Patio Garden

I made a great discovery today in my little patio garden... the pepper plants finally grew something I can eat!






It's really not bad for a patio garden that only gets a couple hours of indirect sun everyday

Spring Cleaning in August

Woke up today at 7:30. Headache and sore throat irritated me, but that's not what got me out of bed. Apparently it had been over 5 hours since a fat little cat had any attention, so while John snored I listened to Chunky attack the bedroom door. *scratch scratch scratch* *MEOW* *thud*

Eventually, like any sane person, I got up and hissed at him. Then opened the door and chased him throughout the house. Sane. Yes.

Then I got up and started today's chore. More of a life chore, but today it'st the focus: Get rid of this damn clutter!

But first, coffee and lucky charms. Oh, and jailbraking my Apple TV 2G. Go Plex!

Then off to sell/donate/scan/trash/shred/store everything I can find.

This is my saturday

Weeknight Cooking - NJ Style

Tonight I made lasagna and calzones. Not that I would normally make both dishes, or that they fit into the desire to minimize myself, but I had the ingredients!

Tonight's lasagna is made with Anna No Boil Oven Ready Lasagna noodles, which I use both because they taste great and because they're from NJ. I threw in some sauce, ground meat, and seasonings from the "garden" I keep on the front porch. Nice to have fresh basil at a whim.

By sheer coincidence, the store bought pizza dough I got is from NJ as well. It feels like home, not that my mom ever made anything with dough. Not that I willfully remember at least.

Music Update

So I got through it all. Rated all my songs. Purged those I don't love. If I had any desire to skip the song while it was playing, it was a goner.

25GB+ of MP3, AAC, and AIFF files are now down to 4.56 GB of AAC/MP3

This also means that everything will sync up to Google Music Beta & Amazon Cloud.

I decided after ripping all my CD's to AIFF that the AAC "iTunes Plus" format should be just as good for my ears. Not like I can have great speakers with my budget & the cats. That choice alone probably saved me 10GB.

So now on to other projects. Music is done for now.

The Road to Simplicity or Minimalism

I've been trying to reduce the amount of "stuff" in my life for years. Ask anyone who knows me, and it's guaranteed that I have spent a night on the soap box espousing the desire to have less.

Yet every time I turn around, I've acquired more things; books, PDF files, Music files, Pictures, gadgets, network equipment, kitchen equipment, cookbooks. Those just the things I see around me right now.

So I thought if I documented it, maybe I would stick to it. No one ever reads my blog, so why not use it as a journal. I've also deleted and recreated this dozens of times.

I think as I pair down I'll document it. The best parts are already gone, the 50 power cables and 24 audio cables. The 25 network cables are still around though!

Right now I'm paring down the music collection. It was 25GB+ last week. I discovered my love for Spotify, and it's now 11GB. Heading down from there.