this weekend i actually got some stuff DONE. it seems lately that my projects are so large that ijust chip away at them, digging away bits with my fingernails in the hopes that i will one day see a difference, but never actually seeing any change. this weekend, however, i actually got some things done!

saturday started out with gathering clothing to be donated to Odyssey House, a local organisation that helps young adults, as well as mothers and children in need. I had some clothes ready when i remembered that i might have some more things in the basement and sure enough - another box of clothes that Rich and i had put together to donate. so i was able to take even more things down! what a great feeling. then i grabbed some food and headed to work with my parents’ computer to upgrade their operating system. why go to work? broadband. T1. FAST. and we have tons of resources, for which i was glad when their machine would not boot off my firewire drive, nor could i image the machine off the CDs it shipped with, nor with the CD for the new OS. So, i was able to use a CD from the previous OS to image (make a back-up of the current configuration and copy it off to my firewire drive) and wipe the machine and then do the install from the CD for the new OS. The whole upgrade went much smoother than i thought it would and i am pretty happy with it - hopefully they are too! they seemed to be when i dropped it off.

after working on their machine i headed to the store to get some peanut butter and then stopped by my local t-mobile to check out their phones. my phone gets a battery life of about 15 minutes, as long as i do not actually make a call, and so i need a new one. not that i ever get any phone calls, but i like the thought of someone being able to call me if they felt like it. the guy there was actually helpful (i have had REALLY mixed results in their stores, and on the phone, honestly). in the end, since i had ordered a phone with their customer care the other week and then returned it (i had no idea they still made phones as big as this one was). i had to call customer care again. i don’t know if they put different people on when you call from a store or what, but these people did not suck. maybe they are afraid of people raising their voices and saying how unhappy they are when they are actually in a store, vs at home in the tub.

then off to the library where i decided to see what movies they had while i was there and as i glanced through the titles, i saw “he died with a felafel in his hand”: one of my favorite books! oh, if you can find this movie, rent it. the movie is as good as the book. really. don’t blame me if you don’t like either, though, i cannot control anyone’s lack of taste but my own.

sunday, we got out of town. thank goodness. we headed northwest, toward the lake, but never actually made it to the lake. instead, we saw this:

and headed back home in time to get in a traffic jam due to a hay transport catching on fire.

events like these - meaningless, tragic deaths - always stop me cold. i become stunned, dazed, feeling like the world should just stop. Whether it be of an individual - like Rich or my friend C’s husband - or groups like waco, madrid, london, i just feel this need to stop the world and recognize this moment of pain. and yet, here i am at work, evaluating CMS options and so unable to see the importance in anything.

new york
madrid
london

i can’t even express my emotions today.

we started out this weekend with a visit to sop’s parents, where the shade was plentiful, the conversation was relaxed and the black raspberries were ripe and yummy. then it was off to my parents, where the conversation was lively, the cards fierce and the cherries were ripe and yummy. the weekend continued with much lead-paint removal from sop’s soffit and fascia (wow, i use those words like i know what they mean) interspresed with fruit eating. and that is as detailed as i can get without pictures:

sop at work in his lead-resistant ensemble

lmmh caulking it up for good measure:

sop decides to run to the store for more grinding disks:

by this time, the cherry bowl is almost empty (click to see HOW empty):

but that’s okay, we have MORE:

in the afternoons, after inhaling minimal amounts of lead, there is nothing like a bowl of ice cream with black raspberries:

followed in the evening hours by a wee bit of knitting: