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Not a banner day at the CSA, as it included TWO kinds of kale, and, well, weeds--the kind of weed I always hated seeing in the garden the most, in fact: purslane. It doesn't taste too bad, actually. But still ... almost everything was a leaf, only one root (not one kind of root but one root, a kohlrabi bulb--which is great, I just wish there was more of it). I'm missing the beets and turnips. Today included even my least favorite kind of lettuce (romaine), which was uncommonly dirty.

Ah, well; this is the first disappointing week yet, and I expect things are about to really start picking up, with soon tomatoes and corn and peppers, oh my! And the fruit share is finally starting up. This week it was apricots! Yeee! Plus peas!!

While working on my pinch hit for Summergen, I was reminded of a fic I wrote about a year ago that I guess I forgot to put on AO3. So I uploaded it, and got two comments on it (!! Uncommon for me to get comments on AO3), both of which really seemed to connect to my fic. Feeling like anyone connects to me at all in this world, or to anything I say or do, is incredibly rare for me. I starve for it pretty much all day every day. So thanks to these comments, I'm actually feeling good about life at the moment.

And Summergen is here! And gishwhes on its way! YASS.

We got a mushroom share with our CSA, and received a very cool e-mail from them with some information on their small company and some of their plans for the rest of the summer ... which included letting us know they'll be going to the Burning Man "arts festival" and thus we won't be getting mushrooms that particular week.

Now, I've known a lot of people who've gone to Burning Man, and "arts festival" is not the descriptor that first comes to mind. I guess they figure anyone who's hip to what it really is is cool with it, and everyone else can enjoy some mental images of paintings and fine pottery professionally displayed in a lush and natural setting, with well-to-do art aficionadoes looking them over and nodding appreciatively.

THAT'S OKAY DUDES, YOU CAN GO GET NAKED AND HIGH IN THE DESERT FOR A WEEK. THE MUSHROOMS WILL WAIT.

Does kinda give you an inkling, perhaps, into what may have first inspired their interest in growing their own mushrooms ....

I have never liked pesto. I have never understood pesto. Like, what do you do with a sauce that's really just ... leaves suspended in olive oil?

However, I got a CSA this year (for the first time ever--it's something I've wanted to do for so long! You can't imagine how freakin' excited I was to get our first pickup last week--and it was so much food!), and in it came all sorts of leafy greens I didn't know much about and never (thought I) liked, including arugula. I was looking for something to do with all the arugula (A FULL POUND. THAT'S A LOT OF ARUGULA), came across mention of arugula pesto, made some today, and ... wow, that's some really good shit! Like, really good! I still can't quite believe it.

So, wise readers, any suggestions on how to eat pesto, other than on pasta? I'm just trying it on a bagel and that's great, but any ideas about it would be most welcome ....

(And if you've ever had a CSA, I'd love to hear about your experiences.)

We're watching an awesome anime at anime night with s_c's brother lately called Dear Brother that takes being a high-school freshman in a "sorority" and makes it the! most! dramatic! thing! that ever! happened!!! Which I love. As long as a show is good, then by god, make it as dramatic as you possibly can. Aaaaand, since I was a high-school freshman once, I can attest (as I'd wager most/all of you could, too!) that being a high-school freshman girl really DOES feel that dramatic, so it's kind of ... extra realistic, in that way.

I voted today. Man, voting is so cool. I was disappointed recently to see that my favorite rock star said, or at least used to say, that voting doesn't matter, but damn, if fandom hasn't shown me how much it does. I may not be able to make our show win an online poll or the cover of a magazine ... but I know my fandom can do it, which is all of us doing our part, all of us together, voting. (And I know some of you have individually had a significant impact on certain voting situations where one is allowed to vote as often as one wants!) I say, if you think voting doesn't matter, look at all these people in the highest current and former positions in government, carefully deciding and then announcing their choice. They believe their vote matters. And their vote has exactly the same weight as yours. I fucking love voting, doing my part, learning what's going on in my community and being part of deciding how we go forward. All these people who take democracy for granted. It's not for granted, dammit! It's a precious right. Exercise it.

I think I'm the only person I've seen who liked 12.2 as much as they liked 12.1? I thought it was great. YASSS, Rick Springfield--sexy AND such impressive acting! More of him, please! Sexy sexy Jared in the sexy sexy sex scene. Of course the consent issue is cruel, but I am a bit surprised that a fandom that so loves their dubcon and noncon in fic is so bothered by it in show. Toni is over-the-top evil, which is kind of tiresome (I preferred her now-dead cohort in 12.1--a more interesting character by far), and yeah, Dean could've been happier to see Sam, but I suppose the number of times he's been dragged into a room to see his brother tied up and bloody has worn down his sense of surprise, maybe, and he kind of already had a lot going on what with mom being back in the picture and all. I LOVE LOVE LOVE how they're dealing with both boys so desperately needing a mother, Sam's adorable eagerness just to begin to get to know her in that scene at the end, arrrrghhh. THERE'S SO MUCH FIC THERE, in mother and children getting to know each other as adults, having missed all the time in between, but I haven't been able to find a fic in it to write just yet. I want to see where show goes with it first, I guess, hoping they'll do it right and get out of it all that can be got. Mary really is the only thing that could heal either of those boys now, and god, how I want to see that happen! YAY SHOW!!

I'm currently trying some "snacking chocolate."



You know, as opposed to "eating chocolate," "licking chocolate," and "decorative chocolate." It's okay. The thing I like best about it so far is that it's salty; I love salt in sweet things.

But it resembles the choc-kale-late we saw on our trip to Oregon and makes me wish all over again that we'd bought it! Yes, I know it would have been terrible! But it would have been an experience we'd never have forgotten.

Which brings me to the fact that gishwhes this year has banned kale and all mention of kale, and ... I'm relieved, because kale is disgusting. There, I said it! It's got all the solidity of lettuce and none of the humidity, beauty, charm, or flavorlessness.

gishwhes this year also has porcupines. I don't know, don't ask. Still, the commandments are always a hilarious read--check them out, if you dare. (You'll find out all I know about the porcupines, too.) SpringLea was our commandment maven; she kept us straight, alas. I tell ya, if my team's annual new team members would just read the damn commandments instead of asking the group about basic stuff that's fully covered there (duration of videos, etc.), we'd all have so much more time for completing items! They make the rules hilarious to hold your interest; it's not like they're a chore to read, but people just as a general rule eschew the reading of instructions. My eventual dream for my gish team is to have a team of fifteen people as awesome as my core team members who've returned every year. We'd have the best team ever. Someday, maybe.

What's going on in y'all's lives?

A few people have asked me to post a photo of the quilt--here it is! Despite all the trouble it gave me, I really love the final product. I made it because (I had a lot of fabric scraps I needed to use up and) I needed a light summer quilt, and it really fits the bill. If I recall correctly, the batting is cotton, so it's just the right temperature for summer. I even kind of have an affection for the gathered part at both ends--it's a design element! Or that's what I'll claim. ;-) The only thing that isn't quite done is the quilting proper, but it's done enough to use; I'll just have to finish the quilting before I wash it again.

( Cut for picture. )

Finally going back and replying to some old comments in my inbox! Getting it down to a manageable size again. The Vegas trip, followed by the root canals, combined with a stage of great transition, really threw me off my lj game, I guess. And all my games.

That quilt, which spent some months in time-out in the closet, is now almost finished! One of the many things that went wrong with it (the gap in the middle on both ends due to size differences in the top and bottom) turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I somehow managed to leave several safety pins INSIDE the quilt, which I would never have gotten out again were it not for those gaps. I'm usually really careful about that stuff! But it's one of the potential problems of working on a project over a long period. And oddly, now that I'm doing the quilting proper (for me, generally the most challenging part), it's going really smoothly! I guess it got all its difficult-ness out in that one middle stage ....

I've been enjoying the anime Death Note lately quite a bit (one of those oh-so-rare animes that actually get enough attention in the States that Hollywood is making a live-action version of it!), or I was, but then after my precious, favorite character L died, I just didn't have the heart for it anymore. It was a beautiful death, even, and I guess I'm glad he didn't go evil before he died like I thought he probably would, but still ... it broke my heart. :-( Every night when I was watching it, I went to bed with this happy feeling that someone like him was in the world (even if only fictitiously), and now ... he isn't anymore. :-( Oh, well.

Also really enjoying The 100, when I have the stomach for it. And I thought SPN was depressing! I was pretty upset when they killed the one kid character I could stand in the very first episode, Jasper, but then he somehow survived being run through, so it was okay. ;-) The rest of the kids have grown on me, though, especially Bellamy, and of course, the ever-awesome Raven.

What's up in y'all's worlds and lives?

I had a really good b-day. I and another friend whose birthday is close to mine decided to combine our birthdays. The plan was dinner and room-rental karaoke, but it snowed a lot (for the second year in a row on my b-day!) and we had to cancel. BUT, s_c and I live all of five minutes away from both places (they're in the same parking lot), and I was so in the mood to spend the evening doing exactly those things, so s_c and I went and did it ourselves! And it was SO fun!! We found a bunch of great new songs to sing, YAY.

On the way out, I saw that the blossom-bedecked trees were heavy with snow and breaking, and I just couldn't let such beautiful trees die on my birthday, so we got out and shook the snow off the trees.

When I got home, I discovered I had a little souvenir!

( Cut for photo )

I've been thrown off from the time I usually devote to lj due to hardcore doctor appointments every week since we returned from the trip, bleh, about most of which I've been profoundly anxious. (Part of it is that I tend to be anxious in general, part of it is that some of it is stuff I've never had to do before.) Another appointment next week. :-( But hopefully soon I'll be able to find my rhythm again. Lj is no smaller in my mind for not being able to be around as much, and I'm still loving your posts and all your comments as much as always. <3 <3

Well ... that sucked stupendous amounts of ass. I had no inkling when I made my last post that the worst was yet to come.

We left Vegas early yesterday morning, with the intention of getting home within the day--a long trip, but we were prepared. We made amazing time, too ... until we ran into snow in the Rockies. We didn't expect this, I guess because we'd been in the desert all week, after a month of temps in the 60s-70s in Colorado. Anyway, we've been driving in Colorado snow all our lives, including in the mountains, where it does snow quite a bit more and harder than on the plains, but even if it's slow going, we've always made it before.

Then they closed the first of two mountain passes between us and home. The very nice sheriff (who stood in the middle of the highway talking to every single car individually, to give them advice on how to get where they're going--I've never seen that before) advised us and everyone else also headed to Denver to take 24 to 91 and meet back up with the highway farther along. It was slow, dangerous going, but at least everyone was headed the same way on 24 ... then we got to 91, and I really don't want to talk much about that now, but many times during that endless horrendous drive in extremely poor visibility in driving snow while the windshield wipers caked with ice until I had only a tiny clear spot to peer through to try to see where I was going, I wondered if I'd live to see another day.

Somehow we made it back to the interstate having taken the roads he suggested, which landed us between the two passes ... only to discover they'd closed the other pass, too. There was no way home at that point. After consulting with a couple of hotels in these ski resort towns along the interstate (to give you an idea of the prices they were charging, they offered a room with "a murphy bed and a pull-out couch" for a low-low $400. !!! !! !!!!!), I ACTUALLY MANAGED TO FIND THE KEY my sister gave me for the cabin she owns up there several miles off the interstate, we actually managed to find said cabin, the key actually worked (I've never tried it until last night), and at last we were safe in a warm, comfortable place after having spent the previous FIVE FULL HOURS white-knuckle driving, this after ten hours of normal driving. It was horrible. I have a little of the drive on video, which I will try to put together for you.

I have more to tell about what I was referring to in my previous post, but I had to get all that out first. So much to decompress from from that trip. Before we left, both of us had the feeling we'd return as different people, and that came to pass. As we came into town, we couldn't bring ourselves to feel sure we'd really make it home any time soon until we were actually in the door. In normal driving, the place where we were stranded is only about an hour and a half away, so close and yet so far. We're home now. It seems like a miracle that we actually made it.