Things I did on weekends or the occasional Thursday.
Lately I've been having some weekends, y'all, in between floods (my commute took SO EFFING LONG today), which seems like an excellent place to pick up. In late September Holly invited me down to Augusta to paint a mural in her apartment, which is a cute ground-floor loft space downtown. For security's (and privacy's) sake, she's put plywood inside the lower part of the windows, and I was there to paint that plywood. We didn't get to the art until several hours later, when we'd settled some important issues - the population density of Bangladesh, the succession of English monarchs from Henry VIII to the Glorious Revolution, why the Netherlands isn't called Holland nowadays - but eventually Holly once again proved herself superior by jumping right in when I squeezed some paint directly onto the board, dragged it around with a brush a bit, and announced, "And that's how I paint a mountain." She'd never painted before, and now she's completed half of a painting roughly four feet by three knowing she would have to look at it every day. THAT is the spirit.
Mid-effort we went out to dinner at a tapas restaurant I'm having trouble describing without sounding like I didn't like it. It was... very college-town? Lots of vegetarian and vegan items, lots of twenty-somethings, a hostess with skinny black jeans and a shapeless tank covered with sequins. We picked our menu by ordering only plates that avoided a theme (hummus, stuffed mushrooms, raw tuna, spinach quesadilla), plus a slice of ganache-topped cheesecake. Following up on a lead (see next paragraph), I further invested in a Blenheim's spicy ginger ale, which was searing and worthwhile. Anyway, by the time we left there was a lightning storm raging, and being townies we were on foot, and being heedless we were sans umbrella - and being in a hurry, we cut down an alley past the club where an armed robbery had occurred not long before - and yet nobody died. In fact, inanimate objects came to life: the painting shifted itself while we were out, indicating a river where no river had been before and solving the notorious Problem of the Foreground.
I ordered the ginger ale on the strength of an off-hand reference to Blenheim Palace in the previous week's episode of "Inspector Lewis", because two weeks before that, a Wagner-themed episode led me to re-read Das Nibelungenlied, at which point it turned out that much of the action takes place in Hungary (and Iceland!), not just Germany as I'd remembered, and specifically that the whole climactic battle was fought in the castle at Esztergom, which complex our boat sailed past this very summer while I was in the lounge watching a strudel-making demonstration. This is clearly a Connection and, as such, not to be ignored. Also, if I'm never going to wake up to find myself endowed with unusual powers and set to some kind of quest - and at twenty-seven, I think I'm a bit past my mythic prime - then I'm by-gum going to make my own signs, artifacts, and wonders. This week's episode revolved around Shakespeare, so I guess I should go down to the tavern and get my Bard on with Richard III or similar. What will I do for inspiration when Masterpiece Mystery's run is over for the year? Something else.
First things first, though: Ryan and Bethany and Ashley have consented to attend The Brilliant Inventions' show this Thursday, and I'm looking forward to it. Last Thursday I performed some last-minute subbing for a mid-level ESL class at the local community action center. That opportunity came my way because my boss lives in the same neighborhood as a woman who works there, who used to live in MY neighborhood, and in fact I babysat for her several times (never figured out exactly which kid was which, but then I never do); she asked my boss if she knew anyone who would want to volunteer, my boss remembered that I was active in the scene back in '07, and so. Good group of students, and - joy of joys - there's a textbook and a syllabus and suggestions and everything. The class flew by, after which I returned to the office for another four hours of web development. There were still three people there when I left at 1:45, and still one person there when the others left at 5. Five ack emma - and these are adults. Insanity. Site worked, though, and thanks to me it... also had a properly applied style sheet and some design revisions. Etc. We had enough people on the project that I could focus on my strengths.
This weekend, to return to the topic sentence, was also a winner. With the house to myself, I engaged in a host of things I'm not stellar-enough-to-be-public at, like setting a hymn for the banjo, reading a ton of German out loud because I like the way it sounds (Der kleine Hobbit, and if you're wondering whether I do the voices, you're goddamn right I do the voices), baking some pumpkin-related items, and painting another scene of mountains and trees, which alone of all things turn out okay with my current technique. I took it to the office today because I crave praise, and my workplace nemesis (the good kind, not the DiMO kind), who clawed around all last week after burning the hell out of her hand with boiling water, attempted to commission a much larger work on the same theme in exchange for actual US currency. I'll be having none of those high expectations, thanks, but my flattery stomach was sated. Pathetic? A little. Successful? Quite.
Six things that are amazing right now: cinnamon, deciduous trees, library cards, cheap plastic mouth guards, animals that are much smaller than humans in some cases and somehow still have all the necessary parts to make them go, and pens with blue ink. Also, I'm having a good time adding LJ tags. To bed!
Mid-effort we went out to dinner at a tapas restaurant I'm having trouble describing without sounding like I didn't like it. It was... very college-town? Lots of vegetarian and vegan items, lots of twenty-somethings, a hostess with skinny black jeans and a shapeless tank covered with sequins. We picked our menu by ordering only plates that avoided a theme (hummus, stuffed mushrooms, raw tuna, spinach quesadilla), plus a slice of ganache-topped cheesecake. Following up on a lead (see next paragraph), I further invested in a Blenheim's spicy ginger ale, which was searing and worthwhile. Anyway, by the time we left there was a lightning storm raging, and being townies we were on foot, and being heedless we were sans umbrella - and being in a hurry, we cut down an alley past the club where an armed robbery had occurred not long before - and yet nobody died. In fact, inanimate objects came to life: the painting shifted itself while we were out, indicating a river where no river had been before and solving the notorious Problem of the Foreground.
I ordered the ginger ale on the strength of an off-hand reference to Blenheim Palace in the previous week's episode of "Inspector Lewis", because two weeks before that, a Wagner-themed episode led me to re-read Das Nibelungenlied, at which point it turned out that much of the action takes place in Hungary (and Iceland!), not just Germany as I'd remembered, and specifically that the whole climactic battle was fought in the castle at Esztergom, which complex our boat sailed past this very summer while I was in the lounge watching a strudel-making demonstration. This is clearly a Connection and, as such, not to be ignored. Also, if I'm never going to wake up to find myself endowed with unusual powers and set to some kind of quest - and at twenty-seven, I think I'm a bit past my mythic prime - then I'm by-gum going to make my own signs, artifacts, and wonders. This week's episode revolved around Shakespeare, so I guess I should go down to the tavern and get my Bard on with Richard III or similar. What will I do for inspiration when Masterpiece Mystery's run is over for the year? Something else.
First things first, though: Ryan and Bethany and Ashley have consented to attend The Brilliant Inventions' show this Thursday, and I'm looking forward to it. Last Thursday I performed some last-minute subbing for a mid-level ESL class at the local community action center. That opportunity came my way because my boss lives in the same neighborhood as a woman who works there, who used to live in MY neighborhood, and in fact I babysat for her several times (never figured out exactly which kid was which, but then I never do); she asked my boss if she knew anyone who would want to volunteer, my boss remembered that I was active in the scene back in '07, and so. Good group of students, and - joy of joys - there's a textbook and a syllabus and suggestions and everything. The class flew by, after which I returned to the office for another four hours of web development. There were still three people there when I left at 1:45, and still one person there when the others left at 5. Five ack emma - and these are adults. Insanity. Site worked, though, and thanks to me it... also had a properly applied style sheet and some design revisions. Etc. We had enough people on the project that I could focus on my strengths.
This weekend, to return to the topic sentence, was also a winner. With the house to myself, I engaged in a host of things I'm not stellar-enough-to-be-public at, like setting a hymn for the banjo, reading a ton of German out loud because I like the way it sounds (Der kleine Hobbit, and if you're wondering whether I do the voices, you're goddamn right I do the voices), baking some pumpkin-related items, and painting another scene of mountains and trees, which alone of all things turn out okay with my current technique. I took it to the office today because I crave praise, and my workplace nemesis (the good kind, not the DiMO kind), who clawed around all last week after burning the hell out of her hand with boiling water, attempted to commission a much larger work on the same theme in exchange for actual US currency. I'll be having none of those high expectations, thanks, but my flattery stomach was sated. Pathetic? A little. Successful? Quite.
Six things that are amazing right now: cinnamon, deciduous trees, library cards, cheap plastic mouth guards, animals that are much smaller than humans in some cases and somehow still have all the necessary parts to make them go, and pens with blue ink. Also, I'm having a good time adding LJ tags. To bed!