Seasonally Affected

It's fall. Or really it is fall right now because it's 8:30 PM. It's dark, there was just an amazing sunset, and now it's chilly and crisp instead of damp and cold. It was winter this morning, though (I woke up to a steady rain and 50-ish degrees), and I assume it will be winter again in a few hours as has been the pattern-- grossness until 5 PM when the sun comes out, blinds you for an hour and heats the air about 15 degrees just long enough to make you question your wool sock decision. I've stopped looking at the forecast.

I've only just realized why the weather has been affecting me so badly, especially this past year. It's embarrassingly obvious in retrospect-- the main perk of my job has been that I get to work outside. Clearly, however, this is only a benefit when it's not rainy damp and miserable. I'm pretty sure in a few weeks when I will be excited about what I'm doing with my days (/life), my mood will be less weather-dependent. And biking in the rain to somewhere warm and dry will be undoubtedly more pleasant than biking in the rain to a drafty, leaky, unheated houseboat office.

Right now, though, I am enjoying the fall. Even if it is coming in isolated chunks. Yesterday I picked up our first box of veggies from our CSA share with Helsing Junction Farm. The pickup was at a house in our neighborhood, so I stopped by on my way home from work and walked the 10 blocks home balancing the box on my handlebars. I felt very Seattle.

We even get a few fresh flowers every week as well.

Last night I made summer squash soup with cilantro, and tonight I used most of the rest of the cilantro in a tomatillo avocado gazpacho. My favorite part of getting a random box of produce is googling new recipes.

Yesterday was better than today because yesterday I started my day by waking up early and going to yoga. Today I woke up early and went to the dentist. Yesterday the workday went by quickly and I did lots of random little projects, like replacing mainsheet blocks and fixing door latches, while listening to the first chapters of Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought. Today I spent the entire day staring at the computer screen, spending way too much time changing around our e-newsletter template because I'm sick of the old one.

As you can see, there is not much to report. But I'm trying to be better about blogging.

Back To School Shopping

Of all the clothes I have purchased at secondhand stores in my life, yesterday was the first time I ever found something in the pockets.

This is what I discovered in a pair of jeans I bought at the Ballard Goodwill:


No joke. It's what it looks like. (And a guitar pick, too.)

Tuesday

I found $1.63 in change on two different boats today. I used a dollar to buy a Baby Ruth at the fuel dock. Also, Eric found a glass bottle that is perfect for bottling kombucha. I told him I would give him some home-brewed kombucha in exchange, then realized that most people don't like kombucha or have never had it. He hadn't tried it, "Isn't that a fungus drink?," and I figured I should get the process down before I go offering tastes to the uninitiated since my last batch was a little watery and I don't want to be responsible for a bad first impression of my favorite fungus drink.

Other than that, not much to report. Gave my official notice on Saturday, so I'll be leaving Windworks in one month and one day. I also realized I will be starting school in one month and eleven days. And that I haven't written anything in several months.

I will try to start writing. I don't know what to write about anymore.

Summer Reading (and whales)

It's kind of amazing what I will do to avoid cleaning my room. This week's extracurricular activities included fixing and then breaking my bike again, driving around Issaquah for the better part of Wednesday night trying to find northeast facing darkness to see the Northern Lights in what would have been at best a 1 in 200 chance of seeing them but was an even longer shot given the clouds and the iPhone's inability to lead us up Tiger Mountain, baking chocolate chip cookies using Karen's secret recipe, completely dismantling (and fixing!) the vacuum I broke over a year ago when I sucked up a superlong string my old roommate used to leave on the floor for her cat to play with, and cutting whales, lobsters, and goldfish out of construction paper because I decided we needed to have an old school (or should I say, "old library") summer reading club.

The August Reading Club is currently accepting members in all locations, so please let me know if you'd like to join. Our theme is preppy New England sea creatures.


P.S. Thanks for the comments, blogger friends (i.e. Tom and Kate, who actually update their blogs)! Yes, it was a long overdue facelift for ye olde nonblog. But I can't take credit for the background photo (but maybe I'll put some time into trying to figure out if I can switch it with one of the many mountain photos I've taken because that would be much cooler).

Two Reasons for an Update

1) A Threat

Chloë: you better update your blog

or im gonna delink it from mine

Valid. I am a pretty delinquent blogger. But at least I am doing better than the other blog she found called "Not a Blog," which appears to have a single post written in May 2006. So I win based on both recency and quantity. Also, from what I can gather, the post appears to be about tips for MSN chat?

Haha, I just translated it using Google translator. And 1) I was right about the topic and 2) I think it's funny. And speaking of finding new blogs, you should check out Chloë's.

2) A Sign

The other day I got really excited about going back to school in a couple months and decided to look up the reading list for the lit class I'm enrolled in. One of the books is called This Is Not a Novel and it appears to be much more of not a novel than this blog is not a blog. Which I suppose we will discuss--it being a novel that is not a novel, that is, not comparing it to my sub-par blog. This makes me more than a little nervous to think that less than two months from now I will be expected to not only write, but also think. Think about things like whether or not novels that are not novels are actually novels and really what is a novel.