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Monday, May 25, 2009

 
10:14 PM: picking up where i left off [#] [2]

* activities: for memorial day i took my annual trip to ground kontrol to revel in my manitou springs arcade nostalgia. sven & i played a lot of joust, michaelmas played dr. who pinball, and sven, m5000 & i played gauntlet. i've been strangely into games lately: i also played some braid (interesting game mechanics) & meeblings (like lemmings). the only thing missing is air hockey. the big news is that i attended the national abortion federation conference earlier this month and had a really great time. i skipped stumptown this year, though, and we've attended our last white bird dance. but bridget hosted a pottery painting party for her birthday where i created address number tiles for the studio and walked around lake oswego for a bit. because my index finger burns due to trackpad use, i've been trying to use a mouse or other device. my wireless mouse is a pain because if it loses connection, you have to fiddle with the bluetooth preferences panel to get it to be recognized again. also, i don't have a very good place to mouse. but i keep struggling with it because a burning index finger is worse. i was excited to send 365 starry nights to one of my favorites authors, chet raymo, to sign. last but certainly not least, at jalex's baby naming ceremony we discovered her son's name is abraham charles meyer. hooray!

* jobs: opsfest has finally worked itself out. it looks like i won't be performing until august 16, but don't let that stop you from attending a performance near you! i would have liked to have been more involved, but apparently there is a surfeit of women interested in shakespeare who have the summer free. go figure. ohsu continues to be a lot of fun: i played a mother of a child suspected of lead poisoning and i had to give feedback to two doctors by myself (usually a faculty does it). i was just involved as an extra on the TNT tv series "leverage," which was a lot of fun, and strangely exhausting. i also got paid to be involved with a seafood taste & packaging test at the food innovation center. i was delighted to schedule a private gocco lesson at the studio; it would be nice to do more of that; i really miss teaching gocco. backline is sometimes quiet, sometimes busy. but i got two calls i had been dreading (a male & a parent) and they both went exceptionally well! the funding calls are actually hard for me, though. i took sven to the backline mother's day fundraising brunch, which was tasty & pleasant. but i haven't managed to be both a patient advocate and a talkline advocate at the same time yet: i usually do one backline shift a week and that takes most of my emotional support energy in that arena.

* garden: after growing several sweet seedlings, i lost almost all of them when i optimistically planted them in april before a cold week. meh! so i reset my garden with portland nursery starts and they're doing pretty well so far. sven created a pretty amazing watering network for the garden boxes. we've found three grasshopper pupas so far though we haven't seen them hatch. but we have seen clusters of baby spiders hatching, which are cute because they're so tiny (when they get bigger i won't find them as cute, even though mph says they're beneficial orbweavers). the empty house across the street that's been for sale for months has these giant rosebushes that are getting all floppy and wild, leaning out into their driveway and the clawing their way onto the sidewalk. so for the good of the roses and the safety of the neighborhood, i run over there at midnight and trim the rosebushes, filling jars with these huge yellow blooms. now that the weather is warm enough, we leave the back door open and the cat speaks to the birds outside, plotting her escape. after garden labours, i spent a perfect afternoon out on the porch w/ homemade lemonade reading a book. heaven!

* hooping: my progress continues, slowly but steadily. i learned some double hoop tricks, some fancy foot recovery and understand float up/down better. i'm better at knee hooping than most, but none of us can get it back onto our hips. surprisingly, clothing makes a difference while hooping: if the fabric is too slick the hoop is much harder to control. it turns out that skin works best to keep the hoop up, so hooping fashions that expose midriff, chest and thighs are more practical than they first appear. i'm still too self-conscious for that, but for class we often tuck pant legs and shirts up to expose more skin area.

* biking: biking season really starts for me with the "pretty dress bike ride," where everyone wears a pretty dress (even the boys). we stopped by sock dreams, the alice & wonderland mural, the organic gardens going up at city hall and ended up in the park across from city hall with the rocks that look like dinosaur bones. but in my neck of the woods, the springwater corridor has been a little shaky lately: there have been 2 reported sightings of tacks strewn across the path, it doesn't look like the johnson creek bridge is ever going to be reopened, and the sheep bench & the compass rose bench both have their outmost slats broken. so i've been heading west: fred meyer's on johnson creek involves a short sprint at the end without a bike lane on 82nd. i could go to the freddy's that's closer to me, but that would involve coming up the 136th hill, which is still intimidating, and this way i get to visit pdxmph on the way home. once after a bike ride i discovered 3 little girls and a boy selling flowers like a lemonade stand. they were so cute and the tulips so beautiful i bought one, and even though i gave them exact change they insisted on giving me 16 cents in change as part of the transaction. :) i still love rose, and everyone loves rose, too: even boys go out of their way to mention her. but after visiting the new ebike store, i took rose in to have a conversion kit added! i don't have her back yet, but i'm really looking forward to it. :)

[pretty dress bike ride. wish i hadn't worn pants.]

* movies: the day the earth stood still remake, signs, philip glass documentary, sound of thunder, the new star trek, benjamin button. none of these are particularly noteworthy.

* food: sven & i alternate taking each other to a new edible place each month. sven chose flavorspot, which created delicious waffle sandwiches. don't roll your eyes till you've tried one. i attempted to go to the vegan portobello trattoria, but was rebuffed by a sign that said they had too many reservations for the holiday weekend -- even though there was nobody there and no waiting list. so we went to nedd ludd instead, where i had a pretty phenomenal trout. we celebrated the housiversary w/ flying pie pizza in gresham, the first time we've been to that location. i was excited to learn about a fried pie foodcart at the hathorne lot, but the fruit pies aren't all that great, actually. and the last time sven & i got burritos at ole ole their chile rellenos were filled with nacho cheese rather than cheddar: blech! but the thing that blew my mind was that i learned how to make my own butter! it's fantastic, incredibly easy, and goes great with that nytimes homemade artisan bread. speaking of which, i was inspired by that nytime bread recipe to try a chocolate chip cookie recipe where the dough rests for 24-72 hours, but it turns out they weren't really worth the effort. but then i tried a vegan feta cheese recipe which is surprisingly good.

* my photo system is well & truly broken. i still take pictures, but iphoto is so slow that i resist loading & labeling them. now it's may and i'm still sorting through xmas 2008. i suppose that would be an argument for a new laptop...