Double Yolk

Look at what I found in my hard-boiled egg yesterday.

Vacation Pics

A couple weeks ago, we took a trip up the coast, to stay in a lovely B&B. We had a great time along the cliffs and among the redwoods. It was wonderfully rejuvenating to get a way and take it easy (and not have to cook!) for a few days.

Here are some pics:

Peacocks!

So, for various reasons, I decided to try doing some volunteer garden work at Veggielution--after nearly 2 years of dedicated volunteering at Full Circle Farm. Mostly, I just wanted a change of pace.

The two places couldn't be more different. One is huge (11 acres) and regimented into distinct, orderly sections. The other is significantly smaller and charmingly haphazard in its design. One has a few chickens in a coup, the other has birds of all kinds wandering around the premises, including peacocks! This week, I even got to see them show of their tail feathers. I'm not sure if it was the same bird or not, but I did see two open tails. Pretty cool!

The nice thing at both places is that I'm not totally responsible, but I still get delicious, fresh, organic produce to bring home. So it's all good all around. :-)

Music For Minors Is:

Fabulous! The kids are great. I'm in a Kinder class, but this particular class is quite well behaved (for 5-6 year olds). One thing I have noticed is that the atmosphere in classroom changes depending on who the classroom teacher is. There have been quite a few upheavals in that department in this class, but things seem to be settled now with an experienced teacher who keeps things quite calm. I really appreciate that.

I started teaching in January, and have now taught four full length (half-hour) lessons. The time actually goes quite quickly. I have to plan a lot of activities, keep things moving, and not repeat the same activity too many weeks in a row, but I am starting to get into a routine. I have a 3-5 minute warm-up period I do with the kids at the beginning that stays a lot the same, and I end each class with a musical book (usually a picture book illustrating a familiar song). Last week I brought in Roll Over and was amazed that only about half the class was familiar with the song.

When I had my start-up conference with the teacher, she confirmed that kids today miss out on a lot of basic music education. For example, they don't necessarily learn nursery rhymes in preschool, and patriotic songs are no-longer a standard part of public school curriculum. At least the still learn the Pledge of Allegiance. The teacher asked me to do something patriotic next week, since the class will be studying President's Day. Then I get a week off (the school is on break) and in March they will be studying transportation. Guess what we'll be singing that month? The Wheels on the Bus!

Anyway, I'm really enjoying being a music docent. Not much else is new. :-)

Dosas!

I decided to try making dosas today. Dosas are a kind of Indian pancake or crepe. My mom had tried them a couple of times, but always expressed frustration with trying to spread the batter before it clumped up. My first attempt showed me how frustrating that can be, so on my second one, instead of pouring the batter in the middle of the pan, then spreading it with the back of a wooden spoon (as the recipe said to do) I poured the batter over the whole pan. It worked! I got a nearly perfect 9 inch dosa! It was thicker than the ones in Indian restaurants, but it did cook very evenly, and it didn't have any big holes.

It was also quite delicious. I filled mine with curried red lentils, and DH had one with maple syrup. He also thought it was good, in fact he liked it better than the paper-thin restaurant ones! Sweet success!

Strawberry Swing

Okay, I'm probably one of the last people to find this. Actually, my mom found it. But I liked it so much, I thought I'd put it up here. It's the Strawberry Swing video. I planned to embed it, but that's disabled. :-(

And yes, I'm still alive and kicking. Sorry for the radio silence. Been busy elsewhere. Will probably continue for the foreseeable future. I'll try to post every month or so, though.

Worms!

I bought a pound of worms over the weekend, made a bed for them, and fed them. Now to just hope and pray they like their new home, multiply, and provide me with lots of castings for my strawberries (which are shooting out lots of runners and seem very happy)! Next project, lettuce. But that's probably a month or two in the future . . .

Update

Okay, I have become a sporadic blogger. Sorry. That's the way it's going to be for a while. Life you know . . .

Basically, things are much the same. I still volunteer at the farm. I'm biking a lot this summer, now that I can run errands easily with my panniers. What's new for this fall is that I will be teaching Religious Education for grades 3-5 at our church and training to be a volunteer K-3 music docent with Music for Minors. I'll probably start with the Kinders.

I'm more nervous about the Religious Education job than the Music Docent job--I get 2 months of bi-weekly classes before I get turned loose, and I only have to prepare 30 minute lessons with MFM. With RE I got a 4 hour orientation that was all listening to other people talk with no opportunities to practice. And I have to prepare an hour lesson for 2 weeks from now. Eek. At least in both cases I get canned lesson plans to start from . . .

And that's really all there is to say.

Re-Decorating

Or is it just Decorating.

Anyway, we finally got some pictures put up (some had to be framed first). The apartment looks more home-like now, although we are still in the long process of settling in, due to trying to consolodate two households. Maybe someday everything won't be quite so obviously "his" and "hers" . . . Well, I can hope . . .

Big Basin

Just got back from a camp out at Big Basin with some friends from church. It was a nice, short get-away. Campfire, sina-along, flashlight walk, mosquitos, redwoods and all. Very relaxing. Hopefully solidifying some friendships, & of course nice to be away with DH.

Tent now drying in the sun. Should bring it in soon . . .

Knitting

I've picked up my needels again. This time on a project that has both inspired and daunted me for several years. A friend was working on it when I lived with her 6 years ago (has it really been nearly 6 years? Wow.) and I got inspired. I finally got the book as a gift from my mom, somtime in the past 2 years. But still it was extremely daunting. It's aran knitting--lots of cables--very intimidating.

Then, last spring, I joined a knitters guild for a few months. At my first meeting, I felt compelled to apologize for my lack of skill, saying, "I only know how to knit and purl." One of the other members, bless her heart, said, "Then you know everything, that's all you need to know. The rest is just details." That gave me a lot of confidence.

So this summer, when I found myself waisting way to much time on-line, I decided to start knitting again, as a way to keep my hands busy while my mind wanders. It's working. It's much more relaxing and much less depressing that surfing the 'net, probably because there is a semi-productive result at the end of the day. So that's me right now. Knitting.

Biking

I'm finally living in a place where I can use my bike as my main mode of transportation. And what's nice is that the more I bike, the more I want to bike. Now, when I need to run an errand, I think of my bike first, my car second. I'm getting a lot more excersice and fresh air, and that helps my overall mood. Plus I feel good about using less gas and contributing less to global warming.

Serendipity

I went on-line today to find out who to make the check out to for my passport renewal--a chore I've been avoiding--and discovered that the fees are going up tomorrow. So I called and found out that if I can get it postmarked today (which I was able to do) I can still pay the "current" fees. That is a significant savings. And it was just the impetus I needed to finally send in my application. Now all I have to do is wait 2 months . . . I'm sure I'll manage to keep busy avoiding something else . . . ;-)

Sour

So they told me, and I didn't believe them. It is true. Sour dough bread is sour. Really sour. So sour I don't want to eat much of it. I've been trying to finish a loaf for over a week. It  doesn't usually take me this long!

So much for wild yeast. I'm going back to the dried, store-bought kind.

Fighting Mildew

The fight against shower mildew is continuous and always a loosing battle. The pesky stuff refuses to be completely eliminated, and if you leave even a speck, it grows back faster! But I've never been quite so annoyed by it as now.

Some smart individual decided that tile looks nice in showers. And somebody else thought that idea was great. Eventually the trend made it to the apartment I'm living in. For some reason, the implications didn't occur to me until after we had rented the unit. Tile is surrounded by grout. Grout in showers grows mildew. Tile surrounds in showers have a lot more grout than plastic surrounds. So what you get? A nice, beautiful, white-tiled surround, with pretty pink and black mildew stained grout.

And it takes hours and hours of old-toothbrush-scrubbing to get it looking even semi-clean. Everywhere else, tile is nice. It's great for floors, for example. It's even okay for kitchen counters. But when it comes to showers, I'll vote for non-renewable, petroleum-based, easy-to-clean plastic surrounds every time.

My New Bike

Well, it's not really new, but it feels new. I got a tune up and added a kick-stand, a rear rack, and a pannier. We also got a nice stand-up pump for both bike and car tires. I am super excited. We now live close enough to down-town to make biking really feasible, and almost all the places I frequent are within 2 miles of my home. With the oil spill in the Gulf continuing, I really want to do my part to reduce my use of fossil fuels.

Onward!

Going Wild

I've been contemplating learning to bake sourdough bread for some time now, and last night, I put together a diy starter from scratch. Just four, water, stirr, outside air to catch the wild yeasties, and cap it. We shall see how it evolves. It smells good so far! Apparently, the area I live in has some really great wild yeast in the air, so wish me luck!

Clearing Out

As part of my clutter busting process, I've been letting go of a lot of unnecessary stuff in my life. Some items are easier than others, and one has had me stumped. It's a beautiful, old-fashioned, oak desk chair--solidly built and mostly in good condition. However, one arm has come free of the back and I don't have the inclination to fix it. Because I actually like sitting on my exercise ball more. I like being able to move as I sit, not being so stationary. So I want to let the chair go. But it's turning out to be a complicated process, because it's not just any old chair--it has a history.

I got it about 3 years ago from an aunt. She told me that it had been her first office chair, and that it was special to her because of that. She pointed out to me how solid it was, and said, if I was ever getting rid of it, to let her know, because she might want it back. So, I've been e-mailing with her about it, and she said to find it a new home. I'm having a hard time doing that, because of knowing the chair's history. In fact, I even went to the trouble of clarifying that we are talking about the same chair. We were.

Then I realized that, it's not the chair that I'm attached to, so much as the story. So I thought maybe, if I told it's story, I could let it go. I don't really want it myself. Besides the arm being disconnected from the back, when I lean back in the chair, sometimes it feels like I am going to pitch over backwards. I never have, but it is scarry. So maybe there is someone else who can fix it and will like it and use it. Better, I suppose, for it to be used by someone who doesn't know it's story, than for it to be kept unused by someone who does . . . Anyway, I still know the story, and now I've told it to you.

Hundreds of Lions

Erin McKeown has done it again. She's come out with an album that is unique, and uniquely hers. As a musician, she is very hard to categorize. If I had to pick one, I'd call her music Folk, but that really doesn't cover it. This current album Hundreds of Lions is very hard to classify. It is acoustic. But it almost sounds like really mellow techno. But also orchestral. Orchestral Techno? I've never heard of it, but hey! This is Erin Mckeown. Rebel and rule breaker and fabulous musician.

What is amazing to me is that I never would have gotten "in to" her music if she hadn't been opening for a concert I attended years and years ago. I've since stopped listening to the main act from that concert, but Erin McKeown continues to be on my favorites list. I have all her albums thus far. But even if someone had handed me one of her albums I probably wouldn't have "got" it with out the live performance. Because she is 100% better live. No, make that 1000% better. She has this huge amount of energy. Her concerts positively rock. Even if she is a one woman show. So go see her, if you ever get the chance. It's the only way to really get "hooked."

Babies

I got to see the movie Babies yesterday. I have been eagerly awaiting it's release since I first heard about it, several months ago. It was playing at a local theater, and DH and I went to an afternoon showing. It was everything I hoped for, but then I love baby watching. ;-) It has no narration or subtitles, just music and whatever background conversations happen to be going on. The focus is entirly on the babies, not their siblings or parents, and it is mostly from the babies perspectives--the camera is close to the ground/floor, and mostly stationary, while people walk in and out of the frame.

The visuals are stunning, but the best part is the amusing antics of the babies themselves. The filmmaker folowed the lives of 4 babies from birth to first steps, then interwove theirs stories into a single story. The babies are from Nambia, Mongolia, Japan, and the USA. You can watch a trailer here.

Oh, and by the way, I (finally) have a new post up at my other blog--come check it out: Beyond the Myth-Box.