Good Weekend, Ready for the Next One

The bachelorette party was a blast. Neighbors was the perfect cap to our night. The pictures are up on Facebook and that is where they will stay. No reason to draw attention to the incriminating evidence. I was good! Mostly...

The shower also went off very well. We made Sister M fill her mouth with bubble gum and wrapped up Grandma in toilet paper and they both smiled about it. Sister M was inundated with sexy lingerie and kitchen appliances, only the happy couple will know if they use them together. The families got to meet each other and everyone had a grand time.

I got back on the bike yesterday after a week off. I actually don't remember which day I rode last, so it might have been longer. I had so many errands to run last week, I just couldn't swing it. The first ride back was not hard. In fact I felt stronger on the hills than I have in the past. I made it up my goliath without stopping, which I couldn't do for the first couple of weeks I rode.

I am leaving on Friday to pick up The Boy from diabetes camp. I am staying the night in Spokane and picking him up in the morning. Then we will stay in Spokane for the night and go camping for a few days on the way back. I am looking forward to a few days away from work. And a few days with The Boy. This is only the second time I have seen him this summer--busy teenagers...

Plant a Seed

Tonight is the bachelorette party and tomorrow is the shower. I thought I was done with everything, but ended up running a last minute errand on my break today. God I hope this goes well--I feel like I am putting on a program, instead of hoping that people come, I hope they have a good time. That is one nice thing about RSVP's.

I went to see Robin at the University District Farmer's Market today, where she was the chef at the "Ask a Chef" booth. She is on season 6 of Top Chef, so make sure you watch (Bravo)! I am so proud of her. Some of you know that I was a waitress in another life and she was the owner/chef at Crave on Capitol Hill. That was during my unemployment days and she gave me a job when I had never waitressed before. I was going to barista for her--that I have a lot of experience at--but when the restaurant went to open she was down a server and there I was. I was there for about 2 years, waiting tables and adding up payroll. So I stopped in to see her and heard her give great advice on how to cook squash flowers, which makes me want to go home and try the same with my pumpkin flowers since I have so many starts on there. The garden is really chalk full right now--the corn is past my waist, the snap peas are almost over--I think I will replace them with beans that were offered by a neighboring p-patcher--I just planted a few more lettuce seeds for the next harvest and the potatoes and pumpkin plant (grown from a seed from last year's plant) look wonderful! I will post pictures later--I have been a bad picture taker this year.

Ask and you shall receive!

It works out sometimes. My boss called today and offered me a 2-6 on Friday. Sold! And during the conversation I fit in that there is a family dinner on Wednesday night and since I am an extra body couldn't I work the early shift? Yes?! Score!

To celebrate I went to VV to drop off some undesirables in the fight to get the house more livable (isn't this how you celebrate? No? Well aren't you weird) and I got a cool jar to make brandy in. I still need several more, but this one will be pretty and multi-functional.

In the picture, you can see my pretty new jar, my new sunglasses and the darned sun tea jar I decided to use for the peach brandy. It is leaking like a mother. My sis is saving me a big jar from her work, which will work much better. My latest attempt to stop the leak was to put plastic wrap around the nozzle and try to push it into the seal with dental floss. We shall see. The new jar will house cherry brandy. I hope it all works or what a waste of good fruit!

But then, since I have 20 lbs of cherries, a pound or so won't be missed. I spent a couple of hours last night watching a movie and pitting cherries, and now the creases around my fingernails are black. It is fading already, but since I have a ton more to go you might catch me purple handed yet.

Almost Crazy, Almost There...

Once again, too long between posts.

Planning wedding showers and bachelorette parties is time consuming! I am done with everything (crossing my fingers) except food. Usually I go all out with cooking and yumminess, but I have to work. My 4 hour shift this Friday miraculously turned into an 8 hour and I get to work on Saturday too, and suddenly I have little time for shopping, let alone cooking. Amazon Fresh, take me away! Maybe the miracle will reverse itself. Wish me luck.

The 4th was fun, although we saw few fireworks. We went down to some of Dr. T's friends' for a bbq. The food was amazing--some had been on the bbq for 2 days! Yum, so good. We stopped at the dollar store on the way home and had fun scouring the aisles for useless and useful times, the first to poke fun at the second to make use of. That place looked like a mob had hit though; there was stuff all over the floor in all the aisles. What amazed me was the freezer section. Red Baron Pizza....

Today was wonderful! I met up with a friend and walked down to Fremont. We perused the Sunday Market, I got some new sunglasses--let me tell you about this in a moment--and had thai for lunch. We also stopped in a couple of really cute boutiques and I think I got someone a very sweet something. That's all I can say...

Sunglasses...I have been holding onto a pair for YEARS that were non-prescription for gods knows why, until I could finally use them now that I have contacts. YEARS. I have been using them for several months and aside from a scratch, they have been great. I wear them biking even. Well, not anymore. I accidentally set off the alarm at work the other day, partially due to my bike gloved fingers refusing to press the right buttons and my bike being unmanageable in the scuffle to turn the alarm off. Somehow (or just my usual me-ness) I set the sunglasses down in the water fountain and left them there. I didn't notice until it was time to leave. And of course they were gone. I wouldn't even have known where I left them except that a co-worker mentioned having seen them there. I hope some &*^%$ person is enjoying the hell out of them.

The Boy's basketball camp was successful--if successful means "kicked his ass everyday and made him want to go back for more." He came home and his ass was in bed except for dinner--but then he got up every morning, got himself ready and caught the bus to SPU on time. It is the most responsible I have seen him in...well...ever. He had good stories about his games and his teams got a couple of awards: 3 on 3 champions and Shooting league champions. This one might be a keeper.

Dreams of Ice Cream

I think I tired myself out a bit last week. It seemed like each night got a little later and each morning stayed the same--I didn't let myself sleep past 8 even though I could have. On Thursday I stayed home with a stomach ache and slept until 11. That should have helped, right? I went to work the next day and rode my bike, then went and got my hair cut. I rode home and felt fine. I was voraciously hungry, so ate some cheese and crackers until the burgers were ready. We ate around 7 and I crashed. Literally. I was asleep by 8 and didn't wake up until 8 the next morning. Exciting? These are the things you get to learn about on my amazing blog.

My hair is multicolored now. No one has even mentioned it though, so it must not be too exciting. I warmed it up a bit with reddish and blond highlights and got my hair trimmed. Only a little bit shorter... I will post a picture when there is time.

There is a new ice cream place in the U-district! Yummy organic ice cream from a mysterious source--not even the woman behind the counter knew where they make it. It is on par with Molly Moon and they have coffee! Pretty Kitty has my approval. I went there for my co-worker's birthday celebration and got two pints, one Mexican chocolate and one birthday cake (of course) and both were delicious. I also tried the horchata and the salted carmel. The don't have lines out the door, like Molly Moon, so get there before they get discovered!

And life goes on

3 day weekend...thank the gods. I really needed it, with few obligations and lots of down time. The short end of that is that my house has not been cleaned and the garden was not attended to until this morning. As soon as I get my butt out of this chair, I will begin the clean. This is where the 3rd day comes in, you get two to relax and one day to get fed up with your own stink enough to start cleaning!

Two of my sibs in my dad family have birthdays today (yup, twins). We had a bbq at Volunteer Park for my sis yesterday. The weather was actually pretty perfect; the sun kept peaking out and it didn't rain the whole time we were there. I made a peach, strawberry, rhubarb cobbler that was just soooo yummy. Dr. T suggested that I share the left overs with my housemates today and I said "no way! I am eating all that myself!" Then I gave them some rhubarb so they can make their own, 'cause that's how I roll.

I was really on a baking jag this weekend (as you can still see by the state of my kitchen). I made sourdough bread, strawberry scones, scratch waffles from my dad's recipe and the sourdough starter, and the cobbler. I had to make the waffle batter twice because the first time I left it out all night. Dairy and sourdough starter don't like that, although it was an interesting science experiment.

I don't think I mentioned, a friend gave me an italian sourdough starter a few weeks ago. It is really fun to work with and I have made several breads. I have also found that my oven is a little too hot and I keep getting a bit harder crust than I want. When will I learn? Even though I know this, every time I make a new recipe I forget to take that into consideration.

The last few weeks circumstances have made me a little pessimistic about library work. I really love my job and I just needed a reminder. Today has been a good day of reading about what other systems are doing and it gives me hope that we will recover from the changes that are going on. My friend has some interesting info on the NY Library's anti-prom. I love to hear about teens doing such great things. Especially when there is a library involved.

Next...

The restructuring downtown is definitely not the only thing that we at the branches "don't get" the same way as those at central. There is quite the comment war going on over at the stranger and they are all well worded, even is some are more emotional and studded with swears than others. This is one of those debates where I keep turning my head to hear what the new person has to say, being swayed by both sides. It both makes me want to take up arms and go bury my head in the sand. I don't really feel like I am intellectually up to this conversation. On paper, both sides are right.

Had a wonderful day though. Got up early for no apparent reason, but got a bit done before the day really started. Finished a book that seems to capture the life of a street kid, Theories of Relativity by Barbara Haworth-Attard, got some storage stored, moved my desk into the extra room, general clean-ey type stuff. Not perfect, but it makes me feel better. Then I went with a couple of friends to a newish place on 32nd, called Picolino's. They have beautiful outside seating and the food was good. We sat on the front sidewalk and kept having to feel bad for those trying to pass between the table and the tree well in the sidewalk, but otherwise had a lovely time. They have good coffee too--Umbria :) what Crave used to serve. I have been meaning to try this place for a while, even though there was some controversey over their take over of the building they reside in. I can't find the documentation for that right now, since the archives for MyBallard seem to be down.

Now we are off to hit the junk/thrift stores and Fred Meyer to help along my attempt to make my own peach brandy.

The Stranger Said Boo

There is a ton of controversy going around the library right now, for several reasons. Our central branch had a re-structure of employees. They moved people around, changed managers, moved managers out to branches, combined or split apart departments, etc. None of this really affects us out in the Branches, so we are bystanders in this and can't really understand what they are going through down there. Some people seem fine with it, while others hate it vehemently.

We also have some system wide changes coming up, as you may have seen in the news. The Seattle Times, The PI Book Blog and KUOW all covered our proposed changes to the Code of Conduct. These are basically rules which patrons should observe while using the library to ensure privacy, safety and well being for all present and the changes will make these rules clear as well as the consequences for breaking them. There has been a lot of support for the changes, both by staff and the public, although there are those who feel that the rules affect certain populations more than others.

Yesterday, The Stranger decided to take that stance in an article that was actually about something else. I suppose it helps make their case that we are a homeless and immigrant hating organization. This article exposes (through leaked material by one of my coworkers) that administration is planning to change some of our circulation policies, such as reducing check outs and holds to 50 and 25 respectively, from 100 items, and adding a fee for interlibrary loans. This is not expected to make the library a ton of money, and one goal is to make people think more about the actions they take. A lot of interlibrary loans are not even picked up from the library to be checked out, as are many holds. Interlibrary loans cost an average of $15 (some cost nothing more than their transportation and staff time, others I have heard of cost $150 just to borrow from another system) and holds that sit of the shelf and are not checked out also cost money and time.

The article is inflammatory and at times incorrect. The quotes from Nancy Pearl and King County Library System are good and constructive, but anything that came from Seattle Public tends to be overly emotional and finger pointing. I don't propose that these are the best choices for SPL to make for our system and our patrons and I hope more thought will go into them before they are finalized. So far, I haven't been able to find any other news agency (giving The Stranger the benefit of the doubt about being one) covering this story, but I hope one comes out soon. We need more balance in our lives right now.

Update: The library has posted this explanation of the changes as a news release.