Erin, I've had some success growing spinach outdoors. but it really likes cold weather. I have tried to get a second planting in the summer & it never works as well.

I've only been on the board three years and I'm itching to flee to the suburbs where my house will be MINE and not 1/12th of a building co-owned by 11 other families.

Mine was a rental place, but people still crazy. So much less stressful to only have to worry about your own needs, budgets, and desires.

I am thinking about starting to look for a new place. The city are talking about widening the road I am next to from a 4-lane street to a 6-lane extension of the freeway that ends about a block away. I was always planning to try to sell up and move closer to downtown after about 5 years (It's been just over 4 now), but this is making me think I should sell sooner than later. However, my job also may be going to shit (we've been reorganized), so I'm not sure what I should do. I think need to do some strategic planning for my life.

java, my dad who lives not far from you has an olive book that includes several different brining recipes. I can easily bring it over some Sunday (er, except not this coming one) because even though he's got a giant olive tree he's never so much as cracked the book open.

Also, SO EXCITED about the possible home ownership! Your place is so unbearably cute and so gorgeously expressive of you, it absolutely should be yours for real.

Fingers crossed for megan.

Hec, Emmett can still get a monthly youth pass ($21 just for the Muni pass, but all he has to do is ride Muni 3 times a week for it to be cheaper than paying for each ride.

Hec, Emmett can still get a monthly youth pass

I think we get a cheaper/better deal on the Youth Clipper card which covers both BART and Muni. But I still need to study that.

Anyway, he's on the BART train right now! He's supposed to call when he gets to Muni.

JZ, that would be swell.

I sent over a bunch of paperwork to Charlie's niece today (she's a mortgage broker) and I am on pins and needles to see if she thinks I have a chance at pre-approval. That's the first step.

I need to start getting my paperwork in order, too: if (as I am told) they're announcing my job next week, that means I might actually be re-employed permanently by the end of July. (Maybe. This place puts the "deliberate" in "all deliberate speed".)

Which means I also need to get cracking on getting my house in order. I should probably stop buying frozen food at TJ's, for one thing. And schedule a bulk pickup.

Yeah. I have NOT been acting like someone trying to buy a house. Um. 'cause up until Sunday I wasn't. Now I am like "I can afford to meet you downtown if you bring da water and I bring the Crystal Light Mix!!"

About the only spinach-like things you can grow indoors are microgreens and sprouts. Outside, spinach is one of those things that takes up a lot of growing space relative to yield. Think about how a bag of spinach cooks down.

Good luck with the house, java.

Okay, so I am really hating the way my spelling is tanking these days.

I just typed "plays" instead of "place". Which I don't get: why did my brain do that? They don't even sound alike to me, unlike the various forms of "their/there/they're". BAH. Stupid brain!

There's nothing like intending to ignore someone's email and then bumping into them in the washroom. Well, I'm still going to not answer.

Ai Weiwei is a lovely name.

It is rather. A bit of trivia: his family name, Aì, literally means mugwort or wormwood. It's often used as a phonetic element when transliterating foreign words into Chinese, being the first character in the transliterations of AIDS, Eiffel and Isengard.