montpelier visit no. 1

george, jesse and i drove into montpelier today to stop by the bakery and hang around town. paul and elaine had already left, but denise was still there and we talked about bakery things and new news-the delivery car finally died. magically, while we were there liz called! (liz k.-the first liz i worked with at the bakery) we made a date to hang out at the langdon street cafe this very afternoon! i got to meet her five and a half month old daughter, amelia! she's pretty little and pretty cute. she's got wisps of red hair and a distinct voice.

george and jesse played scrabble-jesse won. we went to rivendell and bear pond looking for the horn of the moon cookbook and any good book. i found this one! ideally i'm in the market for a used copy of the horn of the moon. then we went to the co-op and passed susan on the way in, but she didn't see us. jesse got stuff to make quiche and george got some asparagus to roast and we're hoping that james will bring down some steak. it's a lot of food. so come by and eat some.

home sweet home

we made it home relatively unscathed! the most annoying things we encountered were being unable to sleep on the plane and JFK being unusually hot and dry-which made us very unhappy. the icing on that cake is that the water-fountain-water tasted dreadful and the bottled water was virtually unaffordable.

jesse met us at the airport and we headed over to see my sister and pick up some car keys...then downtown for some lunch...then up and down church street for fun...and he drove us down the parking lot with the car. luckily he didn't make it out of the parking lot before we discovered we couldn't get the car to start. after trying to jump start the car about eight times and calling my dad at least four times we broke down and called AAA for some help. then we sat in the car and waited for something like a half hour and then got a call from them saying it'd be another half hour before the town truck got there. jesse drove us into montpelier, where george's mom, susan, met us, we ran into my aunt susi and then susan brought us the rest of the way home.

before we left montpelier i got a call from the tow truck guy who told me that the car started fine-as long as it's in neutral instead of park. so he didn't tow it anywhere because it didn't need to be.

after finally getting home i rang the door bell and surprised my mom! she was very, very, very, very surprised and happy. i managed to keep the actually dates of our trip home a secret from her and let everyone else know. woo hoo! i started to tell her the story of the car and she interrupted with, "oh, ... and it has to be in neutral, dad knows that. halley knows that." ... .. i'm SO GLAD they let me figure this one out on my own.

jenna's managed to keep all the plants i left behind alive-except the avocado tree which may or may not make it because one of the four cats in the house used its pot as a litter box. excitingly, her chinchilla, chillbert, has learned to use her excersize wheel! and all the cats got fat!

birthdays!

happy birthday to:
- my mom, kim!
- george's brother, jonathan!

nothing will make a birthday more special than being in a bulleted list of other people celebrating a birthday.

as it turns out these people also share a birthday:
- george
- liz o.

some stuff about some things

this is the worst of my injuries:



it's looking pretty good today, it's been pretty black and purple for a while.

friday night we drove into the city and had dinner and went to a movie with hope and mal. and i highly reccomend that everyone go see (or rent when it comes out) hot fuzz.

saturday george worked on fixing a chair most of the day and i went to work most of the day. for dinner we had roasted yams and asparagus.

sunday we drove back into the city and went to the alternative press expo with our friends karl and lindsey. it was kind of overwhelming and i felt a little too ignorant about comics. i did buy a little book that's portraits of werewolves among the roman elite; i appreciate it because these guys obviously put a lot of time into it (the illustrations themselves and the folder the portraits are in is handmade) and it gives me hope that if they can do something like this and make some money from it then i could probably do something like this and make some money from it. i also bought a hat just as the expo was closing down, it's a nice brown corduroy cap with some leaves stitched in orange on the sides. hope got a really beautiful blue wool(?) one with a bird stitched on the side.

after the expo was over we drove hope and mal back up here to the north bay so they could see our little apartment and more importantly meet our adorable cats and slightly more importantly eat some delicious dinner. butternut squash ravioli, melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi, beet salad, creme brulee, chocolate mousse torte... hope and mal are two of my (and assume george is with me on this) absolute favorite people to hang out with-there's just enough similarities and differences between us that everything is interesting.

our friend liz leaves to go back east for the summer tomorrow and we're bummed that she's leaving but are confident she'll come back-if not for her car then for her le creuset pot.

as an aside, i think one of the most wonderful things about bicycles is that they're simple machines and, with a little effort, easily understood. would a chainless bike be even easier to comprehend and repair? i'm undecided.

super exciting wednesday!!

the excitment is absolutely non-stop here in san anselmo. my schedule for work got rearranged a little so i can go somewhere this weekend, so today i was supposed to work all day. this morning i got nice and early and cancelled the dentist appointment i had today and ate my cereal and even got to enjoy my coffee. i got all dressed up in layers and headed out for work on my bike.

i was promptly hit by a car!

luckily, i'm okay. my legs are bruised and swelling in selected places, but other than that i'm clean. my bike is even all right! which, deep in my heart, is the most important thing.

now i'm drinking hot chocolate and already going crazy from sitting around. entertain me! or not. whatever. i'll be here.

excitement tuesday

yesterday i had the chance to spend the afternoon with my friend sarah who is going to grad school in england! things would have been more exciting if i'd flown over there on a whim, but it turned out she was in the area for school break. we had sushi and walked around berkeley. she bought a hat. the excitement continued after we parted ways and i returned to the car to discover a $30 parking ticket! woo! on the way home i didn't even get stuck in rush-hour traffic, though it would have been all right because george just installed...a new stereo in the car! that's right, if you keep turning the volume up you can almost drown out the shaking and rattling noises the car makes, it's very exciting.

but the excitment doesn't stop there: about a mile and a half from our house, just past a heavily traveled intersection where two lanes merge - the rabbit broke down! she just turned off and left me in the middle of the road. luckily there were some guys waiting for the bus across the street and pushed me out of the road and into a 20 minute parking spot. i tried calling george - no answer. i tired calling andy - no answer. i called george something like four more times - no answer. i assumed they were in a meeting but walked up to the office anyway. it turns out he hadn't turned the ringer on his phone back on after we went out for chinese food the night before.

we went back to the car and george tinkered on it for a while and concluded that it's probably something to do with the fuel injector pump. just before we called AAA he tried starting it again and it did! we only made it about a quarter of a mile before the rabbit broke down again. this time we pushed it off onto a side street and called for a tow truck. the first time i called AAA told me that my card had been cancelled and that they'd transfer me so i could sign up again, i told her i didn't really have time for that at the moment, but thanks anyway. then i called back and talked to someone else without any problems.

the guy in the tow truck turned out to be a nice guy not much older than us. he had the car up and ready to be towed in a short bit and then when we got to the house he managed to back it into the driveway and even into a parking spot - which, considering our driveway, is quite a feat. sometimes we can't even back the car into a spot.

we're glad it didn't happen far from home and that it was nothing catastrophic, but i'd prefer it didn't happen at all, or if it could have happened on, say, monday. this is the one weekend we actually had planned to go somewhere in the car. so now we're hoping it'll be either an easy fix, the buses run with some frequency on the weekend, and/or that we're up for riding our bikes in and out of the city. or that our friend liz wants to leave her car with us sooner than she'd anticipated. =)

george and i are both relieved that we don't have to drive to work. and now we're leaving for work.

headliners

Vermont cheese makers garner awards

Wife of former Senator James Jeffords passes away

Unicycles, scooters and feet
(the scooter lady, amy, scooted by manghis' everyday. sometimes she'd have the little boy she nannied with her and she always spoke to him like she spoke to everyone else - there was no simplified language, no orders given, like they've been best friends since the beginning of time. she also had pink streamers on the handles of the scooter.)

Phish frontman pleads guilty to drug charge

california's toll

since moving here i've spent more time trying to recuperate from various things than i remember having done in the past ... i don't know... DECADE. ringworm. psoriasis. internal infections. cuts. bruises. scrapes. it's out of control and has been just about non-stop since we got here. i drink water all the time, i do my best to get full nights of sleep, i'm cautious when using sharp knives and when riding my bike in traffic, but none of it seems to matter i still feel like crap and cut myself and am tense, grumpy, and unhappy about it.

as an aside regarding food: despite being in the magical land of california it's becoming increasingly difficult to eat really well and consistently. we have yet to find the farmer's market (but have really promising leads) and really fresh vegetables seem virtually impossible to get. there are something like four or five grocery stores within a fifteen minute drive for us and they either have yucky produce at an affordable price or good produce at a ridiculous price. rar! we've been eating out more and more which is exciting because there's an endless number of restaurants to choose from but it's also more expensive, there's less control over what we're eating, and we run into problems like the one we have tonight: no produce in the house! so we get to go on the hunt.

i guess i'm just frustrated because i'm lazy. but the getting sick and having ridiculous accidents is just absurd at this point: california is not earning any points from me.

things we're excited about:

- tax refunds! which between the two of us total a little over $2,000. hooray!
- parts arriving to fix the wheel of the car!
- finding a new frame for the futon! one that's oriented the short way! it'll fit in our tiny space better than our wide one.
- almost being done painting that breadbox! after running out of one color spray paint i tried to find it at our little hardware store but didn't have any luck. but once the car's fixed we can look in other places!

pictophotos

girl's newest mouse trick.



we deicded to put the soda in the freezer to chill it faster as it was warm and we were out of ice, then we forgot about it and it 'sploded.



cat wrastlin' 101

this weekend, while replacing the ... ball joints (?) on the car, george discovered that our passenger-side front wheel only really has three lug nuts instead of four. when he took the wheel off one of the lug nuts pulled right out and it looks as though the threads have been stripped and someone tried to fix it with a whole mess of lock tight. great! he can track down all the new parts, but how exactly to go about fixing it remains a slight mystery to him and a complete mystery to me.

when our friend liz goes back east to work on star island for the summer, or fun island as we've been calling it, she's going to leave her beautiful honda civic with us to care for. in exchange for getting to drive her car we're going to do things like, change the oil and help her find new tires for it. i'd rather she just stay here for the summer and drive around with us, but she loves that star island cult so much.

this weekend my boss, shannon, was out of town and my co-worker, emily, and i were given the great task of baking all the baked goods for the bakery on our own. things went really well, all things considered, but she and i both worked nine or ten hour days both saturday and sunday. more people came in this weekend then i think they ever have in my few months at fat angel. the busiest times for the selling of the goods is between 8:30 and 11 and emily and i were the only ones there until 12 when someone else showed up. on sunday things were so ridiculously crazy and we were so unprepared (despite our being very confident of the opposite) that i enlisted george. it all started when i couldn't get a molasses bucket open and asked him if he'd come open it for me...then he made turnovers...and glazed scones...and made pizzas...and squeezed orange juice...and helped with maple pecan buns. liz had the day off and wanted to go to the beach so she came out at 1 (thinking i'd be all done work...ha!) and naturally helped form pastries for the next day. then we went to the beach and out to see blades of glory.

while george is architecturing away today i mopped some floors, did the dishes and pressed on with sanding and painting the rusty breadbox i picked up off the street for him. i also repainted a chair we inherited from cynthia and leland (the directors chair) and hauled the bike frame we found at gates salvage out of storage to start the long and excited process of builiding it up into a function bicycle. then i sewed together a slip cover for a piece of memory foam george picked up off the street a while ago - now it's on the landing being a perfect window seat.

recently i made a cheesecake. tonight we're hitting up the laundramat to do some laundry since the dryer here is broken and our landlord hasn't bothered to fix it yet.