happy holidays

there's much to catch up on.

a nearly waste free thanksgiving - we had 14 people for thanksgiving dinner, and requested that people bring their own plastic containers to take home leftovers. we had a few leftovers ourselves, but the best part was that we filled *maybe* 1/4 of a brown shopping bag with garbage. i was SO pleased! stay green, oregon!

new job - i started my new job in wood science and engineering. i spent the first several days finding obscure glassware and other lab supplies in a huge lab with mislabeled drawers, and the next several days grinding up wood samples with a dremel tool. first lesson learned: it's a good idea to wear dust colored clothing when you're going to be doing a dusty job.

first snow - it snowed for real here over this past weekend. and it's snowing again at this very moment. snow is so pretty. i love it. but the city i live in has no clue how to handle it. so they did nothing. result: very icy roads the past few days!

holidays - well i have my holiday letter written, but not edited for grammar or space for a photo. and now it will have to wait till i get back to CT to see my family, though they have a super speedy printer and maybe i can even do a color photo! we'll see. in the meanwhile i'm working on labels and such.

party party party! - i've learned you just can't party enough, especially around the holidays when all your friends are heading out to be with their families. last week i think i went to parties 6 nights in a row! saw miracle on 34th street which a very sweet play, and have been hanging with friends and taking it easy...

another first - where i'm usually known for being the drink lady at the soup kitchen, this week they needed help on the front line. so i became a salad server! it was crazy! actually it was not that difficult. i was able to still help out the kid working the drink table, and serve up salad fast enough that no one went without. we ended up with tons of leftover hot dogs and spanish rice. most people couldn't make it because of the weather.

that's about it for now, a very brief update. happy holidays! stay warm people!

another first

another weekend is behind me. i actually had a pretty good one.

went salsa dancing on friday night which, with a little music and a little help, i was able to get right back into. i haven't danced salsa regularly since the summer of 2000. i think i might actually go again this friday night. why not?

saturday was a challenging day, for personal reasons. but by saturday night i was dancing my feet off, and felt a whole lot better.

and then sunday, why, kirsten was having a pre-birthday taffy pull! i had never made taffy before, so it was an interesting process. learning about the boiling sugar getting past the "hard ball" stage but not quite to the "soft crack" stage...buttering plates, grating chocolate and cardamom, dripping in some vanilla...and after some stirring and cooling and buttering of hands, we all grabbed our taffy and started pulling. it's almost the opposite of kneading bread. but we pulled it, let it fall in a pile, picked it up, pulled it apart, let it fall back on the plate...repeat repeat until it gets cool enough to sort of stick together...then we rolled it out and cut it into pieces and let it cool further. meanwhile i had to taste some to make sure it came out OK.

i made chocolate-vanilla-cardamom first, and vanilla-peppermint later, which i colored purple. why not? other batches included:

peppermint
chocolate-cardamom-hazelnut
chocolate-hazelnut
chocolate-coconut

and much wax paper ripping and wrapping and twisting later, we had a pile of delicious taffy to split up and enjoy!

yet another first for me is rereading the harry potter series. what? reread? i barely have time to read. but, this series did grab me, and as such, i started rereading. book one, which i think took me several weeks to read last time? this time, 2 days. emilie was right, it does go faster the second time. maybe because i skip words or know what's going on or recall the movie while i'm reading. we'll see what happens as i progress through the books.

it's a sunny day. i am feeling my spirits lift already. though i'm still tired.

cheers.

the one that didn't get away

this weekend, michael came home with the hind leg of an elk his hunting buddy got last week. so this past monday, we spent the afternoon / evening, cutting up the leg into steaks and such. we ended up with a bowl of not-quite usable pieces, and so last night we made elk burger. this is the first time i've ever dealt with an animal quite in this way, and while i thought i might be grossed out by it, i wasn't. so now i know where my food comes from. at least, this food, and all the food we got out of the garden this year. while we were making the burger last night at gathering together farm, i thought i might like to work there next year. maybe it's in the cards. could i work there part time?

i have been somewhat busy with working and not working for the past several months, and have just not taken the time to blog about any of it. but maybe i can change that. still have the slow connection that doesn't really make for uploading photos, but i could write more and keep the 2 people who may or may not read this up to date on my life.

this blog thing is hard, too, because i want to be honest and yet, i don't want to be too open about my life. certain things just need to stay off the universal internet. why? so feelings don't get hurt. but then i'm only presenting one side of myself and then people don't know the true me. but then maybe they don't need to.

*shrug* just another day, i guess...

hope to post more soon!

where does the time go?

it has been ENTIRELY too long since i last wrote on here. this must end. but not right now.

since march a lot of things have happened.

i went to the dentist.
i got a new job
i went to CT and my grandma died
i went back to the job
i took a cross country road trip with kirsten! (map coming soon hopefully!)
i resumed the job again.
i interviewed for another job...and got it! starting end of july.

till then i am working like crazy.

our kitchen is finished, now we need to put stuff back in it. a long process.

the garden is in! things are looking good. we have 23 pepper plants! and 2 tomatillos! and 5 tomatoes! and a bunch of other stuff!

i got a new gas grill! i am SO pumped about it. i could grill every night. it's SO GREAT. really great. awesome even. YAY!!!

that's all i can think of for right now. hope to put up some pictures and more detailed entries about things soon...maybe...if i get to it... :)

BACKPOSTING

HEY ALL YOU BLOG READERS OUT THERE.

I GOT A LITTLE BEHIND, BUT I POSTED SOME BLOGS THIS EVENING.

THEY ARE DATED FROM THE BEGINNING OF FEBRUARY.

PLEASE GO BACK AND READ THEM IF YOU'RE AT ALL INTERESTED IN WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING THESE PAST FEW MONTHS!!

AND FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT!

peace, love, and turtles...

the kitchen where soup is made and served

it’s a funny place sometimes.

i go there on wednesdays.

my main job there is to prepare the drinks and then serve them. it sounds easy but it can get tense when i run out of things like milk or coffee or a certain kind of juice. people can be a little cranky sometimes, and you’d be surprised how many people have certain things they can’t / won’t drink.

i have been going for almost a year now. i see many of the same people every week. and some only come once and are gone.

there are regulars. i know them by what they like to drink.

1. the "coffee in a cup" lady
2. the guy who only drinks water
3. the guy who takes multiple trips through the line and only drinks water
4. the guy who drinks milk with his meal, and coffee afterwards
5. the guy who thinks i look like ellen degeneres, who drinks milk
6. there used to be this one lady who always wanted 4 milks
7. the couple who always get apple juice for the lady, milk for the guy
8. the guy who always says "i'll take milk if you have it" (we always have it)
9. the guy who can't drink anything made with city water except coffee
10. the guy who always asks if we have orange juice
11. the guy i refer to as "the milk man" because he always says "leche"
12. there are 2 guys who look very different who always drink coffee with 1 cream, 2 sugars
13. the guy who wears the carhartt coveralls who either drinks coffee exclusively (and lots of it) or occasionally tea

some people only drink coffee and lots of it. some people only drink juice. some people can't have citrus. it's very amusing sometimes.

of late, there's been some controversy about how old i am. i have white hair, in streaks on top of my head. and there's one guy who asked me 2 weeks ago if i was 60. then last week, he wasn't sure if i was over 40 or under 40. but he started calling me old timer.

the guy in the carhartts always makes some comment about my tie dye shirts. i wear them to cheer up the place, it could use a little color. anyway one time he asked me if i was a hippy and i didn't know how to answer. i said no, but then i thought maybe yes, and he said we needed more hippies around. then last week he asked me if i drove a volkswagon micro bus. i said no. he said i should get one and paint peace signs on the side of it.

anyway, wednesday is a day i always look forward to. the kitchen always smells so good when we get there, and i get a ride from margrete, my diagonally across the street neighbor. the dynamic in the kitchen is interesting because everyone is older than me. that is not what makes it interesting, but everyone has such dynamic personalities. there's margrete, who is german. then there's pat, who is always making jokes about me dancing or playing rugby or running out of milk. pat is the dishwasher and is quick witted. marilyn is just very nice and is generally smiling and in a good mood. tom scrapes the dishes, and always smiles when i bring him something to wash. and there's vicki and marge who work very hard, and bob and his wife who do most of the cooking along with dorothy.

together we're a great team!

the kitchen remodel project

well we decided it was time to do something different with the kitchen. it started off as just a plan - to reface the cabinets and get new doors and drawers made.

on friday we decided to re-do the whole entire thing. there was unscrewing and sawing and drilling and all sorts of things, and the next thing you know, the berlin wall came down (literally) and we had an open kitchen leading to the living room. on saturday we rebuilt the wall. on sunday we screwed down the drywall. today there was mudding and taping, and tomorrow will be sanding.

in order to prepare for this kitchen project, many things had to be accomplished. before anything could actually happen, we had to clean the kitchen out. but before that, we had to take the cabinet doors off. which turned out to be harder than just unscrewing the hinges because the hinges were so painted over that we couldn’t get to the screws. so michael cut new slots in every screw in the entire kitchen, and i unscrewed the hinges and removed the doors.

the following week included a lot of emptying cabinets and shelves, sorting things into categories, and boxing up all the things we keep in the kitchen. you wouldn’t believe it, but almost all the boxes i used to move my stuff from CA to here were used in boxing up this kitchen. i guess that means there was a lot of stuff. we were able to come to an agreement on a few things that we just don’t need anymore. so now everything is in one of 2 rooms, in one of many, many boxes. and the drawers are laid out on a spare bed so we can still get to them when we need to.

what i didn’t like, was on the day of the removal of everything, the 2 guys (dan and michael) that were doing the work were making comments about me not helping out. um, excuse me, but where were you both the whole previous week when the cabinets needed to be emptied and packed up? where were you when the strategizing about where things needed to go to be accessible was happening? where were you when the actual boxing of things was happening? not only was i annoyed at their ignorance, i was plain angry that they considered me to be a non-helper. because anyone who knows me, knows i'm everyone's #1 helper. i just didn't want to be in the way of all the ripping and shredding and downright testosterone that was happening in such a small space.

an unusual assortment

friends

one thing i really really enjoy about living here and not being involved with the university, but rather with the dance community, is the friends i've made in just the past year.

they're great. i love spending time with them on a very regular basis. at least 1-2 times a week, sometimes more, we get together and have dinner. sometimes we have dinner and a movie. sometimes we just eat and talk. sometimes there's only 2 of us, sometimes there's 10. sometimes we go running. sometimes we set out to run and just walk and talk. and on the weekends, we generally contra dance together. and if we are dancing out of town, we carpool together. it's a special thing i've never really had anywhere else. i cherish them very, very much.

---

physical me

i am thinking about getting active again but am not sure what i should do. i know the best way for me to do so is to get involved with a team. but what? on the weekends i dance. during the week i have been keeping track of my steps per day. even going for a walk helps me feel better sometimes.

---

mental challenges

i have been getting back into doing sudokus, jumbles, and crossword puzzles again. i like the patterns and i like the way it feels to have my mind working. maybe that means i’m ready for a job.

---

visual/audio entertainment

on movie nights with friends, we've recently watched:
- hillary and tenzing - climbing to the roof of the world
- lord of the rings - the two towers (this dvd kept skipping around, it was very challenging to get through, not knowing if we'd see the next scene in order or from 1/2 hour ago)
- a mighty wind (turns out, i LOVE this soundtrack. i must have it. the songs have been stuck in my head for days.)

i have been doing some reading:
- reading – three cups of tea by mortensen and relin
- listening – on the road by jack kerouac

turns out, listening to a book on cd is hard for me to do while trying to do housework. i keep moving from room to room and feel like i’m missing something every time i leave and so i have to rewind. it’s much more ideal for me to listen while on a long distance drive.

spring is coming

spring weather in the willamette valley of oregon means warm days and cool, usually clear nights.

it’s just march and the crocus and daffodils are blooming, and the daphnes are just about to be on. i'm imagining in california the buckeye's have already leafed out.

we’ve been doing a bit of yard work, including mowing the lawn, hoeing the massive amounts of weeds in the garden, reclaiming the garden from the lawn that keeps trying to take over, and pruning the plum, pear, and apple trees, and kiwi and grape vines.

the lunar eclipse happened on a wednesday a couple weeks ago, which is the exact day my friends and i usually go running. instead, we went on a walk and enjoyed the early evening light, and by the time the sun went down we could see the moon eclipsing, and the sky was clear. we drove to a better viewing spot together, and managed to see the earth move in between the sun and moon. it was a pretty neat thing to see, and it was nice that it was at an hour that wasn’t unreasonable like the last one, which happened between 130-5am. plus, it's much more fun to share those sorts of experiences with other people, vs sleeping in a cot on the porch, alone aside from the cat sleeping on my feet. which, was good in its own way. (to see pictures from last summer's eclipse, reference back to my august 2007 blog archives. i didn't take any photos this time.)

to do-s galore

i’m always making to do lists.

they aren’t always in one place.

so then i have these to do notes to myself all over the house.

sometimes they're lost. sometimes they're found.

and sometimes things get checked off, and sometimes they don’t.

what happens to things that never get done? were they that un-urgent?

do other people have this problem?

a celebratory weekend

leap day was my radio birthday, and march 1st was michael’s birthday.

we started the weekend off right by having lunch with one of michaels friends at osu. and then we invited all our friends to go get pizza with us at our favorite pizza place. and then people came over for ice cream, and they stayed till midnight so we could sing happy birthday.

and then saturday we had a contra dance, and then had a big group sleepover with our friends. our friend em has a house with a bunch of beds, so we dragged all the mattresses down to the living room, and lined them up so we could all sleep together in one big line of beds. we ate popcorn and talked, had a fire in the fireplace and roasted marshmallows for s’mores. and we all fell asleep approximately 10 seconds after we all laid down.

and then sunday we woke up and had special breakfast, then we came home and did garden work all day, then michael, his daughter and i went to the depot for a delicious fish dinner.

what a weekend!
(no wonder we had post-party let down the next day!)

happy radio birthday to me

this only happens once every 4 years, but i’m happy to say that this is the third (or 12th) anniversary of me getting my dj license at wrho 89.7fm, “the voice of hartwick college” in oneonta ny.

it was the birth of bert, sister kristen, the nameless one, the captain...

it was the beginning of bert and the brown shoes, brother joe and sister kristen, the nonexistent truth...as well as football, soccer, field hockey, and even a lacrosse game...

and so many hours on air, for regular 3 hour weekly shows, subbing in for other people, 18 hour shows - alone and with others, the 48 hour show, the daylight savings marathon, the "welcome freshmen" shows, the spring weekend nights on frisbee field...

it was the freshman takeover, with my fellow djs - joe, dawn, brian, missy...

it was meeting new people, and making friends i wouldn't have made elsewhere - martin, brad, mathew, jorge, eric f, jj, shaun, jim, eric d, amy, kevin

it was making sure everyone in the organization felt welcome, including the non-students - wolfman, charlie the k, jerry k, irwin, mike w, mike s, uncle bill, the other guy who was on fridays before uncle bill took his place...

it was countless hours of hanging around in the station during other people's shows, or even when no one else was on the air.

it was listening to music that had just been released, and only to the college audience...and some of it was amazing and some of it was so, so awful...

i have so many fond memories! i loved WRHO. and will forever.

face vs. house

in this situation, the house always wins.

i was putting firewood into the woodbox by the backdoor. we have 2 steps from the landing where the door is to the ground level, where the wheelbarrow is. so i have one foot on the 1st step and one foot on the ground. lean to the wheelbarrow, grab some logs, pivot and put them in the box, pivot back. repeat. until i get sloppy and forget my spatial reality, and WHAM-O, i smash my face into the corner of the house. i yell. i spit. i rub my head. i go inside. my tooth feels rough.

i chipped my tooth putting wood in the wood box. and spit out the piece.

luckily it wasn’t visible, and i went to the dentist a few days later and everything looks fine.

but just in case anyone was wondering, i wouldn't recommend going head to head with the corner of the house. it just doesn't feel that good.

dance dance dance the night away

this weekend was the corvallis contra dance camp. michael and i were able to pull ourselves together, though it was looking a little questionable for m at the beginning because he’d been sick for the past 2 weeks after dancing fool.

we danced friday night, saturday morning, saturday afternoon, saturday evening, sunday morning, sunday afternoon, and sunday evening.

michael says we danced 23 hours overall, including not just contra dance, but waltzing, and learning salsa rueda. and it ended up that there weren't enough men during the rueda lessons, so i ended up having to dance lead for most of it. hopefully i will remember how to follow one day when i actually dance it at a club.

there were many fun dancers at this camp as well. several new faces, some young people - children, who were having a GREAT time, and who really knew what they were doing - as well as many familiar fun faces.

the bands - THE GREAT BEAR TRIO and THE KITCHEN BAND were just amazing. they knew just when to really make things move and we were all rocking away for hours on end, sweating through the gatorade like we were on one of their commercials.

this camp reiterated the fact that i really need new dance shoes.

being that it was an in-town camp, we also hosted to guests at our house. it would seem they had an enjoyable stay.

recipe reader

i don’t like reading much.
well i guess it isn’t that i don’t like to do it, i just don’t make time to do it.

i’m not that creative of a chef either. i mean, i can make the basic stuff really well, but i don’t have a real creative streak when it comes to cooking.

but, in the last few months, i’ve realized that i like looking up recipes and printing them off, or looking in cookbooks and finding recipes that sound interesting. and i really enjoy reading the recipes.

making the dishes, well that’s a different story.

the things i’ve made seem to have turned out well, and people usually say “yum!” or at least they don’t say “yuck!” and spit it out. or else my friends are just super polite and would eat it even if it tasted like sawdust.

however, when it comes to the motivation to make something new, going shopping is not high on my priority list of “fun” things to do. plus, i’m always very worried that things aren’t going to end up tasting good anyway. this is probably an unrealistic worry, as i mentioned in the previous paragraph – no one has not eaten what i’ve made.

i might also have a tendency towards making things that i am fairly confident will be delicious. especially if they’re dips or sauces. these are my favorite things to make:

- basil pesto
- tomatillo salsa
- any dip that uses cream cheese or sour cream, most recently spicy crab dip

i'm not intending this to be a recipe sharing forum or anything, but if anyone has any meal or sauce / dip ideas they've tried successfully, i'd be open to hearing about it.

in the meanwhile, i think i'll go open betty crocker and see what i can find for dinner tomorrow. or maybe we'll just order pizza. :)

a dancing fool

life state = washington!

well i can check another state of the list of states i’ve never been to. on feb 1 we went up to seattle washington for a contra dance camp called “dancing fool”. apparently a frank zappa song.

anyway, we hit tons of traffic going up there, which was almost unbearable. and there was no side road to get onto, so we just had to sit in it: one sort of minor accident and one pretty major, multiple car accident that smashed the barrier into our side of the highway.

the dance itself was brilliant. we danced for 18 hours over the course of a friday night, saturday day, and sunday morning. needless to say, i trashed my dance shoes and my feet, my energy and my smile, but it was worth it on so many levels. there were hundreds of good, fun, daring, risky, high energy, playful dancers to meet and dance with, and i would definitely go again in a heartbeat. as long as i get new shoes.

and then we returned to corvallis where we both promptly got sick. michael got the flu, i got some variant. oh goodie.

and so it goes...

well it's a gray, cold january here in oregon and for me, it's been a series of highs and lows, both physical and emotional. after a great new years contra dancing party in west hartford, which is maybe the best way to start off the year, michael and i hit a couple more contra dances in greenfield mass before returning to our cold, western state.

the weather, for me, has never played much of a role in my mood, aside from the fact that i don't think of going outside to play if it's pouring rain, or even just raining a bit. this year, however, has proved to be slightly different. perhaps it's that i'm paying more attention to my mood, and someone i know who lives in portland oregon has kept mood journals over the years and notices a definite down-trend during the cold, dreary, wet, winter months. i've never done that, thinking that i would be bias towards myself, making myself think i was feeling gray even if i wasn't. but this year, i have had a series of days where i've asked myself if i'm feeling depressed. am i sad? am i feeling low because of events that have happened or just because there's no sunlight? hard to say, but sitting around thinking about it sometimes makes it worse. attitude is everything, they say, and i'm not going to let myself get down just because it's easy.

in sadder news, rachel's cat midnight died on monday. it was an extremely hard day for all of us, emotionally, because she showed up sunday night and the cat was having a hard time walking and not eating and hardly drinking anything. we knew the end was near, we just didn't know how long she had. and then rachel went to class on monday and on her drive back from portland, the cat coughed and seized a little bit, and then just stopped breathing. it was sad in that the cat had been with rachel since childhood, and was her home companion and friend. i felt sad not just because of the loss of life and a loved one, but because i realized what she represented to rachel - a piece of her life, gone forever. there was a lot of crying, periods of calm, followed by more sad thoughts and more crying. i had a headache after that for hours. we buried midnight under the light of the nearly-full moon, at almost midnight...and may she rest in peace in our hearts and minds as well.

in happier news, then, my friend shelley from san francisco came to visit on tuesday! she was en route to hawaii via seattle, but was in portland on a stopover and stayed for the night. we had a great time chatting, snacking, laughing, and generally talking a lot. during the day she was here, there was napping, sitting by the fire, drinking tea, going for a walk downtown, shopping at the co-op, and dinner with my friend emilie. the next day i drove shelley back to the airport, and we spent some time reading the comics and looking at the security line before she decided to head through. she got security scanned for making last minute arrangements, and apparently her sandal set off one of the security detectors. as far as i know right now she is in hawaii and in a happy place. she was just what i needed after monday's events.

however all that driving put me in a weird place, physically and mentally. i enjoyed it because i was able to listen to some of my old radio shows on tape, and laughed about how silly i was then, and how much fun it was to be on the radio. memories came flowing back and i was in a good frame of mind. when i got home, i realized the house was empty with michael gone to las vegas, so i called kirsten and paul who came over for dinner, guitar playing, looking at pictures, and snuggling with the kitties. when they left around 9, i thought it seemed early to be tired, but then i proceeded to fall fast asleep on the couch. vivid dreams of college homecomings and contra dancing and later on i was in possession of some special magical device that could protect my friends and i from hail the size of golfballs that also had razor blades on it. i just had to focus real hard on what i wanted to happen and it would. meanwhile there were bad guys abounding trying to hurt me for one reason or another, and there was just a lot going on so i was glad when the phone rang and i woke up.

a contra dance friend, dan, called today. he wanted to come and check our kitchen, which he is going to redo for us, to check on the location of the window and some cabinet and drawer specs. he had been to portland last night, at which time he had visited a museum with an exhibit about contra dancing. he picked up one of the promo cards and brought it back, and he showed it to me...and it was ME on the card! taken last january in new hampshire, i knew that there was someone taking pictures, and i knew that he was somewhat of an artist, this photographer. he had exhibits around the walls of the hall where we danced. anyway, i was shocked to see myself on the front of this card, promoting his gallery. while it is a cool photo - i'm in the ray of sunlight shooting through the one open window - i'm not making a very attractive face, and it appears i have a serious double chin going on. i shouldn't complain, i'm practically a star!

http://www.dougplummer.com/#/dance/At%20The%20Dance/7/

it's cold in the house. think i'll go sit by the fire. then it's on to big project, getting "my room" cleaned out a little and set up in a way that would make me feel like spending more time in there.

hope all is well for you all in blog world.