Interview, meeting, interview, interview

OMG, I'm so excited. I have a big interview this morning, and then a lunch meeting at a place where I have two applications in, and then another interview this afternoon.

I am indeed SO excited! I've prepped well for both the interviews, and I feel fortunate to have been included as a member of the meeting. The meeting is to plan a youth conference--I was involved last year, but it never occurred to me that I'd be invited when unemployed.

Then tomorrow I have another interview, for which I had to prepare a 15 minute presentation. I did it this weekend, and it helped me prepare for the interview this morning. Totally awesome!

Wish me luck!

Long time no see

This is a list entry.

New awesomeness has happened over the last year, such that I'm in preparation at the moment to arrange MY OWN HOUSE such that MY BOYFRIEND can MOVE IN in two weeks.

Which means I need a plan. The house is kind of in total disarray, and I want him to have his own space here. And I need to make that so it can happen.

Edited 3/19/10
List:

• Kitchen: all the normal stuff to clean. Dishes, etc.
  
• Laundry: ditto the above
  
• Living room: get the seedling setup going (for once! jeeze!), straighten up
• Den: Wood goes outside. Tools get put away, crap gets picked up. Curtains get re-installed. Carpet gets vacuumed.
• Bathroom: sweep, put away stuff on counter, clean counter, make room in a few drawers
• Bathroom #2: sweep, wipe counters
  
• Guest room: Move camping stuff out of closet to attic
• Office: make room in closet for M, clean, remove extra crap, put up curtain rod and curtain
• Bedroom: move out of season clothes to guest room, clean out drawers, sweep and vacuum, wash sheets, etc. Move lamp and put other bedside table, well, bedside.

I'm sure there's more. There's a ton more to do for the frikkin' garden, too. Time to get a move on!

Need cheering up?

Go here. Watch the whole thing. You'll smile.

I got a simple gift today.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Simple gifts

We've come 'round right, y'all.

What you missed.

Happy New Year!

The Wusses were way better than I could even have hoped. I'll never miss them again, I think.


The setlist:

• Lady (The Little River Band)
• Things We Do For Love (10cc)
• Jackie Blue (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
• I'd Really Love to See You Tonight (England Dan and John Ford Coley)
• You Are The Woman (Firefall)
• Sister Golden Hair (America)
• Lonesome Loser (TLRB)
• Brandy (Looking Glass)
• Love Will Find A Way (Pablo Cruise)
• Reminiscing (TLRB)
• Auld Lang Syne (Robbie Burns)
• Baby Come Back (Player)
• Ride Like the Wind (Christopher Cross)
• Ride Captain Ride (Blues Image)

Do yourself a favor and make a mix tape of this. And then make me one!

Dashing through the SNOW!!!!!

OK, so there might not be snow, but I'll be home for Christmas! At my second home, that is. My NC family home base is in Charlotte, at my sweet love JJ's parents' home. Skip, Jane, and the rest of the clan welcome me with open arms whenever I need it, and I am just full of gratitude for them.

Also, for my mumma, who read that last pitiful entry and offered to buy me a last-minute trip home.

Love Love LOVE!

Lost

Hiked again today, first a couple of miles on my own, birding, and then another few miles with Suze. I'd never been to the quarry in the wintertime, and decided to check it out for waterfowl. The usually empty gully you need to cross to get to the quarry has turned into a creek. One that's too wide to jump over. Dammit.

I found my way across with the help of a couple of stepping stones, though. The sun's angle highlighted the water and pine trees, and it made the red clay soil just brilliant. No birds, though. Ah well. I crossed back over the stream and almost fell backwards into the water. On my ass. Hiking back to the parking lot, I considered how well I'd be able to survive in the woods for a day or so with what I had on me if I broke an ankle.

Inventory of what I was carrying/wearing:
Binoculars
Sibley's guide
Grinch Hands
Cashmere hat #1
Cashmere hat #2
Bandanna
Tank top
Bra
Base layer
Cashmere sweater
Jeans
Underwear
Wool/cotton socks
Hooded waterproof shell
LED keychain
Lighter
Cell phone*

What I didn't have:
Water
Food

Even taking the phone out of the equation (cause that makes it way too easy), I was pretty happy with what I came up with.

Observations of note:
I could use the Sibley's guide and a lighter to start a fire (sad, but worth it). There's a lot of dead wood.
The LED keychain is a wondrous thing.
I'm glad I have warm head coverings.
Wettish leaves would be a good smoke creator.
I know the SOS morse code. I think. Smoke signals. Cool.
I'd drink stream water, risking contaminants.
There's wild ginger, so I could chew on the roots.
Can I catch a squirrel? I don't have a knife. I wonder if I could gut it with my hands. Would it skin easily? Maybe I could just burn the fur off?
I bet if I had to, I could break my binoculars to get to the lens.

Yah. It was a fun hike.

*Which I lost later. And then found again. Whew.

The Friendly Birdy Island

"Aunt Stew, you're spilling your beer!" 6-year-old orange-headed nephew. Gotta love a guy who knows what's important, hm?

Mom and Pedro gave me their old camera, so I took a bunch of photos. Unfortunately, the light was rarely right. Here are the best of the bunch. I didn't edit.

Pearly-eyed Thrasher*



Black-faced Grassquit*

'
Black-necked Stilts and White-Cheeked Pintails*.


Zenaida Dove


Lesser Antillean Bullfinch


Bananaquit!! (definitely the best bird picture I got)


Ruddy Turnstones

Green-throated Carib



*Lifer this trip!! (Also, a female American Wigeon and Caribbean Coots)

Other birds: Gray Kingbird, Antillean Crested Hummingbird (so tiny), Common Ground Dove (also tiny!), Brown Pelican, Magnificent Frigatebird, Brown Booby, Common Moorhen, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Sanderling, Spotted Sandpiper, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Cattle Egret, Green Heron... I'm probably forgetting a ton. Ah well.

Oh, and check out this delightful surprise I found next to a beach bar!





(Yes, they were tasty.)

Sunscreen off season is pricy.

Who in their right mind gets an international flight that *leaves* at 6 a.m.?

Oh, me. Right.

SO! Saturday at 3:45 (yes, in the morning OMG), I'll be driving out to the airport, hopefully having a seat assigned, and jetting off to Sint Maarten, and well, Saint Martin also, via Miami.

Hm. Last time I went it must have been on my old blog, which has since vanished into the ether. Argh. Ah well, the first sinnoticiasdetstew lives on through the wayback machine. Or at least I hope it does. I've somehow lost the URL for that old blog. Anyone else have it? Wow. Argh. I just found the old link and the blog is GONE GONE GONE, do you hear me? ARGH!!!

It's OK though. Sad, but I'll get over it.

Cause I get to BIRD again. Yay Antillean Crested Hummingbird!



Male Antillean Crested Hummingbird
Originally uploaded by Alexander Yates

Camp

There's a whole lotta campin' going on.

Last weekend I made a trip up to Lake James State Park with a few friends. Rained like crazy Friday night, and got a bit chilly Saturday night. My hair still smells of woodsmoke, even through four washings.

This is my s'more face:



I also managed to trip on the fire pit grate while trying to walk around it. Fearing that I'd land face-first in the fire (nice alliteration, eh?), I managed to throw myself in another direction. In doing so, a chunk of my epidermis ripped off my left palm. It was a clean separation that exposed a 1"x1"x1" (approx.) triangle of dermis. No bleeding, but man did it sting.

It's healing, but I fear a nice red scar:



I'm working this Friday and Saturday evening facilitating a youth group retreat. Around a campfire. They're gonna see my s'more face, and I'll end up smelling like beef jerky for another week.

Mom Menu

My mumma's birthday is today! I called her from work when I was meeting with my cutiepie peer educator kiddos, who insisted they wanted to talk to her.

So she had a 10th grade boy and a 10th grade girl each ramble to her for a while. They are SO CUTE.

This is mom's dinner tonight. Can you figure out where she's going?
(I'm jealous)

Wednesday, October 15 $75
Hand-stretched mozzarella with late-season tomatoes and basil oil
Local swordfish involtini alla siciliana
Spit-roasted loin of Magruder Ranch California boar with shell beans and wild mushrooms
Meyer lemon granita with raspberry sherbet

I do love the SNL commentary on the election...

Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill is just genious. And I shouldn't have to mention that Tina Fey must be a national hero by now...

I wouldn't hire him...

You just never ever know what you're going to find around here. Today has been a GEM! I was outside watching Bubba rolling around, thinking I was videotaping him, when a guy came up my driveway.

(Now, I'm going to avoid certain words, so use your imagination to fill in the blanks.)

It was an older gentleman, dressed in a suit and tie, holding a badge open. You know, the kind that you hold horizontally and it shows your picture? And your title? And the agency that employs you?

Yeah. In this case the organization sending him around was from the USA, not the state. A BIG and IMPORTANT agency. The kind that gets called when certain lines get crossed. Like the line between Virginia and North Carolina, for example. Yah. That one.

Anyhoo, he told me he was looking for info on a woman who'd lived nearby--nothing nefarious had gone on, though. It was a pre-employment thing. So he was checking her out.

I had the computer open, taping. Or well, I thought I did. But I didn't. Which I did eventually realize. And fix. As you can see. Unfortunately, I messed up turning the tape on two different times, so I missed the best parts. Like the ID, which I had him take out to look at closely several times. And his explanation of what he did--in a nutshell, he's not the guy with a curly thing attached to his ear and wearing these:



No, he had a more mundane title, though that doesn't make the encounter any less bizarre.



Here you have it, with bonus Bubba goodness. Bubba, who brings out the love in everyone.





LOVE HIM! (Where I got the intonation I used to say that in this video is beyond me.)

VCL. Oh. MY!

Yesterday I got back from Georgia, where as per usual I visited Jamie and Nemoid. Georgia is my default road trip. I have people I love there, it's relatively close by, and I always enjoy myself.

In that respect, this trip wasn't any different. So many things are the same from visit to visit, only changing a bit in the details. Jamie got a new freezer since I last saw her. The garden's bigger. Karen has a new car, and her children have reached new developmental milestones. Jamie, the s.o. and I trade stories about plants, wildlife, food and soil. Karen and I laugh about old times and catch up on the new ones.

It was just as perfect as it always is.

BUT! The overarching theme this weekend was not one of calm and expected happenings. Nope. It was a weekend of firsts. First time I've been stuck in traffic so bad that we turned the cars off entirely, going only two-ish miles over 1.5 hours. First time I've ever dropped my binoculars 8 feet onto a hardwood floor and knocked the optics out of alignment. First time I stepped with sandaled feet into a fire ant nest.

Sounds pretty sucky, that part. But it really wasn't that bad. I used the downtime in the car to clean it out, and the delay inspired me to let down my hair and buy cheap beer in cans in order to crack one open upon arrival, before I'd even opened the trunk. The binoculars miraculously fixed themselves over the course of two days. Right after the crash I had double vision through the eyepieces, but when I looked through them as I was leaving, the images had become one. I felt a certain pride at finally having succumbed to and survived fire ants.

Fire ant bites are rite of passage for southerners, don't you think? I only ended up with about 20 bites, thanks to multiple factors--not least being Jamie's s.o.'s quick reaction as I ran into the house shrieking "FIRE ANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Thanks for that, s.o.!

Welp, I'm making a short story long, again. Ah well.

The biggest first of all was on Saturday. See, when I asked my Georgia friends if they were going to be in town, Jamie encouraged me to come on down, with the caveat that she had plans in Atlanta for part of the weekend that I was more than welcome to tag along to.

That's how I found myself at a multigenre convention. Oh yes. Not *just* Trekkies. Not just comic-book collectors. Not just Dungeons and Dragons LARPs . Furries. Anime. Fairies. Wizards. You name it.


Fandoms of every sort wended their way around and through the three adjacent hotels that hosted DragonCon this weekend.

Here are my reactions, in brief:

• Wow.
  
• Everyone's either naked or overdressed.
• Hm. There are a lot of good-looking people here. That doesn't fit into my head.
  
• Am I supposed to recognize the characters people have dressed up as?
  
• Why would anyone go for a full-body plush or rubber suit in Atlanta in the summer?
• You know, that guy's creepy. So's that girl.
• Who has this kind of *money* to spend?
  
• The health department needs to have a table here with condoms.
  
• I wonder what all those Clemson and Alabama fans are thinking right about now?
• Does not compute
• A lot of people seem to be either fainting or puking in here right now. Not me! Cookies please!
• Most women's costumes rely on a corset, it looks like.
  
• Bad corsetry signals: breasts pushed so high they fold over on themselves. VCL under spandex.
• The Utilikilt to corset ratio is 1:1 (Holy CRAP that Utilikilt video's wrong!)
• I lack the background to understand any of the concurrent sessions here.
  
• Zombies.
• Poor kids in their strollers.

Check out the photos I took. Some of the costumes are obvious, but others left me entirely clueless.

BTW? Definitely worth the $50 entrance fee.



**************
Edited to add:

I forgot another first!

DURIAN! DURIAN!

I survived it! Basically imagine sweet taste combined with burnt hair/emerging BO. Unfortunately, I also ended up with Durian burps, which hold none of the sweet and all of the stench.

Burro

Dude. Bubba and I are home alone tonight, and I just played the video for him. OK, well, not FOR him, but just to see him again. He BARKED! A LOT!

And earlier when I had my friend Suze over for dinner after a matinee, he nicked the half loaf of bread we'd left on the table when we went outside to enjoy the fresh air for a bit. BUBBA! You're not supposed to do that. You don't eat steak scraps from the trash, after all. I suspect you're as carbo-loving as I am. The only time you seem to beg is when I've got crackers or an english muffin in hand.

Speaking of carbs, my oh MY. You have to make this for your loved ones. Don't let tell them the ingredients. For that matter, you might want to blindfold yourself AND cover your ears and sing LA LA LA while you make it. I'm not that dexterous, so I just resigned myself that it had better taste DAMN good. Instead of canned tomatoes, I used sauce that I had made yesterday, boiling down fresh tomatoes until they were literally half the volume they were to begin. There was an unfortunate forgot-to-stir incident during the sauce making. Just for the record, burning tomatoes onto the bottom of a pan will not ruin your sauce so long as you don't try to scrape the crap while the sauce is still in there. Just dump the sauce into another pan and cry that you've perhaps ruined your stockpot. The sauce will even be better for the burning, though, because it will taste as though you've roasted and caramelized the tomatoes somewhere along the way. Crazy.

I've never ever made a pasta dish that was so simple and so delicious. Actually, I may have never eaten a pasta dish that was that good, period. I tossed a handful of fresh basil in at the end, which made it even better. Suze and I both had two gigantic helpings, and I'm barely restraining myself from going into the fridge for a snack.

Do it. Seriously.

p.s. Suze never comments, but she does lurk. Just for that, here's a bit of dirt on her--she cried during the matinée of Mamma Mia we watched today. Somehow I did not, though I got a bit misty. Really, though, I think I may have just been lusting after Pierce Brosnan. Twentyish years older seems less of an issue than it did in the Remington Steele days. It left me so overcome that I spilled an entire HUGE Diet Coke on a young girl as we walked back to the car. Then I knocked my glass of wine onto the tablecloth. Thank god the wine was white, because so was antique linen table covering. More about Suze: she loves Bubba, too, and commented that he was rather catlike, for a dog. This as he lolled on her lap, paws up.

Excellent. Twenty minutes to write this means I still haven't gone back to the fridge for that leftover pasta. I might have to make that sauce for the next 12 meals in a row. I'll put the cardiologist on speed dial, don't worry.

A day at the farm in Ionia. More of my favorite things.

Welcome to my aunt and uncle's 250 acre farm in beautiful Ionia, Michigan, home of the Ionia Free Fair.


The farmhouse is real old. It's kind of not my style on the inside, and I wonder if there are hardwood floors under the carpet. The well water is very very full of iron, which is difficult to get used to drinking.

The barn is really old, too. I love it. Blue silos rock.

Flower mix of goodness.

Oh, my, how cute?!

Uncle Evan. Over the course of my life they've had normal farm crops (wheat, soybeans, corn, etc.) and always animals. The best ones in my opinion were the angora goats. I mean, look at how cute the kids are! Evan and Linda used to have huge numbers of cattle for beef, but now they just have about 14 head that they breed for stud. One roan got out of the barn while I was there, which was very exciting. Aunt Linda and I had to chase the poor cow back before it decided to cross the street onto someone else's farm. Evan's not in the best of health, but he still spent the day spreading manure. Like I said, the farm is 250 acres, but Evan rents about 175 of them out to other farmers. The rest is for pasture, hay, and maybe grain.


Steer. Soon to be MEAT. Less than a month, dearheart. Enjoy it.



I wish I had gone up in the hayloft yesterday, but here's a shot of where the cattle go to feed once they've had their fill of pasture.



Grandma and Aunt Linda pick some strawberries. I came home with more vegetables than I know what to do with. And a pressure canner! And a ton of rhubarb seeds! And onion sets! Lots to do today. I might take the beans home in my suitcase and process them at home with my new pressure canner.




Isn't she lovely? Born 1919. Grandma kept telling me that if I was tired I should take a rest. There's another photo on flickr of her that I couldn't get to rotate correctly on my computer. It shows Gram's beauty even better. An added bonus is that you get to see a monster beet.


What a fantastic day.

When other people blog

Lazy Stew!

I'd planned to blog my very fun Thursday evening watching the VH1 Classic's "Rock honors the Who" with Cristin, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Fabulously, Cristin did the evening much more justice than I ever could. And the photos! You've gotta step over to Cristin's blog to see the goodness of the pix she took.

Check it out.

Additional observations:
• I introduced Cristin to McVicar, which had shots of Roger Daltrey's bare butt. I saw it at the Eastown theater* with my wonderful stepmother, who took a 10 year old girl to a midnight movie because she loved the Who.
• The musicians' commentary on Squeeze Box, my standard karaoke song, has vindicated me. I get made fun of for liking the song. NUH UH, baby! Sting likes it! So does Joan Jett! And Billy Idol! HA!
• I used to know all the lyrics of all the songs. That is no longer true. However, thanks to the magic of Google, I was able to sing along with everything anyway.
• Cristin does a damned good job of keeping her house cat-dander free. I slept over (very responsible of me) on her couch, and didn't have even one moment of breathing problems.

*No longer a theater--I think it's a church now, which in GR makes all sorts of sense.

Providential Oddities

This afternoon I had a meeting at my local senior center, to get trained on how to ask companies to donate to one of the organizations that funds my workplace.

As I was leaving, I saw a table of women crocheting. Something overcame me, and I sat down with them and just started chatting. I hauled my hook out of my purse* and asked if they had any extra yarn to play with. For about 20 minutes I learned about these ladies and their various crochet meet ups. Monday and Wednesday 1-3 p.m. at the senior center and fourth Thursdays at 6 p.m. at the IHop. They showed me how to properly (EW THERE'S A CICADA!) start your first row and assured me that my meathook-like grasp was a perfectly fine way to hold a hook. They called my technique dainty, in fact. I lamented my problems with following patterns, and they were excited at my freeform approach. It has a name! It's called modular crochet**. I told them about my bag making and my felting, and they absolutely lit up with joy.

I put in a volunteer application, and I hope to stop back by if I'm ever in Durham on a Monday or Wednesday from 1-3. Thanks Lorlene, Hazel and Miss Mary Rita.

I miss my grandma.

* I know. They laughed at me, too.
**Hilarious URL!

YAY!!!!!!!!

In my zeal, I didn't actually let them get ripe enough, but DAMN it's nice to have tomatoes again.

I just got back from about 2 hours of preparing my new bed at the community garden. Two more wheelbarrow loads of compost filled it in. I amended the soil with some blood meal and bone meal. Then I made two walkways, dividing the bed into three main rows. I lay down some garden fabric, weighed it down with a few bricks, and put some scrap wood in the trough to use as stepping stones.

In the northernmost row I put two watermelon mounds. In the middle, one cantaloupe mound, several cuke plants, and a ton of beans. The southernmost row is all cantaloupes. I need me some fruit.

I met both of the coordinators for the teen program and some of the youth themselves, and it looks like I'll be volunteering regularly on Friday afternoon/evenings. One of the teens suggested I bring the teens from my program over to visit. I think it's a wonderful idea! I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing with them, but lifeskills workshops were mentioned.

Another major bonus of this community garden is its numerous and varied fruit trees. According to the garden outreach coordinator, they don't get sold at the market, but rather are for "casual consumption." Hell yeah. Plums, peaches, figs, apples, mulberries, and probably more.

So there's this Swedish guy...

HA HA HA HA!! Not like *that*! I wish...

Anyway.

Yesterday when I came home from work, my neighbor was sitting on his porch with another guy and called me over to introduce me. His visitor is a Swedish photojournalist, who's traversing the country in search of the Real America to share with the 500,000 people who read the biggest newspaper in his country. He said he basically wanted to present the United States that's not known to outsiders, and has been/will be making several trips to meet and interview people all over the country. I think he said that so far he's been to DC, and maybe NYC? He'll be here for a bit longer, and I agreed to let him interview me.

In fact, actually, he's going to interview me at the legislature tomorrow, where I'll be participating in an HIV Advocacy Day, sponsored by one of my fave organizations in the state. Since he's mostly only interviewed white men in the 25-40 range, I figured I could whomp* up enough others at this event so that he'll get a broader picture than he already has.

Other than that, I don't really know what he'll be asking me. He interviewed Neighbor yesterday evening, after we'd all sat on the porch for a bit with Next Door Neighdog (who drank all my water, thankyouverymuch), just chatting. I'd gone home by the time the actual interview happened, so I'm looking forward to what he has to say!

Seems like a cool guy and a cool project. I'm not positive he'll come up with what he's looking for, given how pervasive our culture seems to be elsewhere. But I'm more than happy to help.

I just want to be HEAAAAAAAAARD!

*Whomp up alternate definition: find, come up with, throw together.