back to life back to reality

it feels really good to be back in ohio and to be back in my routine. i love my apartment and i really miss it when i am gone. rooms with walls and ceilings lower than 10' are just not as comforting. speaking of the humongous quality of my unit, i had dinner the other night with a couple of architects. the architect guest is under pressure to get rid of his drafting table/desk because they are pregnant with a second child. the desk is nine feet long. do i take it? i think yes, but if i do, then i need to get rid of it if/when i ever leave here. grrrr. what to do?

i arrived late thursday night and hosed off my bad self. and i unwound with a little bravo reruns. i did not sleep very well because i still felt like i was in motion. friday, i puttered around at home moving laundry, exercising (twice: spinning and yoga), fighting with fruit fleas, procuring some staples, etc.

saturday was a big day: back to market sprouts, off to a strawberry festival in nearby shandon, and then to dinner with AEA and robert, janice and tom.

while i stood at the market on saturday, i saw a gaggle of people i know fairly well ... yoga teachers, tech people, and loads of faculty colleagues. i garnered a number of invitations to dinner and one campfire. at the risk of sounding as needy as i am, people like me here. unlike when i was in ann arbor, faculty colleagues here want to spend social time with me. recall that in A2, i spent a lot of time hosting parties with only the grad students showing. don't get me wrong, i dug dug dug the students. "some of my best friends are grad students" even. but here some of the tenured faculty have social skills. or at least the kinds of social skills that i understand and can relate to.

i was really really tired on saturday and really really inclined to stay in and be alone. simply, i needed to slow my roll. it was all too much. but, i really had fun at each of the events. sunday, the sabbath, i slowed down and cleaned a lot and rearranged the furniture (it was looking a little cluttered at home). i uploaded and arranged a mess of pix, went to yoga, made a beautiful meal and watch some of the pregame and first two quarters of the NBA finals. i love parsley and arugula.

btw: it made me really happy that on the weekend of the local pride activities, we had a worksheet/scavenger hunt for sprouts to spot different objects that are colors of the rainbow. we are not generally seen as a queer friendly town so i was especially pleased to smile slyly at the a couple of the couples who came to the market and point out the rainbow activity. we chuckled. a tiny tiny look of panic clapped across larry, the market manager's face when at the end of the market, i pointed it out to him. he is very very concerned about the market promoting any political issue aside from organic and seasonal foods for locavores. i assured him that i didn't promote it as pride weekend at the sprouts table to everyone at the market.

and finally, jason, abby and i concluded that strawberry shortcake with homemade ice cream tastes much better when accompanied by an organist.