10 March 2008

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.

09 March 2008

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

05 March 2008

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.)

03 March 2008

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?

02 March 2008

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!)