Long weekend in review

[annathepiper]

I got to leave work early on Friday--yay! So did spazzkat, so we bolted for MurkNorth around three. We stopped and got a few groceries on the way home, which turned out to be fun as kathrynt was following us north on 405 all the way into Bothell. We wound up going to the Starbuck's next to QFC, where Kathryn kindly bought us tasty beverages (THANKS Q!), and then it was on to MurkNorth. Paul did a bit of work on his tablet PC while I napped, the both of us waiting for solarbird to get done with showings at MurkSouth.

Once she joined us, we had a quiet evening of dinner and video games. I wound up getting very little writing done, and I went to bed extremely early, due to being fried of brain.



Saturday was fairly laid back too. Dara and I went on an errand run down to LFP, where we went to the bank and got rid of a lot of books that we didn't want at Third Place--some of which they actually gave us store credit for and some of which we had to ask them to donate, because they didn't actually want them. But between the store credit I got and a coupon for 10% off any purchase made in the store that day, that was enough to let me get one of the paperbacks on my current buy list for only two bucks and change. Not bad. (The book in question was Elizabeth Lowell's The Color of Death, through which I proceeded to quickly plow. It was, unfortunately, not as good as her previous works. More on this later.)

I got the watching of episode #9 of Lost out of the way, so's to get caught up with Dara.

Paul joined us Saturday afternoon and evening for the viewing of Doctor Who, Lost, and an anime called Future Boy Conan that he, Dara, and risu are enjoying. Me, I grooved hardcore on the latest Doctor episode, a very satisfying conclusion to a very satisfying story in general. Episode #10 of Lost was also suitably intense. Hopefully Dara and I will be able to get caught up soon, as Paul is anxious to share his various theories about what's going on with the show, and it'd be nice to get caught up before the next season starts.

There was also much playing of Monkey Ball 2. I have not been participating in the playing of Monkey Ball 2, but it's been amusing to watch. I mean, you have balls, and you have monkeys. Very difficult to go wrong there. ;) However, I'm pretty sure that no matter how biologically correct it might have been, the game could have done without the cute little monkeys doing a dance and a chant that ended in "POO!"



+2: I really do need to learn to better check the Folklife schedule before I wind up heading there every year. Had I done so, I would have known that the Celtic Band Scramble was scheduled for yesterday, and I could have brought my bouzouki along. Foo.

As it happens, I did not. But Dara, Paul, and I had a pleasant morning and afternoon at Folklife anyway, mostly involving listening to various ukelele acts (including one by SUPA, the Seattle Ukelele Players' Association, of which Paul's friend Pam is a member), wandering around the fair people-watching and fountain-watching, and eating tasty fair food. As is required for upholding annual Folklife traditions, we popped into the instrument makers' emporium to ogle all the instruments being sold--though I noticed that Romy Benton and his wonderful bamboo flutes were not present this year. This is probably for the best as I would have been coveting them and I have neither extra money nor any real need for another new flute.

For Rivendell purposes, I have no real idea how much walking we did yesterday. There was my usual mile to and from the bus stop at the bottom of the hill (where we caught the same bus I take downtown every morning on my commute, actually), and I'm pretty sure we got in at least a mile's worth of walking from our downtown stop to Westlake Center (where we caught the monorail to Folklife) and back again, plus all the walking around the festival itself. So I'll give myself an extra mile for that.

We wound up staying not terribly long into the afternoon, though, mostly because the various acts we were all interested in weren't scheduled until later and none of us really wanted to stay too late. So we made our way home again.

On the way I stopped at the downtown Borders, where, as I posted happily yesterday, I found a copy of mizkit's shiny new fantasy novel, Urban Shaman. Dara looked it up in the store's computerized book lookup thingie, where we noticed that the book was actually listed wrong--it was shown as releasing in hardcover, and not out yet. That listing was dated 5/26, though, and I don't know where it was pulling its data from. Still, it was extremely satisfying to be able to buy a novel by my friend and tribesmate. ^_^ Once I finish off Sharon Shinn's Angel-Seeker, Urban Shaman will be next on the queue!

I had to spend a while yesterday working on my web page some--because Drizzle had sent me a notice that I'd gone over quota on my web space with them. So I had to rearrange a few things and delete a few other things, to make sure that the stuff I mirror up to Drizzle got back under 10 megs. Plus, some of the stuff there needed updating anyway. It was all small updates, nothing major, though I'm still feeling a small urge to do a major content update and new design soon.

And, with my brain coming back online, I got in more writing. Yay!



+3: So far Monday has been laid back too. Now that I'm done with the Mad Editing Marathon, I am resuming treadmill activities; I know I said that last week, but now I've actually done it, getting myself onto the treadmill for a good 50 minutes or so.

Dara and I are about to go out and frolic on bikes, too. We're going to head in the direction of Woodinville, just to see what there is to be seen. Yay, exercise!


Saturday miles: 2.0 (walk to LFP)
Sunday miles: 2.0 (bus stop walk + walking around Folklife)
Monday miles: 1.59 (treadmill)
Miles out of Hobbiton: 129.5
Miles to Rivendell: 328.5