Amanda Takes Off...

So. Since my last day of work, Good Man and I have gone to the beach for a weekend, visited Newfoundland, gone to my Grandparents' and spent a week with my parents.

I finished knitting a dress in about a month.

Good Man got his license.

Good Man met approximately 50 family members this summer. He hasn't met two cousins (and their spouses), and some of George's side of the family. Other than that, Dad's family is knocked out, and so is Mom's. And he's still alive.

And now summer is done.

Preplanning for the new school year starts tomorrow and I am not ready. Dammit, why can't I have just one more week? Or month? This summer was awesome.

When I was in high school, I became friends with a guy. We were...a very odd pair of friends and most of our friends would say with astonishment, "You're friends with [him/her]?"

He was new to school our freshman year and while I thought we met in science class, he remembers it differently.

"I remember exactly how we met. I was sitting in the library," he said yesterday over brunch, "and you walked straight up to me, sat down, and said, 'You're that guy who thinks he knows everything about God, aren't you?'"

I blushed and laughed, Good Man almost choked on his brunch, and Thinks He Knows' wife laughed and nodded. "I'm so sorry," I said.

"No, no, it's OK," Thinks He Knows said, "That was a pretty good description."

Thinks He Knows and I would sit in science class and passionately debate evolution. In photography class, we work on our projects and debate the existence of God.

Our sophomore year he disappeared (home schooled), but he returned junior year. Somehow we ended up taking Spanish together at the community college (our junior and senior year of school, I went to the community college full time). Thinks He Knows would pick me up in the morning and we'd listen to Christian music while driving to the school.

While he was reading "the endtimes are near" books, I was reading really radical 60s and 70s feminist philosophy "men are evil, let's go live in the woods without them" books. We would passionately talk about our books, the other sort of gritting their teeth to deal with it.

Well, Thinks He Knows and I have both mellowed out a bit since high school. We've changed. We saw each other once, two years after graduation. He had just proposed to a woman who he was...not dating. She's now his wife of eight years and they have a beautiful, happy baby together. While religions (or lack of religion) have not changed for either of us, the forcefulness in which we believe we are absolutely right has mellowed out, and the practice of said beliefs has changed. Political views have changed a bit.

In other words, we've both grown up.

We emailed each other a few times when I was in Korea (he and his wife taught in China for two years). And then we reconnected on Facebook. We weren't able to meet during either of my spring visits to Minnesota and I really wanted to be sure we got to meet on this trip, so we scheduled it early in the trip. Good Man and I were invited to their home for a wonderful brunch. (As a side—I have got to get the French toast recipe his wife used. So delicious!)

And we just fell into conversation as if ten years hadn't gone by at all. It was wonderful.

Over brunch we tried to figure out why we got along so well in high school despite being polar opposites in just about everything. Thinks He Knows said, "I think that we respected how passionate the other was. We might not have agreed with each other, but we just thought almost everyone else was stupid, because they weren't passionate about anything!"

That's probably it, actually.

A Decade Later

Several weeks ago, David asked about composting. Yesterday Mark and I set up a new bin for Mark's Lover and harvested my bin. We took a few photos of the process.

Punching Holes in the Bin

The bin size we both use is pretty small. It's my understanding that worms only stay in the upper layers of a bin, so I don't bother with really big bins. This bin is a 10 gallon one, but it's only 8" deep. Next time I'd probably get a slightly deeper one, but this works for now.

Mark punched four holes in the bottom of the bin. That way, if it drips, you know the bin is too wet. Some people don't use holes on the bottom, but if you're new to worm composting, I'd probably add holes on the bottom.

Around the top of the bin Mark punched more holes, about nine to fifteen on each side, for air flow.

Soaking the Paper

Mark brought a ton of shredded paper from work to fill the bins. Then he soaked the water. This method was a mistake! The shredded paper was so fine that it all clumped together. You don't really want this to happen. So if you use shredded paper, I would spray it damp with a mister. You want the paper materials to be about as damp as a wrung out sponge.

Another option is to tear newspaper into strips (the narrower the better) and then soak it in water. When you drain the water, the newspaper still remains fluffy.

The bin should be mostly full with bedding.

Bin with Bedding

This is the bin after I've added all the bedding and the unfinished stuff from my harvesting.

Red Worms

To compost, you need red worms, not regular variety earth worms. These red worms are actually an invasive species, so don't stick them into the ground! You can buy red worms online, or at fishing shops. I went on Craigslist and wrote an "ISO: Red Worms" post and got them from a lady for $5, which was about 1/10th what they would've cost to order them. Now I've split my worm population twice, once for Mark and once for Troy.

Feeding

I pocket feed. About once a week I dump food into a different corner of the bin. Then I cover it with bedding (to prevent fruit flies). I also freeze the food scraps before feeding, which helps prevent fruit flies and aids in breaking down the food faster (because freezing the scraps breaks down the cell walls).

Another method of feeding is to just dump new food on top.

By the time I reach the original corner, if there's still food there, I don't feed for a week. The benefit of pocket feeding is that the food scraps are in various states of decay, so the worms can eat what they like.

I feed veggie and fruit scraps, and sometimes coffee grounds. No dairy, no grains, no meats. Go easy on the garlic and onion because worms don't like it much, and go easy on orange and citrus peels because it can irritate the worms. (Worms breathe through their skin. Have you ever accidentally squirted yourself in the eye while peeling an orange?)

I'm not able to use up all of my food scraps yet, but between saving scraps for vegetable broth and the worms, I throw away very little compostable food in a week.

Every other week or so, I add more bedding to the bin to keep the ratio of browns (paper products) and greens (food products) right.

Ready to Harvest

After several months, the bin will be ready to harvest. (I should've had more bedding in this bin, I think.) I quit feeding for a couple of weeks. In this bin I pulled a lot of the larger pieces of unfinished stuff to one side about two weeks ago. I figured it would make harvesting easier. (I was right.)

Light Harvesting

Red worms are sensitive to light. I made several piles of compost on a tarp and waited about five minutes while the worms moved away from the light, to the middle of the pile.

Scraping off Compost

When the worms were done diving, Mark's Lover and I scraped off a layer of compost from the top, reformed the conical piles, and waited for the worms to dive again.

We tossed unfinished compost onto my bin lid, where it was later added back to my bin to be finished.

When the piles got small enough, we combined them until we were stuck with two piles of mostly worms and very little compost. We then dumped one pile of worms/compost into each bin.

Finished Compost

This is the finished compost. I need to let it dry out a little bit, and I need to stir it in about a week to find missed worms and newly-hatched worms. I'll also run it through some wire mesh to make the clumps the same size. Then it's ready to be used!

When I was a teenager, I wanted to grow up to become an adult who was an expat, who had a decent job, who felt comfortable financially, had a great partner-in-life, and who traveled widely.

Last week, I whined to Diana that I wanted to go somewhere this summer and wouldn't and couldn't and whine, moan, bitch. I told Diana I wanted to go to Iceland and that she needed to talk me out of it.

Diana instead decided to talk me into it. She claimed I tend to stockpile money and not actually spend it.

Hmm. Well.

An hour later, Good Man and I sat down. On paper we maxed out our Roth IRAs for the year, finished my gifted and talented endorsement, accounted for my missing August paycheck (since we're switching from modified to regular calendar, I end up losing a paycheck), etc etc. Diana's point has been made.

Iceland it was!

Except...not so much. With the crash of the Icelandic Kronor in 2008, Iceland is a lot cheaper than in the past, but because we were getting a late start on trip planning, we could only afford to sleep if we refused to eat.

The alternative was to only spend time on the southern coast, which we didn't want to do.

My mother suggested we try Alaska. She also said, "I keep hearing about the east coast of Canada, they say it's a lot like Gotland."

Good Man and I did some research and decided to go to head to Newfoundland. Apparently the rest of Canada hates Newfoundland (which means I'll probably love it). And it's an island. Gotland, Fåro, and Jeju-do have proven that we do islands well.

We'll be heading out for just over a week in July. Diana again offered up some great advice, telling me to check out the flights from Newark and taking Amtrak there. It ended up costing nearly the same as flying out of Baltimore and actually saves us travel time in the end.

We considered getting a package self-drive tour, but I am too cheap for that. The trip is mostly planned out I'm so excited to go! (Thanks for being a great friend and not supporting me, Diana! ^^)

I woke up after deciding that we could afford to go somewhere and realized that the life I dreamt of as a teenager? I've gotten it (and more!). And I'm not sure I actually expected that.

At Grandmother's house, the night of the jaesa (ceremony honoring the death of Good Man's Grandfather), I slept on a "health pillow." This health pillow was filled with short straws. When I woke up in the morning, I had a dark, honeycomb-like bruise on my chin.

I joked that it looked like I'd used a Korean name stamp (dojang) on my chin. A name stamp is a stamp that acts like a legal signature in Korea. It has your name on it in pure Korean or in Chinese characters. You always use red ink with a dojang.

Several days later, it was still there. While out with Master, he asked what it was. Good Man explained for me since I didn't have the vocabulary, but Master's Daughter didn't understand. She leaned over onto my lap and poked my chin.

"아만다, 뭐예요?" Amanda, what is that?

I smiled, "도장 찍었어." I stamped a name stamp on my chin. I started stamping my chin.

Master's Daughter's eyes lit up and she started stamping her own chin. "찍어요! 찍어요!"

Stamp, Stamp

찍어요! 찍어요!