I'm not dead

        I'm still alive, I promise! I've been absent from this blog for almost two weeks, and I really don't have much of a good reason for it. Just got lazy, I guess.

       Quick synopsis of the last couple of weeks:

       Went for a walkabout in Berkeley with Ben two weekends ago. It's starting to be spring here, or at least whatever passes for spring in this ridiculous climate. The crabapples are blooming, tulips and daffodils are coming up, and the area has been innundated with songbirds.  

         A kitty has showed up at our house. I've named him “Kitty.” So far, he's killed or scared away all the mice that live in the compost bin. Don Petronilo bought some cat food for him and we're hoping he sticks around, because he's adorable and pretty tame. I'll have to get some pictures of him sometime.

        Last weekend was the Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year celebration. The official Chinese New Year was some weeks ago, but whatever, I guess. We went into the city on Saturday afternoon and spent the afternoon and evening there for the street fair and parade. The street fair wasn't as much fun as I thought it might be. There were a LOT of people and it just wasn't worth it to fight through all of them. Now I know how salmon feel when they try to return from the ocean into the mountains to spawn. Rough trip.   

I'm really not a fan of Chinese food, but this was pretty darn good.  I ate it with chopsticks
so that all the Chinese people in the restaurant wouldn't judge me. 

         The parade started at 515, so Ben and I decided we were going to get good seats. So at about 430, we struck out, trying to find an outside corner of the parade so that we could hurry off to the BART station once it was over (I had to work yet that night). Seemed like everyone else had roughly the same idea though, because there were lines of people 3 deep against the barricades on the street. We got lucky though, and found a spot where the barricades hadn't been set up. So we loitered on the corner like a couple of degenerates and waited until the police set them up. Then, presto!, instant awesome seat! Here are some photos from the parade:

          Afterwards, it was getting close to time for me to be at work, so Ben was like “OMG WE HAVE TO GET TO THE BART STATION NOWWWWW!!!!” and took off running. Unfortunately, I had been standing for so long that my feet were numb. It was like running with concrete blocks instead of feet. We made it to the BART station just in time, but then at the transfer point, the train was 15 minutes late. So I was late to work. Stupid transit.

         I also made a skirt. Here it is. I wore it to church on Sunday, and afterwards, Ben and I ate with Jonathan and some church members at a burger place in the Mission. Great food.  

It feels like my eyeballs are bleeding

You know that feeling when you're so tired you feel like your eyeballs are bleeding? That's totally me right now. If I am conspicuously absent from Facebook tomorrow, it's because I've died of exhaustion and am decomposing in my bed. Vivid imagery. You're welcome.

Here's a rundown of the last two days:

Wednesday

610 – wake up, shower, leave for Berkeley Whole Foods to pick up past-dated cakes and bread.  Decide (as I do every week) that it's really not safe for me to be driving in such a half-awake condition.  

715 – return, put away all cakes/breads/pies

730 – 910 – nap.  Try to, anyway.  Neighbors and DP bringing in noisy rolling trash bins keep interrupting.  

915 – start cooking the noon meal

11 – 2 – serve the noon meal.  Run up and down the stairs approximately 85,299 times. 

2 – 3 – clean kitchen, sweep/mop floors and main staircase

3 – 430 – catch up on Hulu shows, nap

430 – 7 – cook/consume supper. Made ham/green bean/potato soup and cheese-stuffed jalapenos. Very successful.

730 – 830 – early Valentine's day celebration at Fenton's Creamery with Ben.  Delicious cookie/ice-cream combo involving cookie dough, actual baked cookie, chocolate chunks and syrup, and vanilla ice cream. 

830 – 1130 – travel to and work for lady with cerebral palsy. First day on my own.  Did pretty well.  Only had to ask for a couple of clarifications/next-step-type things.  Finish everything early (like a BOSS) and leave unexpectedly early.

1130 – catch #1 bus at BART station. Ride it all the way home for $2.

1230 – bedtime.

Thursday

740 - alarm.  snooze. 

800 – shower, accidentally miss unloading the produce truck from the Food Bank.  Oops. 

830 – 1030 – do nothing

1030 – pass out numbers to people standing in line. Get mobbed. Lose some faith in humanity's ability to share resources

1030 – unload van and 2 pickups full of produce/bread/canned goods

1115 – 100 – Distribution. May have finally conveyed to the Asian portion of the line exactly how the number system is supposed to work. Maybe. Hopefully things should go a little smoother now. Maybe.

115 – clean up sidewalk, eat leftover pupusas from our very gracious neighborhood pupusa stand

230 – guest interview. Guy walked all the way here from southern Mexico. 7 day hike, I guess. Fell asleep in the office chair.

310 – leave for work at the clinic. Arrive late.

330 – 8 – Clinic

815 – 1030 – dink around on the Internet

1030 – pick up Maria from BART station. Assume my day is finally done.

1045 – someone taps on my window with a fingernail from the outside. Repeatedly. Creepy as all hell. Decide “better safe than sorry, what if someone genuinely needs something?” and open the window. Neighbor tells me the lights in the van are on. Know that they probably aren't, but again, “better safe than sorry.”

1100 – check van lights. They are off.

        And the worst part?  I have to do this every week until I leave one or more of these jobs.  I know, I know, I totally signed up for it.  Made the bed, gotta lie in it, that's how it works.  And I really can't complain too much.  Thursday really wasn't so bad. It was mostly the combination of Wednesday + Thursday that makes me want to keel over and die. I did this ALL THE TIME in high school, college, and this past summer. I worked  regular 16 hour days this summer, I worked the rough equivalent of full time + classes in college, and I was out of the house from 7am to 930pm in high school. I must be getting old or something. Out of practice. Guess I'll have to start adopting the “young at heart” motto or something.  Get an AARP membership and senior citizen discounts at Costco.  Start buying 12-packs of SmartBalance butter.  Get a chain for my glasses.  Start wearing shoulder pads and clip-on costume-jewelry earrings (but maybe that is actually considered "hip" nowadays?)  Start stuffing my sleeves with Kleenex.  Documenting my daily poops and obsessing over their regularity and consistency.  Crochet afghans out of brightly-colored orange yarn.  Start using words like "gee whiz!"  "tarnation!" and "holy mackerel!"  Jeez, I'm such a geezer.

         I'm going to sleep in like an Olympic champion tomorrow. Like it's my m-f JOB.

The only things I know about trifle are things I learned from reading the Redwall books

        Well, this weekend was pretty boring. It consisted of napping and training at my new job. Yeah, I got a new job as a caretaker for a lady with cerebral palsy and an autoimmune disease. She needs help with mobility, getting nutrients through a PEG tube, and getting to bed. I trained Friday from 9-130am, Saturday from 9-1130pm, and Sunday from 430-830. So there wasn't much room for much else besides catching up on sleep (IN OUR OWN SEPARATE BEDS). But here are some interesting things that happened: 

1. So I put a back rack and baskets on my bike, so now it has the added ability to carry all of my junk, which is great, because I used to have to put it all on my back, and that was uncomfortable and sweaty. Unfortunately, it now weighs just as much as the cast-iron bike owned by the Worker, making it pretty impossible to cart up and down BART stairs. So I take the escalator, something that is technically not legal, but everyone does it and no one cares. UNTIL FRIDAY. I got off BART at Downtown Berkeley and wheeled my bike over to the escalator and noticed a small knot of bicyclists at the foot of the 2-story escalator to the street. Nothing unusual. They typically wait until the bulk of people have gone up before they crowd the stairs. As I got closer, however, I noticed a lady standing directly in front of the entrance to the escalator, talking to a bicyclist. Closer, and I realized she was actually telling him off for using the escalator. The confrontation quickly escalated (haha) until he was trying to push past her with his bike and she was actually throwing herself in front of the bike and screaming at him like a harpy to take the elevator or stairs. It was like Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-dum, in the face of the Balrog, or something.  YOUUUUU...... SHALL NOT....... PAAAAASSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!  I'm sure she felt self-righteously justified to make our lives miserable.  In her pursuit to zealously follow the law, she was making a complete and utter fool of herself. I stood there for about 7 minutes while they and everyone else in the station duked it out. It appeared that no one thought the lady was in the right except for herself. Eventually the bicyclists disbanded, shouting that she'd better camp out at the foot of the escalator every day, because they were still going to use it. So I had to lug my bike up 3 flights of stairs thanks to her.
2. I found some brownish-orange 100% silk for $8/yd at the fabric store. It was half off, so I took advantage of that. Plans are in the works for a drapey shirt. Also bought batting for my quilt.
3. Went to a nearby park for awhile on Saturday while Ben skyped with his parents. I was going to be productive, but was distracted by a hummingbird. Every 30 seconds or so, he'd be like “squeaker-squeaker-squeaker” like a rusty hinge. After awhile, I started hearing a “BIRRP” from another bird, followed immediately by the little squeaker. That continued for awhile. Then he started ZOOMING from perch to perch in a very precise triangular formation, hitting the exact same branches every time, and squeaker-ing at each one. Like “squeaker-squeaker-squeaker” ZOOM!!!! “squeaker-squeaker-squeaker” ZOOM!!!! “squeaker-squeaker-squeaker” ZOOM!!!! Evidently he was trying to help the lady bird triangulate his location, because after 15 minutes or so, suddenly there were two, dive-bombing and chasing each other. It was very exciting, probably because most people wouldn't have noticed at all, but I did. And it all happened in the middle of a city. According to a later Google search, I believe the hummingbird is an Anna's hummingbird, due to it's bright pink head and green back. Here are a couple very poor photos to illustrate.
   

   

   Bright pink head (click to enlarge)

   

   Green back

   

   Can you spot the little squeaker?

4. Went to a Turkish restaurant and had doeners. Delicious. Definitely a place to return to. They had great murals on the walls.

   

   Yum yum doener sandwich

   

   Been there!

   

   ceiling map

   
   
   
5. Went to church as usual. The VSers planned the service, so there were a lot of great hymns, including the Patty Shelly original - “The Lord Lift You Up.” All of you Bethel folk will know exactly what I mean when I say that when Alyssa and I sang it, we couldn't help but remember how it was sung in chapel. I also extracted TWO invitations to supper in the coming weeks.
6. There was a boy with a sousophone on the BART this afternoon. Weird.

Quilt Top! BAM!

      WHOOO, YOU GUYS I FINISHED PIECING MY QUILT TOP!!!!!!!!!!!!

      I've been working on it since before I boarded the train to come out here and it's finally done!!!!

      I started cutting out the applique pieces a couple of days before I was set to leave, stuck them all in envelopes along with some thread, needles, ribbons, buttons, and embroidery floss. I cut out enough for twenty blocks, and that seemed like a ridiculously high number, especially since some of the blocks had 10 pieces + embroidery. I started working on them on the train ride out here and finished about half of them, not including embellishments. A couple of months ago, I finished all of the applique, and about a month ago, right after I came back from Christmas, I stitched the last few buttons and beads on.

      And finally, after sewing literally all day, I finished piecing the top! I watched “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” while I did so, which may have not been a good idea, because there were a couple of times when I realized that I had run out of bobbin thread like 3-5 minutes ago and wasn't actually sewing, just stabbing the fabric with an impotent needle. Whoops. So here are some pictures.   

One of the blocks - from the Amtrak ride

Laying out the blocks

Another close-up

It is finished.

      Now I just have to get the thing quilted. I think I'm going to try and rope some of the church quilting group into helping me get it laid out and basted onto the backing using the church's quilting frame. Otherwise I'll have to lay it out on the cigarette-smoke enhanced carpet in Ben's house (now with added cheap-motel charm!), or on the dining room table at my house, and neither of those really sound ideal.

 

Berkeley is like Middle Earth!

           Saturday was a social justice forum at Holy Names University, the Catholic school that the CW is affiliated with. It started at 9, but I had to be there early to help set up a booth and stuff, so it was a pretty early start to the day. The forum was very interesting – I went to two workshops, one over US immigration policy, and another over prison reform. They left me with a renewed hatred of US foreign and domestic policy regarding “others.”

           Afterward, I packed up all my stuff and headed over to Ben's. It was later in the evening, so we didn't really do much – just watched some Adventure Time and ate microwave popcorn for supper.

We decided to skip church on Sunday (heathens!) because it really is a pain in the neck to get there. And it's expensive, too! $6 per trip! I mean, it's worth it, always, but at the same time, we just wanted to spend the day together, since we hadn't been able to the day before. So we slept in instead (IN OUR OWN SEPARATE BEDS). I brought a new skirt that I had made this past week, and I didn't want my adorable outfit to go to waste, so I wore it and we pranced around Shattuck for awhile, enjoying the nice weather. We went to Safeway to get some munchies for the game and went to a park near the house and took photos of my cool new skirt.   

         Game coverage started at 3 our time. No one from our friend group was really doing anything (no one has a TV), so we found a place to stream it online. I was interested for about the first 30 minutes and then fell asleep and woke up after the power came back on in the stadium. I guess Beyonce's performance was so hot it melted some fuses or something... The 49ers were down by a lot so we decided not to watch because neither of us were that invested. We kept checking back in, though, and once they reached an acceptable level of decent play, we turned it back on and watched the last quarter or so. And let me tell you, they BLEW IT in the last 5 minutes. BLEW IT. SO HARD. I don't know a lot about football, but I really think they could have at least tied the game for a bit. But they didn't, even with all of my encouragement. But at least they played “O Fortuna” in the last 30 seconds, that was pretty exciting!

 

         On my way back to the BART, I realized that my new rear bike rack, which I had installed on Friday, was super loose. Evidently, riding over bumpy streets will shake loose the nuts and bolts holding it onto the bike. By the time I realized, I had lost about 4 nuts and 3 screws and the rack was just barely hanging on. I guess I'll have to put some tape on the threads or something so they won't come loose again. It makes an almighty racket when it's not tied down securely.