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Vanguard at Jane'sLet us, then, be up and doing, |
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Saturday, August 2, 2003
Four years ago: Bedding Frenzy
Five years ago: Convalescence
Six years ago: The Two-Party System
My muscles were a bit sore this morning, so it's good to have the weekend off from working out. My goal for this whole thing is to build strength and endurance, though I won't mind if I lose weight also.
I've never actually gone to see the hydro races, which the Blue Angels serve as half-time entertainment for. I see enough of the blue angels to satisfy me just by peeking out the window when I hear them zooming by! They are loud, but they don't rattle the windows here on Capitol Hill.
I enjoyed catching up on a month of Liralen's life. Her food descriptions always make me hungry!
"I got spanakopita and stuffed grape leaves along with a handful of olives and the stuffed, grilled eggplant with pita bread. That was so good. It was made into a kind of spread for the pita, and was very tasty. The spanakopita was crisp and butter and the spinach filling was rich and dense. It was really excellent. The dolmas or stuffed grape leaves were tasty and dense. John ate my olives, on the most part, though I ate one bitter, rich bite."
She's been on vacation, road-tripping with her husband John and two-year-old son Jet in a VW Vagagon camper thing. Sounds very cozy! While underway, they watch DVDs on a laptop with Jet when he's not sleeping.
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I drove over to Lowes to buy some windowshades that I hope will satisfy my neighbor. The traffic was still messed up in that direction even though the Blue Angels were over for the day, so I had to do some trailing around in back streets. I couldn't remember which cross street would get me to Lowes directly and picked the wrong one! Finally I drove down Martin Luther King Way and got there. Sometimes when they change street names it doesn't really stick, like Avenue of the Americas in NYC, but MLK is what the street is generally called now; I don't hear anyone insisting on 28th Avenue. Maybe that's because the people in the Central District wanted the change.
I'd heard about an inexpensive windowcovering solution, Redishades. They are indeed inexpensive, and they do it by leaving out features! Peel and stick adhesive holds them up, and to raise them you use two plastic clothes-in style clips, included. If I upgrade these in the future I'd like to get the kind that can raise from the bottom of the window as well as lower from the top -- privacy but still let in the light! But I'm not that concerned about people peeking in so long as I'm dressed, so that's something I'll deal with later.
In between putting up the shades in my living room and dining room/office, I worked on yesterday's journal entry. I was able to reach the window tops using my kitchen stepstool, no need to drag out the ladder. It really was very easy! They could be a few inches longer; I think I'll attach some weights to the bottom of the shades so that when they are down, they are down. I'm glad this is mostly taken care of, and inexpensively, too!
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Tonight was the first time I've been to Jane's new place for Vanguard. She hosted in July, but I was working on the Clarion West anniversary party at Westercon so wasn't there. I've been there before, though -- I think the former tenant Constance hosted Vanguard once, and we had a Potlatch meeting there in July. Her new place is right next to her old place! She and Vonda had purchased their neighbor's house and rented it to another fan for some years. When that other fan had to move, it generated a round-robin series of residence changes among that sector of Seattle fandom! Jane moves to the house, rents her part of her old place to R and A. Luke thinks he'll sell his Ballard house and move back to share the new place with Jane, buying into it also. (This part hasn't happened yet.) Normally I'm change averse but this all seems suitable to me.
The space from the front flows well to the kitchen in back, with Jane's toys in what might be the dining room space eventually. We got to the smoking area (the back deck this time) by going through Jane's bedroom and office. A nice mild evening! I don't know what it is about these houses in Wallingford that the windows mostly don't open up, but it was cool enough tonight. I talked with Jules, a bay area fan who has just moved to Seattle and was attending her first Vanguard (I offered to put her on the vanguard-disc mailing list). I was suprised and pleased to see Loren MacGregor -- I knew he was moving to Seattle but didn't know he was already in town. Paul Carpentier and Julie McGalliard showed up, too! They'd been to a wedding earlier in the day. Paul was confused about when Jack would be returning from Michigan and thought he'd be around. I knew that Julie had recently quit her awful call-center job, but I didn't know that Paul had been laid off recently as well! Ouch!
I ended up getting home around one o'clock.
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