The Big DumpTruck

It only took me about 4 hours (or so it seemed) to get 21 strawberry plants into the ground. Well, 19 in the ground and 2 in a planter on the deck. The main problem was the general lack of a “garden” area, so that was me, digging up part of the lawn with hand tools. It was a nice little workout, anyway.

I had 4 plants left over because I literally ran out of room. Maybe if the three plants from last year hadn’t started coming up (yea!) I would have had room for all of them, but nature has her own ideas. So I’m going to put the four in pots and give them to my sister, who can replant them when she has time. I need to do that tonight, but for now the plants are safely damp and in my fridge.

And yes, they are all covered with some special cloth that I bought, knowing it would be cold this week. I’m not stupid.

My father ordered strawberry plants for me, and I have to go get them and plant them today. I know, it seems early to me too, but he tells me that they only send them out when it’s okay for you to plant them (based on where you live) so he wants me to hurry up and get them. Of course, that means I also have to go get strawberry fertilizer, netting, etc. etc. etc. then dig out the space for them on the side of the house. Man oh man, nothing is simple, right?

And I won’t even worry about the predicted snow flurries on Monday. I’m sure young strawberry plants just love snow.

And no, Junior and I didn’t win any games at mother-son Bingo at his school last night. I mean, there were people getting bingo after they only called 10 numbers. But it was cool to have a mother-son activity anyway. And everyone who went left with a book, which was actually the prize if you won…I guess the difference if you won is that everyone clapped for you and you got first pick of all the available books. Next year, we wipe the floor with the competition.

Looking for an exciting, fast-paced, exclusive vacation spot to take the whole family? Have we got a place for you!

Newstead Montegrade, the ULTRA-exclusive Massachusetts vacation spot (and when we say spot, we mean spot) with a heart of gold, is perfect for you.

Or it would be if it wasn’t just some dot in the middle of Franklin Park. It’s taking on a life of its own over Universal Hub. After your trip, remember to post-vacation comments, and photos!
(Here’s another conversation going on about it…just wanted to keep all the links in one handy place.)

I was just reading that a woman was hit by a freight train at the Leominster Station this morning. The time was listed in the paper as 7:45am, which is just about the time the school bus picks up Junior. I just realized that as we were standing there, I heard a long engine whistle blow (I remember this because it startled me and I looked over at the neighbor’s 3-year-old to guage his reaction to it.) So that must have been the train that hit her (I live within spitting distance of that station). YIKES.

Let me tell you a little something. If, heaven forbid, you’ve used the same laptop every day for three years, and that laptop up and dies on you, when you do get a new laptop, the thing that will make you want to slam your head against the biggest piece of cement you can find is the fact that this laptop does not contain a single ounce of the stuff you lovingly collected on your hard drive over the past three years. No bookmarks. No photos. No applications. Especially no applications. I have backups of my bookmarks and my photos (thank you Picasa! I swear to you, go download it right now from Google. I’ll wait. Then click the link that asks you if you want to back up all the photos. It will tell you how many CDs or DVDs you need to do so. This is A GOOD THING. This was one thing I didn’t freak about when I realized the laptop was dead. I know I had copies of all my image files.)

If you are guessing that I replaced my laptop, you’d be correct. A week of research and I decided to go with the HP dv4030. Look up the reviews for the DV4000 (the 4030 is just the retail flavor – right now you can’t even get them from HP, and custom designing one will take weeks.)

Okay, so anyway, it’s taking me hours to rebuild this thing. I guess there will be things I never add back. But I have to try to figure out if I have copies of some of my registration info for stuff like mailwasher. Ugh.