verdict: it was not terribly helpful. gonna try Hugo next. https://gohugo.io/getting-started/quick-start/

https://stripedspatula.com/gallo-pinto/#wprm-recipe-container-7474 was quite tasty when we made it the other night. also https://www.ruchiskitchen.com/vegan-spicy-peanut-noodles/#recipe. both good!

i don’t know if this link is great, but it’s one that i’m going to read and try to follow along with. https://stablepoint.com/blog/how-to-host-your-own-website

to answer my own question, i have planted two rows of potatoes this spring - my first garden that i’ve ever been involved with! and yes, two rows of potatoes is barely a “garden” but it’s a start. i want to grow food i will actually eat, so we planted an apple tree last fall and potatoes this spring. i am hoping to also do a three sisters garden this year, but we’ll see. i also potted a Scotch Bonnet plant that i bought accidentally online while trying to buy actual Scotch Bonnet peppers, ha! this will be great for the Nigerian-style jollof rice i make on weekends, and anything Caribbean inspired that i cook which calls for that specific flavor and heat profile.

i also started a Calibreserver based out of my home server setup, which will be accessible to the neighborhood i live in - i bought a domain name and am learning about what all is necessary to statically host a website. this is the first part of my dream to start being a community sysadmin for my neighborhood, where i can provide resources that are freely available to my neighbors, and we can all add content and features as time, skill, and desire allow.

finally, i have dusted off Laika, my old trusty two-wheeled steed. she belonged to a coworker’s husband who never rode, so i got it for free last fall! I have not historically been a cyclist so I am working towards it. I bought a rack i need to add to the bike, and hope to get some different tires. add in a trailer, and you have a great errand-runner, which is my goal here.

oh man, this is a great question. i’d rest, first and foremost, for kind of a long while. i’m chronically exhausted right now. then, when my body starts to feel like it can do things again i’d love to grow food, write poems, play music, hike, explore, and interact with people over shared food and conversation.

oh yeah, the Praxis test! I remember that from back in the day when i was in school to be a teacher. that’s the subject-matter test, right? like, if you’re going to be a math teacher it’s the test that proves you can do math?

i’m no expert, but what we ended up using as mulch were wood chips from a tree we had to get removed from a fenceline. it seems to have worked for us.

that’s a good question! my understanding is that praxis means the practical application of a theory; like, for example, if you’re a socialist then praxis could involve sharing those ideas with friends/family, creating socialist spaces like community gardens or little free libraries/etc, or organizing your workplace. and it doesn’t just have to be socialism, though that’s the context i’ve heard it used in the most. for me, solarpunk is the theory and these practical application questions give me ideas about praxis. does that help? hope i don’t come off as too mansplain-y!

I’ve never heard of coffeeberry, but I’m intrigued! I’ll need to look it up.

for me, since i live in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau, i have hooked up the first rain barrel of the season to start catching moisture. my plan for this coming weekend is to lay down more cardboard and mulch on our front “lawn” to suppress weeds and allow for the growth of native cover cops we’re planting. i also got a decent gift certificate to a local nursery for Christmas so once they open, soon, i will be excitedly acquiring a Mormon tea bush for my native pollinators garden.

on a different front, my wife and i are practicing living with one car. it should be easy for us, but we’ve never had to think about some of the implications of the single-car life until now, so we are trying a practical experiment in February and March, and if we can make it okay we plan to sell our second car in the late spring or early summer.

it’s so handy. 99% of the time I use it to clean my glasses, but if I’m with someone who’s crying, if I need to clean off a screen, if something’s dusty or gross but I need to pick it up, if I get sweaty and need to wipe my brow, if something gets spilled and there are no napkins handy, etc I can use it. when my dad passed I got all his; he was a high school principal most of his career and carried one every day.

Ascent for business, Outback for pleasure, lol. the Ascent is the car I drive for work, the Outback is my personal car.

good eye! my own car is an Outback (2018) and my work car is an Ascent (2022).

I think it’s designed for outdoorsy stuff as it also has a firestarter component. but it definitely works well for basic networking stuff too!

lol, yes it is! I got my glasses from there ages ago before I knew there were cheaper options. I like my glasses and need lens cleaning cloths all the time, so it works.

finally finished my compost bin - just three pallets in a U shape, but it worked! added PiHole and Unbound DNS to my home server setup to keep ads and other nonsense as out of our lives as possible. more to come!

from my wife and i: we relatively recently received some free bikes from a colleague of mine. i’m fixing one up myself to be an ultimate commuter, but my wife said she didn’t really want the other one - so we’re fixing it up to give to a fifteen year old we know who needs reliable in-town transportation. it should be done this week, and he’s getting it on Friday. i hope he likes it!

also, we’re decorating for the holidays but in a sustainable, old-fashioned kind of way. my wife is a really good fabric artist and has crocheted a long holly vine that wraps around our living room. it’s well off the ground, and so that’s where we hang our ornaments so our two energetic kitties don’t succumb to temptation and danger. we did hook up house lights this year, powered by rechargeable batteries that i recharge using our Jackery and a solar panel. it’s small things, but it’s a start.

i’ve mentioned it before but we’re still planning on our community building chili feast, we’ve just had to move it to January due to our schedules. and we still host weekly zazen (Zen Buddhist meditation) at our house. we have four folks outside our family who come almost every weekend, and last weekend we did our first all-day sit on Saturday, from 8am to 5pm. i just launched a website for our group, in the hopes that anyone in our rural western Colorado locale that searches for “meditation”, “Buddhism”, or “Zen” and our city name will find our site and, if they feel like it, join us.

I wish I had a photo of my setup but I apparently never did that, how odd! Anyway, it’s a series of pallets tied together with zip ties to make bins. I keep a seal-able five gallon bucket with lid in the kitchen, and we toss any organic scraps in there. We don’t have much yard yet so there are few grass clippings, but we have added some from neighbors before. Plus woodchips, leaves, etc. The smell issue came from unloading the buckets weekly in the pile - I would gag from the smell, though it was pretty mild all things considered. The pile itself didn’t reek really, but the bucket did. I just need to clean it more but with my brain sometimes a tiny challenge becomes a Mighty Challenge and it’s easier just to stop.

To answer my own question, I’m working on restoring/modifying two mountain bikes I recently got for free from a coworker. I’m hoping to turn one into a sweet daily commuter for me!

I’m also a Buddhist and host weekly zazen at my house every Sunday morning. I feel like Zen/Buddhism and solarpunk go hand-in-hand - seeing the reality of interdepence, we can’t keep killing the earth!

Finally, I’m also trying to get started composting again. I did really well last winter then got out of the habit when it got warmer (I have a thing about smells). I am hoping to get back into it now that it’s cooler and maybe I can pay less attention to the smells for a bit.

nah, go for it; i readily admit to knowing only what i have googled so far about things. i’m using cardboard because it’s what i have; i am also composting, but buying stuff is out of the realm at the moment. glad to hear that tilling isn’t necessarily all bad; tilling = bad is what got me on the cardboard thing in the first place.

i do appreciate the heads-up!