Weekend Wonderment

I went to the Farmer’s Market this morning with Bob (Anne’s SO) and Maggie (his dog). It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny morning, and it’s always nice to go to the Market. It’s fun to run into friends there, as well as buying yummy organic produce. I bought a bunch of cute freshly-dug carrots to try in my juicer. I’ve been making orange juice and wheatgrass juice, and I love my juicer! I just put my first batch of wheat seeds in water to soak to start the sprouting process, so hopefully I’ll be able to plant them tomorrow afternoon and have grass of my own growing on my windowsill in time for Mom’s visit! :)

After the Farmer’s Market I went to New Seasons to do the rest of my shopping for the week, and just happened (well, okay, I planned it) to be there during their chocolate and wine tasting. They had pretty much opened up every chocolate bar in the store, and they have a lot of chocolate bars! There was soooo much chocolate! I think my favorite was the Dagoba organic “Xocolatl” which was dark chocolate with chili in it, among other things. It was so good! They also had hot chocolate made out of that, which was amazing. They had also opened up a few bottles of wine that are on special this week, but that seemed almost unnecessary with all the decadent chocolate that was out! It was a very lovely shopping trip. :) And when I came out of the store and got in my car to go home, it started snow/hailing! It was so weird; it was still really warm out (for February in Portland), and pretty bright and sunny, but there were these big white globs of snow hitting my windshield! I was driving down the road with my hand out the window trying to figure out what was going on. I love strange things like that, things that a lot of people miss because they’re so brief and fleeting, but they’re so special.

So it’s been a good day. And a good weekend altogether. I drove down to Corvallis on Friday to watch DeMara perform in the Vagina Monologues at OSU. She did a fabulous job, and it was a great performance altogether. Go DeMara! Last night we had a birthday party for Bob, with a very fancy many-course meal – there were three dessert courses alone! It was fun to work in the kitchen with Anne to prepare it all, and it was quite a lovely dinner. And we got the leftovers for breakfast this morning! Mmm, asparagus and quince cake for breakfast. :)

Back to readings now. I’m hoping to finish getting caught up and actually get all of my readings for this week done this afternoon. Wish me luck! :)

My Year

Happy Chinese New Year! It just so happens that this is my year, so cock-a-doodle-doo! :)

A Good Day

Several happy things happened today, for which I am grateful. I found out about a nifty new program called “PSU ReUses!” that collects and redistributes used office supplies and materials to students and student/faculty groups on campus. They basically accept donations of stuff from departments that are relocating, groups that have leftover materials, etc. and offer it to other people – for free! So I picked up a few binders, some white-out tape, a bunch of binder dividers and sheet protectors, and printable transparency sheets, all for free! The girl who was staffing the room was really nice, and I stayed and talked to her for a while. She’s an AmeriCorps volunteer working in the sustainability/environmental sphere (I actually looked into that program a while ago, so it was neat to meet somebody who was actually participating in it), and she’s implementing this program on campus and hopes to get it up and running on a weekly basis, with end-of-quarter collection drives, etc. I talked to her a bit about volunteer opportunities, and it turns out she’s also trying to organize an Earth Day event on campus. It just so happens that I’ve been trying to find Earth Day stuff to get involved with, so I gave her my email, and hopefully we’ll be able to connect and work something out. So that was really cool.

When I got home I had a mysterious envelope in the mail for me with no return address. I opened it up, and it turned out to be an invitation to apply to become a PSU Student Ambassador. Apparently my archaeology professor nominated me for the honor (of applying), which I thought was really nice. The job is basically to represent the school, organize and host events, and that sort of thing, and you get paid $150/quarter and get one credit for it. It sounds like a pretty cool program. Of course, I won’t be able to do it, because I’ll be gone for fall quarter next year, when the orientation is (and it’s also the first quarter of the ambassadorship), but I was tickled to be nominated. The nomination came from one of my favorite professors, too, which makes it even nicer.

And the third nice thing that happened today was that I went out to the garden center and bought planters and soil for growing my wheatgrass! Now I just have to soak, sprout, and watch it grow, and I can juice my own wheatgrass shots every morning! I’m very excited. J