cornfields and harry potter

another odd dream:

i was on vacation with my family, and we were renting some house at the beach. i woke up in the middle of the night and i was really hungry, so i got up to get a snack. i went outside and walked down the road to a bunch of huge cornfields, of course, and started eating field corn off the stalks. i heard someone coming through the field, and i got really scared so i crouched down to hide... and it was one of my sister's high school friends - amber beathard! it turns out i had wandered onto their farm. she sat there while i ate corn, then we started to see headlights in the field. then a car drove through the field RIGHT beside us! the engine was completely quiet, so it was a miracle it didn't run us over. a bunch of people were drive around the fields searching for me. so i dodged them and got out of the field. then i remembered that i had stashed my quidditch broom in the beathard's barn, so i hightailed it over there and found it. then flew back to the beach house. and i think i might have actually been harry potter at some point in the dream.

wackadoo dreams

okay, i dream a lot. and usually my dreams are a little strange. so since a) i have been neglecting this blog and need content, and 2) i can't think of anything to say... i think i'll just list a few of my recent dreams. i'd like to remember them in the future. i might just make this a regular feature.

last week - friday night, maybe? i dreamt that i was neda ulaby (whose voice, let it be documented here, drives me up a wall), or maybe i wasn't her but i could see through her eyeballs as if i was her. in any case, her father was a terrorist, and she killed him as he slept - by dropping BBs into his ear, one by one, until his ear canal collapsed and the BBs flooded his brain.

there were some screwy dreams the other night, but i JUST NOW forgot them as i tried to type.

last night i dreamt that i busted scott for taking peni$ enlargement pills that he bought on the internet. the way i found out was that i saw a text message on his phone that he sent to someone, saying "the pills work! just waiting for the last couple of inches!" ??

i think i like this new feature. you? feel free to share in the comments.

austin, TX, here i come!

i'm heading to austin next week, for the annual meeting of the society of american archivists. i am jazzed because i've always heard such great things about austin... but not so jazzed because it is supposed to be several ticks above ONE HUNDRED DEGREES all next week.

just kill me now.

it was hot enough when it was in DC a few years back. but this. this.... i just can't imagine slogging around in that.

i've also been advised to bring my bathing suit because there is a pool at the hotel, and because of the always-62-degree water at barton springs. but what about running into my boss whilst wearing a bathing suit? what about averting my eyes from speedo-sporting colleagues? that makes my stomach hurt, just thinking about it. archivists, including me, are not generally known for their ripped and trim physiques.

in other news, the garden is thriving! photographic evidence here. and my parents were here for a nice visit last weekend - we hit the mid-city dog days of summer sidewalk sale (we stumbled upon it by accident last summer and made a point to go again this year) and the national aboretum, out on new york ave/US50. i got an early-early birthday present! a chiminea! i can't WAIT to have cozy fires in the backyard this fall. and winter. and next spring! and always.

due to my travel craziness, i've had to cancel my appearance at the MPHS class of '94 reunion this weekend. i was actually looking forward to it, but alas. not this time. i'll have to hook up with my homies when i am home in october instead....

and that's all i've got. now i'm off to wish it wasn't too late to mail-order a full-body victorian swim dress in time for next week...

hot or not

we've been awfully spoiled this summer. well, at least all of us in the DC area. we've hardly had any re-e-e-e-a-lly hot days at all. at all! as in, i can't even remember the last time it was in the 90s. and i sincerely doubt we've broken 100. for the most part, we've drifted around in the upper 70s and lower 80s. lows in the 60s at night. it was even TOO CHILLY to go swimming the other day. in july!

which sounds nice.

sounds awful nice.

sounds like a cool lake in canada, without the black flies in your nose.

but instead, it has made me a HUGE WIMP. i just went on a walk outside with a co-worker. not long, maybe 20 minutes tops. and i have sweat through my shirt, my ass is damp and my hair is dripping sweat into my eyes. it's only 88 out there, people! i should be ashamed of myself.

fun weekend, and other stuff to report

i had a pretty fun weekend, how about you?

Friday was spent by myself at home - which might sound boring, unless you are a homebody like me who likes some extended periods of alone time. sometime during the course of the evening, i also snacked on some pine nuts left over from making pesto, and had some of that pesto for dinner. somewhere in that mix lurked a rancid nut that had been sitting around too long - because i now have pine mouth! i had just bought the nuts from the bulk section of Yes! organic market, only days prior. i should have known better, because as much as i like Yes! - you really have to watch them on expired food and the bulk bins can often be kind of dodgy (i found what appeared to be rodent turds in the bulk popcorn bin once, and all their chicken was DAYS past due and still in the meat case, and their beets often sit in the produce section until they turn to liquid blobs. and god knows there aren't enough pine-nut-eaters in brookland to make sure the bulk bin has a good rate of turnover. i'm sure those nuts had bin in that bin for months... but i digress. i have PINE MOUTH, dammit! it was the worst on saturday. everything tasted like gasoline/crushed aspirin/bug spray - especially coffee or anything bready, and my mouth would occasionally suffer a pine-nut aftertaste at random times. sunday was still bad, but getting better. today is much better, but still not all gone. lessons learned - if pine nuts are cheap, it's probably for a good reason; only buy pine nuts from italy, as the ones from other countries (especially china, for some reason) sometimes contain cheaper quality, they are more lax about refrigerating in the warehouses, and are riskier for pine mouth. great. that is, unless you like teh taste of gasoline or sharpie markers - then by all means, go to the brookland Yes! and gorge yourself.

Saturday, we went to Bengie's Drive In, up near Baltimore - which boasts the largest screen in the U.S! As usual, it was a fun time. but insanely late, so i didn't shamble into bed until after 3:30 am. AM! that is basically unforgiveable. before the show, we went to toys-r-us and i got the re-released Mastermind game. which SUXX for many reasons that i won't go into, and i will now be stalking old versions on ebay.

Therefore, i slept late on Sunday before heading over to Courtney's to paint trim in her bedroom.... which killed my back, and i knew it was killing my back even as i did it... but i am obsessive when it comes to trim work and couldn't stop myself. sick, i know. but then i went swimming! in a pool! for the first time this summer! and it was so so good. i wish i could have a pool in my yard. but alas, that would be a terrible idea. too small, and would be filled with urine and syringes and dead squirrels within the hour of installation. *sigh*

i have a busy several weeks approaching. i hate busy.

makes me wanna hoop

So I made a hula hoop.

For myself.

Scott asked me what in the heck I was going to do with the PVC tubing I bought from the home despot – when I said I was going to make myself a hula hoop, he laughed. I told him I was serious, and he laughed some more. So I said, “no really, I’m making a hula hoop.” And then he chuckled merrily and shook his head.

He came home from work yesterday and there was a hula hoop in the living room. He said, “oh! So you were serious about that hula hoop thing!” and he wonders why I say he doesn’t listen to me...

I hooped my ass off yesterday afternoon (well, not really, I’m more aiming to hoop my gut off) while I was home early from work. I hooped through Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and part of an episode of Clean House. Which, looking back, might have been too much for my first time of hooping since elementary school. My back was k-i-l-l-i-n-g me last night and I have little bruises all over my waist. But it was worth it! It is supposed to be a good workout for gut and lower back. Lord knows my flabby gut and weak back could use some work. and it's really pretty fun.

You can buy exercise hoops online for $20-$30+tax+shipping, but I got the supplies at the store for less than $10. And that is good enough for me. it was put together and ready to go in under 10 minutes flat.

The first couple of tries at the hoop resulted in the hoop crashing dramatically and immediately to the floor. I knocked a candle off of the coffee table a few times. Scared the hell out of the cats more than once. The first, oh, say, 300 times it fell to the floor it smashed into the pointy part of my ankle bone on the way down. God, you know how that hurts. I said curses (motherFUCKERohgoddamnSHITballspleasegodhelpmeohfuck) so loud and convincingly that i’m certain my pleas were heard at the gates of heaven. i was afraid to look, because it hurt so sharply that i thought the skin over the pointy bone had been cleaved open and that my ankle guts would be exposed. And just like when you bite your lip once, and proceed to chomp down on the same place over and over and over…. Well, it’s the same with pointy ankle bones, apparently. I smashed the bejeezums out of my ankles, then with tears in my eyes I tied dishtowels around my ankles like bulky, super-short leg warmers resumed hoopin’ the night away.

to make a hula hoop of your very own, all you need is some PVC tubing (not the pipes - it has to be flexible enough to bend into a stiff circle), a connector (from the same aisle at lowes depot), and some jazzy colored electrical tape to cover it. and that's it! i think there are calculations for how big around your hoop should be, based on your height. but i wasn't that technical. the tubing came precut in lengths of 10 feet, so that's what i got. i am just under 5'8" and the finished hoop comes just to my belly button when i stand it in front of me. that seems about right to me. go make one. you won't regret it.

Spring!

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

[Today, Billy Collins]

Wow, so spring is here. Finally. (i've been away for quite some time, but we won't talk about that. let's just pretend otherwise for now.) here in DC, the weather has been skipping back and forth between spring and crap for a while now - mostly springy, though. daffodils have come and are almost gone, packing their little hatboxes and heading up north where spring is still sleeping. forsythia was a flash in the pan and the flame is gone. cherry blossoms have peaked and their confetti is sprinkling all down the river. next up will be azaelas and lilacs and other bloomy sisters. i was in ohio last weekend and spring was just arriving there. it was nice! i got to see spring twice.

wedding stuff is chugging right along. right now the pace is pleasant, if not a little skippy. soon it will be a freight train, bordering on derailment, so i'd better enjoy the semi-relaxation while i've got it.

this would be a good time to make a list of things i still need to do. but i'm afraid i would throw up once i saw it all written down. so let's think of other things!

like the vegetarian meatloaf i made the other day! it was DANG good. i didn't do the vegan route - i used the egg that the original recipe called for. and i didn't have hazelnuts so i used a mix of walnuts and cashews. also i used less nuts and more lentils, because the thought of 2 cups of nuts scared me badly. and i slathered it with ketchup for the last 15 minutes of baking. it was so. good. i just had leftovers for lunch. my only thought was that it was a little crumbly - i might add a second egg next time. and i might add a little minced green pepper, since i like that in my regular meatloaf. try it! i'm serious. it is very delicious. i think scott ate 3 slices.

in other news:

- i've been watching american idol. it's a little embarrassing, but hey. we have a DVR now, so it's a lot less painful when you can fast-forward through the crap. and i hope adam wins.

- my seedlings are doing....well, they're doing okay. they were great a few days ago, but a few have mysteriously died or disappeared. i believe the cats are to blame. nilsson must have developed a taste for seedlings last year.

- i'm going to be an aunt AGAIN! well, an aunt still, anyway. or is it again? i'm not sure. but either way, jessie and david are having another baby!

- i think the Death March is out this year. we didn't register in time, and all the spots are filled. refresh your memory on last years' walk here.

- and that's it for now.

ta ta.

just like my dreams

to find me gone

Oh it's been so long, been so long
The sound of my heart stopping, a surprising sound

wow! people, i've been away from here so long. i suppose no one even reads me anymore. anyone? anyone? i didn't think so.

i won't bother recapping what's been going on here to keep me away. that would be boring, even to me who lived it. but i will say this: i worship a new idol now.

well, maybe two idols.

they compete for my time and space in my heart. they are Wii Fit, and Harvest Moon Tree of Tranquility. I curse the mueller clan for bringing this foolishness into my life. i haven't been so obsessed with a video game since the days of laying with my brother and sister, three in a row, on a soiled old mattress on the bare concrete floor of the basement rec room, taking turns at the paddle wheel of Atari Kaboom! until our eyes bled from the sockets, the primitive buckets a blurry whir on the screen, napping a little between turns. or, i suppose in college it would count when my roommate carrie and i would crouch behind our friend kiwi as she played Legend of Kyrandia on her PC. we wouldn't even play! we would sit for hours (hours!) after dinner in the dining hall, watching as the little elf Brandon (odd name for an elf) would try and save the kingdom.

scott go Wii Fit for me as a birthday present. i didn't ask for it, and i didn't necessarily think it would be much fun. but MAN! was i ever wrong. in the weeks following my birthday, i played it every day. and when i wasn't playing, i looking forward to the next time. but it wasn't a total obsession. not really. i couldn't play it endlessly, hours at a time. it is a very finite game - there are set amounts of yoga poses, excercises, and goofy games. once you unlock them all, that's it. and once you play them all, there's really a limit to how many times you can play "super hula hoop" or "hey, i'm a penguin, watch me catch fish!" before you either collapse from exhaustion or just get bored for the moment.

but not Tree of Tranquility. oh no. not that.

scott's sisters got it for me for my birthday. i thought, gee, that's nice, sounds neat. and tara said it was awesome. so hey, nice present! i waited a while to try it out, mostly because i didn't know a thing about the game and honestly, the cover of the game looked a little childish and dull. even the first time i played was only so-so - lots of weird legend that i only half payed attention to... lots of talking... preferences... set up. and even when i got to the game itself, i was annoyed by the long loading-up time as the game paused between scenes. but i stuck it out. AND NOW I CAN'T STOP, so help me. we got home from ohio on saturday. i started playing it sometime around 6:00pm. with a break for dinner, and a short break for a shower, i played NONSTOP until 2:00 in the morning. then i got up at 9:30 and played until 11:00. if scott hadn't been around, i would have surely played all day, eventually rotting into the cushions of the couch. even now, at work, i wish i were home playing that DAMN GAME.

but it is so fun.

it sounds reeeeaaaally dumb. here's how it goes: you are this anime-type character (see? i can't even speak the lingo) who gets sent to this island for some reason (again, i didn't really pay attention), presumably to set up a ranch/farm and also to possibly solve a mystery about a goddess and a rainbow, and save the island. you mess about fixing up your little house and exploring the towns, and buying seeds and planting gardens and harvesting and.... man, this sounds lame. but it's friggin addictive. maybe it is because i love to garden, but i am very impatient? in the game, plants take only a few days to start producing. maybe it's because i like having chores to do? on the island, i have to water my fields every day and harvest produce every morning, before i can do anything fun.

i'm going to stop talking about the damn game because by now you likely think i am crazy. plus, it is making me want to go home and play more. instead of making dinner. doing laundry. playing with my other christmas presents. i am an addict. i said it, OKAY??! are you HAPPY??!

geesh.

i hope you all had a lovely holiday. someday soon i'll remember to post some pictures of what i've been up to.

Fall is here!

blue sky, chilly breeze, golden-y leaves. this is my favorite time of year! the end of sweating! the end of upper-arm-baring tops! the beginning of blazers and cozy sweaters. pumpkins and craft projects.

but this time of year also brings 'round the dreaded Switching Out Seasonal Clothes. admittedly, it's an easier chore now than in years past. i used to have to stack a small dresser on top of my larger dresser, then drag over a rickety desk chair to stand on... then climb onto dresser number one, then way, way up onto dresser number 2... then sling one leg and part of my torso up into the loft of the bedroom... drag over a hugeass tupperware under-the-bed-storage bin with a cracked side and an ill-fitting lid, full of heavy jeans and sweaters.... then somehow crawl back down the whole mess, feeling for direction with my feet, while carrying the heavy wobbly half-broken bin. and i have TWO bins, so even though my nerves would be thoroughly shot after the first trip - i'd have to get right back on the saddle and do it all again. it's not much better now, but at least i have a real ladder instead of stacked-up furniture.

it is safer (marginally) but still a monumental pain in the rear. usually half my clothes are either missing or too small or eaten my moths, so a temper tantrum/crying jag ensues. i can't have scott witnessing any of this, because i am usually attempting these feats of acrobatic balance and emotional distress while wearing only torn-up granny panties and half a too-small bathing suit (or some similarly awful getup). it's not something i look forward too. but it's gonna happen soon, because i can't keep wearing the same 3 long-sleeved shirts to work over and over and over.

in other news, joe and dana are starting a blog! i'll add a link when they send it.

i had a great weekend of fall fun. on saturday scott and i, and cliff, courtney, ian and angel went to the "life and death on the C&O canal" - a spooky, fun, awesome, kind of hokey, great program run by the national park service at the great falls park in maryland. the canal runs parallel to the potomac at that section, and the tour reinacts various grim and gruesome acts along the canal and river over the last hundred or so years. civil war field hospitals, mine collapses, booleggers getting shot in the night, drunken canal workers robbing folks on the path, rival irish gangs who dug the canal brawling and killing each other, kids drowning in the canal... i can't even explain how fun it was.

on sunday, the october meeting of Sew Watts Cookin' was a spectacular hit! we focused on fabric printing (paper printing was also on the docket, but we didn't get to it). we had two methods - freezer paper stencils and making a cheater silk-screen with mod-podge painted right onto the silk. i embellished a canvas pea coat with the paper stencils - it looks SO good. i want to paint on everthing in the house now! someone else used the other method and made a set of six fabric coasters, and they look terrific. i can't wait to do it all again. pictures on the Sew Watts blog will appear in a day or two. here is a link to the freezer paper method, in case you want to give it a try: http://www.neitherhipnorfunky.com/?p=106

what did you guys do over the weekend?

oh, but it's friday

i used the word "awesome" in a conversation with my boss the other day.

i am still mortified.

hurricanes in ohio? and other news.

so i've been out of touch with the news that past few days. i was in NC for my brother's MBA graduation, then had a crap-busy day at work on Monday. i didn't hear about the "hurricane" in ohio until late last night! yikes! i called mom and dad this morning, and they are fine. they have a generator, which they are using to power the fridge and freezers... and they are living in the camper, since it uses much less power than the whole house. fun! still no power, but they are thinking of it as extended camping. wow. i still can't get over it. hurricane in ohio.

anyway!

so today is day three of a self-imposed "no refined sugar, no refined flour" diet. i did it a few years ago, in the month leading up to halloween. i lost about 7 pounds, then went on a tootsie-roll-dorito-pizza extravaganza for a week and never looked back. the fridge and cupboards were bare, and i needed to stock up on essentials - what better time to clean the slate and try again? i can't do no-carbs, because i like a little starch. and i can't do it forever, because i love bread. but for a short while, it's a good challenge.

monday:
breakfast - oatmeal with skim milk, coffee
lunch - seaweed salad, miso soup, futo maki roll
dinner - turkey sausage and potato pancake with cabbage, peas

tuesday:
breakfast - puffed rice cereal with skim, apple, coffee
lunch - green salad with feta, green beans, 1/2 grilled chicken breast, fresh fruit (catered at work!)
dinner - zucchini cut into long strands like pasta, steamed; sauce of fresh tomatoes and red peppers, with ground turkey, olives

for snacks and guilty-pleasures, i can have popcorn (whole grain)... potato chips (hey, they're just potatoes, right?)... cheese... apples... and other assorted, more boring stuff.

last time i did this, i cut out all artificial sweeteners. and coffee and all caffeine. i think that was a swell idea, but sometimes i just want something sweet and that became a deal-breaker. so this time i am allowing sugar-free hot chocolate and sugar free pudding, if i reeeeeaaally need it. and coffee. last night i had sugar free cook-n-serve tapioca pudding, with a cinnamon stick boiled in. it was worth the chemicals, let me tell you. i can only find sugar-free cook-n-serve in two kinds - chocolate and tapioca. the cook-n-serve taste (i.e. slightly toasty) hides most of the sugar-free taste. try it. you'll like it.

we are going to a Nationals game tonight. let's see if i can find anything to eat there.... yikes! i suppose a hotdog, sans bun? some chili? this could prove to be interesting.

it's too bad all i can think about are pancakes like these - jess, i think these look right up your alley. sort of like those nifty breakfast muffin thingies you make and then freeze. make some, then mail them to me in approximately one month. :)

oh yeah.

and a friend of mine, ellen, just got a new tattoo while we were all in san francisco. it has awakened my desire to get another tattoo. maybe a post-wedding celebration? my first tattoo was chosen to be added on to at a later date. i think the time has come!

back from the dead.

whew! i've been gone a long time! i blame work. and traveling for work. and general laziness.

i warn you now - this is going to be a reeeeal boring post. no pictures.

in recent past:

- i went to san francisco for work! a whole week on the company dime! i was in a workshop on a new-fangled archives tool for a few days, followed by several days of a big archives conference - the society of american archivists big annual meeting - so it's not like i was lounging around having fancy cocktails. i was sitting in meeting rooms most of the daylight hours, but i still saw some sights around town. i haven't dealt with my pictures yet, but i did manage to take a few before my camera battery conked out. i'll just say for now that san francisco was a strange place, and not as pretty as i thought it was going to be. i'll go more into that when i put up some pictures. oh wait! here is a picture i stole from one of my co-worker's flickr - from the closing party of saa, and the sign from the bar we ended up at later:










i look like a dullard with bad posture and schlumpy hair. where did my good posture go? and my hair needs help. help!

- scott and i are ramping up the wedding planning business, and have chosen a caterer (awesome!) and are narrowing down our location choices - which will allow us to announce a date REAL REAL SOON. i promise. likely in the next week or so. then i can start thinking about even more fun stuff like decorations! cakes! invitations! oh yeah, and getting back to the gym. :)

- the kitties are getting along great! they chase each other all over the house all day. and all night long they hold Extreme Wrestling matches under our bed. how two cats can be so clumsy and loud, i have no idea. although i think nilsson's one-eyeball-ness factors quite a bit into the random clunks and crashes that we hear through the night. he ran smack into the bedframe so hard the other night that i was afraid to look. i thought for sure i'd see his little grey body, lifeless on the floor with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. vashti was shy with him for a day or two, them scared and combative for a day or two. now they take turns being the bully and i think they are doing just fine.

that's all for now.

new style of compliment - use it on your friends!

i almost forgot about this - it happened on saturday evening, as i was on my way home from dinner with scott and his brother, kevin. it was kevin's birthday, so i was making a secret stop at the safeway up near Piney Branch road to pick up a Carvel ice cream cake for desert...

there was a drunk/high older woman serenading everyone in the checkout area with her homemade song - which went something like “oh, my beeeeeaaauuutiful blue balloon, my shiny blue balloon….” she was twirling around, looking up at the ceiling, so i suppose the song was inspired by the mylar birthday balloons hanging around the florist/plant section. Everyone was cracking up, but giving her a wide berth. I got my ice cream cake and started to leave, but as I headed for the doors, I passed by the aisle where she was now buying some stuff. I overheard her tell this odd compliment to the poor little teenaged kid who was ringing her up:

“you are cute, yes you are. i could just crawl up inside your BEHIND. right up in there. yes i could.”

i almost peed my pants laughing all the way home. that poor kid will probably never recover from that.

cozy places.

why can't i have one of these? to escape to for weekend and vacations?



http://www.simondale.net/house/gallery.htm

lumberjacking, crafting and kitties

i chopped down a tree on saturday! all by myself! my back is punishing me now, of course, but it was very satisfying work. we had a mulberry tree growing in the front yard, pretty close to the house. i've been meaning to do something about it for years, but mostly i just hack the top of it off a few times during the summer and ignore it. i like to eat the berries in the spring, but the thing was getting dangerous... i ignored it too much this year, and with all the cool weather and the rain the silly tree was getting really top-heavy and huge. and threatening to topple over into the neighbor's front window. and probably ripping out our foundation at the same time. so! i chopped it down. well, i SAWED it down using a little hand-held saw from el Depot. then i had a huge pile of brushy stuff in the middle of the yard. and i wanted to run away or sell the house and move. instead i dragged a chair outside, along with a can of coke and an array of saws and clippers, and set to work. i now have 4 big logs, about 93 smaller logs/sticks, and a bajillion skinny branches - all drying behind the front bushes. once they are dry, we'll be set for camping firewood for a weekend or two. i'm pretty sure the neighbor's think i'm crazy. in fact, i know they do. and dad? if you're reading this, i'm pretty sure you would have had a thing or two to say about Safety With Saws. (standing on the tippy-top "this is not a step" step of a ladder while wielding a hand saw above my head; sitting down, sawing through a branch that is braced against my fleshy bare leg; sawing towards my own hand; scratching mosquito bites with the sharp edge of the serrated saw; doing all this while wearing flip-flops instead of real shoes; you get the picture. i'm very sorry.)

second meeting of Sew Watts Cookin' on sunday - 4 new people showed up! yay for that. i embroidered a cute little dogger onto a boring thrift store handkerchief. some folks knitted and some cut fabric. all was well in the world. next month we are meeting in rock creek park to do camp skillz (fire making, cooking, whittling maybe) and knitting scarves.

and..... we got another cat! a kitty sister for nilsson! a co-worker of mine knew of an abandoned kitty that needed a home, so i said i would take her. i picked her up on sunday morning. she is peachy-pale-orange tiger stripey, very very lovey and kissy, probably a little younger than nilsson - maybe 7 or 9 months? right now she has an efficiency apartment set up in our bathroom and bedroom. she'll meet her anxious grey brother tomorrow... yikes! i hope he doesn't stay mad forever. and that they have fun playing together.

pictures to come.

fondling the collections

as an archivist in the united states, i deal with collections of materials. i use the word "collection" all the time. about a billion times a day. if i worked in canada, say, or the UK or France, or pretty much any other place... i would use the word fonds instead.

Fonds.

i hate that word. it looks like it should mean another word for someone's private parts. it gives me the heebie-jeebies to see it on paper. and even worse, most American archivists pronounce it just like it looks - "fon(d)z." it just sounds like a dirty, leering word.

it's a french word, so it should be pronounced something like "fahn" or "fawn." archivists in canada/france/UK/etc. use it to mean a body of work created by someone and kept in its natural, meaningful order. or something along those lines. (this is where i should do some fact-checking, but i am too lazy and will therefore rely on knowledge gained in grad school... but that was 3 years ago.) even in the US, if i recall my SAA glossary of terminology correctly, archivists claim that "fonds" is the correct word, and that "collection" implies something false or not genuine. a collection meaning a bunch of stuff not naturally accumulated but instead "collected" on purpose and with a false/unnatural order. but we all say "collection" anyway. maybe i'm not the only one skeeved out by the word after all.

i won't even go into the phrase "respect des fonds."

sounds like something a mangy-looking prostitute would yell at someone on the street: "Respect des fonds, bitch!"

olympic death.

for FOUR nights in a row i have stayed up WELL PAST MIDNIGHT, watching the f-ing olympics. it's got to stop. now.

i haven't been this consistently tired since high school when i would regularly stay up reading until 3:00, only to get back up at 6:45... there were times i can remember starting to fall asleep standing up in the shower, as i closed my eyes to shampoo my hair. not even in college was i ever that tired. if i stayed up late, then i would just sleep late in the morning to make up for it! it never even crossed my do-gooder's mind to skip school in high school. i just drank lots and lots of Mt. Dew.

that's how i felt this morning. but without the tangy promise of Mt. Dew to get me going. but tonight! oh ho ho. tonight is going to be different. i plan to watch to sun set from my bed and hit the sack before it even gets dark. (maybe not that early, but close...)

in other news, scott and i tore out our old garbage disposal and installed a new one - all by ourselves! it was a fun teamwork project - scott spent most of the time crouched under the sink in awkward, hunching positions, his saggy pants stereotypically showing some crack, while i read the badly written instruction manual and scurried about fetching tools. i stood w-a-y back when we reconnected the power and flipped the switch - i have paranoid visions about the chopping mechanism levitating out of the hole, then flying around the kitchen before chopping my face off. i was also worried that the metal sink would electrocute me when i touched it, due to improper grounding. it's true! and that worry is actually founded in experience: in my old apartment in raleigh, there was something amiss with the kitchen wiring - if you touched the shiny chrome toaster at the same time as you touched the water heater and the sink, you would get a thrilling little shock. it sounds like an impossible combination, but due to a ridiculously small kitchen, a water heater located under the counter, and a shortage of outlets... it happened often enough. (rest gut against the counter/water heater... lean way over to the corner to put the toast in... grab the sink for leverage... ZZZZZT!)

i miss that apartment sometimes. it had a nice little yard, and a really great deck. big enough for a hammock. and a cool swinging door in the kitchen. then i remember that i now have central air conditioning. and more than one heat vent in my whole house. and no black mold growing under my bed and behind the couch. and no cold, wet sheets in my drafty winter bedroom. and that i live in a really neat city, near my old friends. in a really neat house. with a really neat person who i love very much.

avoidance.

okay, so i am supposed to be making lots of plans. but each time i start looking stuff up online, i get confused and i stop. i can't keep doing this! i have decisions to make, darn it!

in college, i had a friend who showed us her notebook of "ideas" that she kept as a teenager - wedding ideas and baby names, and house ideas. !!!! of course, we all mercilessly made fun of her, but now i wish i had been that girl. cutting out pictures in magazines, dreaming of the wedding i would have one day, making lists and pasting things into a notebook. because then i could have pulled that dusty old notebook out last week, clapped my hands together and declared it "Done!"

now i have to get busy - a lot of dreaming and imagining to be done in the next few months.

in any stressful situation, i normally adopt the attitude of "oh, it'll all work itself out in the end - for good or for bad." but i hesitate to do that with a wedding. i'd hate to show up to my own wedding, crying, and think "hey, this isn't what i wanted at all!"

or have a bunch of people fly in and wonder "um, where are the flowers? and wasn't there supposed to be some kind of dinner? and you know what, where's the bride?"

and i'll be the one hiding under the bed because i forgot something Major.