In 1985, the intrepid young (15-18 years old!) geeks at "Pacific Tech" built a megawatt chemical laser that "could vaporize a human target from space" in the cult classic Real Genius. If you've never seen the film, you're truly missing out. It was back when Val Kilmer could actually act.

Well, it seems that 22 years later, reality has finally caught up with fantasy. The US Air Force is currently testing the "Airborne Laser", a megawatt chemical laser mounted in a Boeing 747, the ostensible purpose of which is to intercept and destroy ICBMs. Even though the system isn't designed to eliminate military dictators and foreign oil barons as they take their morning coffee on the veranda (or so we're told), the similarities are striking.

If you've been following along this summer, you may have been surprised that I haven't talked more about my garden. I do have a garden--of sorts. I was given permission to plant "as long as it doesn't interfere with the guys coming to do landscaping". I was going to make a snide remark about the frequency and quality of the "landscapers'" visits, but figured it wouldn't help matters.

First, I defined and expanded the flower beds next to the side porch. I planted dahlia tubers and dwarf sunflowers, calendula, and nasturtium from seed. Later on I added some gerbera daisies I bought at Lowes, but even though they're now beginning a post-transplant bloom, I don't really feel like I've "grown" them, since they came to me fairly mature.

Most of the dahlias have grown up quite nicely, and one of the "neon splendor" plants is opening its first bloom. The nasturtium have thrown a couple of blooms, and the sunflowers and calendula are bushy and green, even though they're short and bloomless.

I've also carved out a nice flower bed in the corner of the yard.The centerpiece is another dahlia, "nick's pick". The bushy plants in front are escholzia--california poppy. Behind that are more calendula. The coneflowers are another pick-up from Lowe's, but these I feel a little more attached to because I bought them from the "reduced for quick sale" bin, and though they were cheap, they weren't particularly healthy. On the left there are some lavender plants, also purchased. The purple stuff on the right is russian sage. I was at Lowe's and they had this display where they had different rows of plants and it was really clear which plants the bees liked. I'm not a huge fan of the plants (though I think they'd look cool blooming en masse) but the bees are, so I picked up a few. We want to do everything we can to encourage the reproduction of bees. (In case you haven't heard, the bee population in the US--and increasingly in the rest of the world--is collapsing.) The rug over the fence is the neighbor lady's. For some reason she leaves it there all summer and then brings it in for the winter. I talked to her about it, and she doesn't mind if it gets wet when I water (which makes sense since she leaves it out in all kinds of rain).

Since we have the chain-link fence along the sunny sides of the property, I decided to plant some climbers. I planted peas and pole beans, cucumbers and squash. The peas are doing great. They've reached the top of the fence and we've been eating them for about a week. I was actually a little surprised about how well they were doing, as I started them kind of late, and everybody knows they're a cool-weather crop. But they seem to not mind that they're on the sunny north slope. Which is why it was (is) all the more perplexing that the pole beans, planted right next to the peas, did so poorly. Beans love sun, don't they? The beans started out gangbusters, green and vigorous, but by the time they got their second set of leaves, they were showing signs of sun stress, and many died. A second planting exhibited the same progression. When the cucumbers and squash started to exhibit the same symptoms, I panicked. Not knowing what to do, I began intensive watering--even though the clay-laden soil seemed quite moist--and things seemed to stabilize. I still lost my entire first planting of squash, and about 40% of the cucumbers, but I'm hoping that vigilant watering will be the answer. I'm optimistic; enough so that I've completed a third planting of beans.

In addition to the climbers, I've planted tomatoes and peppers. The Seed Savers' Exchange out of Iowa has such a variety of heirloom tomatoes and peppers that I like to start them from seed. Since my husband doesn't like tomatoes, I decided to stick to two varieties, one for eating and one for canning. I also ordered some pepper seeds. I started them all indoors, with very poor results. I think a 20% success rate might be an over-estimate. So I supplemented my planting with some immature plants from the nursery. As the picture shows, I haven't had much success keeping them alive either. This roma plant is about a quarter the size it was when I bought it!

Overall, I've had mixed results. Most of the flowers (that is, the ones that grew--the celosia, amaranth, strawflower, and false sunflower were total busts, either never emerging or dying off before setting true leaves) seem to be doing well, and most of the vegetables are struggling. Maybe the flowers can feel my love. Whatever it is, I'm more than a little worried about leaving everything to itself for a week. So, I'm going to leave the soaker hose on at a trickle and hope for the best.

We live in a house rented from the college. While it's a spacious little bungalow, it's been around for a while and needs more than it's fair share of repairs. For example, in the picture I posted in the fall, you can see where chunks of concrete have fallen out of the front steps. The winter did us no favors, and in the spring I asked maintenance to come patch up some holes. They decided it was unpatchable (which was really the right decision, since we were losing concrete in chunks the size of basketballs) and decided to replace it. Since the house is owned by the state, that meant putting out for bids, etc.

When the bid came back at half the value of the house, they went to plan B and built us a deck. They did a generally good job. My biggest complaint is that they put the railing spindles on upside down (with the points up, rising over the railing) such that it seems like we're living in a piked fortress. Also, it's quite big--the main part is about 15' x 20'--but as you can see from the pictures below, when you're coming up the drive, all you can see is deck, which also means that when someone comes up the drive, we can't see them from the window. The best part about the deck is that they wrapped it around the side of the house and connected it to our side porch. We use that side porch a lot, since it's covered and cool, and it's nice that they're all connected.

It took them about two weeks to do it--from coming in with the bulldozer to putting on the finishing touches--and it was all done without a single building permit.

In the last month, we've had one day without rain. You'd think that as a gardener, I would be happy to get so much water. Really it's a problem, and not just because the rain keeps me inside and breeds bugs. As you can hopefully see from the crappy video (it was taken with our camera, so it's better than I might have expected) water just washes away, taking the dirt with it. Those brown streaks are muddy currents in the river that is our street. I still have to water constantly, and when I say constantly, I mean about eight out of every 24 hours. We're going away this week and are planning on simply leaving the water on. We've got a soaker hose, and so all of that water goes directly into the ground, but after a while it comes running out the side of the mountain and our plants wilt. It's been tough being a gardener here, but hopefully when we get back from our trip this week, the dahlia will have begun to bloom. Then I'll be happier.

After a week of speculation, Chris Mortensen has reported that Brett Favre has asked the Packers to release him. While the announcement has seemed to have put a damper on the yammering of pundits, the fact that he's asked to be released--not simply moved back to the active roster--has started a whole new kind of speculation in our house: if he's not going to be a Packer, what might he be?

So, for shits and giggles and because I couldn't find one already on the web, I photoshopped a Vikings uniform onto Brett. It doesn't really look like him anymore, does it?

I got an email from an old friend this morning, announcing the birth of her baby. Congratulations, Linnea and Curtis, on the arrival of little Rowan. In her email there was a link to the i'm Initiative. I had never heard of it (like I've said before, I can be pretty out of it as far as web trends go) and was interested enough to follow the link.

The basic idea is that when you IM or email, a donation gets made to charity. The charities are good ones, ones I'd consider writing out a check to. In fact, one of them is the Red Cross, to which I made a donation just this weekend. The catch is, this initiative is sponsored by Microsoft, and you have to use their products to participate.

Now, I've never used Messenger or Hotmail, but if Microsoft's other products are anything to go by, I expect they're pretty crappy. So I guess if you can't get people to use your product based on its merits, develop a value-added scheme that plays on peoples' desire to be benevolent.

Microsoft certainly isn't the first one to play this game. Walk through a grocery store during May, and the aisles are packed with pink packages advertising that proceeds will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure (incidentally, this is one of the charities supported by the Microsoft initiative). The difference I see is that the pink packages exclusively dress name-brand products, which are usually a little better quality than their store-brand counterparts, but also more expensive. So, if you're a store-brand shopper, maybe each May you upgrade to the name brand and soothe your conscience. You capitulate to the value-added scheme, and spend an extra 20 cents on that can of tuna, but what you get is higher quality tuna AND the "added value" of a penny going to charity.

On the other hand, Microsoft's products are free to the user. So in my original decision to NOT use these products, I wasn't balancing cost and quality, but making a selection among available products based solely on their merits. To switch to the Microsoft products would be to sacrifice product quality in the interest of supporting the initiative, and the "added value" isn't really "added" at all, but is merely a feature of the product that allows it to now be competitive with whatever alternate product I had been using.

I will concede that for people already using the software, the initiative is probably a bonus. For me, the idea that for every ten emails I send, half a cent gets donated to charity isn't enough to make up for the evil Microsoft has perpetrated on the world. (Okay, maybe not evil, but have you tried to use Vista? Or open one of Microsoft's "OpenXML" file formats with something other than Office?)

My husband is very proud of his history as a blood donor. He was a regular donor in college, passing the gallon mark in his early twenties. He fell out of the habit for a while, but when we lived in St. Cloud, he picked up again, and even became a volunteer at the local Red Cross donation center. It made me feel guilty that I'd never donated, but because he went to the center every week, I didn't really keep tabs on when he donated, so the guilt didn't hit me hard enough to do anything about it.

When we moved to Bluefield, Josh was disappointed to learn there wasn't a local donation center. So in the spring, when a drive was being held at my school, he was ready to donate. I decided it was finally time for me to "man up" and donate. As I waited in chairs, I joked about getting off the hook by having low iron. They poked me and I "just passed" the cut; I wasn't sure if I was glad or not. The techs had a heck of a time getting a vein, and when they did it was such a flaky insert that the tech had to stand there and hold the needle in my arm to maintain a slow dribble into the bag. Half a pint or so into the donation, the needle site clotted, and they stopped the procedure. When I asked they confirmed that my partial donation would be discarded.

It was disheartening, to go through all of that--especially the bad poke, and them wiggling the needle around in my arm trying to get the flow started--just to have my efforts washed down the drain. (Well, they probably incinerated the blood, but you get my point.) So when they called to let us know that there was another drive in our area, I was a little wary. I decided that I should give it another shot, but that if it went badly a second time, then I would be off the hook in the future. Too bad I didn't clarify to myself what "badly" meant.

Things started off much better--I had some red meat the day before so my iron came out fine. Even though the same techs that bungled my first donation were present, the tech that placed my needle did great, and I was bleeding like a rock star. I had finished the actual donation and the tech was taking test vials when I started to feel woozy. I said, "I'm starting to feel a little dizzy," expecting--well, I don't know what, but not the reaction I got. She called for help and pretty soon every tech in the room was gathered around, lowering my head, raising my feet, feeding me sugar, having me breathe into a bag. It worked--I felt much better very quickly, and while this was going on my tech finished taking the samples, so this time around my donation didn't go into the dustbin (YAY!), but I was horribly embarrassed. Everybody was fawning all over me, while four or five other people were quietly, successfully giving their pint.

So what's my verdict? Did this donation go "badly"? Will I try to donate again? Well, this is not the first time I've gone ill from having blood taken. I was once in a doctor's office having samples taken for testing--a much smaller amount than a pint--and went dizzy. (BTW, their response to my sickness--smelling salts--was much less pleasant and much less effective than the techs' at the donation site. Go Red Cross!) So my response was not unprecedented, and I'm wondering if it will be persistent. Am I just the kind of person that gets woozy after bleeding a pint or so? (I'm kind of confused by this, as I'm a big girl and so a pint is a smaller percent of my total blood volume than it is for lots of people.) If I am, does that mean I should stay away from donating, or is a pint of blood (which will "save 3 adults or 5 babies") worth the complications--both to me and the techs? I mean, would the techs rather have me stay home, or come anyway, fully understanding that I will probably get sick and need extra attention? How much trouble is a pint of blood worth?

I don't know the answers. I guess though that I've got 8 weeks to think about it.

Having spent my entire life in the upper mid-west, I knew that moving to West Virginia would be a cultural shift. Food, speech, tempo, I expected all these things to differ from what I was used to. One thing I didn't anticipate was differences in medical treatment. Whereas I had been used to collaborative treatment: my doctor would give me as much information as possible, and then I would make a decision, here the attitude is very much "Doctor knows best," which leads to the assumption that "Doctor's time is more valuable."

When choosing an internist, I carefully examined the profiles of many of the area doctors. I chose a female, educated at Michigan State. Yet rather than tell me what my cholesterol and blood pressure values were, explaining what was normal, and then suggesting a course of treatment, she simply handed me a couple of scrips. When I had the audacity to ask what the numbers were, she mumbled some numbers and told me to take the medicine. Never mind that previous to that day, I had never had a high blood pressure reading in my life. Never mind that I might want to try alternative means, like reduced sodium intake, to control it. When I went back and my blood pressure was normal, she was very pleased--until she learned I hadn't taken the medication. She seemed quite offended that I didn't blindly follow her direction, and more than a little put out that it seemed I had been right.

Around here it is clear that the patient's time is worthless. They don't schedule appointments, they GIVE you appointments. Yesterday I was at the doctor and he wanted to do a follow-up in six months. I was paying my bill and the receptionist handed me a card with the day and time of my next appointment. No, "What will work for you?" or even, "Will this work for you?" Just, "This is when we are available, so it's what you'll take."

Even then, the chances that he'll actually be available are slim. More than once I've gotten letters in the mail saying "The doctor can't make your appointment. Come this other day instead." Again, no concern that it might not work for me. And there's the chance that when you show up for your appointment the doctor won't even be there. Yesterday, I had a noon appointment, and when I got to the clinic, they weren't even open. No doctor, no support staff, doors locked up. By the time someone finally showed up at 12:30, there were eight of us waiting--all with 12:00 appointments. I got in quite quickly (this being a relative term), but by the time I got out at 1:30, some of the people that were there with me at noon hadn't yet been moved to an exam room, much less seen by the doctor. The waiting room was jammed full--every seat was taken and 4 or 5 people were standing, and that's not even counting the guy laid out on the medical stretcher.

The previous time I had been to see this doctor (I'll call him Dr. V), it had been nearly as bad: I waited in the lobby for an hour past my appointment, growing increasingly angry as it became clear that the doctor was interviewing for a receptionist, but instead of making appointments for the candidates, he had told them to "stop by around..." They were taken to see the doctor quite quickly, even though they had no appointment. When I confronted Dr. V. about being made to wait, explaining to him that I, too, have an advanced degree, and my time was at least on par with his in value, he simply said, "Well, we do better than a lot of places around here." Even if it were true (and I'm not convinced it is, because even though I've only been here a year, I've seen quite a few doctors and he has been hands-down the worst), since when is being better than the worst acceptable?

I will not be going back to see Dr. V., and if I can find someone better than my internist, I will drop her too. The question is, can I find someone better than her? She was at least educated in the upper-mid-west. I can only imagine what someone raised and educated around here would be like. (Dr. V. doesn't give a hint, as he grew up in India and was educated in New Jersey--plus, he's one of those guys that's an ass no matter what culture he lives in.)