(no subject)
Yesterday I went up to Tillamook with Sabine and the rest of Tribalation to dance at the North Coast Seafood Festival. It was a nice trip, especially since I rode with Sabine so I didn't have to do any driving (3 hours each way), which meant I could knit for most of the drive (I'm so close to being done with my sweater, but now the stitch count is off, and I fear I might have to rip out the entire yoke to figure out where the problem is). It did make for a long day, though. The performance itself went pretty well, though in the first song I was dancing in a duet with Shaunia, and as we did a spinning exchange past each other to change lead, the long fringe we were both wearing tangled. In 10 years of dancing I've gotten plenty of things tangled in my own fringe (tassels, bracelets, rings, cane), but I can't say that I've ever gotten tangled in someone else's fringe! We exited out of our duet and back into the chorus, where we took turns picking at the knot until we got it undone. The costume change(s) went smoothly enough, and the crowd was appreciative. The festival itself was really small-- one room of food vendors (with a surprisingly high ratio of beer/wine booths to actual-food booths), and one room of crafts (where the stage also was), much like the basic offerings at any other craft show anywhere else-- baskets, pottery, photography, mosaics, tiles, beaded jewelry, etc. I didn't buy anything from the vendors, though I did really like the baskets. But I did get a light lunch before the show, where I had the best thing ever:
BABY OCTOPUS TACO
Also had some Tillamook ice cream after we danced, because yum.
Got home around 8, which was slightly later than I'd expected, and still had to make dinner. Cooked a Jamaican jerk-seasoned pork tenderloin, brown rice, and an acorn squash cooked with cinnamon and maple sugar, with a nice glass of zinfandel. My kitchen smelled so good! Very cozy and autumnal, which was a nice contrast to the chill and the rain outside.
Now that it's cooled off, I think the kitchen moth problems that have plagued me all summer are done. I only saw one moth this entire week, and no new ones have gone into the trap in a while. On the down side, I think the mice are back. :( I had blocked the hole under the stairs where they were getting in last spring, but in the last week or two, Schmendrick has started sitting in front of it and staring intently again, and I even thought I heard some scratching from inside that wall one night. This morning I opened my tea drawer and found that something had just barely chewed open a corner of one of the bags of loose tea in there. You'd think that now that there are two predatory mammals living in this house, one who has successfully moused in this very house and one who is totally spazzy and pounces on everything (even if she doesn't really know what she's doing), that this mouse thing wouldn't be a problem. Argh. I can't really put out any traps because the kitten gets into everything, but I don't know that just waiting for the cats to get better at hunting is the solution either. (Also, while I would love for Truffle to learn to actually catch and kill mice, given her propensity for carrying her toys around and putting a few of them in my bed every morning, I fear what I might wake up to if she did ever kill a mouse one night.)
BABY OCTOPUS TACO
Also had some Tillamook ice cream after we danced, because yum.
Got home around 8, which was slightly later than I'd expected, and still had to make dinner. Cooked a Jamaican jerk-seasoned pork tenderloin, brown rice, and an acorn squash cooked with cinnamon and maple sugar, with a nice glass of zinfandel. My kitchen smelled so good! Very cozy and autumnal, which was a nice contrast to the chill and the rain outside.
Now that it's cooled off, I think the kitchen moth problems that have plagued me all summer are done. I only saw one moth this entire week, and no new ones have gone into the trap in a while. On the down side, I think the mice are back. :( I had blocked the hole under the stairs where they were getting in last spring, but in the last week or two, Schmendrick has started sitting in front of it and staring intently again, and I even thought I heard some scratching from inside that wall one night. This morning I opened my tea drawer and found that something had just barely chewed open a corner of one of the bags of loose tea in there. You'd think that now that there are two predatory mammals living in this house, one who has successfully moused in this very house and one who is totally spazzy and pounces on everything (even if she doesn't really know what she's doing), that this mouse thing wouldn't be a problem. Argh. I can't really put out any traps because the kitten gets into everything, but I don't know that just waiting for the cats to get better at hunting is the solution either. (Also, while I would love for Truffle to learn to actually catch and kill mice, given her propensity for carrying her toys around and putting a few of them in my bed every morning, I fear what I might wake up to if she did ever kill a mouse one night.)