Now that the windows are open, it’s all birdies, all the time.

This is going to be a really, really close vote, and phone calls do make a difference. (Emails don’t, thanks to mass-delete.) Call if you’ve got a wavering congressperson — promise to work for their reelection if they vote yes, to work against it if they vote no. Call if you’ve got a definite yes congressperson — thank them for all the work they’re doing, and request that they lean on any wavering friends. Call if you’ve got a definite no congressperson — tell them that they are douchebags (except more politely). That last point is particularly important; the “yes” votes are getting flooded with teabagger calls, while the “no” votes are sitting pretty, because their implacability means no liberals waste their time calling. Waste five minutes and tell them they suck.

The House switchboard is (202) 224-3121. Balloon Juice has all the additional details you could want. This is one of the rare circumstances where calling really will make a difference. Be good little citizens today and do your civic duty.

You know there’s a “but” coming, right?

The habañeros. I pulled them out of the freezer and figured, hey, I’ll add some of this, something to cut the sweetness of the bananas. I chop up two, then figure, what the hey, I’ll add a third. Turns out, though, that if you freeze then defrost a pepper, the oil? The scalding oil? It somehow attains super-powers. I have no idea how. All I know is, when I put those peppers into the freezer last fall, they were perfectly normal. When they came out, they’d mutated into tiny orange Sith Lords.

Three itty bitty little peppers spread out over a 14″ pizza, and I only ate two pieces of eight. The acid in the peppers took an entire layer of skin off my gums. Took it right off in peels the size of dimes. Twenty-four hours later and I am still spitting blood.

The moral of the story: Beware the Dark Side of the Pepper.

Okay, it’s not exactly alive yet. But it’s not covered in snow anymore, and that counts for something, right?

Sunday was blissfully, ecstatically warm, and when I realized the last of the snow had melted off of the garden, I couldn’t resist taking a look at how things had gone. Did the leaf layer decompose? Did any of the herbs survive?

Answer #1: The leaves are decomposing beautifully. Look at all that slime! (My apologies for the crappy pictures — this is iPhone work, not the good camera.) I took the opportunity to get out some tools and mix the whole layer. Hopefully getting some air and warmth into the compost will help things keep breaking down now that it’s defrosted. My friend said I’m not supposed to disturb too much of the dirt, so I didn’t — I just stuck with the leaves themselves. When it comes time in six weeks or so to put in manure and other extra soil, I’ll have to rake off whatever didn’t totally decompose. Soon, though, once I’m relatively confident that all but the last few frosts are over, I’m going to go buy some nightcrawlers and toss them in. Maybe they’ll speed up the process. My goal is to buy minimum topsoil this year.

The leaves had another delightful side effect:

Yes, that’s a living rosemary bush. It seems the leaf layer kept everything nice and insulated. We’re going to have to see how the growth goes as spring gets going, but I think both sage plants, both parsley plants, and one of the rosemary plants survived. It’s hard to tell about the dill, since dill has new sprouts every year, but given how everything else did, there’s cause for optimism.

The blueberry bushes survived, too:

They didn’t get any bigger, but I suppose that wouldn’t happen yet. Maybe in the next month or so we’ll start seeing some growth. Apparently whey is also good for blueberries, so I made mozzarella and watered the bushes with the leftovers. Let’s see what happens.

The fences, thank goodness, also kept the damn deer from eating the blueberries…

…not that they didn’t try. Maybe I’ll get a shotgun.

About eight weeks until planting time. Hurrah!

It would seem that the editing process is taking a little longer than ten days.

And Final Fantasy XIII came out yesterday. We weren’t able to pick it up until very late, unfortunately — poor planning, I’m sorry to say. So, today, The Wookiee and I got out of bed at 8 AM (on a day off!), made coffee, and settled down in front of the PS3. And then we played for… well… it’s almost 11 PM as I’m posting this, and we’re still playing…

Yes, I’m still basically a college student, except without, you know, the college. And fewer STDs.