So, growing the beard is something I haven't done before.  The sensation of hair on my face, especially around my lips, is strange.  Apparently it looks nice though, which I can deal with.

It has been suggested that I smile, but that comes more naturally to some than others.  It may take less muscles to smile than to frown, but it takes less muscles to do neither.  That said, people do tend to be more hostile towards those who don't smile easily.

Hostility towards those who don't smile easily is an animal reaction, showing poor socialization, and low social and emotional intelligence.  But that is exactly what some would say about those who don't smile easily!  Facial expressions suck.

The spider plants are flowering.  A tropical lily of some sort has a huge flower on top.  The basil plants came out and started flowering.  Both pepper plants have flowered, and fruited.

That should all be encouraging for the spring season.  Especially considering that outside it is less than 50 degrees and there is still lots of snow in the shade.  The wind blew the plastic garden cabinet over again.

I've had my garlic chives for a couple of years now, and they hadn't flowered.  I left them outside all summer, and they flowered at the end of summer, and did so up until first frost.

Garlic chives are specifically grown for their flowers in China and Asia.  The flowers are harvested before they open, and cooked and eaten with some sort of sauce.  They can also be made into some type of sauce, or paste, but I don't have a recipe for that.

My lack of Chinese (mandarin) means I can't readily search for a recipe, and I hadn't found one after an hour searching on Google.  Heh, I can find about anything after an hour on Google.

I sweated them in some olive oil and served them with pasta, if I remember correctly.  They're really sweet, and garlicky at the same time.  I would recommend them raw, sweated or steamed for about 5 minutes.

They're yummy, and an unexpected surprise from the summer.  I was having such a poor time with my plants.  Really, I don't know of too many people who have a good time with  vegetable gardens in Colorado.

This year was particularly bad.  My other high points were the lavender bush and my second try at a eucalyptus (blue gum) went well.  Luckily eucalyptus is supposed to dwarf in a container, so I won't end up with a 100-foot tall tree.

I've been concentrating on my plants a lot this year.  I've practiced my cloning, and growing food plants.  Growing plants along the Colorado front range is a real pain.  I'm trying to grow indoors over the winter with some cheap light sets.

I originally built the light sets back in 2000, when I was still living in boulder.  I had a small apartment, and I put the set in the closet, trying to grow tomatoes.  That didn't work out well, I only had one sprout from seed, and the young plant died off after a couple of weeks.

Growing outdoors works OK.  The dry air and UV inhibits plant growth to some extent.  The heat is really bad because of the dry air, and the hail really sucks.

My most notable successes this year were the garlic chives and the parsley.  I managed to keep my mint plants alive, and they are currently prospering inside.  My lavender is the most long-lived I've had so far, and is doing the best indoors.

I now have two basils indoors, as they are perennials when you take them inside for the winter.

I've cloned my sage plant twice, and started a new rosemary.  My mom got the old rosemary wood.  I hope the new one grows as large as the old one, but it is less than one year old - the other died around four or five, as rosemary will.

I grew two tomato plants indoors this winter, and got about 5 tomatoes from them, but they got kind of funky and I scrapped one and trimmed the other back to the stump, from which it is currently struggling to recover.  We shall see.

My peppers don't get enough sun, and the lights aren't strong enough for them to fruit.  The flowers drop off after three or four days.  At least they'll be ready to go in the spring - they are long day, so I'll probably have to bring them indoors for light treatment if I want peppers in the early spring.

I cloned some sort of Ivy I trimmed from an indoor plant in Aurora.  It rooted after about four weeks in rooting hormone and water.  I think most would have given up.

I'm on my third batch of indoor radishes, learning how they respond to container growing, and the lights I have.  Hopefully, I'll manage to get something useful.  At least the greens from the first batch were a tasty additive to a salad.

I'm thinking that asparagus is the next one I'll try, either indoors or early in the spring.  Surprisingly, asparagus is a traditional North American early vegetable.  So, given a good sunny spot, and enough watering, I should be able to do well.

My rhubarb did really well, until hail and weeks of high heat seemed to take their toll.  I shall see what is left of the plants in the spring, as their containers are covered with snow now.

The strawberries produced fruit, but did not produce runners.  That was disappointing.  I'll have to put them somewhere after the snow melts, as I'm sure the bunnies will get hungry enough to dig up the roots before spring.

The soil here really sucks.  The top is OK, but under that is really hard clay.  There's more topsoil in this area than some others around here, but mostly the growing conditions are really poor, so I'm glad I chose containers.

No blog entries in a while.  I've been concentrating on work and health.  Excercise is the current personal health issue I'm trying to work on.

I can only do 1/3 the push-ups I could do 15 years ago.  I weigh about 15 pounds more and I have become sedentary.  So hiking is good, as well as working on the garden.

While I'm not much of a believer in worldwide organizations, or worldwide efforts, this site has definitely reduced the issue to the most basic element:

http://www.stopchildpoverty.org/

If you have the time or money to help children in your community, that's the best way to mitigate future misery in the world, IMO.  Just keep in mind that charity begins at home, and there are impoverished children in developed countries too.

Writing about vanity, I appeared to make several logical errors.  One is that low self-esteem might be associated with a lack of sympathetic vanity, when a lack of sympathetic vanity might be mistaken for low self esteem, as well as the other things I listed.

Eh, it is a blog post.  More of a whiteboard to be scribbled on, where people can have an inkling of sympathy for the subject, antipathy for the subject or a complete lack of interest.  Caveat emptor, or more like, are you a sponge, a filter or a densely saturated liquid polluting the waters around you?  It goes both ways.

People only learn in the case of sympathy anyways, that's why they say those with antisocial tendencies don't learn as quickly, ah, until they get older and learn to trick everyone around them.  Kind of hard to hypnotize someone who is antisocial.

So if video games hypnotize kids to promulgate violence, just like commericals hypnotize people into buying stuff, doesn't that mean those kids already have a sympathy for violence, perhaps learned from the environments of poverty and abuse they find themselves in, as well as the competitive economy most of them are disadvantaged in?

Hahah, don't read this, sunshine place!  Rawr.

" Malaysia may introduce tough Internet laws to control bloggers and prevent them from spreading "disharmony, chaos, seditious material and lies""

Deputy Science and Technology Minister Kong Cho Ha said moves such as registering bloggers would be difficult, but accused some writers of posting controversial articles to attract readers."

"posting of a photo ... of a Muslim male and Muslim female lawmaker ... in what appeared to be a hotel room."

"seditious articles that can create disharmony and chaos"

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/03/061203071601.m105hesl.html

Don't rock the boat!

It is funny when you meet new people, they're like mirrors for your vanity.  The way most people think of this is complementary, as many people want to be with people like themselves, doing similar things.  There are also people for whom this experience isn't complementary.

I think this is the greatest misunderstanding that people with 'complementary vanity' have, psychologically speaking.  As an emotional rule, you could say that 'complementary' people don't really get the state of mind of certain people.  You could label those people as having low self-esteem, anti-social tendencies or self-hatred, among other things.

I believe this is the greatest emotional divide among people, those with 'complementary vanity', and those whose vanity isn't complementary.  Now, there is something to think about!

Every day I find something nice on the Internet.

Here's a link to the CPD page on Dl-Menthol:
http://potency.berkeley.edu/chempages/DL-MENTHOL.html

Yet another reference source!

And don't forget the awsome reference page on Wikipedia for menthol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menthol

Hah, can you tell that I was trying to find potential toxicity in menthol?

We have colds and are taking menthol cough drops.

Know what you eat!