Kimberly's Phone Books Made a Second Story for The Offspring

Back in September, I talked about the food offerings Kimberly made and mentioned that Kimberly's phone book offerings would require another post. Now's the time to button down what seems to be the hardest button to button as it's taken me so long to get to it.

Of course, I was reminded of this by the fact that sometime a couple weeks ago Kimberly gave me a bag of shredded paper from her straight-cut paper shredder. Thanks Kimberly!

I love Kimberly's paper as it's so, so fluffy, and not at all compacting when wet. When I tell her so, Kimberly reminds me that the shredded paper I love comes from a shredder from WalMart, which causes my sphincter to constrict just slightly*.

Here's the stack of two phone books, right there with Kimberly's Post-It declaring them worm food. Thanks again, Kimberly!


I peeled the front and back covers as well as glossy middles from the meaty paper sections of the phone books so I could take those glossies to OCC for recyling.


And so you'd be absolutely clear, here's some of the phone book meat, complete with Kimberly's Post-It attached.


When I got down to the last bit of meaty phone book middle, I chopped the Post-It up with it, yielding a 10-gallon bin full of shredded newspaper. Now you know it takes two large phone books and a 3x3" Post-It to yield a 10-gallon bin of shredded paper.


Then Spooky climbed inside the bin to pack the paper down because we work as a team. Spook's like a mama cat, lookin' out for a nice nest, but with him it's all about...well, him, and his personal comfort. Spooky likes paper.


Over the next couple days, Kimberly's phone book shreds were marinated in tap water, drained, and made into a second story for The Offspring September 12th, 2010. It's like a born-on date but better than Budweiser. That might be because I don't drink beer.


Just so you know, I had supplied The Offspring's second story with leftovers from an Ethiopian recipe (primarily cabbage and potatoes) I had tried as well as melon rinds and old pineapple bits, about 5 cups. I didn't bother looking for dirt.  There's enough in the unwashed vegetable peels I feed the worms anyway.


Since I began harvesting The Offspring's first story December 12th, those worms are now operating primarily on Kimberly's phone books, with additions from other sources as necessary, including part of the new batch of Kimberly's paper!

I now wonder if I should get a kitchen balance to measure the mass of food I actually feed a worm bin. So far, I've been doing it by volume, even though it's said worms eat their mass in X amount of time. That'd be one way of deducing my worm poundage per bin too. Hmm...

*I'll save you the grief of reading the deluge of reasons why I don't shop at WalMart. I'll just say,

• When Kimberly's shredder dies, I will personally go out and buy her a new straight-cut shredder from another vendor.  Note To Self: Get some ads up on this blog for funding.
• WalMart: The High Cost of Low Prices

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In other news:

• I fed the worms all of Bill's doobs over the weekend;
• The original Bill's Banana Peel's bag and bag of Tony's rice are long gone now;
• I'm enrolled in Korean 2 and it still sucks being the slow kid. The other kids laugh when I answer in English, but I don't do it to make a joke. I figure an answer in English is better than none at all. It's a weird thing, but I have serious difficulty when it comes to speaking in Korean, like I'm doing something wrong and Mrs. Sorenson won't give me a smiley-face hand stamp if I speak Hanguk
• Compels me to provide a grant to my elementary school with a specific clause that the money can only go toward minority or half-breed kids and those with a primary language other than English cannot be brainwashed into speaking English-only with Chutes and Ladders and smiley-face stamps in SPEECH THERAPY. Yes, I realize I need to hone that a bit.
• Ali's liquid diet lemon halves are way long gone by now, but I'll give you a visual on that
• Tony's squash plants grown impromtu from poop have suffered a drowning death with all the rain in December. Please, let's take a moment and bow our heads.
• Tony has sprinkled some of his latest poop in various areas of his giant outdoor domain; I'll be bugging him and Clare for photos
• And yes, I WILL get Clare's previous photos up one of these days

I Need to Retract a Previous Statement

Rather, I need to clarify what I'd implied. Earlier I sort of suggested that Bill hasn't been saving his banana peels.  I found out today I was dead wrong.  He has been saving them but just hasn't put them in the designated ("rotten food scum" covered) bag. Turns out, Bill has been twisting each banana peel in a sheet of paper like a big dube (Bill's words!) and stowing each banana dube in the freezer.

As the first bag was full, I started a new bag and it's nearly full already with Bill's banana dubes, but there was plenty of room for the cup of pistachio shells he gave me. I am thankful that Bill isn't saving each banana peel in a fresh, scum-free, Ziploc bag.  My crew will eat the paper.

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In other news:

I gave Tony the delicata squash I'd picked up and imaged yesterday.  We compared it to the squash image Clare had collected, and judging by Tony's reaction, it's pretty much locked-in that at least one of their plants is of the delicata variety.

There's been an addition to the Poop Queue. I'm thinking I should really do something to crank out a batch of the good stuff. After all, I have three worm bins with second stories on them.  The oldest is certainly primed for harvesting by now. Since Korean 1 is almost over (Final Exam Monday), I might have some time to do it by Xmas. While it's not difficult, it does require my taking the time to make it happen. And there's the fact that I estimated I'd have had a batch ready a month from this post.  YIKES!

And those rotting lemons?  They're still chillin' over by the slider.  I'm sort of scared to open the bag. I can just imagine the hideousness within.

Tony's Impromptu Garden

A few months ago, maybe back in September, Tony had a trench in front of his house that needed filling. I had a couple of worm bins of poop I could unload. It was a perfect match. Sure as shit, stuff started growing out of that worm poopy trench.

Tony was smooth enough to talk his girl, Clare, into collecting images of the growth over the past couple months. I plan to get these progressive images up one of these days. Meanwhile, we'd been scratching our heads over what the hell could be growing and determined that it must be some sort of squash.

Here's where you should imagine me leaning back in a high-backed leather chair, puffing on a pipe Camel while wearing a smoking jacket with leather on the elbows and a reminiscent thought bubble over my cartoon head as I thought back to

the squash I'd eaten
and the pulpy,
stringy gunk
and seeds
from those squashes
I'd fed to the worms
over the past couple years or so.

It was narrowed down to summer squashes like zucchini or yellow crookneck.
Or winter squash such as carnival, butternut or delicata.
Of course, there are the squash I may have eaten and forgotten about entirely. Like the acorn, which I suddenly remember having eaten.
So really, we just had it narrowed down to squash.
Thankfully, I did my undergrad biology/microscopy thesis on Curcurbita maxima, otherwise I'd have never believed Tony and Clare's leaves as squash since tomatoes were most prevalent thus far.

Based on Tony's verbal description and the photos Clare graciously supplied today, it looks like they might be growing some of these:

That shiny thing in the bottom of the image isn't a squash, it's a quarter. You can use it as a reference for squash size. Or you can go by the fact that the butternut in the back weighs in at 3.53 lbs and the giant pickle-like delicata came in at 1.03 lbs.

It'll be cool to see if Tone's growths grow up to be 100% identifiable. Considering that it's getting below 60°F regularly now, we might not see that happen. Keep your fingers crossed. Better yet, get on Tony's ass about putting together some sort of impromptu greenhouse for the sake of us being able to determine that we were right about the fruits being squash.

Anyone have an old swing-set they want to get rid of? I've a truck I can move it with.

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In other real-time news, since I haven't posted in nearly 3 weeks:

1. I fed the worms some of Ali's liquid diet lemon halves from the big bag outside 2.5 weeks ago. Then I put the little bag I'd been keeping in my fridge inside the big bag and put the bag outside. More than a week ago, I brought that bag inside to feed the worms. Because I was so concerned about my snake, Sleepy, being constipated and having a wacko lesion on his neck, I forgot about the lemons. The bag of lemons has been sitting on the floor of my kitchen (kicked toward the slider -- it's cooler there) since then. I'll feed some more to the worms this weekend. On a side-note, trash compactor bags are pretty heavy-duty; the lemons haven't leaked and I can't smell them. I'm sure though the lemons are quite disgusting by now.
2. How Chuck's grape-bits went over with the worms is still in my "things-to-post" queue.
3. Outskirts had another uber-wet worm-bin issue where she saw that there were again INCHES of water in the catch bin. This time around, I nosed around because inches of water just doesn't make any freakin' sense. Turns out, she was soaking all of the paper she was giving her worms this whole time. Remind me, and we'll discuss this later.
4. Bill's Banana Peel's baggie, other than visits by yours truly, hasn't seen much action. Because I can't stand the texture of bananas, it's pretty much full of apple cores from Fuji or Ambrosia apples I eat for breakfast. Again, Bill sucks. He says he doesn't want to touch the exterior of the bag as he's sure it's covered in "rotten food scum".
5. Kimberly hasn't coughed up any of her shredded paper. I need to get on her about that.

Speaking of things I need to get on, I need to get onto posting more regularly. News is lengthier than the post.

Oh, and judging from extremely quick glances of recent mud-run photos observed today, Cang has hot legs. Just sayin'.