9 posts tagged “apr2007”
Whew, the weekend was a lot of fun, AND very productive: Lisa got to meet a few of my coworkers, I finally got to check out my neighborhood bar, Lisa helped me pick out curtains (and she did most of the work of getting them hemmed with fusion tape-stuff) AND we went on a hike. Throw in some yummy meals, a cameo visit by her husband (who rode his motorcycle down, so arrived at noonish Sat and left at 4 am Sunday), and a bottle of wine, and you've got a great weekend.
Curtains:
And hike & flowers:
... and so was my fruit tart - not bad for a first try!
Portland-friend Lisa is in town, and her husband Ken is meeting us in a few hours (after riding his motorcycle down) so there MAY be pictures, there may not... stay tuned for rampant sum-uppage.
Oh... and speaking of rampant sum-uppage, I posted a full photo set of my trip to Yosemite, with explanatory captions, notes, the full works. So head on over and see how my trip was! But there are 146 shots, so it might be good to look when you've got some down time.
In this post I began describing my new love affair with XnView which is freely available photo management software. I just learned how to use the batch rename tool, and have given standard names to all 183 pictures I took this weekend (down, I might note, from 400+ - I did some heavy editing last night and will take another pass before posting them).
So, to recap: XnView lets me batch name photos - I wanted to prepend each name with 2007Apr_ and then give it an accession number. But I didn't want to have them numbered 1-183; no, I wanted to leave some gaps to make them easy to rearrange later. So the first batch of six are numbered 100-106, then the next chunks of photos (separated by day) start at 110 and are numbered with every other number: 110, 112, 114, etc. That will make it fairly simple to renumber them so they appear in narrative order, not necessarily chronological order.
AND it lets me add tags in a batch. AND if I want I can create a controlled vocabulary list for future consistency. And I expect there is even more I don't even know about yet.
So why don't you use it yet?
Okay, back from 5 days at Yosemite, with two coworkers, Mark and Esther. I posted the highlights on Flickr so suffice to say, we saw all kinds of weather:
Did a killer hike with amazing views:
And I took lots of pictures of flowers:
Walking up my stairs, dragging the first of two big loads of various crap that came home with me from Yosemite, my plan was:
1. shower
2. unload bags
3. start working on the birthday tart (more on that later)
Instead it was more like:
1. walk into apartment to dump first load. realize it's a bit stuffy and .. aromatic. open windows, take out the fruit that has gone bad.
2. get second load, start getting ready for shower. Put camp clothes in To Burn pile. relent, and move them to the laundry pile.
3. realize that it might be efficient if I print the recipe for the tart, then get the FIVE HUNDRED pictures off my camera onto my computer, THEN take a shower. find recipe, print it, delete half of the new mail in my inbox (spam, lists I don't read) and glance at a couple of email headlines. Tear my eyes away, start uploading pics.
4. shower. bliss.
5. back to laptop, unhook camera, remove butter and cream cheese from fridge, skim mail, reply to a few things.
6. In replying, send link to this to LONG-lost high school friend and realize I should update so this looks fresh! and timely! for my possibly-newest reader. (how long-lost? my younger brother was almost 4 when she moved. he's an Air Force officer now.)
7. tear myself away again, and go get started on that tart. (more later, really. and pictures too)
Well, now I know at least one person reads this, I had a demand for a post. It's tricky to type right now, as I'm ripping a cd to my work computer and it's choking like mad. It's a cool cd, which I learned about years ago on NPR's All Music Considered:
What else: I'm off to Yosemite again! I went there in September and, although I posted only briefly, I loved it. And now I should get to see waterfalls and maybe some flowers, and maybe some snow - sad though that is, it'll be the first snow I've seen in a year (or two?) so I don't mind.
Work lunch group continues apace: I brought in Cajun beans & barley, and spicy kale for today's lunch. I have a metric ton of leftovers, which I shall combine with broth and call soup!
Booboolina and I are watching
and are 2/3 of the way through season 2.5. Tonight, we finish, and will be left with QUITE a cliff-hanger, I hear. Crap! But it's awesome, although I find Dr. Baltar annoyingly whiny a lot of the time.
I know there is more, and if I think of it tonight, I'll post it. Otherwise, be prepared for lots of great photos of my latest trip to nature. Fitting that it's Earth Day on Sunday - I'll be sure to hug a tree!
On Sunday, E and I made omelets. She'd observed a friend of hers, and we kinda faked our way through the process - pretty successfully I might add! (oh, and when I say "we" I mean E, with some of my made-up opinions thrown in for good measure.)
See?
We all got holes to fill
And them holes are all thats real
Some fall on you like a storm
Sometimes you dig your own
But choice is yours to make
Time is yours to take
Some dive into the sea
Some toil upon the stone
To live is to fly low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
The sleep out of your eyes
Whew, I have finally done the penultimate* step in dealing with the (ridiculously expensive and stupid) traffic violation I had in November. I just took & passed the online traffic test (and had to spend 2 hours with the prep material first!). I think I learned stuff though. Most important lesson? A particular intersection near work has photo evidence of running red lights, and the camera does not care if it is the 5th light I've hit with no traffic on the road at 7 am on a Saturday morning.
Also, my taxes are set to mail. I'd had this little pile to sort through and write checks and envelopes, and it's done. So two things can be removed from my to-do list**. yay!
Oh, and did I mention I finally got back on my bike? Yep, commuted to work yesterday. It was great.
Now - off to SF!
*Penultimate because I still have to get the certificate in the mail and send it in to the court before the 17th. I wonder if posted-date counts.
** My to-do list, off the top of my head: 1. receive & submit traffic school certificate; 2. receive, wrap, and re-mail my sister's bday gift; 3. arrange to switch my schedule in May (work a Sat for a Mon off); 4. start thinking about mother's day gift; 5. change the oil in my car, preferably before I lend it to a friend
Remember when Vox asked us about our favorite cookbooks? In this post I said that it was a Donna Hay cookbook. And I DO love it, but I don't often cook from it. This one, on the other hand, is going on my must-own list:
and, today, Cravin' Beef Curry:
And, I don't need *lunches* for the week because this is the first week three coworkers and I are taking turns bringing in lunch for four, Monday through Thursday. My day is Wednesday (I think!) and I've already picked out what I'm going to make, and got the ingredients today. Groceries for the beef curry and for my day of lunch ran me about 28 bucks, and from that I will have four dinners and four lunches. Sweet! Eating well at under $3.50 per meal!
And, to get back to touting Desperation Dinners, it really did take under half an hour to make the curry today. I think that if I cooked more often, I'd get even faster. The only thing about today I would change is I would have measured out the spices before starting the rest of the project, because it would've been nice to just dump them in at the right moment.
