People who have been reading this blog for a while will remember that last year I was at war with my neighbor's cat, who I thought was eating my seedlings and destroying my garden. Those neighbors have moved out, and a new gardening season has started, and I have come to find out that the cat was framed.

Once again, my seedlings are being eaten, and this time much quicker (only a few hours after planting). I also had the tops of all of my annual flowers knocked off. I researched online and found that these symptoms usually point to one thing - squirrels. From my mom's experience with her birdfeeders, I know how sneaky squirrels can be, so I believed it. I sprayed my leaves with a mixture of chili pepper and water, put birdseed away from my garden to lure them, and bought this stuff called Shake Away that is a powdered form of predator urine that is supposed to scare them away. (Patrick said I should just get the cat to pee in my garden and save the money...)

After a couple of hours of planting and mulching and putting out all of my squirrel deterrents, I sat at my window watching to see if it worked. What I ended up witnessing was not a squirrel attack at all, but more of a Hithcock-ian assault on my garden. A nasty, crafty starling swooped down and pulled off the top of my tomato plant before I even knew it!

I screamed through the window and Patrick ran out and scared it off and then sat in the back yard with Byron in his harness keeping the bird at bay while I ran to the hardware store to buy chicken wire. Back home, I proceded to form cages around all of my seedlings (of course withour gloves or long sleeves, which was dumb, and I ended up with arms all scratched up like when I was a sculptor) while the starling and his friends chattered at me from the neighbor's roof and the power lines, alerting all of their friends that I was taking away their buffet feast.

As of this morning, the plants are all still there. Hopefully the plot was foiled. I do feel bad for blaming the cat last year, who probably wasn't interested in the garden at all, but very interested in the birds in the garden. |

I am really busy today, training a new person and dealing with lots of deadlines...

Until I get a chance to put my own report up, check Patrick's site. |

Sentimental notes for Patrick:

I remember the first time I told you I loved you, staring deep into your eyes, seeing the same fire and knowing you felt the same without asking. You stole my heart and opened my mind and made me realize that there can be one perfect person for another. I can't imagine spending my life with anyone but you.

You know I love you more than anything and I promise by all that I hold to be true, that I will keep loving you and always be by your side. I promise to support you in whatever you do; to listen to you when you need and to always try to make you smile. And I promise, most of all, to be your wife for the rest of my life.

Happy Anniversary! |

Cleveland needs local businesses, viable downtown residential areas, and support for these things by our local government in order to become a destination city once again. What it doesn't need is a monstrous big box strip mall only a few miles from downtown and the emerging cultural hotspots of the near west side.

What I am talking about is Steelyard Commons, a shopping plaza planned for an area once occupied by the steel mill that will be anchored by a WalMart Supercenter and will also include the usual national chain stores and restaurants. Our local councilman understood these concerns and more, and along with the rest of the city council created zoning legislation to stop this once before. This week we found out that the developer had been meeting secretly with city officials including the mayor to move forward with this project and keep the council from being able to block it.

Cleveland area bloggers have banded together to try to stop this "done deal". An organizational meetup is being scheduled for Wednesday, May 25, 7pm, at the Treehouse in Tremont. Spread the word. |

Sometimes I seriously think my cat Audrey is smarter than us.

For a bit of back story, this is the cat who figured out how to get on the counter, open the drawer, and pull all of her toys out. She also used to have a "game" she played that involved scooting her water dish across the floor with her paw, spilling as much as possible and making tons of noise (usually at about 4am of course). At one point I decided to end it by sticking the dish to the floor with velcro. This foiled her for about two days while she pondered the situation until one night I was woken up by the very distinctive *riiiip* sound of velcro being pulled apart.

Last night we searched for her for about fifteen minutes; calling, looking under furniture, looking in dresser drawers, opening doors and looking ouside. We were starting to think things like "alien abduction?" "twilight zone parallel universe?". Then I decided to shake the cat food bag and, of course, there she was, strutting in the doorway looking very pleased with herself with an expression that said "What? I was here all the time." |

Monday night we watched Arlington Road, a movie I put on our queue simply because of the title sequence I had seen in a film/video class in college. Dark, mysterious, and brooding - aided by a score from Angelo Badalamenti.

The movie was very dark, very smart, and totally challenged my expectations of a political thriller. Although Tim Robbins' character was politically the opposite of what I know of the actor in real life, I can totally see why he took that role, playing it as devlishly benign as he did. And Joan Cusack has an evil smile.

That said, I also have to say that maybe the tension level was turned up a little high. In oher words, Patrick and I were wound up so tight after watching this movie that we got into a fight about beans. Yes - beans. As in how many should be soaked for chili. Thank you, Arlington Road. As Morrissey would say "I can laugh about it now but at the time it was terrible". |

Since I archived my old blog (Pixellation), I have now lost links to the photos I published there. They're still on the server, they're just not easily accessible anymore. So, I have been toying with the idea of using one of many online photo album sites. The only ones I've seen in use are Flickr and Hello.

Hello has a plugin that works with Blogger, but you have to download and install it, and nowhere on their site does it say if the file you download is PC only or not, or if the plugin works in Safari. (Anyone tried it on a Mac?) So, I am trying Flickr's free account out for now, and it has already annoyed me with its monthly upload quota, because now I can't put any more pictures up til June without paying them.

Anyone used any other sites/sources? I already don't like this one because it broke my CSS styling when I put captions on the photos. Please post recommendations in the comments.

Here are the pictures (Click the thumbnails to view the photos):


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Browsing and voting on Reboot, I've come across lots of great designs. This is by no means all of the sites I have liked, but these four really stand out:
signalnoise.com
factory4.co.uk
easyweb.pl
dopestudio.com |

It's 2pm Grenwich Mean Time on Sunday, May 1st, 2005, and that means it's officially time to launch my new site.

As a participant in the May 1st Reboot, this site is one of about hundreds (thousands?) of design sites worldwide that are launching a new design simultaneously. It also means that I am competing with all of these other sites for fame (a notation on the official reboot site) and fortune (lifetime free web hosting), so - if you like what you see, please vote for this site!

Note: The reboot site is not very intuitive, so here's some instruction on how to vote:
From the homepage, click on "Participants" (the star icon on the top of the page). Then, on the top right of the Participants page, choose to sort by "title" "ascending" - scroll to the "e"s to find ex machina. Click on "ex machina" and information will appear at the left of the screen. The bottom left icon is a thumbs up, click on it to vote. |