I've decided to keep an
ongoing diary/journal online. This is for all my (wired) friends back in
Indiana that I don't write enough, and for anyone who really wants to get
to know me better. If you're not sure who I'm talking about here, you may
find more info under Who's who.
As with
the "selected" journal, I'm not putting up anything overly personal
up here, so quit skimming for the juicy bits and check out my erotic poetry instead.
So, today I had an interview with Open Enterprises (or Good Vibrations, as their store is called) for a clerical position with the marketing department. There were three interviewers, including Carol Queen (who writes the Queen of Hearts Q & A column in the back of the East Bay Express every week). It was a fun interview, as I could honestly tell them that if I got this job I would want to stay for a very long time. I have a lot to offer that company and I know I'd learn so much working there. What a perfect job for someone who writes erotica, huh? I really jive with the main thrust of their mission statement, which is to help promote sex-positive attitudes.
Next week I'm hoping to make it up to Oregon to camp, visit some hot springs, and visit my friend Shel, who just moved to Portland. David is pulling his hair out at my last-minute planning, and I feel bad for putting him through my "seat of the pants" organization in these matters. I've been too preoccupied with my job, relationships and housing situations to really concentrate too much on anything else. Wearying is a good word for it all.
Ah, but I was telling you about Oregon! Well, we'll see if it pans out. Part of me thinks I should stay home and find the stuff (stained glass shards) to make candle holders to sell at the Phish show next weekend. Shel and I made a bunch of money doing that two summers ago, and they're fun to sell, those candle holders. We'd light them and just smile, and people would buy them right out of our hands, they're so pretty. They're rather time-consuming to make and they cut up your fingers pretty badly, so that prolly ain't gonna happen. Anyhoo, Buc and Lumpy (and Amanda, I think) are going to be out here for the show, so I'll have to find time to hang out with them. It'll be odd, seeing those good old boys in this environment! It should be fun, though. I miss my old gang something fierce sometimes.
Ok, so I was certainly out of town on this day. David and I drove up to Mendocino to go camping in honor of our 6 month anniversary. Yes. This was all my idea; I'm the one to make a big deal about dates, milestones etc. I'm also the one who has been camping in the past 10 years.
We drove up the coast, which was twisty and cool. It took us about 5 hours, but it was worth it for the coastal views along highway 1. We found a nice campsite in Van Damme State Park. I showed David a few things about setting up the tent, camping tips, etc. David didn't *quite* understand the point, since we were so close to the car the whole time.
We went to the coast to watch the sunset, only to have the sun disappear behind a jag in the coast instead of the water. Oh well. I amused David by my enthusiasm for beach combing. Hey, I grew up in a land-locked state; we didn't have driftwood or rubbery seaweed.
That night, on our trip to the bathroom (we only had one flashlight), we chanced to look up at the most incredible sprinkling of stars. They are so brilliant, so many, far away from the city lights. We stumbled out into the meadow and strained our necks to look at them for some time.
The next day we took a long hike in Russian Gulch State Park to see their waterfall. I think we made about 6.5 miles round-trip. The waterfall consisted a creek that fell in several streams over a large rock. David took a couple of pictures of me sitting on a huge tree that made bridge in front of the waterfall. The path continued up and around so that you could stand on top of the waterfall (but we were out of film, too bad). Then it wound up the hill through a quiet redwood grove. This was the long leg of the path, so there weren't as many people on it (in fact, we passed only 2 older gentlemen who asked us if there was water at the falls. Very impressive, I hope I'm in such good shape at that age!). Calm, cool, serene.
We ate lunch at the most stunning spot I've ever seen. The picnic table overlooked the coastal headlands, with nooks and little bays where the ocean splashed in frothy white waves below. I'd seriously never seen anything like this outside of movies, and the walk along this coast was amazing. There was one feature called the Devil's Punch Bowl, where the water came in from two caves eaten through the rock by the ocean. You could walk all the way around this caved in area, which was the most impressive part of it. I much preferred the harsher waves slapping the coast to the lapping tide that brought driftwood into the punch bowl.
That night I showed David how to roast corn on the cob over coals. I raked over hot coals, placed the corn (still in the husks) directly on them, and turned them every so often. The fire was in a metal tub, which meant I had to put my hand down into a much hotter area than is normally around the edge of a campfire. If you've never tried this, do. The corn doesn't need any butter or salt and the kernels are impossibly tender.
Ah, on Thursday, after much consternation as to the nature of such a place, I convinced David to drive up to Glass Beach (in Fort Bragg, take a left off highway 1 on Elm street and drive to the lot). I heard about this place from 2 nice ladies I met in the campground ladies' room. It used to be the town dump, but is now covered with glass worn smooth by the ocean. We spent probably an hour scooping up green, amber and clear glass pieces. We even dug a bit to find blue sea glass. It's weird, I know, but I can make my glass candle holders from these and not worry about cutting my fingers. And it's the ultimate in recycling.
That was the end of the trip. We drove back down 128 and 101, so we didn't quite have the view. In fact, it was ridiculously hot and it made me glad to be living in the Bay. David wants me to mention having to pull off the road so I could puke in some redwoods. So I did.
I got some gardening done, with David's manly help. The dirt here is rock-hard, as I've mentioned before. But it was time to give my tomato plants a bigger home. After first consulting Mom to make sure they wouldn't suffer too much of a shock, David and I dug up a small part of the yard and transplanted them. My new roomie, Tracy, is a gardening fiend (with a questionable taste for lawn ornaments, but we'll see), and I had to claim a sunny spot for a garden quickly. We set in my Early Girl and Roma tomato plants, as well as my purple, yellow and green bell peppers. Not that my green pepper is any bigger than it was 2 months ago, but Mom assures me it'll pick up near the end of the summer (we hope).
I bought some Lobelia and some Blue Verbena and set those along our walk. I love blue flowers, and I always remember Mom going on about how pretty the Verbena was . . .
Next I'll finish off the vegetable garden with most of my herbs. The basil would love more root space, I'm sure. The peppermint and chamomile aren't leaving their pots, as they're the type to take over a yard.
David found digging in the garden satisfying, and I must say I really enjoy getting dirty tending plants. When we lifted the huge dirtball around the roots of the tomato out of the pot, David commented, "Look at Heather man-handle the dirt!" He prolly doesn't realize how much that means to me. I decided years ago that making plants grow was a great tradition handed down along the female line of my family. I still remember Grandma picking apples in her orchard and that night serving up fresh apple pie. After fresh corn on the cob. And I can still taste the green beans and tomatoes from Mom's garden. Every summer the vegetables we ate came directly from plots Mom so carefully weeded, watered and guarded from Dad's mowing. When Mom goes to visit her sisters, the first thing they do is take a tour of the garden, see what they're growing this year and how it's doing with the weather we've been having. Makes sense, since they all grew up on a farm. But I've been waiting for the green bug to bite me (outside of copious house plants), and I think it might have. Weeding isn't so much a chore as an outlet, a getaway these days.
Perhaps I'm giving too much credit to my blood. David commented that he could definitely see the appeal of gardening; he even mused that it would be nice to have a little plot of his own to do his own thing with. I think he'd be a fabulous gardener. He's meticulous about caring for living things (his cat, his house plants . . . hell, he's even *my* main source of hot meals these days). A thriving garden would bring him so much joy . . . if only he'd move into a *house*.
Ok, ok, so I hardly wrote at all in my journal this month. Sometimes life is just too damn painful and personal to put up on a web page; sometimes I'm just lazy. Either way, I'm sure I've lost some readers due to lack of, well, reading material. My August resolution is to write more, so there. Hopefully that will work. Hrm.
What have I been up to? Well, I think I'm going to go back and write journal entries for as much of July as possible. We'll see how much comes out of this endeavor.
Today was my first day back to work in a week. I was ill with the flu, sore throat, all of it. Blech. I come back to find that most of the office is ill these days, and after the throat thingie comes the stomach flu. Time to make up some warding-off-illness pouch. Yeah, ok, or I could just take a multivitamin.