Four Newspapers

Apparently, four newspapers, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday copies of the OC Register, has a volume of about 20 gallons when cut into 0.5-1" strips.

When soaked in water and drained until just damp, the volume is reduced by half, conveniently fitting into one bin.

Just an FYI.

OC Register Subscription

I did it, I finally remembered to cancel that crazy newspaper subscription Friday!  I had to do it as I was running out of space.

What irks me is that by the time I called to cancel I was already into the "next" billing period -- you know, the one I JUST got the bill for, by three weeks. Had I not called from the office I'd have gone off like a crazy lady being buried under an avalanche of paper. Unusually, I kept my dumb calm and let them charge the dumb AmEx for dumb newspapers I'll never read.

Thankfully, I had a couple worm bins laying around empty to accomodate the 50 lbs of paper.

Note that those papers in the left bin are standing upright, maximizing space in the container. I almost broke my back carrying the friggin' thing out to the garage.

Worm Food, Corn Growth, and OC Registers 070911

I didn't have much food for the worms the weekend of July 9th. Turns out, they didn't need much so it worked out ok.

Most of the bins had food leftover. Like this bin with the germinating kernels of corn. There were three in the bin, each of them sprouting like mad.

The pile of OC Registers is getting out of control. How long had I been receiving them by the 9th? I'm not sure, but I need to cancel this shit as the pile is even bigger now.

Deciding to chop of some of the papers, I came across an article in an edition about how OC Food Banks' shelves are sparse. It was a good reminder that food banks usually get the most donations in winter months and are sparse in summer.

Here's a list of kitchens if you have anything to donate: OC Food Banks/Kitchens.

Nate Gave Me Straight-Cut Paper

I received this bag of paper from Nate the 9th. It is the second batch of straight-cut paper I received from him and likely the last as he's moved on to become a Ph.D. One day, I might find myself working for Sir Master Nathan. It would be a pleasure.

Orange County Register

Because I'm a sucker for helping high school students in Santa Ana, I agreed to an 8-week subscription to the OC Register, four dailies from Thursday to Sunday each week. Two weeks in, I have 8 newspapers I haven't even removed from their stupid orange bags except the first Sunday copy, the one with the coupons.

Is there one single coupon I'd use in there? Of course not because I'm the turd who doesn't buy into brand labels.

While I'm all about supporting youth and their high school education so they can do their thing and get the basics of education, I'm not sure that my $20 subscription really does anything but provide me with worm food and a huge pile of glossies I feel obligated to haul to the recycling center.

Maybe the kid I am sponsoring with my 20 will devise a way of really making my contribution work. This "let's sell newspaper subscriptions" thing is seriously antiquated.

How I Made Eve, aka, How to Split a Worm into Two

June 28, 2008 Adam was born. By August, I determined that an Eve was necessary. And so she was made.

Segue:

Holy crap, I've been keeping worms for nearly three years!

Later this month will be the 3rd anniversary;

I know it's not the paper anniversary

so would it be rock or scissors?

 

August 26th, 2008, Eve was born from Adam. I had made it so. Rodney helped. Not that Rodney and I...well, nevermind. Eve came from Adam. Period.

 

Look at the time frame between Adam and Eve. That's just two months. Certainly I could've postponed on making Eve, but at the time I was ultra-concerned that the worms would be suffering if I kept them in such a pile of poop. As I said in the About Me, I didn't know what to do with so much (what I'd now consider not-very-much) of Adam's poop anyway.

 

So let's take a look at what I did to split Adam into Adam and Eve. It'll be fun trip down memory lane for me and, for my current generation of worms, family history.

 

First, I soaked a couple of paper grocery bags in water and transferred them to the newly bottom-holed Eve. Then I soaked some shredded paper, primarily grocery bags, and transferred those to Eve.

Because I bought the coir and hadn't used it to make a bed for Adam, I went ahead and used it to make bedding for Eve; surplus went to Adam. This poorly imaged brick of RoLanka coir was what I started with.

After removing the coir from the plastic encasement and glossy paper label, the brick went into the water left from soaking the above-mentioned paper.

The coir went from totally dry at time zero to semi-soaked exterior in 6 minutes and (after flipping) totally-soaked exterior at 36 minutes.

The coir was totally soaked and started breaking up at about 38 minutes.

I put in a nice layer of the coir on the paper in Eve.

Followed by a nice even layer made up of some of this food.

The food included coffee grounds and filters, puffed rice cereal, lettuce, tomatoes, used paper towels, melon rinds and seeds, carrots and mushrooms.

Adam sidled up next to Eve and gave her half of his wormy contents.

Adam was fed the rest of the food and Eve was topped off with more damp grocery bag strips.

After the remaining coir was spread over Adam, additional dry paper was added to the coir water briefly before being spread over Adam's coir layer.

Cardboard from a thin box a book came in was placed over Adam and Ever before their lids were snapped on.

Voila, a happy couple. 

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