Come With Me Now

Damn, living on my own is awesome and busy. I did it; I made it a week without my PartnerPenguin!Among my personal goals I wrote out when I started out this week was the following:

Do only what serves my highest potential.

I feel like I did a pretty great job doing that this week. I am finally taking a night to catch up and food shop and blog and wash my stinky clothes. Oh the stinky-ness!

Well, the week went pretty well. I don’t actually remember what I did last Monday but I’m sure it was cool. I did make all my food last Sunday. I figured out a pretty good strategy, for now. I make 2 dishes, one Western, one Eastern. Alternate those for lunch and dinner. Get something different for breakfast. This past week Partner Penguin left me 4 lbs of boneless skinless chicken boobies so I had boobies for days. The Western dish was one of my own concocting involving butter, dark red wine, onions and mushrooms. The Eastern dish was a Trader Joe’s premade curry simmer sauce with obscene amounts of coconut oil and milk. In addition to chicken, it had red onions and tomatoes. I get really bored of my food really easily so I found a good way to combat this is to pick up a different fresh vegetable each day. So I have my entrée and a new veg dish and it’s <$3 per day after initial chicken/meat/protein investment.

Tuesday and Thursday nights I did CrossFit. I decided it was more worth it than a gym/YMCA membership for me right now because there is a built in community to support you and it a designated time commitment. I lifted a 25lb barbell this past workout and I rowed about 2000 meters in all. I am very proud of myself, and I hope to continue in a productive manner.

Wednesday brought girls’ night and we had a pretty good crowd this week. My next-door neighbor came out with us. I’m not really sure if she spoke to anyone besides me but she seemed like she enjoyed herself. Wine+estrogen is always a good idea, especially when you have ChromeCast available to watch the trailer for “Movie, The Movie”.

Cool, I went a bit out of order but anyway my week was swell. Then I had a badass weekend.

In case I haven’t mentioned, I am on a pretty cool work schedule that allows me to take every other Friday off. So Friday being my day off, I got to do a bunch of housework and pack. I laminated the first geology map I made in school; I’m super stoked to put it up in my office.

In the afternoon, I met up with some friends and we went camping for two days. It turns out that when you’re not camping for research or classes it’s actually an incredibly relaxing and peaceful experience! I really liked it and was super glad I had some good friends organizing. I did two important firsts this weekend too.

1.   I pooped in a hole. Including research trips, field camps and educational camping trips, I have certainly been camping for a total of more than 3 months of my life. I just evaded that particular issue forever. Whatever, I know you don’t care but this isn’t your blog.
2. I shot a gun. This was a little more profound for me than pooping in a hole. I am scared of guns and the noise hurts my ears a lot. This was a 45 caliber dude. PartnerPenguin asked me the brand and I told him “black” and he said that wasn’t a brand. The one thing that I was impressed with myself about was that I aimed at the target and hit exactly where I aimed. I then gave the gun back to its owner and ran away. 

 Other than that, I’m still working through the book The Bees; a mini-epic of a dystopian feminist world solely populated by bees. It’s pretty violent and incredibly compelling. I appreciate any author who successful writes about smell and pheromone communication between animals. Plus, it had Margaret Atwood's stamp of approval.

Sunday morning I left hella early and braved the treacherous dirt road back to the main road. When I got home, I showered the most delicious, cleansing shower of my life. Then I hit the road again and headed up to a local ski village for a music festival.

Now I’ve been to a couple folk festivals and a couple large venue multi-band gigs but I had no idea what to expect. The headliners were international with an average of one top 40 charting song. The event didn’t publish the set list so I got there when it opened at noon only to find out the first act wasn’t until 3:30. Haha. They had filler music groups until the event. Among the artists, I was not surprised to see Mariacha or Flamenco group. The group that did surprise me was the Native group who sang traditional prayers around a drum. Something about their presence and performance was so piercing. Maybe it was because many other areas do not have enough of a Native American population to offer such a group. Maybe it was the timbre of their singing that just saw through everything mortal and spoke to spirits directly. I was glad they were present.

I passed the time exploring this wonderful new place and basking in its artsy-fartsy-ness. I found a jeweler who I really liked as well as an all women artist collective. I ran into my boss’s-boss’s-boss’s boss which was…interesting. I guess she was the one who suggested the ski village in the first place so it wasn’t that surprising.

Back to the concert. I have to give kudos to the opening header act, Rixton. They had fabulous stage presence and encouraged a really energetic crowd. The one audience participation act they did was they encouraged everyone in the audience to put their arm around the people they cared about the most. The lead singer then asked everyone to say

“I appreciate you.”

He then encouraged everyone to turn to a stranger and say

“I don’t know you, but I appreciate you.”

I would really like to point this out because such a simple act of gratitude should NEVER go unacknowledged or underappreciated. I hope the band will become more technically proficient and enjoy their already successful career. I also hope the lead singer and the guitarist are boyfriends because the former kissed the latter a whole bunch and I hope it was consensual. Anyway, this is the song you’d know if you know them at all.

The act that I went to see was KONGOS. Damn they rock. And HOT DAMN is their bass player one fine specimen of man. They certainly had different personalities than Rixton but they worked the crowd well in their own way. Most of the music was extremely heavy in bass drum and bass guitar but there were some pretty fabulous accordion and guitar solos. I was convinced the solo in “Come With Me Now” was an electified dulcimer but the guitarist played it on his guitar. Slight disappointment. Now I need to learn how to play the dulcimer and do heavy metal covers with it. Obviously. The set ended with rain and excellent head-banging and some really really rad covers of the Beatles and New Order. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard such a successful cover of Elenor Rigby but it works really well with a heavy-metal-accordion band.

The rest of the fest was unremarkable except three things.

1. A woman asked me “Is this what people are normally like?” She was very intoxicated but I think there was some horrible truth in her question. She looked so lost and terrified that people were so horrible.
2.  A lesbian couple (it was relevant to my shirt) told me they lived in an earth ship. Apparently that’s a particular kind of zero waste house.
3. A woman extended her hand after talking for a while, presumably to shake and exchange names. I extended my hand and touched hers. Instead of shaking it, she pet her face with the back of my hand. I’m fairly sure this isn’t normal, but as long as bodily fluids aren’t involved, I don’t judge.

Then I drove off into the sunset and so ends my story today.