last week we picked some tomatoes from our garden and tommy made a sauce and today we used some for breakfast/lunch to make fried green tomatoes with remoulade. had it with some bacon and eggs. /chomp

our garden neighbors also gave us fresh lettuces and cukes and we've grilled lots of shishitos and more should be ready for picking soon. this season is going way better than the last. still waiting on fennel and bell peppers.

nice

just yesterday we made salsa from fresh homegrown tomatoes and onions. quality sauce

summer fruits and veggies are heaven

i have a big garden.

got a garden or did you hit up a farmer's market?

our community garden is in a lot that used to be a home and it's only a block away. the woman's whose parents used to live there runs it but it's pretty informal. everyone is individually responsible for their boxes and we get in and out using a code on a bike lock on the gate.

what are you growing and what have been your challenges this year? our weather has been just about perfect; ive barely had to irrigate. my beets, which usually are my main summer root crop and a big seller, have all gotten totally fucked by cereopsia leaf spot or whatever. theyll be ok until theyre about to size but then the disease kills the foliage and they stop growing. only getting 8-10 bunches out of beds that should have given like 40-60. i think im just going to rest all the goosefoots next year to try to break the disease cycle. i could probably find something to spray them with but who knows whats in that shit.

oy vey

The farmer's market here is a total sham. They shamelessly unpack the berries out of the plastic container from the store right in front of everyone, and don't remove the stickers on bananas, avocados, etc that are from South America. They just buy them and mark up the price and people shop there. Um.

so does your dad

it's true

we had a huge, delicious eggplant salad there the other day

you can decide for yourself whether that's a euphemism or not

what state are you in again? are there any local bananas?

just one

:bananamac

I am a father, educator, ex-academic, and now, fiction author who writes sexy thrillers for adults that will make you think, laugh out loud, and might turn you on. Because they are packaged in a way that will appeal to men, it can be hard to spot sometimes, but everything I write has a feminist conscience. Smarter men mean safer women and a better world.
The books I love most are fast-paced, gripping thrillers with lots of twists and strong women characters. That’s why I try to fill mine with gritty, hard-boiled leading ladies who can kick your ass and men who model the confidence and humility necessary to overcome all the sexist garbage we’re taught and learn from the strong women in our lives. Still, I’m only just able to spot and root out the sexism in my own thinking and work. I’m also a pretty vanilla guy, so it’s been a challenge to put myself in the mind of Ginger the bisexual dominatrix, for example, but it’s helped.
It’s fun to mess around with gender-role stereotypes (Tom all but wears an apron and frets when the ladies aren’t well fed), in particular. This can sometimes come across as patronizing, though. Note that the gangsters, spies, and other underworld types I choose for villains are almost always men, and when they are women, such as Stella, they’ve been misled or lied to—by men—and they’re not all bad. When it comes to violent crime, the statistics back me up on that, but it’s still sexist.
I love the noir tradition of pushing a flawed and damaged but still “regular,” unwitting person into the role of perpetrator. Or, having the heroine make the same stupid mistake that you or I would in a given situation and then have to work her way out of it.
Another thing you’ll notice in my writing is that the protagonists are often searching in untraditional places for a sense of home and family, of belonging to something bigger than them.
In the near future, I'll be working more on crime noir with the Wicked Dark Boston Thriller Series, a sci-fi saga about Kika the Hunter, heir to the throne of Ios, an Amazon planet, who must rectify her faith with the imminent harvesting of Earth for slaves, and an Odyssey-inspired epic that starts with the truth of what I saw with my own eyes on August 12th, 2017 in Charlottesville, VA. That one is wreaking havoc with my blood pressure, but it's a story that needs to be told and fiction is the only way it will have a prayer of cutting through the noise.

I'm in Oregon, so they aren't. But why not just buy imported produce at the regular price in the grocery store? Nothing at these farmer's markets is locally grown so it dosen't make sense to me. I have plenty of neighbors that grow and gift veggies though so it works out.

jesus, heavy stuff. good read though:

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Remain...y-McGuinness-1

It was interesting to find out about William Rees-Mogg's book. I was on the fence about Jacob Rees-Mogg - I was unsure about whether he was just dogmatic and wrong, or ruthless and pragmatic. Hard to see any room for doubt now.

My older son turned 14 today. 14! At the moment his favourite author is Stephen King, he wants to be an architect and live in Germany.

congrats!

You should leave the Netherlands and go back to Holland

I'm in both

Ha

Do you ever go to the footie?
Ajax or Feyenoord fc

Netherlands is the best footballing nation never to win the World Cup dontchaknow

I have recently enjoyed the pleasure of cleaning melted blue crayon out of my dryer. I would definitely recommend this.

i want to take a friday class at my school that takes place inside a prison. it's part of a program recently started where "free" students take classes WITH "incarcerated" students. anyway, i need permission so i emailed the teacher out of the blue on friday and we spoke yesterday and of course there needs to be a background check. i kept it so real with her said (something like), "full disclosure: i got a dui when i was 23 and i'm 34 now. in case that is a problem, i don't want to waste anyone's time including mine". she said other students have had drug convictions that were more recent.

so i sent her my personal info to begin the background check and i'm not sure how long it will take. classes start september 11 so if i don't pass i gotta scramble to enroll in whatever is left. this particular class is on friday and from 8am - 3pm and we meet on campus and take a bus together to the prison facility in Joliet. need to be there at 7:30, though, which means i need to leave my house ~6:30. but i gotta do what i wanna do.

im going to mock interview inmates at the federal prison next to my house on the 27th. will report back.

good luck. if it's worth it, it's worth it. in my last semester or second to last i don't remember, i had a day with 5 classes, the first one at 8am and the last one ending at 10:30pm, on two different campuses.

i always try to consolidate my classes for ease and create time to have a job (or sometimes two). this coming semester i am taking 3 online classes, one on M/W morning, and hopefully the long one on Friday. the latest a class ever went for me was 9:10, but i was an hour away from home.

i am working remotely for now and would like to keep this gig but they I am afraid they will attempt to take time from my other commitments 'cause my boss calls in the morning and evening...she don't give a fuck. yesterday, though, i interviewed for a position at a place that works with youth in the juvenile justice system by helping them tell their stories through musical theater.

it's very part-time but pays 20-30/hour which means i could still work remotely if i can trust that they would respect the time i say i am available to work.

this is my last semester in undergraduate school, too. probs gonna work in Chicago full-time for a year or so while taking classes that just interest me like photography or horticulture. then we'll move to texas and i will go to grad school there. we def don't want to be here forever.

I always tried to consolidate too (of course), but this particular semester had several classes I really wanted to take (special topics crime & violence, forensic psychology, and personality testing and measurement) and that's the only way it worked out. It was only one day a week since the latest class was only once per week, the other day it was 8-4:30 or something like that. And then no other classes except those two days, but I was also writing a thesis and working.

good luck with that other PT job, sounds awesome.

right now i only work outside my house on the weekends and i'm seriously considering quitting and just working from home. i could definitely swing it, but it's mostly freelance work so there's an element of risk involved (although I have a lot of work and have for a while). maybe i'll go down to one day just to have a backup plan if all goes wrong somehow. it's just becoming hard to justify getting paid less, having to deal with the public, dealing with verbal abuse and scammers at least a few times a week, wearing a uniform, having to get ready/commute/work scheduled hours, never having weekends off, etc, instead of working whenever the fuck i want and getting paid more.

why would you mock them?

Where dat Flamingglobes?