memorial weekend

the other day girl brought home her first kill: a tennis ball. as you can see it's only slightly smaller than her head. she carried it inside, walked around with it, showed it off, then played with it for a while.

for memorial day we went to my co-worker emily's barbeque in the park for a little bit and then headed off to muir woods to meet up with george's cousin iran, her husband anu, and two of their friends from iceland.



today i did all sorts of fascinating errands and cleaning and belated birthday present sending and of course: baking! chocolate chip cookies (from my new favorite book, baking illustrated), high protein bread (the amazing manghis' recipe), and grape nut muffins (from the enchanted broccoli forest).



now george and i are patiently waiting for dyani's pretty-delayed plane to arrive at 1am by rearranging the house and putting up bookshelves and watching a movie. dyani'll be here for a whole week! we'll be going up to davis to find her an apartment, biking into the city to bike into the city, and heading to the beach because it's been seventy and sunny for the past two weeks so why wouldn't we go to the beach?

last sunday we went to the maker faire and were overwhelmed by the number of people, the amount of technology and resounding creativity. there were fire trucks shooting flames, rockets, power tool races, at least three different electric cars, bicycles, bicycles, bicycles, a life-size game of mouse trap (it looked just like that too..), yarn, clothes, legos...



there was this tiny house which is truly remarkable. before we left for california we thought it'd be a great idea to build and tow a tiny house instead of a u-haul. our design looked more like a cross between a gyspy wagon and a train car.



a tiny tiny model A engine! (for those of you out of the model A loop: this past summer george spent hours upon hours tinkering on a 1930's model A in his parents garage and managed to get it running!)



on our way out of the faire we came across driving cupcakes! there were three or four of them, well, one was a blueberry muffin.

since we were down in that neck of the woods, we decided to check out half moon bay. it's one of those ridiciulously quaint costal towns that only survives because of the tourist traffic. we had some coffee and looked around an antique store where we found this little hand drill. i've been searching for one to use to drill little holes in order to bind books. (someday i may shell out the $40+ for a screw punch, but until then...)





but perhaps the most exciting part of the day was the very beginning when we were just heading out of san anselmo and stumbled across and antique faire! (they're all about the "faires" out here.) we meandered through looking at all the unaffordable antiques and the wealthy people buything them to use as decorative splashes to their homes until george found a little chest full of machinists' tools!



$500 later we were on our way to the maker faire.

p.s.

the key to polenta is cheese.

a smattering

george made this nifty little circuit tester! it lights up AND buzzes! he plans to use it on our sick rabbit in order to fix things like the headlights.

speaking of rabbits, my sister's rabbit, andrew, died this week after living to the ripe ol' bunny age of ten. after her first rabbit, fluffy, died mom and i went out in search of the perfect replacement to give her as a christmas surprise. we found andrew and managed to keep him in the house and a secret from her for something like a week. she opted to have him cremated like i did ollie - if anyone finds a bottle shaped like a rabbit, please let me know.

speaking of things being sick, my grandfather goes in tomorrow for some heart surgery. in addition to needing a stint in his artery, he has a touch of pneumonia in one of his lungs. he's spunky (like his wife was) but old; here's hoping everything goes smoothly tomorrow.

today continued to be full of baked goods: pitas, maple cornmeal muffins, and finally, polenta for dinner (which is still in the oven.) other highlights of the day included:

- breaking little pieces off of plants at OSH to bring home and root
- getting some new sheets
- george coming home for lunch

tomorrow we hope to bike out to point reyes station like all the cool kids do. (tons of people bike from san francisco to pt. reyes on the weekends - flocks! oodles! droves! murders!)

meh.

clearly someone's a better nose-licker.

we're back in california after a visit home. the travelling back went without incident except for george's weird-pain-in-sternum-might-collapse-lays-down-in-the-airplane-and-feels-
better-in-five-minutes thing. it was good to see the kittens and nice to not be flying or driving, but i can't say that i was glad to be back. the last three days i've been feel crappy physically, mentally, and emotionally. it's like living in someone else's apartment and going to someone else's job. george and i decided to try and think of it as having summer jobs in some great costal place.

rose is in town for a wedding in berkeley and hopefully we'll get to see her along with liz o. and mike. and at the end of the month dyani will be visiting for the sake of visiting and to nail down some housing in davis where she and conor will be moving in...the fall i think and to visit friends in santa barbara.

girl is pretty pissed at us-literally. she's taken to doing her business by the door and on our messanger bags. we reassure her that we're not going to leave her for good and that she's a good cat, but not when she pees on things other than cat litter.

recipes of the week!
- chilled avocado cucmber soup, from Horn of the Moon Cookbook
- coconut milk cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting and pineapple, from the blog Vanilla Garlic

chilled avocado cucumber soup

4 c. (2 medium cucmbers), chopped (reserve 1 cup, peel only if skins are waxed)
2 ripe avocados, pitted and peeled
3 large cloves of garlic
1/2 packed cup fresh parsley
2 c. yogurt
1 c. water (or 1 c. ice cubes to chill soup quickly)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. chopped scallions

- in a medium bowl combine 3 c. chopped cucumbers, avocados, garlic, parsley, yogurt, water or ice, and salt.
- puree mixture in a blender in batches until smooth.
- when everything's blended stir in the reserved cup of chopped cucumber and scallions
- chill 1 hour

my note: i think i would go ice cubes as a cooling method-the water seems to....water the soup down a little more than i would like. or maybe i wouldn't use either of these and would just chill it longer.

also, today i swiped some big, healthy wandering jew clippings from home depot-suckers.

montpelier visit no. 2

today i rode a sweet bike that colin made! george rode it too; he tried to do a wheelie and fell over backwards. we spent time with liz wandering around the town, visited the bakery and saw the new delivery car (a blue ford windstar), and some other stuff. mostly the bike is the coolest part.

[edit 5/3: the link to the sweet bike is a sweet video of me riding the sweet bike, but it didn't work out so hot. ]