when they're assigned and then it's hard to keep on top of it all.

My classes include:
EEE 202 Circuits I
EEE 202 Circuits I Lab
PHY 132 Physics II Lab
MAT 243 Discrete Math
CSE 220 Programming for Computer Engineers
CSE 230 Computer Organization/ Assembly Language Programming

Two of my classes (both CSE) are taught by the same professor, Mr. Burger. The first assignment in each of his classes is to post a profile picture to his moodle (moodle is an open source version of BlackBoard) and write a brief description of yourself. To the left is the picture I posted. My friend Nadim took this picture with my broken camera. He had to take several because the screen is broken and we couldn't see the pictures till after I put the SD card in my computer.

I also used this picture to update my profile at the ASU directory and my Blogger profile. I don't like this picture particularly, but it is good enough and I'll take a better headshot someday and update again.

ASU offers web page hosting, so I made a little Jack Site to test it out. I don't know if they will terminate it after I graduate. I also fixed the URL to www.turner08.com.

I updated my email alias from Jeffrey.C.Turner{at}asu.edu to Jack.Turner{at}asu.edu. Both of these addresses get forwarded to Jack{at}turner08.com anyway, so it's really not so important.