Designed to make you jealous

Today is a beautiful, stunning, warm summer day in Oakland. There is a gentle breeze, the sky is blue, and all I can hear is the rustling of the wind.

Because I’m working from home.

… From my backyard.

… In a hammock.

… Under a canopy that blocks out just the right amount of light.

… Eating toasted dried squid.

Oh wait, I think that’s probably one more thing than most of you want. Oh well.

Welcome back, Charles!

Welcome back to Charles of “Team Uyen, Powered by Charles” fame. We’ve missed you!

Update: AIDS Walk and Camping

I’ve had to change the camping date to Friday, July 13th to Sunday, July 15th, so if you want to join us, please be aware of this change in date.

This change in date also means that I will not be able to participate in the AIDS Walk in SF, so sorry to any potential partners for the walk.

AIDS Walk San Francisco & Camping

AIDS Walk in San Francisco is happening on Sunday, July 15, in Golden Gate Park. I am thinking about doing this while my brother is here, either the 10K walk or volunteering at one of the refreshment stands. The thing is, I’m more likely to want to walk if I knew other people would join me. 😀

So, here’s the question: would anyone be interested in doing the walk with me & the little bro, and failing that, volunteering at a station with me? Team registration has to happen by July 3rd, I think, so let me know if you are interested.

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention the very significant fact that the little bro is gonna be visiting from June 30th to July 21st. I’m pretty excited!

I scheduled a weekend of camping at Anthony Chabot Park Friday, July 6th to Sunday, July 8th. We have a spot that can hold up to 8 people — note that Seppo, the bro, and I only make three people. Mobi doesn’t count as a person, although he’ll be there too. So … Would anyone like to join us? Let me know, as the spot is already paid for. 😀

An Exaltation of Larks

This morning, as I was listening to KPBS’s pocast of their program, A Way With Words, I heard quite a beautiful phrase: an exaltation of larks. An exaltation, then, is a group of larks (a type of bird). There is even a book by that title, penned by the very same James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio, basically covering the variety of grouping terms that exist in the English language, tracing through the history and making sense of it all.

I just love that imagery. I picture birds bursting through the air, filling the skies with music.

In some ways, my life is an exaltation of larks — of the other type. My fellow generalists will get my meaning. 🙂

Firing on all pistons

I’ve observed in the past that a little momentum can carry me a long way. When I’m energized in one arena of my life, all other part also get a boost. It is nice. It feels like life is humming along pretty well right now.

Last week Thursday, I caught dinner w/ Max at Bong Su [review | map] in SoMa. We took our time to get caught up and had a fantastic dinner.

Friday night, we moved into Joe’s old room. Saturday was full of moving more stuff, IKEA, hanging curtains (Seppo), and assembling a side table (me).

Sunday, Uyen took me out to lunch and to see The Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons at the Curran Theater as an early birthday present! Can you believe it? Ok, so it’s about 60s pop music? What, it’s a musical? And it’s about a bunch of Jersey boys who make it big? Hee hee, the only thing that would be better is if this musical were actually about Bon Jovi instead. Thanks, Uyen! 😀 It was an awesome, fun time, full of great music. We got a chance leisurely chat during lunch and the drive to and back. It was really, really, fun. Woo hoo! And Charles gets back on Sunday! YAY!

Tonight, I went to dinner with Holly. Man, being with Mac and being engaged to him makes Holly always look like she’s lit like a candle from within with happiness. Yeah, you might think that’s an exaggeration, but it’s not. She’s so happy and it shows, and I am so, so happy for her. It was nice to catch up after so long. For a while, we had a standing monthly-ish dinner, but it had been a while. We are going to try to continue them once more. We went to a Filipino restaurant in San Bruno called Kuya. I’ll have to review this place, the crepe place Uyen and I went to, and Bong Su, at some point.

I got back home and found that Seppo had cleaned up the entire living area. Man, he is so awesome. So to try to make a contribution, I pulled out the sewing machine and hemmed the brown curtains for the downstairs. Since I had measured and pinned them last night, sewing them was a breeze. In a fit of productivity, I decided to mend my shiny reddish skirt (which I had to let out) and my pale grey dress (which I had broken the shoulder straps on). Done and done! I mean, they don’t look pretty, but at least they’re fixed.

I need to buy fabric for the dress I am going to try to make. It’ll be my first big project. I should pick up some nice heavy silk for a tie for Seppo too.

My seedlings are doing well, but I am going to wait another week before I put them in the ground. I need to get corner thingies and 2x6s to make the raised bed.

Busy busy. Woo.

Spring Fever?

Seppo and I have been acting like crazy people. We’ve been reorganizing the downstairs and moving stuff around. It’s unbelievable how much larger the downstairs looks now. I keep wanting to randomly invite people over just so they can admire it, but we have some more tidying up to do.

Two Saturdays ago, I spent something like 9 contiguous hours with the IKEA kitchen designer, trying this and that and a dozen different layouts. I think we have a couple of options that we think are really functional and nice. It was reassuring to think that we have an estimate of the cost of kitchen renovation that is far, far, far below the supposed average of $300-400/sq. ft. that is common in the Bay Area.

We spent much of yesterday and the day before doing the backed up laundry and organizing random records and dog toys strewn about the house, into our new fire-safe, water-safe locked file and storage ottoman, respectively.

I’ve swept the downstairs about 20 times since we reorganized the area, feeding off some heretofore unknown OCD-like cleaning impulse, which, if you know me, you know was heretofore unknown. Probably also will be “henceforth unknown”. 😀

Aside from that, we haven’t been doing very much. We’ve seen a couple of friends here and there, mostly at their houses or our house, laying low while we get through this crazy frenzy.

We are pretty much acting like we did back in 2001 and 2002 when we first moved into the house: moving things around, organizing, imagining neat things we could do with the space. I hope this year brings some noticeable changes. 🙂

Sick

You know what’s sick? Me. I’m at home today because I feel like crud. Bleh.

You know what else is sick? This guy from last night’s So You Think You Can Dance:

If you think you’ve seen this type of thing before, make sure to watch at least up to 1:02 (2:04 on the countdown timer) because that’s just crazy. I mean, what is going on with his bones & joints?

It was also nice to see Hok back. He was entertaining as ever. I couldn’t find a video of him though. It seems like a bunch of the SickStep crew left to form Quest. Uh yeah. /fangirl blatherings.

ETA: More videos! This couple was from last week. Hawt! Especially the woman. Could the cameraman love her any more?

I loved that slow-mo thing they do (1:10 on the countdown timer). I hate Nigel’s unnecessary sleaziness though.

Stanislav’s sister is awesome too:

I feel like I finally “get” the appeal of this type of dancing.

Welcome surprise

My spring mix is already sprouting! And I just planted on Sunday. I am going to take a picture everyday to track growth. It’s another story as to if I’ll be posting them. Heh. I’m so lazy.

On a completely unrelated note, yesterday, when I drove in to work, I got 65.5 mpg. Nice.

On yet another completely unrelated note, we met with a third architect yesterday. He was very informative and helpful. Most likely, we won’t be able to afford him, which I think both he and we recognized, but he still gave us a lot of helpful tips and insight. That was pretty awesome.

Stuff from last week

• We met with another architect. I think both of us liked her better than the last person.
• I bit an impressively large flap open on my tongue, which is healing up ok.
• We had a giant-assed bbq and consumed a ton of vegetables and fruits from the local farmers’ market an Costco, two diametrically opposed types of produce merchants. Seppo cooked up some great ribs.
• I sewed missing buttons onto two pairs of pants.
• I bought 7 seed packets and have started seedlings for all of them. I decided to get the following: spring lettuce mix (yes, it’s the end of spring, but who cares :D), sweet italian basil, cilantro, garlic chive, green perilla (ao shiso), pepper (whose name I forget but look the most like the twisty, gnarly Korean peppers I enjoy), and mixed cherry tomatoes. I plan on taking daily photos to keep track of their growth.
• We attended a neighborhood crime watch/”get to know your neighbors so you know they aren’t the criminals” meeting due to a rash of armed hold-ups in our area, most notably near the movie theater, right on the side street that provides access to the parking lot. One person that was robbed lives three houses down and across the street from us. He was robbed at gunpoint while taking out his trash at 10pm. That’s so early! Some have been robbed as early as 8pm. 😐