Fluffy Ain't So Fluffy

Sophomore year in college Karen and I bought plants at Kroger because they were on sale. She purchased a broad-leafed yellow-green pathos-like plant and I got a bushy ivy-like plant and a small, unlabeled mysteriously fluffy little one. We bought them at the self-checkout and I tried to use up my excess change but the machine was full of quarters. Frustrated at how long I took to pay my bill in the smaller denominations Karen named her plant "Penny". And I named the unlabeled plant "Fluffy".

The ivy-like plant did not last long. Our deluxe Georgia Tech dorm accommodations that year ran to leaking windows and uncontrolled indoor climate. The powers that be had turned air conditioning on before spring break but turned heat back on while we were gone. Most of our plants didn't like being baked alive, without water, for a full week, but Penny and Fluffy survived.

I don't remember where Fluffy spent that summer, but the next year we found out he was a climbing plant. From the little ball of fluff he sent out long tendrils that we wound up our dorm wall nearly to the ceiling. He spent the next summer with Catherine and enjoyed the Georgia heat and humidity on her parents' porch.

The next summer was not as good. I left him with Karen because Karen had plants of her own. But with the plants of her own she didn't have room in her car for Fluffy at the time. So she decided to cut the entire plant off an inch from the ground.

And he came back! That year in the dorm he grew back from his shorn state and climbed again. He didn't like being shoved behind a couch but that was the way the furniture had to be arranged.

After that he got to travel across the country to California, and has been draped around my living room ever since, taped to the walls or strung with yarn across the window.

And somehow, sedate living was the worst thing to ever happen to him. For the past few months he's been turning brown and shedding like crazy. Fluffy-detritus gathered on the windowsills and in my sewing kit. I'd vacuum every once in a while, and fertilized him, but he confusingly kept both dying and sending out new sprouts.

So this weekend I took drastic measures.

I repotted him.

This probably sounds minor to other people with houseplants, but there's an important point I haven't mentioned about this plant.

Holy cow it's got thorns. Tons of freaking thorns. Thorns that can gouge huge holes in your bare flesh. As I know, from copious experience.

That's probably why it's been four or five years since he was repotted.

So this, the first completely free Saturday I've had in a long, long time, I sucked it up and did it.

I went to Osh to get more soil and a huge pot (to delay a repeat of this for as long as possible). Then I cut Fluffy out of the blinds, cut off a lot of brown parts, and then dragged him outside my front door so I could vacuum. I climbed over him to get outside and snagged my jeans up and down the legs on his thorns! Stupid thorns. I'm glad it was my third best set of jeans. So I went back inside to get one of my numerous pairs of Target $1 cotton gloves to wear while I repotted him. But those weren't enough, and now I have little cuts over all my knuckles. But I did it.

Now Fluffy is in a big giant pot, trailed again over the window, and it stings when I wash my hands. He looks a lot better at the moment because I cut off the brown, so it remains to be seen whether this will actually halt the death process.

In other news, I am very curious about the new Domino's pizza. It's a bold move for them to advertise that their previous pizza sucked and they've improved it. But since the fact is that their previous pizza really did suck, it might be worth seeing if they're right about the improvement part as well.

Lightbulb

I finally figured it out. The government values its citizens only so far as they provide its members with their salary or their office through taxes or votes.

This explains why the new government health care shafts the elderly - who contribute less income tax. Similarly with the sick, and handicapped. It values minorities and unions who can provide votes, and campaign contributions.

It is also short-sighted. National security or improving education doesn't increase tax revenues or votes. Abortions, since babies don't generate revenue or vote for several years, are also explained.

All my previous confusion and doubts were due to thinking the government actually might value the lives of its citizens but that simply can't be true. It only values what its citizen can do for the government. Taxes and votes.

It makes sense. And I hate it.

SoCal

I don't think I've been in Southern California since high school. Whereas then I was here for a marching band competition the main purpose of which was to get to go to Disneyland. Now the main purpose is two different meetings for work at our plant near San Diego.

I flew in last night with my boss. Though we're on the same flights we have separate rental cars and are staying in different hotels. Our company switched travel agencies at the beginning of the year, and either the new one isn't good or they need some time to get used to us. We've had a plant down here for at least three years, and people from all kinds of departments come here all the time. I know for a fact that there's a Four Seasons here we're supposed to stay at because the company has some "minimum occupancy" agreement with them such that when we all got an email saying no one can stay in four star hotels except the Four Seasons in San Diego. I was excited about the idea of staying at a four star hotel. Brad in my group stayed there once and said they actually put a mint on your pillow, it was so fancy.

So when I called the travel agency and asked what hotel I was supposed to stay at in San Diego I expected them to say "The Four Seasons" to which I would happily agree. I wasn't expecting them to say, "We don't have any recommended hotels for San Diego." Uh, seriously? I clicked on the list on our website and it had a whole list, one of which was the Residence Inn (Four Seasons was not on that list for some reason). So they signed me up for Residence Inn. But then when my boss called two days later for reservations they wouldn't let her sign up for the Residence Inn! She got put in a hotel 20 minutes away, hence the separate cars.

So despite the disappointment over the Four Seasons gotta say this Residence Inn is super nice. I didn't understand the concept of "residence", so I wasn't expecting a full suite with separate living room, bedroom, and full kitchen. If we have an engineering run for my project when it goes to manufacturing I'd totally stay down here for two weeks to watch over it if I got to stay here.

Today was a six hour meeting and then two hours of trying vainly to do work on the work laptop which doesn't like pulling up files from the shared drive over wireless and didn't have Adobe Acrobat to do the other things I needed to do. Then I got takeout from a Yelp-recommended Italian restaurant - penne milano (ziti with sun-dried tomatoes and chicken in a cream sauce) and broccoli and watched Fox News and read Georgette Heyer.

Haven't seen any of San Diego in daylight. I have been using my GPS to get places and see the same street names over and over again but couldn't get home without the automated voice giving me directions.

Now my microwavable lava cake is calling me.

Orchid

I am testing my picture-uploading skillz with a picture of my orchid from this summer.

This orchid, from Trader Joe's, is the first that I've ever had bloom for a second time. My first orchid, from Kroger I think, died when I asked Karen to take care of it over the summer. Her orchid didn't make it either. The asparagus fern she cut an inch off the ground, surprisingly, did make it. But I digress. My second orchid, from Ikea, grew very well and split into two plants when I repotted it. One of the two died after a few months as if it didn't have the strength to go on. The other started growing a flower spike about a year later but gave up the ghost. I think I shouldn't have let it split into two.

But this one, from Trader Joe's, I have kept alive for over two years. I bought it shortly after I started working at this current job because I had a window by my desk and kept it there. I brought it home when I moved to the windowless but unshared cubicle. I bought four houseplants I kept on my desk instead until it turned out we're not allowed to have plants in the building. At home, the orchid not only rebloomed, it bloomed in two spikes! It had a very good display for several weeks. I had to wait until daylight to take a picture of it because this was around the time my camera's flash broke. It's been around six months since then but it's already growing what I think might be another flower spike. It also has a ton of roots coming out of the pot. I'm reluctant to repot it given my previous experiences. This plant also has a bunch of keiki because I overfertilized it when it was at my desk. They're little "clones" that shoot off from the motherplant. I wonder if they're giving it strength to produce so many flowers. The Internet says you can cut them off and get more orchids, but after my previous experiences I'm not messing with what's working.

Multicultural Cookies

My cousin Janelle made the most hilarious "multicultural" cookies for Christmas. Not only was the Mexican wearing a Mexican-flag T-shirt and have thick eyebrows the Chinese one was pure yellow, with sprinkle eyes.

They were too awesome to eat.