Driving

Catherine now has her learner's permit - for driving. This means she can drive with a guardian... we will hit the local streets tomorrow, so you all are forewarned.

zumba

I have only that one word for you. But seriously, this is the new exercise fad and I got talked into giving a class a try. It is a sort of Latin dance inspired aerobics and, man, is it hard work. Not only do you sweat buckets, but you spend a lot of the time wondering how the instructor's butt moves that way, and by extension, why yours does not. One hour = 546 calories burned. And one bright, red face for a whole hour afterwards.

Oh, and it was fun.

A little gem for Monday

Kathryn Dixon shared this one with me, which is attributed to Gloria Steinem.

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."

Quite true in my view.

Spring?

This is what we woke up to this morning....

The view of where all my lovely veg was planted yesterday.

Catherine's night out

So, midweek Catherine asks if I will buy tickets for her and two friends to go see four bands on Saturday night at somewhere called In the Venue. Since none of them has a credit card, I wrested their precious dollars from them and bought the tickets. The show started at 6pm and I realized that by that point we would be deep into the sushi with Ted and Lani (see previous post) and that I would not, therefore, be able to collect the tickets from 'will call' with my id and the credit card used for purchase. So, I thought, I'll just pop by the evening before and pick them up. The place is right by the homeless shelters so I think you can picture the ambience. That evening's entertainment was very loud and made me feel about a hundred years old. the large bouncer and ditzy woman on the door had no idea what i was talking about. "Will call", what's that? No, you cannot pick tickets up the day before; no, there is no box office. So i call Smithstix the next morning and ask them exactly what their 'convenience fee' is for. They assure me that with a copy of all my relevant documents, Catherine can pick up the tickets. Which she does. I text her at around 7 to see how it is, and here is her reply:

"There's a 40 year old man with a pot belly by me jumping. He's wearing a superman shirt and knows all the lyrics to the unknown band opening band. Pretty sketchy."

She had her fancy new camera with her so took lots of photos (even one of Mr. Sketchy) and videos and spent this afternoon making seamless compilations with i-movie.

Friends getting married

Our friends, Ted and Lani, got married last month and yesterday held a celebration for those of us (everyone pretty much) who couldn't join them in San Diego for the actual ceremony. There was a re-ceremony, sushi galore and speeches by friends and family at a local Japanese restaurant and then we repaired to our place where Smokin' Id played and people celebrated some more. Today was a bit of a slow day... I did get more plants in and was relieved to see that the birds have hatched and seem to be doing fine. The mother was flying about very busily gathering bits for them to eat.