Michaela Sue

My Saturday began with a phone call to aryana_filker, who was wisely escaping the rain by being at home where she was phoneable. Then a trip to the Public Market by bicycle to see what was on offer. The Farmers' Market opened Saturday. It's too early for locally-grown veggies but various live plants we on sale, plus the soap people and the honey people. It being warm, I sat outside to eat soup and charge my iPod with my folding solar panel, which seems to work well.

I finally found the "marsupial bridge," which is indeed under the Holton Street Viaduct and is entirely invisible from the roadway above. I drive over the viaduct twice a week, and you can't really see anything from the road. It turns out that there is a river below with condos going up along it, and a park. I'll have some photos up eventually. It actually makes some sense, connecting up the lower level. If there wasn't anything down there it would be pointless, since the viaduct itself is plenty wide for cyclists and pedestrians.

Saturday night was music night at Chez Dork. born_to_me's chili is great! Lots of fun. exapno was there with Xapling2, so were Marci, TC and Sean, anach and jerusha, and almeda and her energetic dog mightyajax. There were an amazing number of Small Creatures, with the two dogs, some cats, and a large number of little children of various ages. Much musical fun. Oh, and did you know you can experience a massive traffic backup on I-294 at 1 AM? You can! How much traffic can there be then? Too much for one lane, which is all we had in one spot due to some sort of work.

Sunday Joyce and I had coffee and part of a giant cinnamon roll at the market, stopped by Laacke and Joys to look over the kayaks at their annual Paddlefest. We walked over the Marsupial Bridge. We ate Reuben sandwiches at John Hawk's. They do a mighty fine Reuben there.

Friday evening I bought bread and chocolate, ate sushi and salmon-on-a-stick, and did some ice skating. I’m feeling faster and fitter, and I think the time going fast on the 400 meter oval has helped.

Saturday I saw almeda, exapno and mightyajax. I’ve been lead to believe that Ajax is pretty energetic, but OMGBeagle!!!! I’ve never before seen anything so excited and happy and bouncy and excited and jumpy and excited and eager to sniff, lick and chew everyone and everything. So very cute! It’s very nice to go out and be sociable, too.

On Sunday, besides a chocolate chunk scone from C. Adams Bakery, we had something with cherry in it that I cannot recall the name of. I didn’t do any ice skating, but I did get to shovel a little snow, which is also exercise.

Last night some combination of my iPod, gtkpod, and the rest of the computer got into some kind of an argument and the iPod lost. Fsck fixed the filesystem, but the database the iPod uses to keep track of everything was trashed. So I manually rm-ed all the audio files and refilled it the usual way with gtkpod, and it’s working fine now.

I found a discounted used/returned cable for the iPod at the Apple store and I bought a cheaper version of the power supply with USB connector gadget than the one Apple sells, so now I have a dedicated power supply for the iPod set up at my stereo. No more dragging in the car adapter and setting up the 12V supply.

More ice skating today, then some time drinking coffee and finishing reading an article in Foreign Affairs en Español. I’m always amazed that my marginal Spanish is good enough to make sense of that sort of thing, but it is. Now, to get the German up to that level....

I wandered around by the lake, and took some photos of icicles. I had Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition playing on the iPod, as transcribed for organ by Jean Guillou and played by him on the organ at the Tonhalle in Zürich. You really need something better than cheap ear buds to appreciate that organ. It’s a wonderful recording.

I bought more chocolate-covered hazelnuts. $27.50 per kilogram, but worth it! I also bought some fancy coffee beans at the Cederburg Coffee Roastery. Very nice smell! Flavor yet to be determined.

Tonight’s plan? Snuggling!