Tiny Tomatoes

We already have tiny tomatoes on the "Early Girl" plant.   I am extremely excited about this.  Tomatoes are at least 80 percent of why I wanted to plant a garden in the first place.

All Sorts of News

We had an amazingly fun birthday/anniversary weekend.  Tracy planned it as a surprise for me and it was just right.  We went to the Utah Symphony at Abravanel Hall, where I learned I'm a bigger fan of Beethoven than of Brahms.  Saturday we went to the Desert Star Theater for a parody musical called The Princess Bridesmaid, to the Melting Pot for dinner (one of my very favorites), and stayed at an amazing historic inn near the Capitol Building.  On Sunday we took a drive through one of the canyons where I was able to get a small fix for my pine tree withdrawal.  It was great.

On the job front the bad news is that I got turned down for a job I really wanted in Washington, but the good news is that I was offered to a chance to teach a class for the University of Utah in the Fall.  Nice to know I am at least somewhat employable.

Spinach and Walnut Pesto

A few years ago I tried to make traditional basil and pine nut pesto and we didn't really like it that much so I sort of just gave up on pesto.  However, this week we got a big bunch of spinach from our Bountiful Basket and I was feeling adventurous so I made Spinach and Walnut Pesto with Pasta and Bacon.  I figured the bacon was a good idea because adding bacon to any recipe immediately ups the chances of it being delicious.  This time it was definitely a success.  So if the spinach in our garden goes to town I now have something I can do with it. 

Hmm..I realized their is no super hero reference in this.  Umm...it was green like the Hulk?  Or the Green Arrow?  There, that should cover it. 

Avengers

So apparently so far May is "superhero references month" on the blog.

We went and saw Avengers last night and honestly I can't remember the last time I had that much pure fun watching a movie in the theater.  It was really pretty clean, laugh out loud funny, and I was impressed with the way that the plot both made sense and gave a satisfying character journey to a pretty large ensemble of characters.  Plus, since I really liked both Thor and Captain America it was like watching a sequel to two movies I liked at the same time.

People actively clapped and cheered in the theater.  It was pretty awesome. 

Geekiness

So I'm currently listening to the Scarlet Pimpernel as my audio book and am really enjoying it.  I'm also thinking about how geeky you have to be to be enjoying a book from the early 1900s while simultaneously thinking about how much it reminds you of Batman.

We Have a Garden

Today Tracy got the dirt filled into our raised beds and this evening we planted them.  We have two 4 by 8 raised beds along the back of our house and we've planted:

-6 Tomatoes (Yeah, that's a lot. But I bought a cherry and three regular ones and then found two other varieties I wanted and Tracy MADE me by them :-)
-3 Peppers (red, yellow, green) 
-2 Cucumbers
-Celery
-Carrots
-Green Onions
-Spinach
-Basil
-Rosemary
-Dill

We will also be planting green beans when it gets a little warmer, and I planted some mint in pots because if you plant it in your garden it will apparently take over the world.   We had to cover them because tonight might get too cold, but after that we should be good to go.  

Honestly I was worried we wouldn't know what to plant, but if anything our beds are a bit crowded and we didn't even use all of our seeds.  We are really excited about it, here's hoping we stay excited and have lots of fresh veggies.

Tiny Writing Bright Spot and My Unintentional Pen Name

Shocker...I'm posting twice in one day.

The digital short story collection I'm in was the #15 bestseller for Amazon Kindle Short Stories today (they did a big publicity push).  Now I know this has almost nothing to do with me considering all of the big names attached to it, but it's still fun to know people are actually reading something I wrote. 

Oh, and if you look it up on the Amazon page my name is listed as Jenel Copeabout.  Somehow the "about" from my word count formatting got pushed over onto my last name in some versions of the table of contents.  I did try to get it fixed, and luckily it's right in the book itself, but just for the record, I'm not planning on having it as my pseudonym - though it does make Tracy laugh.