I think she’s had enough bike riding for a while.

A couple of weeks ago, I started noticing earwigs hanging out near the worm bin.  While earwigs don’t fly (after researching I discovered they can fly, but they rarely do) and they don’t multiply as quickly as fruit flies and fungus gnats, I still didn’t want any problems with them. They kind of gross me out with those menacing pincers. (I know they can’t pinch humans, but still…gross.)

So finally I decided, enough is enough. I invested in a Worm Inn. Worm Inns are amazing contraptions, sold through Bentley Christie’s Red Worm Composting website. Bentley’s site has taught me basically everything I know about worm composting. So if these posts intrigue you and you’re thinking about starting a worm farm yourself, definitely check his site out.

Anyway, I bought the Worm Inn (pictured below) and got it set up today. It is amazing. Very easy to set up, holds all of our worms, and takes up less space while looking more attractive than our old Rubbermaid tub with mosquito netting taped around it. Plus, the compost that comes out is supposed to be much better quality, not so soupy and mushy like the kind produced in the Rubbermaid tub.

As I transferred the worms, I saw tons of baby worms and worm cocoons, so they seem to be quite happy. If anything, they were probably hungry since I stopped feeding them so often to decrease the fruit fly threat. Matthew chopped up lots of food for them, and they should be quite content in their new home.

The old Rubbermaid worm bin. I taped mosquito netting around it to keep pests out.

The new Worm Inn, available at http://www.redwormcomposting.com. I had to get some PVC pipes cut at Ace Hardware to make the stand, but it was super cheap, like $5 or less. And VERY easy to put together, even for the technically challenged

The top view of the Worm Inn. The extra oxygen flowing through makes the compost better quality, but the mesh top also keeps the bugs out.

There are drawstrings included with the Worm Inn, but I made it a little more secure by tying some clothes line around. So far nothing is leaking and no worms have escaped.

The Worm Inn came with zip ties, but I thought clothes line knots would be more secure.

The empty Rubbermaid bin after I successfuly transferred all the worms to their new home. We had some interesting white mold growing in there that I'd never seen before. I think it came because of some moldy coconut remains that Matt's mom gave us. Hopefully the ventilation in the Worm Inn will stop it from spreading.

But we were inspired yesterday by our lovely friend, Steph Lee, to get back into a regular blogging schedule. Okay, so we’ve never had a regular blogging schedule on this blog to speak of, but we’re going to start. We’ll even write it down on our calendar.

We’re learning a lot of things about web design at work, so we’ll implement some cool new things here soon too.

May is turning out to be way busier than anticipated, but great to see long-lost friends like Steph, Chuck, Bob, Jacob, Jasko, Butz, and Kate!

Also great to catch up with friends who aren’t so long-lost, but who we still love hanging out with (Yay, Karen!)

Our worms are doing well, we think. There was a lot of undigested food in their bin, so we decided to leave them for about a month without even checking on them. So far none have tried to escape, so we think they’re pretty happy.

I don’t even remember if we’ve talked about our worms on here yet. If not, we started a worm composting bin a few months ago. Things were going pretty well until we had a massive infestation of gnats. At first, it was kind of annoying, but we thought we’d just live with it.

Then when it got to the point that these gnats were so overrunning the house that they would fly into our faces in every room, land on my cheek when I was putting on moisturizer, and land in a pan we were cooking in, we decided something needed to be done.

After lots of research and help from the Red Worm Composting site and other online forums, we started freezing all of our compost scraps (to prevent new eggs from coming in), putting fly tape on the top of our bins to kill some of the adults, and putting this natural bacterial larvacide in our bin that kills fungus gnat larva but not worms.

We had been leaving the worm bin outside so our apartment could be gnat free while we waited for the gnats to die. Two weeks later, there were still a lot of gnats in the bin and we were going out of town for the weekend to visit family for Easter. It was supposed to snow that weekend, so we couldn’t leave the worms outside while we were gone. We really didn’t feel like having a host of gnats living inside again, so I told Matt, “It’s do or die time. We have to empty out the whole bin and clean the gnats out, rinse off the worms in case there are any eggs on them, and start over with fresh, clean compost.” Kind of ironic to have clean compost. But that’s what we needed.

Also I had read about others with gnat infestations cleaning out their worm bins, including rinsing their worms off to get rid of any eggs, and their worms turned out fine. So it didn’t feel that weird to me. Just a lot of time and hassle.

It was pretty amazing. We saw baby worms, worm cocoons, and discovered that some of the worms kind of have personalities. Some are pretty crafty and good at finding hiding places. One of them reminded us of PS because it liked to burrow in a piece of corrugated cardboard and wouldn’t come out until we dismantled its hiding place.

So anyway, after hours of cleaning out the worm bin and washing off the worms, their new gnat-free home was set up.

We left for the weekend, came home, and found half of our worms shriveled up and dead on the kitchen floor. They had crawled out of the bin and died in a large circle around the bin. It was pretty tragic.

Turns out we had left their new home too dry, so they escaped looking for the promised land. Unfortunately, their promised land was nowhere to be found, so they just died.

We added some water and some more food and managed to save the rest of our worms who are still thriving today. Whew.

So now we’re paranoid about getting more gnats or flies in the bin after all that work and death. A few weeks ago we found some fruit flies and their pupae in the bin. Fortunately, I don’t think they were able to find enough food to survive (we now cover the compost/food section with a big layer of cardboard to make it more difficult for flies/gnats to breed…seems to be working well so far). We realized that in our paranoia about losing the rest of our worm population, we had overfed them and needed to leave them alone for awhile so they could catch up with the food we had given them. So that’s where we stand now. Happy, eating worms. Hopefully no flies/gnats.

Here are some videos:

A baby worm I found while rinsing off the worms.

Evil pupae! We discovered these a few weeks after cleaning out the worm bin…but pretty sure they the flies weren’t able to multiply. We only found a couple of them and haven’t seen any in several weeks.

It’s a pretty handy system; the only problem is we get lazy and go for a few weeks without menu planning before we realize how stressed we (and more honestly, I) get without planning menus ahead of time and how much more tempted we are to go out to eat when we haven’t planned anything out.

In our times of planning, I’ve come across some great new recipes. You have to understand, I grew up without cooking anything, except spaghetti and macaroni and cheese. Everything else, I made in a toaster or a microwave. My parents had a few meals that they liked to cook, but I guess I never got around to learning how to make those meals. And other than that, we just weren’t the kind of family that sits around cooking together.

Even now, when we have a big family get-together, the smoke alarm usually goes off several times before the cooking has finished.

So keeping my genetic tendency to dislike cooking in mind, I’m pretty proud of my recent accomplishments (even though they actually are baking, which I enjoy a lot more than cooking.) Here’s a photographic journey:

Homemade bread!

Perfect sandwich bread, made with organic flour

Homemade organic stuffed crust pizza!

What are your favorite things to make in the kitchen?

]]> http://mattandangelblog.com/2010/03/recent-adventures-in-the-kitchen/feed/ 2 http://mattandangelblog.com/2010/03/testing-out-our-new-camcorder/ http://mattandangelblog.com/2010/03/testing-out-our-new-camcorder/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:12:03 +0000 Angel http://mattandangelblog.com/?p=118 We’ve decided if we’re going to become serious about this blogging thing (and we are, we promise! We’re just busy and we have to blog a lot for work, so it takes some motivating kicks in the behind to get us to post here. Perhaps some motivating comments would work too

Anyway, as I was saying, if we’re going to become serious bloggers, we figured we needed a legit camera to post video and pictures for our adoring fans. After much deliberation and viewing youtube video examples of camera work, we went with the Sanyo Xacti VPC-FH1A.

We’re still figuring out how to use it well, but in the mean time, enjoy our very amateur camera work. Hopefully it will give us the motivating kicks we need to update more often. But comments definitely help too.

Without further ado, here’s our first video. A few weeks ago, we went to Taneka’s apartment to celebrate her birthday (and the birthday of a girl named Tene, who we had never met before but turned out to be pretty cool). This is most of the crew playing “Big Booty” (with comments in the background from the peanut gallery aka Brian).

“Stop licking! NO.” That’s Angel yelling at our dog, P.S. right now. It stands for Peggy Sue, and that’s the name that she came with. We got her as a retired breeder from Indiana a couple years ago. P.S. has some quirks about her, but overall she’s a great dog. Well, having a dog, to my surprise, totally impacts your life. It did for me, at least. See, I never had a dog growing up. Other than some quick-to-die beta fish, the most that we had was a rabbit. Hazel (as we named her) never really did that much except try to run away whenever we let her out. Despite some annoyances (like the compulsive licking), P.S. does a few things that I try to do myself:

1. Dogs listen to you ramble. Around the time of our wedding, Angel was out of town a lot planning, and P.S. moved in with me. I was stressed with my old job and wedding stuff. P.S. was always there (what, it’s not like she’s going to the store or anywhere) and never seems to mind when I talk about life.

2. Dogs forgive you quickly. P.S., being only a bit taller than my ankles, has had a few accidental kicks from both Angel and me when she nips at our heels. Despite the kick, she always seems to forget about it in less than a minute. Angel and our friend Karen can attest to this, but I enjoy wrestling with our dog. P.S.? Doesn’t enjoy it as much as I do. Even after she gives me her dirty look, she always forgets about it and comes back.

3. Dogs aren’t picky. Listen, any animal that eats its own poop (remember how I said P.S. has some quirks?) doesn’t have discriminating tastes. I think if P.S. could talk, she would tell me that she likes any food, just as long as it’s not spicy. Do I think that it’s good to eat poop? I think that’s way too far (sorry to burst your bubble P.S.), but the idea of being flexible in your expectations is something that I think you can really learn from dogs.

4. Dogs are enthusiastic. You’d think that when I work all day and come home to let P.S. out, she would be pretty angry about that. Well, as I pointed out, she forgives pretty quickly. Not only that, but she gets excited about pretty much anything that I do with her.

5. Dogs continually seek to entertain you. P.S. has this quirk (yes, another one) about wrapping herself in her blanket until she’s a little mummy. When she’s ready to come out, it’s pretty hilarious:

So, that’s my list of 5. Do you have a dog? How do you think we should be more like dogs?

First off, I strongly recommend the book I’m reading right now: Surprised by Hope by NT Wright.

I think I read NT Wright in a Bible class at Wheaton, but I’m pretty sure it was the class I took with the worst Bible prof Wheaton has probably had. He was no longer teaching right after the semester I had him for New Testament. The highest grade in our class on our midterm exam was a D. For New Testament. At Wheaton College.

Anyway, because of the other negative parts of the class, I don’t think I paid much attention to Wright.

But now, reading through this book for pleasure and for desire of the knowledge it contains, I am really falling in love with Wright as a writer. He reminds me a whole lot of CS Lewis, and that’s pretty sweet, because he’s still alive. Hence, there is a chance I could interact with him some day. I probably won’t, but the mere prospect makes me happier to read his writing.

But on to the topic of the book…

Ever been confused about what happens when we die? There are a lot of scriptures about this, but I always felt confused. People say you go to heaven when you die. Movies show the saved knocking on St. Peter’s gates, being let in if they were good (or for Bible-fearing Christians, if their names were written in the Lamb’s book of life). Then the saints sit around worshiping God, falling on their faces and calling Him ‘holy’ for the rest of their lives.

I’ve heard that you see everyone you know when you get to heaven, that it’s okay to lose Christian loved ones to death, because they’re waiting for you “on the other side.”

And then there’s “the other side of the other side” aka hell. In youth group, I remember being shown a video about a girl who died in a car accident and went to hell. The video graphically showed a place of horrific terror. Then at the end of the video, the girl came back to life and knew that she had to change her life so she wouldn’t go to that awful place. I can’t count the number of altar calls I’ve heard given with the threat of “Do you know where you would go if you walked out of this building today and got hit by a bus?”

People die, they go to heaven if they’re good (or if they accept Jesus, depending on whether you’re a Christian or you’re following popular belief about life after death in our culture); they go to hell if they’re bad (or if they reject Jesus).

Okay, easy enough.

But then I knew the Bible has all this stuff about “new heavens” and “new earth.” What does that mean anyway? What is a glorified body? Do dead people have consciousness?

I won’t say any more for now because I have to go to bed, but I will say that NT Wright’s book answers these questions with great sensibility and understanding of Scripture. My thoughts on heaven, hell, salvation, resurrection, Kingdom of God, stewardship of the earth, and so much more have been radically transformed by this book. Check back soon for part two…

She scheduled me for a pap smear the next week and said she would write me a birth control prescription when I was ready to start taking it.

The next week I went back for the pap smear and promptly regretted our decision to get married. It was SO painful. I had heard that it would be uncomfortable, but that it shouldn’t be painful. So when it hurt, I told my doctor, and she tried a smaller instrument. It still hurt, just as badly, so she stopped and said that since it was hurting, I shouldn’t have a pap smear done until after I was sexually active.

Wait. So sex is going to hurt this badly??

I tried asking her some clarifying questions to see why it was better to have my husband hurt me this much rather than a doctor.

“It won’t hurt the same when you break your hymen having sex,” she said. “It will be quicker and you’ll want to do it. It’s better than having your hymen stretched during a pap smear.”

I walked out of the exam room with a newfound awe for every married woman I saw. I stared at the receptionist’s wedding ring as I turned in my paperwork after the appointment. How did she endure such pain? How is she so happy, calm, and normal?

I walked bowlegged for two days after that attempted pap smear, and it wasn’t even a FULL procedure! She never even got near the cervix!

So here we are, over a year later.

Our insurance has changed, so I’m going to a new doctor. Sex doesn’t hurt anymore (that is a story for another self-disclosing post), and I’m pretty sure my hymen is stretched enough to handle the pap smear this time.

But my general fear of doctors and my memory of the last pap smear are not making it easy to approach this next appointment with peace. What if she isn’t gentle enough? Honestly, the idea of anything touching my cervix still weirds the heck out of me, the same kind of feeling I get when someone tries to stick a finger in my belly button. It’s not painful, exactly, but it’s intolerable.

So that’s where I’m at this week…dreading Friday’s cold, sterile table, barely-there paper gown, and awkward stirrups. I guess it seems a little silly to pray about a pap smear in light of global tragedies like Haiti’s earthquake, but thankfully God is big enough to handle both. I will be praying during that appointment and asking for supernatural peace. I’ll let you know how it goes.  Fortunately, I have Avatar to look forward to on Saturday as a reward for my suffering on Friday.

P.S. Something funny: When I showed this post to Matt, he said, “Wow. That’s really self-disclosing. But I like it. It’s from the heart…or from the cervix.”

So I’m still playing around with who I think I’m writing to on this blog.

Ideally, we want to grow our readership and speak to people we don’t even know about super intimate topics (like how I’m terrified of my first married pap smear coming up soon). But for now, our readers mostly consist of close friends who click on our Facebook links and may not want to know about my pap smear fears. Hence, we continue writing glib, simplistic posts. You see the conundrum, right?

To remedy this problem, I will begin categorizing posts based on level of self-disclosure versus topics. That way, those of you who are totally weirded out by TMI about our marriage, our bodily functions, or emotions in general can skip to the more light-hearted posts (like about food and martial arts) or the strictly theological posts.

Matt’s not home right now and I haven’t talked to him about this (communication is very key in a healthy marriage, you know), so we may change this system up. But for now, look for the categories. I’m going to try out the new system by posting two more posts. One highly self-disclosing, one minimally self-disclosing with lots of theological pondering. Read accordingly.