It was an absolutely beautiful day outside when I took that picture, so I took a few others around the house as well. We moved in here around mid-February, so our entire yard was dead and lifeless when we got here, not very pleasant. The last week or so in Milwaukee has been perfect early Spring weather though, so things are starting to come back to life. A few hard rains mixed in with mid-70s weather? That’s pretty ideal for April/May.

I love having a yard, so things growing again is extremely exciting to me. I grew up around my grandparents a lot, and my Grandpa was a role model of sorts for me, though I didn’t come to realize it until the last couple of years. His yard meant a lot to him, he was constantly out there tending to it, even when his health told him he shouldn’t have been. It drove him nuts if things weren’t being tended to, and when his health finally dropped enough to keep him bedridden, I found myself going out into the yard in his place and taking note of what needed to be fixed. None of those things ever happened because we had to sell the house when he died, but it was fairly eye opening. I loved having a yard that was, essentially, my own.

Now, I live in a duplex. The yard isn’t mine, not nearly, but it’s still cool to see it coming alive, and I was already taking notes of what I could clean up out there when it’s warm again.

There are a lot of pictures incoming, so for the sake of load times I’m going to put it all behind the link below. If you read my work over on WI, you know how this works. Just click the link and you’ll see the full post. If you’re already seeing the flower picture below, you probably followed a direct link to this post and you don’t need to worry about it. It only affects those reading this from the front page of the site.

I have no idea what kinds of flowers we have in the planters around the house. None at all. The landlord pointed out what he thought was a rose bush, but even he didn’t know what else was out there. Most of the plants out there are pure greenery right now, but there were a few little tulips (I think) mixed in with all of the green. These guys were totally surrounded by greenage, I had to push some stuff out of the way to make them at all visible for a good picture. They’re still pretty obscured. I’m pretty sure the other plants around going to choke them out, so I might end up asking the upstairs neighbors if any of this stuff belongs to them, or if they were here before they were. If they don’t care about these plants, I’m going to plant something else in there. Well, my mother will probably plant them. That’s sort of her thing.

I do not know what this is. It’s just a chaotic leafy mass, and there are more of these around the house. Will it grow something neat? It is a mystery! I don’t think they’re related to the tulips but they might be. Also in this picture, you can see the edging of the planters. The bricks have somehow sunk into the ground and they’re lower than the sidewalk. I do not think they can do their job crammed all the way down there. I should ask the landlord if I can do something about them. Bonus points if fixing the planters can get money taken off of the rent, but I have doubts about that. This guy seems like the sort of person that would rather keep our rent consistent and come out and do repairs himself. We’ll see. Eventually.

This here is just gross. Apparently nobody knew how to rake leaves last fall, so there’s just a huge filthy mass of half-decomposed leaves in front of the house. Again, there’s a bunch of chaotic bushes there that just look ugly, and they’re choking out another bunch of tulips, which is what I believe that yellow thing is. I’m just assuming they’re tulips by their shape, they might be something else. I’m not looking forward to cleaning this out. Maybe our neighbors will do it.

The grass is pretty nice, at least. The yard is sort of lumpy and uneven, but I suspect that’s just from getting a lot of traffic. That just ends up happening to yards that have children playing on them and all of that, so it’s not something I’m going to complain about. It’s green, it grows, and there are no glaring dead patches. I’m happy with it. I’m just hoping it isn’t Kentucky Blue, because my Grandpa had that at his house and it was a disaster. Kentucky Bluegrass, if you don’t know, is basically gross for lawns you want to show off. It’s very pretty grass, and it has high resistance to disease/bugs, and droughts don’t damage it as much. However, it’s meant for low traffic areas. My grandparents themselves had four kids (my mom, my aunt, and my uncles, duh) and they all had kids. After a family gathering (Fourth of July or whatever else) the lawn was totally hosed. Since our upstairs neighbors have a kid, our lawn will definitely have traffic. Please, please let our grass be somewhat resilient.

Again, the planter (which you can see on the right) isn’ t exactly holding the plants in because the edging isn’t high enough. Whatever, not a big deal. Again, no idea whatsoever what’s growing there. Also, yes, those are AC units. What up, central air. No, that dish there isn’t ours. I don’t think it’s our neighbors either, they use Time Warner just like we do. It’s probably a relic of the folk that lived here before we did.

And that’s my yard. I look forward to the weather being nice enough for me to actually tend to it.

On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to say thank you to someone while I remember. Michael (who seems to be a lover of frogs) left a comment on my post asking for Cooking Resources with a link to The Worldwide Gourmet. It’s not as comprehensive as I would like for a catch-all resource, but it really is an excellent jumping off point. It’s not a one stop shop by any means, but the information it has helps me figure out what I’m looking for to begin with. So thanks, Michael! The link has been a huge help.

If any of you want to see the full size versions of any of these pictures, they’re over in my gallery sub-site. Be warned, the full contents of that gallery are very not safe for work/sanity. That page is also a temporary thing, I’m going to try to incorporate galleries more seamlessly into my blog. For now, they’re there. Just… heed my warning. NSFW.

I’m finally moved in my my own place. Well, I share it, but not with my family. That’s the important part. My girlfriend and I found a place together, so I actually have my name on a lease for once rather than just paying family members and friends in cash. You would be surprised how important rental history is when looking for a place to rent. It’s one of life’s great Catch 22s.

It’s actually a really nice place. It’s the downstairs of a duplex, and the landlord lives offsite.  The upstairs neighbors aren’t especially noisy. The place is a bit pricey for the area, $750 per month, utilities not included. Ouch. It’s a pretty spacious place, though. I would take pictures, but I’ve lost the A/V USB cable for my digital camera somehow so you don’t get any of that.

I haven’t been doing any personal writing at all in the last month. Not working on any of my projects, none of that. Purely job-related work right now and trying to get settled into the new place. I won’t go into detail with any of that, it’s not particularly interesting and I’d really like to keep the topic of this blog seperate from the topic of that blog. Just kind of a thing, you know?

To update you all a little bit on something I posted awhile ago, some of you might remember that I was asking for book suggestions for my little sister. I ended up getting her The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because it’s a book I loved when I was little, but it was an utter failure. She started reading it, told me she really liked it, hit the halfway point and tossed the thing aside because it was boring. She hasn’t picked it up since about two weeks after I gave it to her.

I don’t think I’m going to have much success giving her books to read, she’s in that phase of childhood where she only reads joke books. You know, like 101 Wacky Kid Jokes and things like that. I had a phase like that and it was horrible. I remember how many times my grandparents would take me to the library and all I would get is stuff like that. The only thing that broke me out of that phase was Animorphs, so maybe I should give that a try. Not exactly the finest pieces of literature in the world, but I really enjoyed them as a kid, and that’s really what matters.

I’m going to make like a tree and split for the moment. I can’t promise that I’ll post more frequently in the future, but I’m going to make an attempt to do so. That’s almost the same thing, right? If I’m not updating, just do what prompted this post: Bug the hell out of me.

Some of you might remember that a couple of months ago I asked for book recommendations for my little sister. I think you’ll all be happy to know that… I didn’t buy her anything you guys recommended! Haha. I’ve added them to a list that I may look at later if my choice of a Christmas present goes over well.

I bought her The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which was a favorite of mine when I was around her age. She’s currently going ot the same school I went to, so if the curriculum is the same she’ll be reading that book in class in two years. I think that if I can actually get her to read the thing, she’ll feel pretty good about saying, “I’ve already read that!” when it comes time to read it in class. Maybe it’ll encourage her to not pay any damn attention in class, but ideally she’ll be proud she already read it. Assuming she even opens the book I gave her. If she does read it and dig it, it has the advantage of being part of a pseudo-series. I can sucker her into reading the other Narnia books as well.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading myself, but it’s not exactly recreational. I spent a whole load of money in the last couple of weeks on books for research purposes. That sounds far more eggheaded than it actually is. It’s a lot of books on mythology and and feudal/medieval eras in various parts of the world. Europe and Japan are the biggies right now, and I plan on moving into other parts of Asia as well shortly. China, Korea, et cetera.

A really long ass time ago I mentioned on WoW Insider that I was working on an Eastern Fantasy setting. That’s still something I’m working on. It’s going to be a delightfully pulpy and (mostly) original story and setting, but I still want it to have some foundation in the mythology of the areas it’ll be based on, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading and a lot of watching documentaries. I have no intent of being purely historically accurate, but I don’t want to be one of those guys either. You know what I’m talking about.

I think it will be a fun setting, I just don’t want to go too deep into development without really knowing what I’m doing. i think that you’ll like it when I actually have something postable. I have some old-ish concept art for a couple of characters from my awesome girlfriend that I would post, but I don’t know if she’d appreciate that or not. You should leave comments asking her to let me do so!

I’m still working on my Western, somewhat more traditional (but still pulpy) setting, but I’ve been working on that on and off for years. Literally years. I have never dedicated hefty time to it until now, but it’s existed on paper and in my head in some iteration since I was 15. It’s absolutely nothing like that it was at that time, because my god was it terrible, but it’s technically the same project. Technically. I also have a single concept art for that, but again, I don’t think she would appreciate me just posting it out of the blue. Again, ask her to let me do so! By the way, my readers that filtered over here from WoW Insider, you may have heard of her.

You guys will be seeing a whole lot of me (and maybe her!) pretty soon, because I’m getting my own apartment come February. That means I’ll have a lot more workspace to myself and hopefully I’ll have decent stints of uninterrupted work time rather than my current family-related interruptions and in an ideal world, more time to yammer. So, get ready.

Bonus question of the day: Do you guys have any experience with simple, easy to use ads? Google ads are the easiest and simplest, but I can guarantee I’ll be loaded up with WoW gold selling ads because I mention my job now and then. I’d like to avoid that. Are there any similar alternatives?