Fancy meeting you here.

Dying
Originally uploaded by lady grey cupcake

Today I've had three cups of coffee. It feels like it's been overcast and raining for weeks (months), there was a brief reprieve yesterday afternoon and it might clear up by Saturday only to turn gray and cold by Monday. I think I deserve my three cups of coffee. It was even gray and chilly while Cynthia and Leland were here which made us cancel our trip to Chimney Rock and spend most of the time in coffee shops and puttering around the house. On one of the only sunny days George managed to talk them into helping dig up our garden space, which is pretty much just solid clay, and then into getting a load of compost and shoveling it off the truck. (The convincing wasn't all that hard - someone in the group is mere weeks away from being a Harvard-educated landscape architect.) The morning before we shipped them off back to Cambridge we dyed some Easter eggs. It was pointed out to us that all the eggs we had for dying were brown, not white. We decided to dye them anyway and, as you can see over at Flickr, they turned out surprisingly well. I think if we'd been prepared with more rubber bands and a little more of a strategy they all would have been incredible.

There's only one more piece of furniture to move in and the house will be fully functional. Unfortunately it's the biggest, heaviest table IN THE WORLD and I'm too short to be of any use moving it. OH! I lied! There's another piece of furniture: a bed frame! Asheville craigslist finally came through for us and Saturday we'll go pick it up and (assuming the mattress is dry from the thorough bleaching it's going to get - mold, again) then we'll sleep on a real bed like real people. When you get down to it (or up off it) it's not the sleeping on the floor that I don't like, it's that sweeping the room is a huge pain and seriously, how great is it going to be to have space to store things under the bed? Wicked great.

We told you about the biofuels grant, right? Our blogging has been so scattered and inconsistent I can't remember. George and our friend James have applied for grant to start a biofuel refinery in Vermont. Word on the street is that they're one of three finalists and hopefully will find out if they got it or not late next week!

Meanwhile, my sweet job at the cake shop is totally sweet. Not only literally, but in that hip slangy way too. Jodi and I joke about how it seems I was thrown in the deep end - handed a recipe, talked through it, and left with the mixer. While it may have been a little jolting (my last job I spent a week, literally - a week, standing and watching someone before I was allowed to do it myself, and even then, supervised) it turns out: I know how to bake. I can confidently use my judgment and experience. One of the best parts is that Jodi trusts me and when time allows would rather I sort of figure it out for myself. (Because either a) she's pretty sure I'll get it or b) she's confident that it'll turn out at least acceptably, which is fine because she has at least one million other things to take care of) Regardless: my job rules and I'm going to kick ass at it. Honestly, there have been a couple little stumbling points for me, but I think they're being ironed out. The most important thing to remember: cake can smell your fear. It's not even a joke, if you don't assert yourself as the alpha that cake will dominate you.

Be bold little bakers.

Jesse is here. Mostly we eat and sit around. We've gone to the top of Mount Tam and today he and George went to the Marin Headlands. Also they fixed the Rabbit.

Links to things:

Mount Tam
Marin Headlands
Rabbit
Pie crust
Sweet potato fries
Pacific Catch
Japanese Joinery

Part two: other stuff

Saturday night was a 40th birthday party for George's boss at the local winery. His wife is good friends with the owner, so he closed it down so we could have dinner there which was provided by the Puerto Rican restaurant Sol Food. Usually hanging out with the Coutures is entertaining and enjoyable, however this time is was the Coutures and the rest of their friends, who--aside from the other guys in the office--are all about 40 and from Marin. It was an awkward evening that with every "oh what do you do?" conversation drove home the feeling that we don't belong here. We don't have kids, we don't own a home, have a modern car, I'm not a contractor nor a designer, George isn't a business wheeler-dealer or wear a tie, we don't watch sports or even have TV, we know nothing about wine, we haven't traveled much, and we don't care about any of these things. We had a pretty nice conversation with one woman who'd grown up around here and seemed to understand that a lot of the residents in this area are completely intolerable, we liked her.

Sunday night we were psyched to be going into the city to have dinner with George's cousin, Iran, but didn't get to go because the Rabbit developed a fuel leak. George spent the whole day trying to fix it and when he thought he'd got it the car wouldn't start at all (instead of starting and sputtering.) We're both becoming more and more frustrated with this car, but probably will never part with it.

We finally found a place in the apartment for some bike hooks and got the bikes up off the floor! It feels a little less like we're living in a garage. George built a fancy new shelf to go under with window by the table, which replaces a skinny, ill-attached shelf the cats would sit on. Today I'm hoping we can agree on a color for the new shelf and for the underside of the loft, because while I can't put my finger on it I'm convinced that painting the right thing the right color in this place will magically transform it into a more comfortable, homey living space. Or I'm crazy and fickle about interior paint colors.

What we're really excited for is the middle of November when Jesse comes to visit! He'll be here for a whole two weeks around Thanksgiving, which we'll be celebrating at the 2nd Annual Fat Angel T-Day Feast. Maybe we'll get to take an exciting trip to some other part of this God forsaken state, or at the very least have a few days where we can all hang out with anyone having to go to work.

Today's fascinating lunch: mac & cheese with tuna fish. Tonight's fascinating dinner: sweet potatoes and chicken.

bulleted

The bike

For all practical purposes, my bike is complete!






One of her flashiest features are the tires: SpeedBlends made specially for Rivendell. When they're rolling the colors merge and have a nice teal-to-pink progression.




A couple other things I really enjoy are the microfiber bar tape, the waxed thread securing it, and the sleek, attractive stem. (Notice the u-lock attached to the bike...) The next step for it will be a shorter stem so I'm not reaching as far and a little saddle bag so I don't have to carry around a bag on my back.


Trips and visitors

My trip to Asheville was great, I got to spend time with Hope which is something I really could stand to do more of. We spent most of our time tearing paneling out of the littlest room in the house and painting painting painting. When I left we'd finished the walls & trim in the bedroom and almost all of the studio and the first coat in the kitchen. The time we spent away from the fumes was filled with trips to Lowe's, going out for food, touring around the city, and a really sucessful trip to and antique mall where we walked out with a chrome breadbox, a set of rectangular chrome kitchen canisters, a little kitchen table (mostly for the heavy-duty base, not the paint-splattered institution-like top), and two awesome chairs.

Dyani and Conor have arrived in California, Conor will be starting classes at U.C. Davis anytime now. They came down for the weekend where Dyani got a new bike: a new Volpe! She'd been looking for a nice touring bike and I, naturally, couldn't shut up about how amazing the Volpe is and pointed her to a bike shop that had one the last time George and I were there. After test riding and discovering it was on sale and loving it, she decided to get it. Hooray!

Liz is coming back tonight! We like Liz, she makes us feel like we have friends and know how to have fun.


The Rabbit

George has been plugging away at Rabbit repairs. I'm not too sure of the specifics, but I know that lately the work has been unfortunately frustrating. Parts not fitting and having to be reordered, bolts in ridiculous, hard-to-get-to places. Maybe he'll make his own post someday about it and it'll be more in-depth and interesting than mine. (hint hint)

hot summer

lately we've been hanging-out machines; first dyani was here and while she was here we got a hang out a little with my paper-source-boss lori, we spent a good part of the weekend with karl and lindsay at the beach and playing wii, tonight we're dining with lil, tomorrow we're attending a little birthday bash for george's boss's son, bo (catered by wife/mom, jen with hot dogs!), then hopefully more hanging out with karl and lindsay, then mike and liz, then cynthia and leland are coming in july!

in the meantime george has been diligently working on our new-old dash for the rabbit. he's got it pretty well flattened out and cleaned up and soon we'll choose a color and install it. i'm not sure what his next step is, possibly working on the not-running problem, or the broken-horn-steering-wheel thing. regardless, we're one step closer to getting her running again.

my new-old bike frame has arrived and is beeeeeautiful! it's got part of a bottom bracket that needs to come off and then it's just a matter of amassing the parts, a good portion of which i'm hoping to get from rivendell bike works, and an up-coming bike swap in san rafael.

woo!

mourning and the lighthouse

after checking ebay and craigslist every day for the past week, i'm truly convinced my bike is gone for good. some people i've talked to have had optimistic stories of other people finding their bikes on craigslist and having the pleasure of getting it back, or simply finding it, or having it returned to them more than a year later. my bike has moved on. i have found a couple other bikes similar or identical to mine for sale and have considered buying another one, but i've come up with a better solution: i'm going to build my own precisely the way i want to. i deviously won an ebay auction for a Volpe frame from the late 80's and have started compiling a list of parts. the frame is scratched up enough that a dumb bike thief won't go through the trouble of stealing it, i hope.

dyani was here visiting for the last week or so which was a very welcome break from the lame stuff we usually do around here. she and her boyfriend conor are moving out to davis in september, so the first thing we did was drive to davis so she could sign a lease on an apartment. we did other californiay things like: go to the beach, the jelly belly factory, ride our bikes across the golden gate bridge (and then walk back after they got stolen), eat seafood, walk through chinatown, and check out the point reyes lighthouse.

















the cats, who we recently had to de-flea, are very big fans of dyani and are kind of bummed that they're not getting all that extra attention and entertained all day long anymore. while here dyani requested some baked goods and picked out chocolate cupcakes filled with chocolate mint ganache and topped with mint buttercream. they turned out delicious and kind of stomach achey. luckily we've pawned three off on the neighbors and george doesn't seem to have a problem eating one a day so we've only got a few left.

in car news, george took a dash out of another rabbit to replace ours which is cracked and messed up beyond repair. he's going to sand down the few cracks this newer one and finish it with some bondo-like stuff and paint it. he hopes to have it running by the end of the month. we got a new set of tires for liz's car and now it rides like a dream - smooth and steady.