My Life, Currently
My vacation starts tomorrow night, and I CAN NOT WAIT. One of my biggest complaints about being a grown up and having a real job and all that is this: You can't just go on vacation. The amount of work you have to do before you can go on vacation so that, when you get back, you still have a job, makes the vacation a necessity just to recover.
Anyway, I've got a lot to get done, but I just wanted to throw out a few items that have been going on in my life.
This past Saturday I had my first volunteering event with Seattle Works. Seattle Works is team volunteering. You join a team and, on the first Saturday of every month, your team has some different volunteer job. They try to get a variety of things, ie: one month it will be environmental, the next it will be hunger, and the next it will be children ... you get the idea. Anyway, this past Saturday my team volunteered at the Phinney Neighborhood association. It's the a real center of the Phinney Ridge neighborhood, and I just love it. They have classes and events, and people actually participate. Their farmer's market is on their property, people of all ages were there and seemed to know each other. The place had such a good feeling it made me want to move to Phinney Ridge.
So my new friend, Leah, and I worked in the gardens and landscaping there, cleaning up the plants from last season and preparing the beds for new spring planting. I had a lot of fun. I almost want to go back and volunteer on my own ... but it seems like I should try to find something similar in my own neighborhood instead.
After gardening all morning, Ray and I went a-caucusing, which really wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped. The facility -- a high school gym -- was crowded over capacity which, while a cool commentary on turn out and participation in the democratic process, didn't do much for my crowd-anxiety. So we turned in our preferences and got out. Washington easily went for Obama by a huge margin, as you probably heard, so we didn't really need to stay and convince anyone.
We went out Saturday night and saw In Bruges, which was a fantastic, if dark and sad, movie. I highly recommend it, if you don't really need cheering up.
In other news ... we had so much snow around here last week that all of the passes east through the mountains from here were closed on Friday and Saturday! Fortunately, Sze-lyn and I went skiing on Thursday. There was a ridiculous amount of fresh snow, and it was clear that Snoqualmie Summit was having trouble keeping up with the grooming. I finally learned what the difference between groomed and ungroomed snow was, and it makes a difference. But the slopes were soft and fluffy, even though they were also clumpy and mogully ... so even though I fell a couple of times trying to do things that were slightly beyond my level of ability, they were nice falls into fluffy, airy puffs of snow.
Anyway, that's the news for me. I need to get a ton of work done, so I'd better get back to it. Mexico, I'll see you soon!
Anyway, I've got a lot to get done, but I just wanted to throw out a few items that have been going on in my life.
This past Saturday I had my first volunteering event with Seattle Works. Seattle Works is team volunteering. You join a team and, on the first Saturday of every month, your team has some different volunteer job. They try to get a variety of things, ie: one month it will be environmental, the next it will be hunger, and the next it will be children ... you get the idea. Anyway, this past Saturday my team volunteered at the Phinney Neighborhood association. It's the a real center of the Phinney Ridge neighborhood, and I just love it. They have classes and events, and people actually participate. Their farmer's market is on their property, people of all ages were there and seemed to know each other. The place had such a good feeling it made me want to move to Phinney Ridge.
So my new friend, Leah, and I worked in the gardens and landscaping there, cleaning up the plants from last season and preparing the beds for new spring planting. I had a lot of fun. I almost want to go back and volunteer on my own ... but it seems like I should try to find something similar in my own neighborhood instead.
After gardening all morning, Ray and I went a-caucusing, which really wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped. The facility -- a high school gym -- was crowded over capacity which, while a cool commentary on turn out and participation in the democratic process, didn't do much for my crowd-anxiety. So we turned in our preferences and got out. Washington easily went for Obama by a huge margin, as you probably heard, so we didn't really need to stay and convince anyone.
We went out Saturday night and saw In Bruges, which was a fantastic, if dark and sad, movie. I highly recommend it, if you don't really need cheering up.
In other news ... we had so much snow around here last week that all of the passes east through the mountains from here were closed on Friday and Saturday! Fortunately, Sze-lyn and I went skiing on Thursday. There was a ridiculous amount of fresh snow, and it was clear that Snoqualmie Summit was having trouble keeping up with the grooming. I finally learned what the difference between groomed and ungroomed snow was, and it makes a difference. But the slopes were soft and fluffy, even though they were also clumpy and mogully ... so even though I fell a couple of times trying to do things that were slightly beyond my level of ability, they were nice falls into fluffy, airy puffs of snow.
Anyway, that's the news for me. I need to get a ton of work done, so I'd better get back to it. Mexico, I'll see you soon!