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Saturday, July 24, 2004

 
10:22 AM: the other day was today once [#] [0]

a brief recounting of events from the last... week and a half? geesh.

* i finally spent the gap gift card my aunt janice gave me for christmas! the gap is so not my thing so we tried to buy sven some light gray socks because he only has one pair and they're the only thing he'll wear with shorts. alas, the gap no longer sells those socks, of course, so i bought underwear instead.

* i'm looking for goggles for burning man since the ones i took last year hurt when i wore them for any length of time over my glasses. alas, i was disappointed to find no decent goggles at andy & bax, despite a recommendation from a stilt-walker we saw at the pride parade.

* saw spiderman2 w/ sven. it was enjoyable, more so than the first one. there were some obvious over-the-top bits, but also some incredibly effective ones. overall it was worth the price.

* i found the paper wasp nest that probably got the neighbor girl. it even still had little live wasp grubs waiting to be hatched. ewwwwww.

* i got a used bike for burning man! her name is "stella" in keeping with this year's theme, "the vault of heaven." she'll be a good playa bike. we've gone for two bike rides, one on the springwater corridor trail and one around the neighborhood, where i actually made it up the hill outside our house! no, not the scary butte hill; the slope that eventually leads to the springwater corridor trail. this is a big accomplishment for me as i have only ever been able to ride on flat surfaces, hence the reason why i take a bike to the playa. (the only other successful biking event was when i rented a bike in cambridge.) so whee! not a big deal to you, but a happy thing for me. :)

* i attended the suicide girls burlesque tour because if i didn't i'd always wonder if i should. i was surprised to find it, if not unappealing, less interesting than i would have expected.

* i was responsible for a chunk of ear wax the size of a pencil eraser coming out of sven's ear! we did the peroxide-like-rice krispies thing twice before it would come out, but he said it was amazing how much more he could hear; he thought he was just getting old. :)

* sven showed me the original stepford wives in prep to see the oz remake w/ michaelmas. it wasn't a bad movie. at some point i said it would be much more horrible if she went through all this and they still get her (which of course they do). i realized recent films don't do that; the protaganist is invariably triumphant. but there was certainly a segment of movies, especially in the 70s, where the horror is that the protagonist knows what's happening and can't do anything to stop it. seeing the remake sort of confirmed that theory, and michael even says they re-made the ending of the movie before wide release to make it heroic, which i hated because nobody deserved to get out of that with any dignity (except possibly better middler's character, and i am as surprised as you to find myself saying that).

* on sunday, the new vietnamese neighbors were having a party and doing karaoke as loud as humanly possible. it was like being in the middle of lost in translation.

* the neighbor girls are still randomly coming over to water the barkdust, though the last time they were here they got us wet. i think i'd like to get them on a schedule. but the garden definitely has arugala, and what looks to be carrots, and the pumpkins are going to take over if i'm not careful. roo is bending at all sorts of crazy angles as its flower head has grown to be more than its talk can occassionally support.

* mph got all workflow-crazy on us. he's actually got a workflow wiki to help him sort it all out. i -love- reading about that stuff, but was surprised to discover i have less to contribute to that conversation than i would have thought.

* amelia has been making forays outside the laundry room for hours at a time and hasn't crapped outside the laundry room yet. *knocks wood* of course she's still not actually crapping in the litterbox, but it's a lot easier to put up with is she craps on linoleum rather than carpet. we put her back in the laundry room if neither of us is in the house.

* i wrote some surprisingly sad stuff at the wednesday writing group. hmm.

* i made a small batch of business cards that read:
gretchin lair
online instructional designer by chance
calligrapher by choice

* it turns out key lime pie is one of the easiest pies in the world to make! i had no idea. but it sure leaves an awful lot of egg whites lying around, so i made meringue cookies, too (which i never liked before now).

* i attended a dinnergrrls potluck event after being interviewed for the career risk articles by its membership chair. i met an economist who is underemployed as an inventory person at an automotive parts warehouse, a woman who picks up dead bodies and takes them to funeral homes but is working on her comedy routine, a tech writer for microsoft who also writes screenplays, a woman who creates custom-tailored clothes, a rock star who finds her only other skill is fundraising for nonprofits, a biker who lives in vancouver. i was surprised that at least three of us have only been in portland for about a year. i need to work on my pitch, if nothing else, to convince people that calligraphy is more interesting and useful than for wedding invitations.

* yesterday sven took me to the "basement": a trapdoor in the closet leads to a large crawlspace under the house (where it's cool!).

* i sent out birthday invites; it'll just be cake & ice cream w/ friends instead of the big-30-rooftop-combined-burning-man-grilling party i had last year. :)

* speaking of which, i just realized i only decided to go to burning man two days ago last year, and the day after i met david z (hi!).