The rest of my time in the Bay Area was pretty packed, with the exception of a few hours on Friday where we sat around reading and playing with a dog. I saw a friend for brunch on Friday, had more Cheeseboard pizza with Erin and Chih, then went to the rehearsal dinner Friday night which was pretty fun. On Saturday I went hiking with yfdp and Daria, and was really glad to be in Tilden again on such a clear day. Then we picked up some boxes for Daria and headed to San Francisco for the wedding, had a covert trip to In n Out, and went to the reception in south SF. We were out very late and got about three hours of sleep before a really wretched day getting back here (let me be succinct: my dislike of United is even stronger than it was after last summer, and we arrived in Philadelphia 10 hours late for reasons entirely in their control). So we are back and our cats are glad to see us.

Laura's wedding was very nice. It was the first wedding I have been to that wasn't outside (excepting one in Los Alamos that I went to because everyone from my dad's church was supposed to go), and it was by far the churchiest. But it was well done, and while it was long there was a lot of variety in the ceremony and it was very moving and beautiful. Laura and Joe are obviously a great match for each other and will be happy and strong with each other down the line, and a wedding is more enjoyable when you have such good feelings about the couple. :) At this point at a wedding I am analyzing things from a 'having a wedding soon' standpoint, which is actually kind of interesting because you think about what went into everything. I do sometimes worry that people who were there will be critically comparing our wedding to Laura's, or Mika's, but ours will be fairly different from either of those so hopefully it'll be incomparable just for the sake of variety.

When I go back to the west coast I am invariably reminded that I want to move back there. I work very hard to keep myself away from a mindset of "how I wish I lived there!", and to enjoy unusual things about the area that I'm living in. And I would like to live abroad if possible, which would be more variety and adventure and less what I'm necessarily comfortable with. But I am very comfortable in the west.

Of course, the real reason Steph and I were in Oregon was to go to a wedding. (I have to blog about this before I go to another wedding this weekend!)

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cake kiss, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

I am very tired. Ben and I drove out to Indiana last weekend, to spend the first part of our spring break visiting Jeanine and Andrew. We drove across Ohio on the day where they got 20" of record snowfall, going 20-40 mph on the freeway on black ice for maybe 200 miles, which was unpleasant. Being there was nice though, and worth the drive. On the way there we stopped at Fallingwater, which I'll make a separate post about. We got back late Wednesday night, and I worked really hard yesterday so that today I could go to a conference on women in science at Princeton. The conference was great but sort of depressing and draining, and now I just feel wiped out. So here are a couple pictures from my trip... my favorite one is me and Jeanine, while we were at a bridal store trying on dresses. It was a blast.

me and jeanine, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

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Berkeley was hectic but nice, which is also kind of what getting back to Philadelphia has been like.

Basically, in Berkeley I ate delicious food and saw a lot of people. I had some time with Daria, Hollis, Sherri, Jessica, Rich, Kyle, and all the LBL people I used to work with (I walked up there two days I was there). I also had a lot of time with Joao and Gersende, since I was staying with them, and it isn't an exaggeration to say that I spent most of my time there talking to people. I didn't quite catch everyone I would have liked too, both due to time and availability constraints, though. But I did manage to eat at the Cheeseboard, Cha Am, Gelateria Naia, La Note, Gregoire, and a new place I had never been to before but really liked--Taste of the Himalayas. I miss the quality and price of Berkeley food very much.

It was rainy most of the time I was there, but it was beautiful and quiet, and reminded me of the things I liked about living there. Because it's the rainy season, it was quite green, especially up on the hill where LBL is. And it was warm, at least compared to what I knew I was coming back to. And how nice it is to be somewhere that isn't all flat when you're walking around!

I was so happy to see everybody, and it's nice to still have a single place where I can visit lots of friends. Actually, Los Alamos at Christmas used to be like that, but it occurs to me now that I saw a greater number of friends in Berkeley than I did in Los Alamos.

Two things of particular note: firstly, a friend of Joao's (and indirectly of mine) had extra symphony tickets for Thursday night, so I went with him to see Deborah Voigt in concert. That was amazing, because I am no soprano connoisseur nor do I listen to lots of vocal classical music, but her voice is so lovely and mellow, well-rounded and powerful, and overall very impressive. They picked nice things for her to sing, the four last songs of Richard Strauss and a piece by Samuel Barber called something like Andromache's Farewell. The symphony also played Beethoven's fourth symphony after that, which I had heard a few times before but never listened to so closely. I liked it a lot more when not trying to compare it to other Beethoven symphonies, which are less whimsical and more powerhouse-like. But anyhow, the evening was great and the seats were amazing. The other thing that was fun was having brunch with Hollis, which ended up being a long discussion about WoW. He was in the same place I was a few months ago with his main, wanting to get into raiding but not sure how to do it, and it was fun to talk about. And he agreed to officiate our wedding! :D

Overall, it was a great way to end the vacation.

I haven't been able to squeeze in time to post, partly because I was on dial-up at my mom's house, but mostly because things have been very busy but fun.

In New Mexico, we spent several days at my mom's house, hanging out with her and my stepdad, seeing friends, etc. She has gotten really into glassworking recently, so she helped Ben and I make some fused glass plates, by cutting out glass pieces, fusing them in a kiln, and then slumping them into curved dishes. She also showed us and some friends how to make an implosion marble, by melting clear glass, punching holes into it, capping them with colored glass, and heating it so that the colored glass is pulled in and elongated. That was really, really cool. I had a nice lunch with Heather, Tamie, and Jeanine, and a nice games party at Jeanine's house, and some amount of Guitar Hero 3, which my mom got us for Christmas along with a 360.

The day before New Year's Eve, we flew out to San Diego to see Ben's mom and family. I was really glad we got out here in time to spend a little time with Chih, and then yesterday we went up to Pasadena to see Erin, Josh, and Adam for New Year's Eve. It was great hanging out with them and playing games, and then this morning we watched the Parade of Roses from their roof. Now we have a couple more days here, with Ben's family in San Diego, and then we'll head up to Ojai.

Ben's sister gave me a wedding book for Christmas, which was sweet of her. But it is a little stressful to read, because they really cover everything and so they imply a lot more expense and planning then I think we will end up actually having. I am happy about one thing, though, which is that I convinced my mom to make my wedding dress. It saves us money, but more importantly, she has made some really lovely dresses and I love the idea of wearing something she made.

ring, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Ben asked me to marry him, and I said yes.

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Just some silly pictures, to celebrate autumn and food and friends.

scott and a turkey, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

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Our house is big enough that it's easy to have several guests, and we finally got to test that for Thanksgiving. Four of my friends from high school came out, arrived Tues/Weds, and stayed through the weekend. It was so fun! This was the first year I had done Thanksgiving just with friends, not with either my family or Ben's, but it was a blast. On Wednesday we walked around Chinatown and historical Philly after I came home from work, and on Thursday we all cooked a lot. It was also fun going for a run, and playing Kill Doctor Lucky, and eating until stuffed. And I was happy with how much people helped out chopping things for cooking, cleaning up, putting things away... it was a bit overwhelming for me in terms of mess but everyone kept things flowing and prevented any mouse-friendly situations. Friday we went to campus, had lunch at Bubble House, walked around downtown some more and then had delicious gelato (new beloved flavor: molasses). Steph and Scott left Friday night, and Jeanine and Andrew stuck around Saturday for Italian Market, pho, running, and general hanging out. They helped me make turkey soup, and since they had some work to do I finished reading Freakonomics (I know, I'm really behind the times here).

Jeanine and Andrew left early this morning for the twelve-hour drive back to Indiana, and I spent the day doing some chores, many loads of laundry, and playing a little WoW. I'm very excited for going back to New Mexico in less than a month now, and taking Ben with me to see farolitos and my mom's holiday cooking in full force. (Most of the things I made for Thanksgiving, I got the recipes from her.) I'm glad to have had the break, and guests visiting is both a good excuse to really clean the house, and a good excuse to walk around and see fun parts of the city, eat good food, and try to share good times with people I'm fond of and see entirely too rarely.

I'm sure you can guess, when I came home from teaching on Friday to find Ben at home, I was quite happy. His trip went well, he took fun pictures that he showed me, and he brought back some sake and a small tapestry. The main session of his conference was in a No theater! How cool is that!

We had sort of a lazy weekend since Ben was a bit jetlagged, or at least kind of in the wrong time zone. I made sourdough pancakes on Saturday, we watched The Wire, I went for a run, and then we went to Uzu with Aimee, Ben's sister, who was in town for a psychology conference. We had a great time talking, walked to Naked Chocolate and had toffee caramel Belgian waffles, and then walked down to that mural I really like at Broad and Lombard. It was a lot of fun; she's a cool person to talk to. And today... ugh, so I want things to be clean for guests at Thanksgiving, like really clean, so we spent a huge amount of time cleaning the upstairs of our house really thoroughly. I can't believe how long it took, but we really did everything, so I'm pretty happy about it. I don't think the downstairs should take nearly as long, but then it does include the kitchen. BAH.

We got pizza for dinner, and watched the movie Down By Law which someone clearly recommended to me at some point, maybe Ron. It was great; really funny and strange, and Ben pointed out it was similar to a stage play with minimal reliance on sets or large casts, but a lot of great dialogue and interesting interactions. Plus it has the strange combination of Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni, before he was known much at all.

I'm trying to think of idiosyncratic Christmas presents for people. It's hard.

Daria, a friend of mine from high school that also went to Berkeley, came out to Philadelphia over the weekend with her boyfriend Simon, at the end of a weeklong east coast trip to celebrate getting a job. It was very fun seeing them; on Saturday night we went out to the Continental Midtown, which is a very cool bar with tasty food, to celebrate Daria's birthday. We went with some friends of Simon's who also live in Philadelphia, including a professor in the computer science department at Penn who was a postdoc with Simon's group at Berkeley. Then on Sunday, we walked around Philadelphia, following loosely the walking tour I have developed for when people visit me. Simon left Sunday night but Daria came with me to Penn yesterday, and we walked around and ate a late lunch at Bubble House, a restaurant on Sansom which I like more and more.

I was talking to Steph last night, who told me she had to get a rabies vaccine because there was a bat in their apartment. I have to admit that bats were not something I thought that civilized people had in their houses, and before I moved here, I also thought it was very unusual to have mice, rats, or roaches in your house. And yet now we have had all three (though no bats yet). When I was a kid, all we had were spiders and the occasional lizard, but maybe that's because we had cats to scare the larger rodents off.

There's been an interesting development in my teaching situation. I am teaching these two lab-only mechanics courses, for students that got a 5 on the AP Physics exam but need lab for some reason. Although last year my students turned in their labs two days after the lab class, now we are supposed to make them turn in their labs at the end of two hours. The labs are the same, so it's just not nearly enough time. Combine that with the fact that these kids have forgotten a fair amount of the physics they learned, and the result is that I don't think they learn nearly as much as when they can take the lab home and just spend an extra hour on it. I brought this up with the professor in charge of the class, and he responded very nicely, saying he agreed with me completely and felt really guilty, but apparently it's a jurisdictional issue and the engineering school will be all bitchy if we give lab-only students too much work. He did say, though, that I could change the content of the labs however I want. Like, if a lab isn't that educational, I could cut it partially or completely and insert something I think would be more edifying. I am still sorting out what I could do with this, though; it's a lot of freedom. What do you wish you had done in physics lab?

I went with Ben to the Flying Fish Brewery, in Cherry Hill, on Saturday to get a tour. It was pretty cool, sort of like the Scharffen Berger tour, to see how they make beer in a smaller brewery. Everything was slick stainless steel tubing and containers, but then there was a hose running into a bucket overflowing with foam. Ha. I saw one of my former students there, who was one of the other 8 people on the tour. But I couldn't (still can't) remember his name.

Last-minute, one of my friends from high school and Berkeley decided to come out to the East Coast to visit, to celebrate having gotten a job. She'll be here this weekend with her boyfriend, and I'm very excited. Plus Ben and I are planning to go to Cape May on Saturday.

I've been reading The Green Flag, which is a detailed history of Irish nationalism from 1600 or so to 1925. It's really interesting reading, and it's embarrassing how familiar I am with England's history in the same time period, but not at all with Ireland's. (My mom's family is Irish-American, emigrated during the potato famine, so I also have some personal connection to the topic.) Things of note that I have learned:

1. Some Irish republicans tried to induce Germany to help Ireland during WWI, offering that they could invade England from Ireland. The Germans were interested until they found out how little popular support there was for Germany over England.
2. Winston Churchill was a huge jerk. I knew he was a big jerk about India (when someone sent him a telegram saying that Gandhi was hunger striking, he responded something like 'hasn't he died yet?'), but I did not know he was also a huge jerk about Ireland. Very imperialist, I guess.
3. There were many, many Irish rebellions, and most of them were pathetic failures. This mostly seems to have added pathos to the national character.
4. France tried to help Ireland revolt, many times. But it never really worked because most of the Irish people, despite producing fine goods for England and living in abject poverty, were fiercely loyal to the crown until the 20th century.
5. I never before knew what a Black and Tan was, other than the drink.

The reading has been slow going but fascinating. I should read nonfiction more.

glasses, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

The rest of my time in LA was really nice. I had a great time at the beach on Friday, because it was uncrowded, clean, and beautiful. Saturday morning, Ben went up to Ojai to see his family and pick up a rental car, and I went with Laura, Steph (Erin's UCLA friend, not my Steph), and Chih to take Aislin and Erin to get manicures. It was my first manicure, and I am shocked at the amount of cuticle skin they remove. Not to mention how weird it feels to pay someone to fuss over your hands. Anyhow, then we went to Agoura Hills for the out-of-town-guests' dinner, which was really nice. We had a bachelorette party for Erin afterwards which was really fun, a nice combination of wacky fun and just chatting. I'm embarrassed to note that I won the weird game we played called something like 'Who is the biggest pervert', but glad that Chih was just one space behind me.

On Sunday, Ben and I went up to Ojai to spend the day with his family, and then were very nearly late to the actual wedding because of traffic. Erin and Josh's wedding was really lovely, and very fun! It led me to the conclusion that Jewish weddings are great, because everyone seems to be having so much fun. Also, the amount of dancing was higher than I'd previously seen at weddings, and that made me quite happy. And Ben looks extremely cute in a kippah.

Overall, the weekend was great, seeing friends and family was great, but I am really happy not to be flying cross-country again for a while. What's even better, though, is that tonight at 11:30 I get to go pick up Ben from the airport. :)

houses, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

My my my it’s a beautiful world
I like swimming in the sea
I like to go out beyond the white breakers
Where a man can still be free
(or a woman if you are one)
I like swimming in the sea

I drove up to Providence Friday night, and Steph and I drove to Cape Cod for the day on Saturday. I had heard it was a blast, and I expected to have fun. But I had, seriously, one of the best days ever. It was SO fun. ( Read more... )

I'm designing parts and ordering materials for work! It's more mechanical engineering than stuff I've done before, which makes it interesting. I've also never designed such a complex mechanical system from scratch (the cold finger plus the mount for the AFM sample, which has to be thermally insulated). It is actually pretty fun, though I have no idea whether I'll do things right or not. I got to hear about how the machine shop's entire store of copper was stolen a few months back, potentially by a disgruntled machinist, so we have to buy our own now. OFHC copper is expensive!

The dinner group last night met at Eulogy, a Belgian tavern with an impressive beer list and glass-fronted coffins for tables. I ended up meeting a lot of cool math grad students and a law student who was really nice and loved fries; I really enjoy these dinners. It was also a nice walk there and back, maybe 40 minutes each way, and if it hadn't been so humid out it would have been just perfect. With Ben not here for the summer, it strikes me how I've made a lot of acquaintances but few friends, people I would call up to hang out. That is changing, though, and Ben not being here helps me get out more. I don't think I've got the balance of bringing a boyfriend along with friends who don't know him, since I did it so seldom in Berkeley.

Tonight I'm driving up to Providence, to serve as a jumping off point to go to Cape Cod with Steph. I'm really excited about it! I'm a little worried about the drive, since I haven't done any long drives alone out here yet, but it should hopefully be fine. I am going up to the Tappan Zee bridge to avoid NYC traffic; hopefully it will be enough. And I finally got my tickets for Erin and Josh's wedding; hooray for Southwest having random promotions out of Philadelphia that allow me to easily get free roundtrips, but boo for Southwest changing their award policy so that only so many awardees can fly on each flight. Those punks.

I finally gave up on finding my old metronome and ordered a replacement, and while I was at it I ordered some piano music. Some new Debussy, but also, well... jazz. My Los Alamos piano teacher was staunchly anti-jazz, so even though I love jazz piano I never learned anything about how to play it. I got one ragtime book, and she let me play one song out of it and then never spoke of it again. So from habit, I just only play classical... but I'm an adult now! I can play whatever I want! Maybe not well, but we'll see.

I'm in a good mood, after a weekend of reading and hiking, and an unexpected situation yesterday in which the post office did not lose my package. So I'm going to tell two London stories that never quite made it into my entries on that.

( unexpected song )

( small world )

I had a blast in Seattle. There were crepes, the underground tour, Mario Kart, penisbar, Harry Potter, Wii sports, waterfront potato races, pancakes, funny napkin stories, etc. Also sleepy snuggling with Ben, and a whole day with Chih. A funny trip to an adult store at noon on a weekday, and a lot of interesting conversations about relationships that I wasn't expecting. It's true that I didn't get much alone time with Ben, but since I wasn't expecting to, it was still nice seeing him and everyone else. I flew back last night on a red-eye, worked some today, took a nap, went to dinner with Ben's grandparents who are visiting from NYC, and sat and chatted with my housemate Jen for some time.

I stand by earlier things I've said that I would love to live in Seattle. It's so beautiful, with the evergreens and all the water, ringed by mountains. Of course, I haven't been there during winter.

rainier, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

After a frustrating week at work last week, on Friday I finally got some great news, that the cryostat I'm working on finally does what it's supposed to. And then in the evening I flew out to Indiana, to spend the weekend staying with Jeanine and Andrew in West Lafayette. It was a blast!

First thing Saturday morning we went out to the farmer's market, to buy meat and berries and egg noodles, and then headed over to Samara, a Frank Lloyd Wright house in West Lafayette. It's still owned by the original owner, and lived in, and occasionally he opens it for tours and talks given by extremely enthusiastic volunteers. The talks were interesting, and the space inside was just beautiful. It was one of the last houses he built, and thus free of many of the engineering problems that plagued earlier projects. And something that must have helped was that his wife, an interior designer, worked with the owners to do a lot of the color and decoration inside, though Wright designed most of the furniture and put many motifs in that are repeated in windows, hinges, linens, room shapes. What I really loved was the living room, huge and stylish and accomodating, with all sorts of seating: long cushioned benches, couches and chairs, hassocks with small cushions, steps, a coffee table that split into six stools. Everything was modular, everything was cantilevered, everything was open. Two walls were taken by windows out to trees and brick, and there were curtains covering the posts so it looked like a wall of glass. The corner was solid glass, held together by glue. And the fireplace was incredible, massive and brick but floating in the air, dramatically lit. The rest of the house was cool, but it was catered to the couple living there, who wanted big open spaces for entertaining but private, small spaces for having their bedrooms and bathrooms, so the ceilings in the rest of the house were so low I could touch them with my elbows. The hallways and doors were tiny, to give you the sense if you wandered into that part of the house from a party that it was private and you didn't belong. But then in the smallish bathrooms, huge lofted ceilings with skylights were raised up above you, so you didn't feel you were peeing in a closet. The showerhead, though, was about 5'3". The kitchen ("workspace", Wright called it) was nice and airy but had a minimum of easily usable counter space, because of big imposing cabinets right over many of the counters that probably helped the short-ish denizens. But many vintage 50s appliances. And the landscaping outside was excellent, Oriental (for lack of a better word... the decor mixed Japanese and Chinese art with abandon), and matched by the style inside. I'm not a big fan of Wright furniture, much of it is too ugly, but he had some great stylistic ideas, like using an obi as a runner for the center of your dining room table, and china with off-center colorful geometry meant to hide lipstick prints on cups. Apparently he designed every last detail for the house, left the plans with the owners, and as they got more money over the course of their lives (the house was built 50 years ago), they had more of the pieces made. It was really amazing to see.

Then we had lunch, and I went to the Victoria's Secret sale yet again to help Jeanine with bra-shopping. We went home, Sam showed up from Bloomington, and we made dinner. We then left for the Wolf Park, where you can see wolf packs up close and howl with them, and hear a lecture which is not that informative and clearly designed for children. But the wolves are really cool, and the park volunteers can enter and interact with them, and they also have several foxes and a herd of bison. And when you go at night, to howl with them and hear them howl, you have the pleasure of watching fireflies dance over the grass when dusk sets in.

On Sunday we lazed around more, made scones, watched the first Harry Potter movie, walked around the garden plots that married graduate students can plant things in, played gin, and eventually went to Indianapolis so I could come back here. I was especially glad to spend the weekend with friends because Ben and I are in the middle of our apart-time; he's been gone seven weeks and will be gone another six. This means I'm not in as high spirits as I've been, for whatever reason, and it was nice to see people to help me take my mind off that. Especially people I miss. :)

Until yesterday, I was still saying things like, "I'm sure there could be good sushi somewhere in Philadelphia, I just haven't found it yet", but I wasn't really meaning them. And this really marks the first time in my life I've been openly snobby about food being 'inauthentic'; until I moved here, I hadn't had cheap sushi that was so lackluster, and similarly I hadn't had 'Mexican' food that was so far from the real thing.

But while my quest for real Mexican continues, I actually ate at a very nice sushi restaurant last night. 'Cheap' sushi here unfortunately means something different than in California, but it was possible to get a lot of sushi for under $20 a person, and the quality was great! The place was incredibly small, only six two-person tables and a four-person sushi bar, but had really nice decoration, obviously a lot of thought put into it, and was in a cool part of Old City. I only had some rolls, but they were all excellent, and they had a nice nigiri-for-two deal that I'll try sometime with Ben. I owe the knowledge of this place to my housemate Jen, who is an entertaining dinner buddy. And on the way back she asked if I felt like Rita's, and I said, 'what's Rita's'? And she made her horrified you-did-not-just-ask-that face and made me try it. The answer to my question is, Rita's is delicious.

One thing that's great about Philadelphia is if somebody visits you who likes to walk. When Joao and Gersende visited in October, we walked around the city a lot, and this time with Steph I had a pretty good idea of what routes to take that went by nice things. So we basically walked around and talked non-stop the two days she was here. :)

Saturday was beautiful, as previously mentioned, and after I met her at the train station and we had lunch at my house, we walked over to the Penn campus so she could see where I work. We popped into Ben's building to take a peek at the piece of ENIAC they have there (Ben works in the room where it operated, actually!), and then walked down Locust Walk and to the biopond. We sat and talked there, in the warmth of the late afternoon, and saw a blue heron! It was beautiful, but kind of a bully to the other birds. We saw it eat a fish, which was amazing because the fish looked way too big to fit down its throat but it slowly swallowed it, and the tail was still flapping as it disappeared into the heron's beak. There were also tiny cute sparrows bathing in the dirt, which I love to see. When the sun was starting to go down, we went back to my house and ate out at Grace, a nearby pub with great burgers, great spicy fries, and great Pennsylvania beer on tap. Then back home to sit in my backyard and watch fireflies and talk, though we were a little late for the fireflies so we didn't see many.

On Sunday we did a downtown walk, going up South St. to 6th, up 6th St. to Independence National Historic Park, then northwest to Chinatown, southwest to City Hall, southwest to Rittenhouse Square, and back home. Along the way we saw the Liberty Bell, ate tasty lunch at Mai Lei Wah, got boba, looked along the sightline from City Hall to the Museum of Art, popped in to the Victoria's Secret sale to paw through the bra bins, went to H&M for the first time, and sat in Rittenhouse, where every bench was taken, to talk. The weather was perfect and it was a lot of fun. When we got home we ended up making chocolate mousse at 11:30 at night, with cherries and walnuts, and watching videos on youtube.

Steph's train left around noon yesterday, so in the morning we went to the Italian Market. I hadn't wanted to go on Sunday because I drive there, but I also live near two churches so if I move my car on a Sunday I'm not getting a space near my house when I get back. And I had seen produce stands set up there on weekdays, so we went... but it was really dead, a big disappointment. There were a few produce stands, but maybe a fourth of what's there on weekends, and a lot of stores were closed for Monday (many of the butchers, the spice store, the sandwich place). We did end up having coffee at a really nice place, and going to the less awesome spice store, and getting things at Giordano's, which was open. But we'll have to go again the next time she's here, and now I know not to take people there on Mondays.

I had such a fun weekend!

I had a nice weekend. My flight out to Los Angeles was seven hours delayed, due to some clouds 50,000 feet high which we had to wait to settle down, so I got in at 3:30 AM. I was really excited as I was going to the airport, but I guess cross-country flights are less straightforward and less clear-shot than just hopping down the coast. Plus the time zone really did make a difference, since I wasn't there long enough to adjust. But we had a lot of fun: ate breakfasts at a sunny coffee shop, went to the beach with Erin and Josh and Ben's roommate John, watched Police Story, played Carcassonne, had sushi in Santa Monica, cuddled while watching The Empire Strikes Back.

( ways in which this weekend was different )

And now I'm back, and I'm making progress in my work, and trying to get caught up on my chores. My favorite pair of jeans ripped while I was in LA, so maybe I can mend those... and I want to finish Juneteenth, the other Ralph Ellison book, so that I can start rereading Harry Potter. :) I should also clean up... when I came back yesterday, I noticed that one of our mouse traps had moved onto a vent in the dining room... then noticed the tail protruding from it. A mouse got its leg caught in the trap, tried to go down the vent, and died there. I was concerned that the mouse would be stuck in the vent, and I would have to take drastic measures (or have a professional take them on my behalf) to remove it, but it slid right out. But now things feel unclean.

Our garden grows slowly, in fits and starts, not nearly as fast as our weeds. But we have pea-vines!