Saturday, July 12, 2003

 

Hooray for weekends and sleep. I came home from work last night and basically slept from 6:30-10:00. Hugo woke me up for a yummy dinner and watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." What a lovely movie. I'd been feeling drained and very low on energy for the last couple of days, but that nap was just the thing I needed. I woke up much much happier this morning.

Ale-planning is still crazy, and trying to coordinate everything has been quite a learning experience. I actually took last Wednesday off of work as a "personal day" to deal with things. I was on the computer emailing people and on the phone for most of the day. Yikes. But I got things pretty well sorted out. We had a meeting after practice on Thursday to get everybody on the same page. It's hard to believe that the Ale is happening in only two weeks -- yikes!

I'm trying to keep this weekend as mellow as I can, to avoid beginning the week as exhausted as I ended it. Hugo and kids went to get haircuts this morning (I told him to take before and after pictures), then up to Mount St. Helens to visit the lava tubes. I would like to do that some time, but not today. They took Sylvia because Hugo's van is currently being used by a friend, so I'm walking places today. I walked to a little thrift store about 8 blocks away, and came away with a pair of overalls (at last!) and two wonderful rugs (at last! at last!), which I then had to carry home over my shoulder. :P Luckily, the guys at the store were really really nice; they rolled the rugs up together and taped them up for me so I wouldn't have to deal with them unrolling. They said, "Now this is excellent customer service" and the woman who was ringing me up agreed, saying "Yeah, they never do this!" It's nice being a girl sometimes. :) One of the rugs is a rag rug in various shades of blue that goes perfectly with the walls, trim, and sheets in my bedroom, and the other is one of those heavy rugs with fringe on the ends, dark green and burgundy and beige, and goes perfectly with the futon in the living room. Hooray!

I've been doing a bit of looking into colleges and things in the last week. I've basically done searches to find all the colleges in Portland, and have been browsing their websites looking at what they offer and hoping something catches my eye. Lewis & Clark College has a Sociology/Anthropology major that actually looks pretty cool. It has some neat looking classes like Anthropology of the Body, Environmental Sociology, and American Advertising and the Science of Signs. I requested information about the college last week, and this morning received their entire course catalog in the mail -- I thought that was pretty cool. Of course, Lewis & Clark is almost as expensive as Stanford, which I was trying to avoid, but it could still be nice. I'm still looking at other places, and will probably try to do some visiting and tours next month or so, and apply for transfer admission starting spring semester. We shall see.
# posted by Lacey 4:31 PM

Monday, July 07, 2003

 

Weekends are good when you can change plans as often as you want. Instead of cycling and berry picking yesterday, we stayed home and had "Project Day." It was wonderful. I got out my sewing machine and the fabric I've been intending to make curtains out of for the last year. Hugo kept looking over at me and finding me in the same position, standing staring at the fabric laid out on the floor with my thinking look on. I explained that I had to do the whole thing in my head and make all of my mistakes up there so I only had to do it for real once, and do it right. He laughed, but it worked! :P I of course had to do things about the most complicated way possible, and I only got half of it done (one panel of two), but it looks great! And it blocks the light really well. So I was happy with myself. :) It was soooooo nice to have a three-day weekend. We managed to savor the whole thing so that it felt like a vacation rather than just a long weekend -- it certainly felt longer than three days to me!

Work is getting to be a bit more tiring and frustrating and unrewarding, and I'm starting to think it might be time to look for something new. Of course, for that, I probably need to go back to school. And for that, despite the constant admonishing reminders from Hugo and others, I feel like I need to have some idea of what I want to do in college. I certainly realize that I'm most likely not going to make a career out of a specific major I choose in college, but I'd at least like to think I'm choosing something that will have some relevance to my life after I graduate. Hmmm.. So my ongoing assignment for myself of researching colleges and degrees in Portland has stepped up a notch or two in priority. I feel like I'm finally coming to the point where I could return to school and survive, if only I knew what I wanted to study. That's my stumbling block right now; if I knew that I could go just about anywhere to get a degree and get it over with. We'll see. Meanwhile, it's time to extend my Stanford leave of absence... again.

# posted by Lacey 7:43 PM

Sunday, July 06, 2003

 

A very fun day at Oneonta Gorge yesterday. We drove up to the Columbia River Gorge, which is a beautiful area, went to the lookout at Crown Point, had a picnic, and then hiked up Oneonta Gorge, where you can't not get wet. It was a beautiful day with perfect weather, and we all had a blast. I took a bunch of pictures, which you can see here. We took the streetcar downtown and walked to the Riverfront to watch the fireworks last night, shot from a barge on the Willamette. I could have done without the cigarette smoke and the crowds, but it was a good show. The funniest part was when all of the lawn sprinklers started going off -- everybody had their blankets and chairs and things out on the grass, and these monster streams of water started shooting all over them. It was hilarious. A rather large oversight on the part of the Parks department, I think, not to turn off the automatic sprinklers when they knew there would be hundreds of people out on the grass. :P

Today was a pretty mellow day. Hugo and I were invited to a dinner party that was a "first-annual fourth of July weekend June/July birthday party." It was hosted by the very nice couple whose wedding we danced at on May Day, Jonathan and Suzanne. Suzanne just happens to work as the cook for the lovely bed and breakfast down the street from their house, The Lion and The Rose. So of course the food was absolutely scrumptious. And the company was excellent as well, a good mix of folks we knew, folks we had met once or twice before, and folks we had never met before. All in all, it was a lovely evening.

Tomorrow is a sleeping in day. (I love holidays -- it's sooooo nice to have an extra day!) Hugo and I are planning on cycling up to Sauvie Island to do some berry-picking in the afternoon. Mmmmm, fresh berries. But now it's time for bed.

# posted by Lacey 12:42 AM