Category: Journal

I spent most of the afternoon out in the garden. I’ve had a pretty productive weekend. I cleaned up the remaining petunias, some of which were still flowering. I felt bad about pulling up flowering flowers, but they were pretty ragged-looking and we’ve been getting pretty consistent frost in the evenings.

Once the petunias were up, I dug up the garden and planted a bunch of the flower bulbs I bought. I buy bulbs every year, but this is actually the first year I’ve had the time to plant all of them. I feel pretty good about that. If all goes well, I’ll have lots of tulips and hyacinths and things in the garden.

I also used the fork to soften up bits of the lawn and plant crocus and other bulbs around the rock and the tree and by the road. All that stuff is supposed to only last till maybe April, before I’d take the mower to it. I like seeing little flowers in the lawn in springtime. I wasn’t paying too much attention to where they were going, so I hope it doesn’t look weird. We’ll have to see in the spring, I guess.

I didn’t plant anything in the back yard. There are already quite a few bulbs back there already.

I trimmed back the rose too. I have a climbing rose that the previous owner tried unsuccessfully to kill off. I think it’s kind of nice, even though I’m not sure what to do with it. I just let it climb up to the top of a trellis and trim off the roaming tendrils that catch on my clothes when I walk by. It did give me lots of little pink flowers this year, so I’m happy to keep it around.

Yesterday I mulched up the leaves on the lawn in the back and raked the leaves in the front. I’m working from the theory that the mulched leaves will help the soil and not kill the grass. It worked okay last year. I have, I should note, lots and lots of trees in the back yard. About 12, I’d say. And more overhanging from the neighbours. That makes for a lot of leaves. The important thing is to keep them from staining the patio stones and killing the grass. Beyond that, I don’t want to have to bother to bag them all. I tried that the first year and it’s just way too much work.

All I have left to do is clean out the eaves and kind of reorganize things so that the winter maintenance stuff is easier to get at than the gardening stuff. Then I can just wait for the snow to come.

It’s November, which makes it some sort of NaSomethingMo. I’m gonna do the blog post thing. I know there are some people who would really like me to join in the novel writing madness. I don’t think I have the wherewithal for it this year, though.

My plan is to do something vaguely related to software or software development or talk about personal projects I’m working on during the week. You know, to keep the mind limber. The weekends will be more of the usual sort of thing I tend to post here.

One blog post, every day. Before midnight. It’s the first day and I’m already cutting it close.

I don’t talk about my work much here. That’s intentional. I don’t think it’s appropriate. Sometimes, though, my work life encroaches on my personal life and I have to at least say *something*.

Like today.

My (now former) employer of 11 years and I have parted company. Thus, I am unemployed.

The offers of help and support I’ve received so far have helped cushion the blow. I have some time to ponder my next step.

While I liked the work and really wanted to bring my project to completion, it’s also been stressing me out for months. I wasn’t even allowed to take all my vacation this summer, what with all the work. I could really use a break.

Once I’ve given myself a little time to decompress, I’ll be out there looking for new challenges and new opportunities. I have some ideas, but would greatly appreciate help and suggestions.

Can’t sleep. Posting this might help.

I wasn’t going to talk about the election results, but given that the results for Kitchener-Waterloo were a tiny bit extraordinary, I felt I should really say something.

Rather than the comfortable Liberal win that most people were expecting, it turns out that Conservative [Peter Braid](http://www.peterbraid.ca/) won the riding by a slim 75 votes.

I, for one, blame the Communist party for splitting the vote and allowing this to happen!

No, seriously. [The polls utterly failed to predict this](http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/node/567). The reason, I think, is that the polls don’t ask one vitally important question: how likely is it that you’ll actually show up on voting day. I can totally buy that people just assumed that Telegdi would win so they didn’t have to bother to vote.

Turns out it doesn’t work that way.

The people who wanted Peter Braid to represent them really wanted Peter Braid to represent them. About 5000 people who *said* they wanted Telegdi in polls didn’t show up for the only poll that matters. [Voter turnout across the country hit an all-time low](http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE49E1B320081015).

So congratulations, Mr Braid, on a hard-won victory.