A Treasure Found at Home

my house is a mess
dust and dried food everywhere
i’m too tired to clean

… but struggling to dig out from under a week and a half of personal email, blogs of people i know, and tonnes of work email.

back soon with stories from the playa!

i went with buttons to do a lot of burn shopping this weekend. we returned some stuff to a sport store, got pedicures, and then spent over 2 hours in target. really. we closed the place down. it was exhausting.

the only essential thing on my list was juice, but the selection there was sub-par so i’m saving that for a mid week run.

i still need to remember to print out people’s snail mail addresses if i want to send mail, and buy stamps, and also make memorials for aj, grandpa, and grandma for the temple. ;-( of course i keep putting that off. i think i’ll just print pictures of them and write a note on the back, maybe a mantra, and roll that up and tuck it away somewhere in the temple. it’s not going to be complex, but it’s not so surprising i keep putting it off, either.

thursday i get my hair braided! then i drive down to sp guy’s with the remainder of the stuff for the playa. packing the car while working from ‘home’ friday and as soon as flo’s hair is done that night she’ll hop on a train to svale and … playa here we come!

i made it to shambhala this morning again! it’s so nice to be back; it feels like home and people still ask me lots of questions. it won’t take much to get back into the swing of things, i’m just sad i won’t be able to be involved to the same degree for the foreseeable future.

tomorrow is also the first woman’s circle meeting i’ve been to in 10 weeks. i had to take some time off for the db class. i have mixed feelings about the whole endeavor, as i think i have all along. when we’re all back from the playa i hope to have some more focused meetings. talk about our body image or or relationship to money or what our hopes and dreams are and what we’re doing to try to instigate achieving them. i think we could do so much more with it than we are.

gratitude list

• naps
• coffee
• crepes
• small friends meeting
• scratch on palm healing quickly
• db class is over
• inexpensive pirate stuff in the mall
• time at home
• radio
• sp guy and i learning to navigate relationship better
• coffee card from mom
• liquid wrench

i heard the hot rod lincoln song on the radio this morning on the way to work. you know:

My pappy said, ‘Son, you’re gonna drive me t’ drinkin’ …
If you don’t quit drivin’ that - Hot … Rod … Lincoln!’

i really miss hearing music from the 50s and 60s on the radio here. i mean, the last time i unexpectedly heard the everly brothers was in the middle of the simon and garfunkle concert. sp guy is going to lend flo and i his satellite radio for the drive to the desert. i hope she lets me indulge for a little in boy bands who wore matching clothes.

i also love car songs.

i got in to the office to find my kfog local scene cds were delivered yesterday. i bought 2 and 3. yay, music! i’m in that mode where i just want to buy lots of music… but my bank account isn’t in quite the same state. maybe after burning man, and jon’s wedding, and the tx state fair… that is, if i still haven’t found a house.

today is a FIVE HOUR conf call/webex thing. i don’t have a working headset for my phone here, and i also don’t really know how to mute my phone. those aren’t really related issues. luckily someone suggested we start taking small breaks. whew!

i’m almost completely done with my burn prep. i just need to haul everything to sp guy’s house (where we’ll be packing the car) and sort through what i really want to take, what i want to leave, and what i want to give to ootc.

i’m really excited about the week off! i’m looking forward to walking to center camp in the morning and getting a latte. which, i have to admit, i was forsquare agains for a number of years. then, suddenly, when i ended up there one morning i found out what a nice experience it can be. it’s not too hot, it’s not too crowded, it’s not too high energy.

i just wish sp guy could make it out for at least part of the week. i think he’d really love it, he needs a vacation more than i do, and it would be fun to share this thing i love so much with him.

of course you know by now i only post my horoscope when it’s accurate. like this one below.

i’m getting out of bed in a minute to start making tea and have a shower before heading over to flo’s. we’re taking her mother to the airport to fly home after a great visit and then we go down to svale to pick up sp guy and head to costlo for burn shopping. we’ll finish building the kitchen today and hopefully the shower. oh, i just realized i didn’t make a supplies list for that project. today is burn prep day extrodinaire!

Daily extended (by Astrology.com)
Just because dinner parties and other types of social events are fun doesn’t mean that they don’t require planning and organization. As a matter of fact, the more prepared you are, the more you can relax once things get started. An upcoming event might not be happening for days or weeks; but today, if you have some spare time, you should use it for some advance planning or shopping. Consider who will be a part of the festivities and try to come up with some personalized touches.

i probably should work for a bit more before i sign off for the night, but i am really really hungry. for two days i’ve been really hungry. and i haven’t had much time to eat frequently… since i still can’t eat a LOT at one sitting.

i also really want to shop. i want new shoes and new dresses and new jeans and new shirts and new pants and… for no particular reason. i hardly ever wear the dresses and skirts i have now, so i know i shouldn’t buy more of those. and shoes?… well, i probably don’t *need* any more of those, either. plus, there’s the money aspect of the whole shopping thing, no?
i was super good about finding a whole suitcase sized duffle bag full of stuff to give to out of the closet. actually, a duffle bag plus, but flo took some stuff she liked and her mom took some stuff she thought flo’s little sis would like or need for work.

plans for the camp keep a changin’. sp guy might make it up mid week, if all goes well. we’ve had another person drop out. we won’t be able to bring as much up for shady bits, but i think we can still make something work pretty easily.

the end of this week is going to be a lot of burn prep. i’m taking g to sp guy’s house to get settled in so sp guy can watch him for the few days he’s not on the playa and whomever house/walter sits can galahad sit, too! that’s if they get along. g’s getting old and change is not his most favouritist thing so much. luckily, i do have a backup cat lover in the city. i also need to plan with flo when/where we’re packing the 4runner.

of course it would be easier for me to take my stuff to sp guy’s garage and sort through it there and load it from there (i think, would it really?) but how would that work for flo? and if we pack our stuff up here, how do we get the shady bits? will we still need a trailer or roof container? are we taking freelance malcontent’s bike? if not, when/how do i get it back from sp guy’s house to him.

none of this should be considered too closely on and empty stomach. i’m heading out for a snack on my way to sushi with tpos.

people are dropping out of our camp. actually, all but two ‘drop outs’ are people who were big maybe’s anyhow and were coming from canada. i can’t say i’m too unhappy about less people to support who can’t help with building.

one of the more sure dropouts was someone who suggested a lot of things for us here in sf to build, but sorry, she couldn’t do any of it cause she was in canada and by the way didn’t plan on participating a whole heck of a lot once we were there. er? she ended up in a much bigger camp which had more cool things to look at and hang out at and seems a much better fit for her overall.

now sp guy is probably backing out, too. the problem at work isn’t getting solved as quickly as he would like, even though he spends almost all his time on it. i’m irked at that guy who didn’t do what he said he was doing and now i don’t get to go to dinner with my guy very often, or movies, or burning man, or even burning man shopping! i just get to go down to his place and use his garage and see him come out for snacks and be stressed and that’s pretty much that.  sure, sp guy can get overly pissy sounding sometimes; i’ve heard him on the phone and it’s not fun. but i think spending a year and a half on a project means you should have some usable code. and when it’s discovered for the second time in two months that what you’ve been doing is completely unsuable, and someone has to stay up till four in the morning the night before a conference fixing your work so you have a usable demo, then sneaking in to the office when no one is around and taking your things and resigning in email instead of face-to-face is the chicken’s way of dealing with it.

i’m so mad at this guy! because he was selfish my new relationship is harder than it has to be and my burning man plans are having to change last minute. let this be a lesson to you (and to me). if you don’t know what you’re doing at work… tell someone sooner rather than later, before things get all fucked up and you waste everyone’s time.

i think i’ve just becme the sf resident co-lead of what is going to be a very cool camp. we’re out of the conexus village, but this just feels right.

anyone who has some old luggage they don’t want back, please contact me.

wow. yeah. there’s that old feeling of buring man sitting in my heart. this is goodness.

ok, still not my writing but very near and dear to my heart none the less. please please help.

WE NEED YOUR HELP…NOW!CALL TO ACTION: VOICE YOUR OPINION TO THE BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT ABOUT ARBITRARY AND UNJUSTIFIED BURNING MAN FEE INCREASES

The BLM has threatened to increase Burning Man’s fees again this year without any rational justification.  It’s the last week of the public comment period before the BLM issues us a 2006 event permit with stipulations requiring Burning Man to pay more money than they are allowed to legally charge under the BLM regulations.Burning Man needs its community to flood the BLM with letters and emails stating that this increase is unjustified.  An emergency Jack Rabbit Speaks will be going out Monday morning and there is a link on the Burning Man homepage to the full story including a sample letter to send to the BLM at http://burningman.com/news/blm_news_06.html  Please forward this to your burner friends and ask everyone you know to send in their comments before next Friday, May 5th. Don’t let the BLM raise Burning Man’s fees again!  Thank you for taking action!

this past sat was tut’s 40th birthday celebration. there we were having a pleasant afternoon on the back patio when suddenly we were attacked by pirates! luckily, i had worn my shirt which is covered in skull and crossbones so i blended right in (once i filched a plastic sword and a gold chain to hang it from). i got this shot of two of the four pirates fighting (with swords on a sward) with my camera phone since my other camera was off with stone having some adventures out of state.

the party was a lot of geeky fun. we drank a slightly more ‘grown up’ version of the cpt’n morgan’s and mtn dew that i drank in college. the pirates brought the rum and the hostess had made lemonade for the two young kids (as opposed to all the 30+ yr old kids).

we watched a video about the tsangpo gorge and spent some time searching the atlas for it’s exact location.

then we drank some mystery drink which apparently is something like eggnog and fruitcake mixed together. you can see photos of the label in my photo stream if you click on the pirates.

we ate home made pizza and i had some cheesecake for dessert. yum!

then i and p (who loved the film noir lighting in the car-one strip of light from the rear view mirror across my eyes) drove up to the city for the second 40th birthday celebration of the day. that one didn’t have any pirates, but there was a room with no apparent use but standing around (space pr0n!) and a heater on the back patio. oh… and the scene of an apparent shooting wich we drove past serval times in our search for parking.

rock on, you 40’s! i’m digging your parties.

saturday was a long long day. buttons came over in the morning to check out possiblities for dresses for the phormal that evening. wild called while while i was trying to wrap up an email for work that i’d started right before buttons walked in. since i hadn’t talked to her in a while, i answered and while i had her on the phone, a work email just finished, and buttons asking for clothing suggestions, the pager went off.

meh.

i summed up the issue in the previous post, but it took all day to work out. of course, since we were working with people in another part of the world it took some organizing to get them all together. i was on im durring brunch with buttons and flow, getting up every so often to answer mobile calls from their rep in the states while we did what we could here to identify what the problem might be.

i got some sympathetic smiles from the bus boy at the cafe, though. to be honest, he migh have been flirting with me but i was already juggling too many other things to particpate longer than a thank you and a genuine smile for his kindness.

brunch and the pre-conference call organization ended at the same time. we had just enough time to get back to my place, trade cars, load up my stuff for charity, convince buttons to wear the red dress, and for flow and i to make a stop at out of the closet to drop off a couple boxes.

i dialed in to bridge the call on our way to shop for next weekend’s event. flow is in charge of all the food, and doesn’t have a car so i was helping by donating my time and space. since she would be doing the actual shopping i figured i could multi-task.

but, it turned out i had to log in to the network, which meant leaving flow at the store and finding a cafe with free internet access. things took longer than i thought they would (for me) and i had to call around for someone to take over my driving duties. the cafe closed and i got bumped out on to the bench outside as the sun started to go down and the weather turned more cold and windy, and i didn’t have a coat.

just as my batteries in my phone and laptop started to die (no electricity since the cafe had closed), ‘b’ showed up to get the car from me. i bowed out of the call, we picked up flow, and they dropped me at my house to log back in to the text portion of our conference.

thank goodness i found a back up and i say thank you again to ‘b’ for giving up his sat for community emergency duties. they went on to do more shopping, the work issue got sorted, and it was only half an hour from when i was supposed to pick buttons up for the fund raiser!

luckily, i’d already laid out what i planned to wear. i called buttons to verify that i’d be there, late, but that i was going to be able to make it. for the next hour i got a call every 10 min on average while i tried to shower, change, and put on my make up.

white dog called to tell me he’d just gotten my message and ask if everything was ok. i told him it all worked out and when i asked if he’d be at the fund raiser he said he loved to dress up but money had been tight for him. i offered to pay for his ticket if he could make me some dinner which i could eat on the way over (all i’d had all day was some yogurt, granola and fruit at brunch). a deal was made.

there were all kinds of car organization calls and plans changed and changed back. finally, ‘b’ picked me up in my car and drove himself home, i got white dog and flow (and my dinner), and headed out to oak town where we were all too flustered to read the small print on the parking signs but somehow still ended up in a great spot.

and here i am looking all carefree and calm and put together while i look over the items in the silent auction (of which i later won two). heh. i think i’m smiling cause i know i can’t hear my phone.