Vermicompost update

You all remember when I started my vermicompost? It's been nine months now and, just like human gestation, the vermicompost is ready to harvest. Hahahahahah, I slay myself!

According to numerous sources, unless you're farming worms to be used as bait in fishing or to be applied to a garden, you don't actually have to harvest or split the worms in your vermicompost. The population will stabilize in response to how much and often it gets fed. Too many worms and some will die off - their bodies decompose and enrich the compost. Too few worms and they will start to lay eggs; you can see the small brown eggs that are oval and look a bit like small grain brown rice. Many people split their vermicomposts twice a year because they think it is necessary to maintain a healthy worm population but that's not actually the case.

So when you're not harvesting worms, you can harvest the castings (worm poo) and the compost tea (I like to think of this as worm pee even though it's definitely not). The 'compost' of vermicompost is both the castings and the tea. Both are rich in nutrients and can be applied to gardens and beds and potted plants. The castings are messier to harvest but the way I set up my vermicompost allows for very easy harvest of the compost tea. The lower bucket catches excess liquid that seeps out of the upper bucket through mesh screens so harvesting is only a matter of separating the two buckets and pouring off the tea that has collected in the lower bucket.


A number of smaller (teenaged?) worms made it through the fine mesh in the bottom of the upper bucket. Actually, maybe the eggs fell through the mesh and the worms hatched in the tea. Anyway, whatever way it happened, there were some worms in the tea and I had to strain the tea in order to collect it and return the worms to the upper bucket.


Now I have a large mason jar full of gorgeous, rich, dark compost tea. I already mixed some in a jug of water in a 1:10 ratio, tea to water, and all my plants are singing its praises. I'm kind of wondering who I can share it with for christmas. Wouldn't you just love to see a large jar of worm pee under the tree, tied with a big fat red ribbon? Well, be careful what you wish for!

Supervisor on CBC

Recently my supervising prof, Dr. John Robinson, was invited to participate on a panel with David Suzuki for a Sounds Like Canada episode with Shelagh Rogers.
Here's the blurb posted on the CBC website:

It was another successful "Shelagh on Stage" - this time a live interview at Vancouver's Heritage Hall with famed environmentalist David Suzuki, and sustainability expert John Robinson. The discussion ranged from the role of the media in the environmental movement, to the importance of optimism in the face of news about global warming, to the lack of access to nature in the city.

John is a thoughtful and inspiring man. We have our differences but overall I have a lot of respect for him and he has been stalwart in his support for my work through thick and thin (i.e., the very definition of stalwart - how redundant of me).

You can listen to the episode in three parts here. A little way down the page, look for November 27th. John and David have very different views on how a sustainable future can be achieved and how to communicate the urgency of sustainability to people. Any die hard fans of Suzuki (in my books, those wearing blinders) might find this interesting, and anyone curious about the tone of conversation we have in my department (Resource Management and Environmental Studies in UBC) should take a listen. It's not long and it's fairly entertaining.

Live long and conserve!

How to make this girl's day

A new friend left me a mixed disc on my desk at school this morning. It's a fabulous mix of soul, old skool r&b, jazzy stuff. Oh my god. So welcome today! I think she is destined to become a good friend over many years. Oh, yikes, I wonder if I should return the favour of a Liminal Me compilation. This gal is so much cooler than me, I don't know how it could achieve her standards.

The gift is so welcome today because yesterday was a massive professional embarrassment. A project I've been on for 3 years is finally moving into the data collection phase meaning we are holding a series of workshops, recording participant engagement and collecting surveys, and looking for more or less successful ways of communicating sustainability. The way things have progressed, I am responsible for a substantial portion of the workshop that will be tested against the control workshops. Yesterday we held a dry run of the experimental workshop and my portion totally, absolutely, distressingly bombed. Of course everyone volunteering as 'participants' for the dry run have heard me talk about the work over the last couple of months and attended the workshop in part to see how the work played out. So you see, everyone in the room knew that it was my part that failed. Plus the facilitators made a point of asking me by name what to do next when they lost their way; I was supposed to be a non-participating observer at the back of the room and the facilitation should have been well-prepared and professional. Ugh. Just disgusted with myself and with the research team right now.

You caught me on a bad day (though yesterday was worse) and the mixed disc arrived at the perfect moment for a little spirit boosting. Life usually figures out a balance, doesn't it? Cue the cheesy art print:

Ha ha ho ho ha

From the online Globe and Mail:

Microsoft turns off 'bad Santa'

JESSICA MINTZ

Associated Press

December 5, 2007 at 10:33 PM EST

SEATTLE — — Microsoft Corp. quickly shut down Santa Claus' Web privileges after it found out the automated elf it created for kids to instant message with was talking naughty, not nice.

Last year, Microsoft encouraged kids to connect directly to “Santa” by adding northpolelive.com to their Windows Live Messenger contact lists. The Santa program, which Microsoft reactivated in early December, asked children what they wanted for Christmas and could respond on topic, thanks to artificial intelligence.

The holiday cheer soured this week when a reader of a United Kingdom-based technology news site, The Register, reported that a chat between Santa and his underage nieces about eating pizza prompted Santa to bring up oral sex.

One of the publication's writers replicated the chat Monday. After declining the writer's repeated invitations to eat pizza, a frustrated Santa burst out with, “You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else.”

The exchange ended with the writer and Santa calling each other “dirty bastard."

Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said the company's engineers tried to clean up Santa's vocabulary, but even after making changes to the software, the company wasn't comfortable keeping him online.

“It's not like if you say, 'Hello Santa,' he's going to throw inappropriate stuff at you,” said Mr. Sohn.

Mr. Sohn said Santa's lewd comment was sparked by someone “pushing this thing to make it do things it wasn't supposed to do.”

Santa is just one of many “agents,” or automated IM programs, that computer users can chat with on Live Messenger. Some are useful — customer service agents, for example — while others are frivolous, like an alien that responds to IMs with burbling extraterrestrial noises. Microsoft disabled Santa Tuesday. On Wednesday, northpolelive.com appeared to be online in one reporter's Messenger contact list, but Santa did not respond to her messages.

Contact Improv Grand Dame

Peter Bingham, Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood
photo : Chris Randle

When I was dancing, I really loved the Contact Improv form. Essentially, dancers throw themselves at other dancers, are picked up, rebound off, slide under and around, balance, and flow. It's wonderful to do and less interesting to watch just because as an audience member you know how good it feels when it's really flowing and you want to be a part of the dance but you only get to watch. Ah well, live vicariously for a while!

I just found out about a contact improv show happening this weekend at EDAM, a Vancouver company and school, with Peter Bingham - the company founder and a huge name in CI - and Nancy Stark Smith. Nancy is one of the founding figures of CI; they call her the Grand Dame of the form, and as far as I know she doesn't perform much anymore. The opportunity to see her perform locally, with Peter Bingham no less, is irresistible. I've reserved a couple tickets for Friday night's show - anyone in Vancouver interested in coming with me?

EDAM also hosts a contact jam every Sunday afternoon - a contact jam is a random collection of dancers who have varying levels of skill in the form. The point is to play and explore. I've often been tempted to go drop in and refresh my dance senses but I'm nervous. I'm out of shape in dance terms and it's been years now since I was in a studio. Still...maybe.

Exciting night in the bedroom!

No, you dirty, dirty readers, not exciting like that. Exciting like this:



I know, it's really hard to see that this is a firetruck outside our house at 5am this morning. It was a fairly stormy weekend in Vancouver with two days of wet snow that turned to heavy rain Sunday evening. Pretty mucky out there and surprisingly cold too with temperatures feeling like -9 at one point. I know that means absolutely nothing to the rest of the nation, but it was not usual for these parts.

So last night we're snoozing away to the sound of heavy rain and a bit of wind, when I kind of slowly wake up to an intermittent noise that I can't place. It's a kind of whump or deep hum sound happening every minute or so and lasting a couple seconds. I climb out of bed to look out the bedroom window, hoping to identify the sound. Nothing...nothing...whump! What? Is that sparking? ...whump! Oh my god the shed is sparking and fizzling! Behind the main house there is a large shed that used to be a garage. The landlords use it as a large workroom now with fancy power tools, and they also carved out a storage space for us where we keep our bikes and other odds and ends. The sparks are coming from the bottom of the door to our storage compartment. And they're getting worse!

I wake Rocco up and we both freak out a little then grab the phone and call the landlords downstairs. They had heard the noise too but don't have a window in their apartment that looks out back that way. Keeping an eye on the phenomenon, it seems like the sparking has started little flames that hang about for a few seconds then get doused by the heavy rain. The landlords call the fire department and the truck arrives really quickly, in minutes. Three firefighters go around to the shed - and here's where all the excitement dissipates, really quickly - they look inside the storage room, they look outside the storage room, one firefighter kicks the bottom of the shed where it was sparking, and they leave. It turns out there is an exposed wire at the bottom of the door to our storage room and it was shorting in the rain. So freaky!

Anyway, the landlord cut the power to the shed before the firetruck arrived so there really wasn't anything else to see. They'll get the situation repaired and there's essentially no damage except a small bit of charring on the outside of the door frame, but it was definitely scary for a while when all I knew was that the large wooden structure immediately behind our house was sparking and trying to flame up. We were both dressed in warm clothes by the time the truck came, I had an emergency bag packed with some food and juice boxes, toques and mitts, umbrellas and reading material, and the cat carrier was out and ready to go next to our raincoats by the door.

5:20am and we were back in bed trying to get back to sleep as the cats were slowly emerging from deep under the bed where they cowered after we managed to freak them out with our own worry. Like I said, an exciting night in the bedroom!