I think I might have mentioned something about this earlier, but I’ve been sort of the driving force behind trying to get a social group going for the 20’s and 30’s at our church. We weren’t having much success at all (the ‘group’ was only Richard and I and another couple), but with the advent of the bible study, suddenly we had a good sized crowd. A mention of our Valentine’s dinner at the fondue place in Sacramento spurred fondue envy from a few of the others, and eventually it all culminated in a planned event – a fondue party at the church for all the 20’s and 30’s. And even with a handful of them not able to come for various reasons, we still had a dozen people excitedly looking forward to eating melted cheese and chocolate from a pot.

We decided to do three different cheese fondues and three different chocolates. I managed to get the rest of the crowd to volunteer to bring all the dipping items, and even foisted off the making of two of the fondues on someone else, but that still left four for me. So for a short time last night I wandered around the store with a little list and peered at all the cheeses I usually do not even let myself notice because I adore cheese, but cheese is not Point friendly. Gruyere. Fontina. Emmenthal Swiss. Sharp Cheddar and Romano. Mmm. Cheese. I filled up my basket, detoured down the baking aisle to grab bags of chocolate chips and jars of caramel sauce, and then got to do something I have never done before: pick out a bottle of wine.

This being a church-sponsored function, normally it would never have involved any sort of alcohol at all, but cheese fondues are made with white wine. And since I know there is an actual reason for using wine or beer in fondue (something about how it makes the cheeses blend better or something), I discussed it with a few people and we decided that as long as the fondues were made before they were actually brought to the church (whereupon the alcohol would have all cooked off anyway), we’d be fine. However, I have never in my life purchased a bottle of wine (since frankly I just don’t like the taste of alcoholic beverages and figure I’m far more fun on caffeine anyway), I was a bit at a loss as to what to get. Luckily I found a sympathetic woman who pointed me in the direction of a nice, cheap white wine.

The fun didn’t stop there. Since we are not normally a wine-drinking household (Richard has the occasional Guinness but that’s about as far as it goes) it had not even occurred to me that opening the bottle might be problematic…until I peeled off the paper top and discovered that it came with a cork. A hasty search through the drawers of miscellaneous kitchen accessories revealed that we do not own a corkscrew, or anything resembling a corkscrew. Luckily Richard’s pocketknife has one, or else I might still be gouging out bits of cork from the stupid bottle with a chisel.

The house smelled divinely of cheese for several hours today, what with the shredding and the stirring and the cooking. I collected our fondue pot and the one I borrowed from my parents, we loaded the car with a hefty selection of board games from our even larger assortment, and headed off to the church to meet up with our friend (the one who’s painting the tree on our breakfast nook wall) who got there early as well to make beignets. I would like to point out right now that beignets are incredibly good in chocolate fondue.

It was a wonderful evening. As I mentioned, there were a dozen of us, and we set up the fondue pots in the kitchen, then milled around between them, from one counter to the next, tasting and dipping and stuffing ourselves until it’s a wonder we didn’t all explode. Then once we had eaten as much cheese as we could possibly handle – and to get ourselves away from the cheese so we wouldn’t keep eating more – we all crowded around a table and played games. And just when we thought we’d finally recovered from the overeating of the cheese, it was time for the chocolate – a straight dark chocolate, chocolate with peanut butter and chocolate with caramel stirred in. I think the entire crowd ate themselves into possible food comas. Even the kids seemed a bit overwhelmed with the sheer amount of food available.

It was a wonderful evening, over all. Everyone lingered, helping clean the kitchens and wipe down tables, chatting and laughing and getting to know the newer additions to our group. We’re already talking about our next ‘organized’ event – a barbeque/camp fire evening out on one of our friends’ ranch.

There is a feeling of relief about tonight, and I know that I am not the only one who feels it. Two other women and I were standing around talking, and one of the others mentioned how hard it has been to meet people since leaving college. And the other replied with a laugh “Yes. It’s nice to finally have friends.”

That’s it exactly. I’ve wanted this for so very long that it’s strange to think it might finally be real.

Once Buffy finished its seventh and final season last year we’ve been at a loss for a weekly fix from the Whedonverse. We’ve been busily purchasing and watching the first five seasons of Buffy so we’re at least now caught up to where we started watching it, but there’s still time before season 6 comes out on DVD and what are Joss Whedon fans to do?

Why, get started on Angel, of course. We rapidly plowed through the first two seasons, and this weekend we finished the third, which ends on a cliffhanger. Gah! If I hadn’t given up and rooted around online until I found a really high level synopsis of the next season, which at least told me how the cliffhanger resolves, I think I would be getting a little twitchy by now. Richard, naturally, has far more patience about this sort of thing than I do and is remaining spoiler free.

I had to do it, however. Season four does not come out until…well, actually, we have no idea when it’s due to be released because it’s not even showing up on Amazon for pre-order yet. Buffy, on the other hand, releases season 6 next month. Of course, in this case, we had watched season six on television when it was first aired, so at least we know what’s going to happen. Not that that has anything to do with our need to get it on DVD and watch it all over again, of course. Must…feed…addiction.

I spent so much time knitting this weekend that my left hand ended up cramping up. But I did manage to get a significant start on the next project, so at least I am feeling pretty optimistic about the time line I set for myself. Of course I’m basing this next project on something I read once in a book that I not only do not own, but cannot seem to track down again. So I’m not entirely sure how I will proceed in the near future. I am, however, confident that I will muddle through somehow, if only because I seem to have somehow developed a knack for this.

My knitting-enabling friend very kindly detached the offending sleeve from my sweater so that I did not have to worry about inadvertently shredding it in the process – much as I had done with my nephew’s sweater (although the very cool news is that she thinks she can fix that too). So now I can reattach it, right side out. Oh, did I forget to mention that teensy little problem? I finished the darn thing up on Wednesday and fully intended to wear it on Thursday – except that in the car, on the way to work, I happened to glance down and realize that I had oh-so-stupidly attached one sleeve inside out. Sure, maybe no one else would have noticed, but at that point I now knew of the problem and I also knew that it would drive me insane if I wore it like that all day.

Plus there’s the pesky issue of the button strip, which is, by its very nature, too soft to act as a proper button strip without a little sagging. Happily the fix for that is simply to acquire and attach a strip of grosgrain ribbon to the back of that section to give it some reinforcing, which we did this evening. I sat on the bed while Richard did homework and reattached the sleeve (right side out this time – I checked more than a few times) and stitched on a length of ribbon. So now it really *is* done. And luckily the weather has remained cool enough that I can wear it tomorrow. Phew.

Tuesday I had Richard drop me off at Raley field again and I rode to work, but this time on the way home I decided to try to ride another few miles, and make it all the way to the beginning of the causeway. Of course, this was all planned before we realized just how windy it was going to be. I’ll admit that I very nearly called Richard as I was setting off from the office to have him pick me up at the usual spot, but instead I hunched over my handlebars and pressed onwards. He found me along the route, since he knows how much I hate wind, and this time the wimpy part of me won out and I took him up on his offer for an earlier pick-up.

We were going to do the same routine on Thursday as well, except that this Thursday was the last day for one of my coworkers, so we closed down the office early and headed off to the local bowling alley. We all proved to each other just how much we all *don’t* know about how to bowl. There silly trophies handed out for the funniest bowler, and I think half the group managed to tweak a finger or yank a muscle in arms or legs during the process – all of us with bowling injuries. As it turns out, by the time we were done the timing would have been perfect for me to hop on my bike and pedal down to the end of the road, which was only a few miles from where Richard would have picked me up normally. But ah well – perhaps next week.

********

An old friend of Richard’s has been in town for the past few weeks, playing at a local coffee shop and also displaying some of her paintings there as well. Friday night we went to listen to her play, accompanied by another friend on saxophone, and then she crashed on our futon, where the cats apparently either were nice enough to leave her mostly alone all night, or else she was so out of it she didn’t even notice when they started bouncing on her head.

Richard went off to do library commissioner type things Saturday and was gone for most of the afternoon. So the friend and I spent most of the day at home – or rather, I spent it at home knitting, while she spent it on our futon, catching up on her sleep. I made her get up long enough to drive out to Davis for lunch. It was Picnic Day at UC Davis, so we met my parents for the traditional barbeque lunch at the Lutheran church there in town. I’m not sure when the last time was that I actually *went* to Picnic Day, since the novelty wore off long ago. But the barbeque is always nice, and even when the inevitable rain started, they’d thoughtfully erected huge tents so we could eat our homemade pie in peace.

Since Richard had access to these two old friends (the one sleeping on our futon and the saxophone player), and since they were also old gamers from way back, he incorporated some of their old characters into the game he ran on Saturday night. We ordered an obscene amount of Chinese food and sat around the table rolling dice and inhaling various stir-fries and noodle concoctions. I knew we’d been playing a very long time when we took a break, hours later, for a second round of dinner. Both of them fit in wonderfully with the campaign Richard’s running and it was as boisterous a game as it usually is with the smaller group.

So that sweater I’ve been working on? It’s done. I finished it tonight, while watching Angel. Making the buttonholes was…interesting, since I had to knit the band and attach it all in one long piece as I went.

It fits loose enough to wear over things, which is good because I ended up putting on the top button a little lower than I’d normally be comfortable wearing just by itself. And how convenient that they’re predicting cold weather and rain by the end of the week. I might actually get to wear it before the winter after all.

Here it is. I’m actually quite pleased with how well it turned out. Ta da!

First of all, in response to the last few days that have culminated in Easter weekend, let me just say that if I am forced to either listen to, or sing “Were You There” one more time I may just shoot myself. Or I may shoot someone else. The whole point is that there will likely be shooting of some kind. You have been warned.

It’s a lovely song. I am sure it is. It’s just that there are people out there who feel that it must be sung slowly and with great drama. And the problem is that these same people often do not grasp the distinction between Slow With Drama and So Painfully Slow I Must Claw Out My Own Ears. Five verses, people. No song with five verses should ever be sung in such a manner.

Aside from my whole quirky little slow song issue, it has been a fairly nice Easter. There was the short service on Thursday, which I attended because it was during the normal choir practice time and I forgot there was a service until I showed up, at which point I was drafted into singing with the rest of the choir members who had also shown up thinking it was actually practice. Then there was the Good Friday service on, yes you guessed it, Friday, which I attended for the sole reason that every year my dad and I (and sometimes other people) each show up with a pile of miscellaneous musical instruments and inevitably end up only using the oboe and the recorder and play the ‘which part shall we play next’ game with Taizai songs (which also, amusingly, tend to be slow and dramatic and drag on forever, but I can handle those because I am always busy trying to kill my lips playing a double-reed instrument the entire time). And to top it all off, there was yet more church and more music (of the singing kind) and yes, even another rendition of “Were You There” (gah) this morning – two whole services of it. I wore my pink flowery dress and my lovely pink shoes and was appropriately Easter-ish. I also ran around after each service and tackled people in their 20’s and 30’s in the most gracious way possible to coerce…I mean invite them to come to the event we’ve scheduled for later in the month. Said event will involve chocolate and cheese and long, sharp forks, and promises to be all manner of fun.

Yesterday, in the spirit of Easter, which is all about resurrection, and coming back from the dead, Richard and I decided to go see the most appropriate movie currently in the theaters. Naturally, that would be Dawn of the Dead, because zombies certainly count as coming back from the dead (although they don’t so much save your soul as try to eat your face off, if you really must quibble over that little distinction). As far as horror movies go, it was one of the better ones I have seen in quite some time. The build-up of suspense in the beginning was marvelously done, and the blood and gore was not gratuitously overdone. The characters all seemed quite believable in their reactions and I don’t think there was anything in the entire movie that made me roll my eyes. This is high praise from me for a horror film, in case you hadn’t figured that out already.

We also did other useful things, like eat crepes for breakfast and steak and shrimp for dinner, and go to the fabric store so I could pick out buttons for the almost-completed sweater. Speaking of the sweater, this afternoon I got hasty lesson number who-knows from my knitting enabling friend on how to make buttonholes while knitting, and finally got the chance to return the enabling favor by letting her borrow the book I bought a few weeks ago that is full of lots of gorgeous sweater patterns that I have convinced myself I will make, one of these days. So at this point I have put on both sleeves and tucked in most of the loose ends and sewn and attached the button band to one half of the front and all that is left is to attach the buttons so I know *where* to make the buttonholes, and finish up the button band, and do a little more mattress stitching and then it will be complete.

Easter dinner was with Richard’s parents, which meant that this morning I got up extra early to whip up two batches of apple cinnamon sweet potato muffins to take down with us. My parents came too, so after church we all went home to change and then they came and picked us up and got a chance to walk around the backyard and see all the new flowers and the eight little baby peaches growing on the peach tree (we have peaches!) and then we piled into my dad’s car and joined the throngs of other people all going off to their families’ homes for Easter dinner.

Dinner was ham and pork roast and scalloped potatoes and corn fritters and spinach salad and my muffins and if that wasn’t enough there was cake later for dessert. We did a lot of chatting and didn’t pause the chatting significantly even while doing all the eating. After dinner we all got to view a screening of Richard’s little sister’s television debut, which involved “hot nerd on nerd action” (That probably sounds far more risqué than it really was. Except for maybe the ‘nerd’ part. Um. Never mind). This was naturally followed by much more chatting and raucous laughter and the usual frivolity that ensues when our families get together. Plus there were the very untypical but much appreciated Easter gifts of strawberries and snap peas, and Starbucks gift cards. So while the Easter season never did end up including any Cadbury caramel eggs after all, it had zombies and ham and buttons and family gathering, and best of all, hot nerd on nerd action, right there on the television for all the world to see – all the necessary elements to make this a perfectly marvelous Easter.

This week it’s apparently all about the surveys. I haven’t done one of these in a while, so here’s a Friday Five.

1. What do you do for a living?
   I work for a construction cost estimating company. However, my job has very little to do with estimating. I’m part database wrangler (of the not-really-a-real-database Access variety) and part research writer. I spend my days researching and writing about the various issues that are impacting the construction industry. Part of that researching and writing includes a strong focus on sustainable building and design.

2. What do you like most about your job?
   Do I have to pick just one thing? I love the fact that my job is never the same thing from one day to the next. In the past year I’ve worked on white papers, presentations, news briefs. I’ve built and loaded databases. I’ve compiled and manipulated cost indexes and learned how to do all sorts of nifty things with graphs. I’ve rediscovered how wonderful it is to work in a small office, with a small group of people, in a company where I am not just another number. I love the fact that flexibility is encouraged, and in fact almost mandatory for the things I do. I love the fact that with each new report I write or project I work on I learn more and more about this industry. Overall, I really love my job. I feel like I’ve found a place where my skills are a good fit.

3. What do you like least about your job?
   This one’s harder to answer. There are times when I’m in full-on database loading mode and I’ve done so much typing that my hands and wrists ache. There are times when I wish the office was closer to home, or at least closer to a public transportation route so I would have more options to get to work (instead of driving). The lawyers underneath us who are always arguing with each other at the top of their lungs over stupid things like who used the printer last can occasionally drive me batty. I know these seem like such nit-picky complaints, but that’s only because it’s all I can come up with. There’s really not much for me to complain about.

4. When you have a bad day at work it’s usually because _____…
   If I’m having a bad day it’s usually because I’m exhausted and having a hard time focusing. However, this rarely has anything to do with the job itself.

   I’ve had other jobs where I dreaded coming in to work, and spent the entire day watching the clock, wishing desperately for time to go faster so I could go home. There haven’t been any days like that with this job. Hopefully there won’t be any in the future either.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
   Actually, I think I’ve found a good place for me. I adore writing, and this job gives me plenty of opportunities to do that. I like playing with databases and writing code to pull out the data in new and unique ways, and I certainly am given enough opportunities to satisfy that part of my brain as well. I need a job that will keep me busy enough, without overwhelming me, and that will constantly surprise and challenge me, and I usually get that here as well. So I’m not sure if there would be another career beyond what I’m currently doing that I would really be that interested in.

   Well, okay, if someone were to offer to pay me ridiculously large sums of money to lounge around my house knitting, poking around on my computer, and petting cats, I may have to think really, really hard. But I figure the odds aren’t exactly high for this sort of thing, so I’m pretty safe.

We’ve been doing interviews over at The Usual Suspects for a few months now. My second one was just posted over there, so I decided, in lieu of an actual entry, I’d reprint it here.

An Interview of Jenipurr, by Locust

1. Your home seems to be very important to you. You bought land and had your house custom built. Why did you go that route?

   Years ago my coworker was looking at buying land and building a house, and showed me the house plans she and her husband had found online. I was intrigued so I started poking around. I stumbled onto the plans for my dream house, but at that time I wasn’t in any kind of position to even consider it. But I bookmarked the site, and in a weak moment I sent them some money and had them give me a rough estimate of how much it would cost to build that house in my area. It was always in the back of my mind when I first started looking at houses with the intent to buy, but I didn’t start considering it more seriously until I looked around on a whim and found out that land was not only available, but something I could afford. And in some kind of strangely amusing twist, I discovered that I could afford more house (and construction loan) by building it than if I were to buy pre-built, even with the same down payment. I called around, there was this quarter-acre lot available in a lovely neighborhood, I found a general contractor who was perfect, and suddenly all the pieces fell together.

   Do you think that having done it that way makes it feel more like home?

   I suppose in some ways it could. I’ve never actually owned a house before so I really have nothing to compare it with. But having it built to our specifications does mean that it was a completely blank slate. Anything that was done to it was done because we wanted it. I didn’t have to inherit someone else’s idea of style. But even then it took both my husband and I a few months before we started feeling like it was truly our home, and not just this incredible house someone else was being nice enough to let us camp out in for a little while.

   Do you see it as something that’s done or something that’s ever-evolving?

   Something I very quickly realized is that a house is never complete. Owning a home means that you own a never-ending project. It’s just up to you to decide how complicated and detailed your project wants to be. For example, we had them paint the entire thing white, just because I knew it would take us a long time to decide what to do in all the rooms. The tree on the wall in the breakfast nook is a long-term project. The sky detailing in the master bathroom is a long-term project (although I did actually buy the paint, so I’m one step further down that path). Simply filling it with furniture is a long term project – one that will probably never end. We’re about halfway done with the backyard, and once that’s completed the front yard gets ripped out because we both want to replace the water-guzzling grass with more drought tolerant, native plants. There are discussions in the works with some electrician friends to completely rewire the computer room.

   And that only covers the little things. If I had lots of money I would completely remodel the kitchen and laundry room. We’ve talked about eventually building over the garage to extend the house and provide another room (like we really need more space, but need and want are two entirely different things). There are so many changes we have pondered, and that’s after only a little less than three years in the house. Give me another five or ten years and I’m sure my list of projects and changes will be even longer.

   The important distinction is that I find this kind of thing fun. I never let myself consider what could be changed in any of the places I rented because I knew it wasn’t mine to play with. The simple fact that we *own* this house is very freeing. I only wish I knew more about construction so I could try to do more of the bigger stuff myself.

   Would you do it again?

   Definitely. Of course, I have a short list in my head of all the things I would do differently the next time we build our house, but I have a feeling that would always be the case, no matter how many times we repeated the process. The beauty of having the house built is that we were free to make changes as we went. We weren’t restricted by someone else’s vision of what the house would look like or be. It was an overwhelming experience, especially since I hadn’t a clue what to do for most of the circumstances we faced, but our general contractor was wonderful, and walked us through everything without once making us feel like we were stupid.

   Can you ever imagine leaving?

   Yes I can imagine it. No, I don’t want to. I love our house – even with all the things I might want to change about it. Part of it may simply be that this is the first place I’ve ever lived in that is truly mine, but most of it is because it suits me. I’ve already poured a lot of love and work into the house to make it uniquely ours, and I know that will only continue as the years pass.

2. You’ve got an eye for moments, as seen in your photoblog. What catches your eye when you go to take a photograph?

   Shortly after I started Cat’s Eye View, I heard an interview on NPR, in which they were discussing the new technology in cellular phones, especially phones with cameras. The interviewer pointed out that digital photography changes how we view taking pictures. Instead of trying to capture a memory, digital photography allows us to simply focus on just catching the moment. I’ve kept that in mind when I take pictures, even when they’re pictures not specifically meant for Cat’s Eye View. I try to find things that seem interesting; something in the shot that might be worth a second glance. I like catching people (especially little kids) when they don’t even realize I’m taking their picture. Posed shots are never nearly as vibrant to me.

   Have you ever seen something in a photo you’ve take that you hadn’t noticed before?

   The best example of this would be the picture I took of the flowering pear in our front yard. I’d taken the picture of the blossoms on a branch against the sky, mainly to have a clean background for the flowers. But when I saw the picture itself I was struck by how brilliantly blue the sky actually turned out.

   What’s your favorite of the photos you’ve taken?
   I’m not sure I can pick just one. I took this one at the State Fair last year (got permission from her parents to take it) and I love the story it tells – all the colors and the blur of activity behind the stroller, and the little girl who’s just had enough. This one was a lucky shot – one of my coworkers had pressed his face on the window and the next day the light hit just right so that we saw it. I was thrilled the shot came out. I like this one because of the contrast in colors (and okay, so I admit I covet those boots). And finally, this one should be fairly self explanatory (I so rarely manage to get sunset pictures to come out so well).

3. You’ve described yourself as an agnostic with a spiritual side. Where does your sense of spirituality come from? How would you describe it?

   Back when I was in high school, we had a long term substitute teacher in English who really drove a lot of us nuts. One classic case was that after a test, he told us that if we could show him where in the book it said that we were right, we would get credit for any questions we’d missed. In my case, if I was right, the information did not exist in the book at all. So I asked him to show me where, in the book, it existed. He refused, insisting I had to show him the section to prove my case. But the entire point of my argument was that the information did not exist. My very proof was that that it wasn’t there at all. Ultimately he won because, after all, he was the acting teacher and I was just a powerless student. But the whole point of this story is to clarify how I feel about faith, and god(s) and supreme beings, and celestial master plans, and all the rest. I can’t just take someone else’s word for it. I need real, defendable proof.

   I think that the problem is that I am incapable of complete faith. I am, for the most part, a purely logical thinker, and I cannot grasp how I am supposed to take something as huge as the existence of some supreme being on faith, without any proof whatsoever. I am currently taking a bible study class at the church where we attend because I want to understand the book better, in the context of how strongly it has impacted our cultures and societies for so many centuries. But I still cannot grasp how I am supposed to think that this book equals proof. If there is no god, it is just a book like any other book. Simply writing a book about something does not make it true.

   However, I realize that there is always the possibility that something truly does exist, and I do think that there are things out there beyond what I can see or touch or feel. I deeply enjoy theological discussions with people who are open-minded enough to want to debate varying theories without feeling the need to insist that their way is the only way. I am leaving myself open to being persuaded one way or another, because the search itself is so interesting.

   Have you ever had to defend it and, if so, to whom?

   Luckily I’ve never felt that I had to defend my inability to believe, although I have been asked to clarify it many times. I think, just as I have such a hard time understanding how others can believe without question, some people with deep faith cannot understand my position either. I will admit, however, that I get a secret glee out of stumping the bible-thumpers who go door to door by asking them to prove the existence of a god without using their bible. I have yet to find a single one who was even willing (or able) to try. Somehow, that seems kind of sad.

   Do you believe you could ever move toward atheism or formalized faith, or is agnostism where you’ll always be?

   I have a feeling I will probably always remain staunchly agnostic. There is a part of me that wishes I could find the peace that my friends have with their own various religious faiths, and I wonder if I will ever be able to understand or accept things based purely on faith. Thus, I go to church and I read the bible to try to make sense of it all. I listen to people of other faiths and ask them questions and have, at times, been in the position of having to explain facets of Christianity to non-Christians as well. I accept that I will always be searching for a better understanding of faith, but I’m fine with that. The existence, or non-existence, of a supreme being really doesn’t matter much to me one way or the other. But I know I’ll always have the curiosity, and the need, to figure it out for myself.

4. You seem to have an incredible sense of community. Has it always been that way? Are you someone who gets invited into the communities of others or do you make your own? Is there anything you’d change about the way you are connected to the people around you?

   I found this an interesting question, if only because it’s something I’ve struggled with for so long. After college it seemed like I spent so much of my time feeling isolated and disconnected. I know that a large part of this was due simply to the fact that my job had me on the road all the time. Plus, by the very nature of the work I was doing, I had to refrain from forming anything more than casual friendships with the people I worked with because as a consultant, I would always be the outsider. Add to this the fact that all my friends from college gradually moved away, either physically or mentally (into a different stage of life than I was in) and I spent a lot of years feeling as if any chance for strong friendships had slipped away. It’s only in the last few years I’ve finally started to feel as if I actually belong somewhere. It’s helped that I’ve had a series of jobs that have not required the kind of extensive travel I was dealing with before. It also helped that we moved to a community where I have a vested interest in putting down roots and trying to make lasting friendships. Overall, I think the main thing is that I finally have the time to put in the effort. Integrating into any community of people requires time and energy, and when you’re constantly on the road it’s really hard to make that happen.

   Right now I’m one of the biggest driving forces behind getting a social group going for people our age at the church where we attend. It’s been a difficult process, but also very gratifying to see that it’s finally starting to come together, and it has underscored the fact that social communities require someone willing to take the time to make the effort.

5. You keep journals and you’ve done NaNoWriMo. What compels you to tell stories?

   When I was younger I used to carry around at least one three-subject notebook with me at all times, and I was forever scribbling stories into them. I often had several different stories all going on at once, and there were times when it seemed like I couldn’t write fast enough to get them all down. I still have an entire drawer of those notebooks of half-finished stories, and every once in a while I drag them out and read through them, just to remind myself that once upon a time I actually could write fiction. I think perhaps the reason I have done NaNoWriMo twice now is to try to kick start that part of the brain again. There are still stories lurking in my head that I want very much to get out, but I just don’t seem to have the ability to translate them to paper anymore. NaNoWriMo is my once-a-year test to see if I can get just a little bit further on overcoming that block.

   These days, however, my sense of story is based more on what is going on around me, and not so much all the little what-ifs in my head. Part of that is probably due to the fact that I have always been very good at the type of writing that is meant to explain things so other people will understand – research papers, reports, user manuals, any type of non-fiction document that might be needed. In fact, a lot of my work in the past few years has focused more on this type of writing. Part of it has also been the online journal, which I’ve kept now for over four years. I enjoy having the journal because it’s a place for me to continually practice my writing skills; to find ways to turn the things around me into something that someone else might be interested in reading. I’ve had a need to write for as long as I can remember, but now I focus more on how I can write for the journal.

   Is it something you look for in others, their ability to weave stories?

   The ability to weave a story in a way that makes even the mundane seem interesting is something I know I will work on for the rest of my life, and since it’s so important to me, it does become an important aspect in how I view others as well. I’ve been trying to get my sisters to take up online journaling because they both are good writers and I think they would enjoy having that outlet. I have also tried to encourage my mom to write down her experiences as a chaplain because she always wrote the most wonderful letters when we were kids – full of humor and all the little details that made them fun to read.

   Is it part of how you define yourself? Do you see everything as a story?

   Yes, and yes. I think I have always considered myself a writer, even though the writing I get paid to do (reports, presentations, white papers, etc.) might not be quite what I first envisioned I’d be doing when I was younger. Having the online journal keeps that designation firmly in my head. There is always a story to tell. It might not be the most exciting story when it comes to the things I do for work, and it might not be fiction when it comes to the things I write for fun, but nonetheless, the stories are there. It’s just up to me to get them out.

Yesterday one of my coworkers, who had been outside on the deck talking on the phone, came into the office and announced “There’s a turtle.”

Naturally the rest of us dropped whatever we were doing to take advantage of such a wonderful excuse to procrastinate on work and rushed outside with the office binoculars to the deck to peer down at the river bank. Sure enough, there it was. A turtle. A fairly big turtle, actually, probably bigger than my foot. And it was just sitting on the bank, occasionally looking around, sunning itself.

As we watched, a second turtle surfaced in the water a few dozen feet away from the first, paddling its little legs just under the surface in a lazy fashion until it established maximum floating capacity, and then just bobbed there with its head poking out of the water.

Later in the day, as I was peering outside to check on the turtle I noticed a little cluster of ducks waddling across the bank. That’s not actually all that exciting because we see ducks around here pretty much every day, but while I was eying them and the turtle another bird came swooping in. At first I thought it was some kind of duck, but the neck and beak were far too long and narrow. We get quite an assortment of wildlife here on the river – heck a few months ago we even had some kind of swan (although we couldn’t figure out if it was a trumpeter or some other kind because the only distinction is apparently wing span and neither of us felt particularly like swimming out into the middle of the river to get the swan to spread his wings so we could measure him). But I’d never seen a bird like this before. It was kind of pretty in a muted way – a silvery blue on the head and back and with a brown neck and very narrow beak.

A hasty bird book / internet search led us to the conclusion that it was a green heron, a name which makes perfect sense, seeing as how there isn’t the slightest bit of green on the bird whatsoever. It eventually flew away, however, and despite our checking on it every hour or so, the turtle on the bank showed no signs of doing anything more than just sitting there being turtley, so we all eventually gave up and went back to doing actual work. Ah well.

Today the turtle was there again this morning, although it had moved a few yards downstream. It was still there when we walked over to Chevy’s for an office lunch, but later this afternoon, it had disappeared. Alas, for the rest of the day there has been nothing more exciting out there than ducks.

It being Palm Sunday, the choir director decided to have us sing a huge pile of music. Included in this pile of music were a song for just the men and a song for just the women. I got to demonstrate, once again, my musical multi-gender tendencies by singing in both of them.

It was a fairly long service, even without a sermon, due to all the singing, but since we were the ones doing most of the hopping up and down to sing it passed pretty quickly. After church I tracked down my knitting-enabling friend, whipped out my knitting bag, and got her to show me how to attach the sleeves. Friday night was craft night so at that point I had her show me how to make and attach the side panels (stupid weirdly sized pattern, grumble), and I finished one of those yesterday. So today’s task was to learn how to do the sleeves, and next Sunday, if all goes as planned, I can get her to walk me through making the button holes, and then this sweater will be all complete. I am torn between whether to be happy about this or worried. After all, Murphy’s Law clearly dictates that the moment I complete this long-sleeved cardigan sweater which is obviously meant to be worn in cooler weather, summer will come early and with a vengeance. Ah well. I am willing to take that chance, if only because I have many other projects to finish this year. Oh yes.

After church we did lunch with my parents at Chevy’s, where I expanded my food horizons by trying their portabella mushroom and asparagus fajitas (not bad, although the asparagus was on the tough and stringy side. Shudder). Then we went home and changed and headed off to Davis because since this sweater is almost done, I am in need of those new needles. I hit the yarn shop first, where I managed to refrain from actually buying any yarn (although I did succumb to the lure of the cutest little container to hold the tapestry needles so I no longer have to rummage through my knitting bag and figure out what I did with them), and then we went to Borders. I had finally made up my mind to get one of the knitting books I’d seen last weekend and didn’t buy then, but unfortunately it was gone. I suppose that was probably for the best since the last thing I need is yet another book of patterns of things that I will never have time to make, but still, sigh.

So instead of buying a book, we got coffee and found a little table in the café section and Richard did some reading while I finished up the side panels of my sweater. There was a woman singing who had a very lovely voice, and also a clever way of working the crowd, so by the end we decided to buy her CD, if only to encourage her to keep at it.

We’ve spent the last few hours watching episodes of season three of Angel, which we both agree is a lot better than season two (even though the last few episodes of season two almost made up for the middle section that was simply too much Darla angst). Richard worked on homework and I managed to attach the first sleeve, and I am actually quite pleased with how well it turned out. I’m not entirely sure I did it the right way, but with the window pane pattern it *looks* like it was supposed to be that way so I am not too worried about it. I did not end up getting the seams aligned as perfectly as I had hoped, but the important thing is that I doubt anyone will notice, and really, if someone is staring that closely at my armpit they have a lot of other issues that are probably far more important than my shoulder seams anyway.

Oh, and by the way, I let Zucchini out of confinement this morning. This evening I took pity on all the poor starving (yeah, right) cats in the house and gave them wet food instead of the usual boring dry stuff. He was one of the first to the plates, and has been inhaling food like there is no tomorrow. I think he is trying to make up for being so sick and not being interested in eating for the last few days (except for what I managed to stuff down his throat with my fingers). So it seems everything is back to the way it it is supposed to be. Now if I can only convince him – and all the other cats, for that matter – that eating stuffing out of cat toys is a bad idea, we won’t ever have to deal with this again.

Today was a good day. It started with sleeping in and ended with gaming and in the middle there was a few hours of being very girly, so it covered all the bases. Plus there were even, at one point, root beer floats, so how much better can a day get?

Richard went off to work out this morning. I suppose I could have gone with him but I decided I would rather take advantage of the fact that Saturdays are the one day each week I get to actually try to sleep in, so he went without me. When I finally dragged myself out of bed there was only about an hour or so left to dress in something pink and floral and inhale some breakfast before I headed over to the church for the annual Women’s Tea Party. I should mention that not only was the dress very, very pink, so were the shoes. Plus I even painted my toenails for the occasion. Will wonders never cease.

This year the theme was teddy bears. Most of the tables were decorated with some kind of little bears, and people had lent out some of their favorite bears as part of a teddy bear museum. We thought at first that my grandma’s bear was the oldest one there since it was from the 1910’s, but there was one bear from 190-something that was almost a hundred years old and thus got to be the most ancient one. People brought in all manner of bears, from thread-bare critters that had obviously been well-loved in their day, to pristine bears that were more likely the sit-on-a-shelf-and-don’t-touch variety. I’ll admit that I prefer the well-loved ones, just because they have so much more personality.

There was tea to drink, of course, and a very light lunch of chicken salad and grapes and a dense whole wheat and seed roll that was probably negative calories based on the effort it took to chew. This was followed by poppy seed cake, and then they brought out the entertainment, which turned out to be the owner of the local florist shop, who showed us how to make floral arrangements in teacups and teapots and old tins. Or rather, she took flowers and containers and did magical things and then tucked a teddy bear among the blooms and told us that we, too, could do this because it was so easy. She was so lively and charming and funny that we all let her keep her delusions that floral arranging is easy, even though I know ours wasn’t the only table possessed of full recognition that if we had been given the same containers and flowers, our versions wouldn’t have looked anything like the gorgeous creations she was producing.

At the end of the tea there were the usual door prizes, although in this case they were all teddy bears. I did not win a door prize, which was probably for the best, although I had my eye on a few of the very small ones because I thought they looked like just the right size to add to Rosemary’s slowly growing collection of Things To Carry Around The House While Beeping Pathetically, and one should always encourage this behavior in one’s cats. But alas, the only thing I came home with was some extra poppy seed cake to share with Richard.

There wasn’t much left of the afternoon after the tea, so we slumped around the house half-awake until we realized it was almost game time. I zipped off downtown to get root beer floats and also picked up some KFC, and then as we were setting up the dining room table I suddenly remembered that I had promised my knitting-enabling friend that I would return her yarn winding contraption to her today and I still had three more rather messy skeins to wind. Shortly thereafter the others showed up at our house for the monthly gaming session (in which, among other bits of excitement, I got to take out half a city block with a fire ball. Oh yes I do love playing a sorcerer, and also yes, I know I am a big nerd). Throughout the entire session I hunched over the winding contraption which I hooked to one of the chairs and squeakily wound the rest of my yarn, sometimes even without any feline assistance. Somehow I managed to get it all done, and now there is a large bag of yarn balls in the guest room upstairs, just waiting for me to finish up this sweater and start something new.