ghosts are good company

the truth is, the purpose of our trip wasn’t so much a happy one.  we were headed to the funeral of a friend of nat’s.  after a few hours on the road we made it to pasco, to a lovely service.  we headed home still sad, and were excited about the opportunity to distract ourselves by visiting the teapot dome.  …but we couldn’t find it.  we did, however, see this.

so, we turned around and headed a few miles back toward granger – yes, granger: where the dinosaurs roam.  nat and i had a great time taking the dinosaur drive, and taking pictures with all of the dinosaurs – you can see the full set here.

oh! i can’t believe it, i almost forgot. after we went to the darigold dairy fair (soooo underwhelming), a few hours down the road we stopped by snoqualmie falls, which was so. so. beautiful.

and we headed home. sunday was lacking in adventures, since i had orientation at work. but info on monday’s adventures is pending.

(part three here!)

every so often, my favorite comic publishes a(nother) strip that makes me squeal “that’s my (new) favorite!” … i’ll admit that i was really behind on things, since it was published more than a year ago, but this is my favorite.  the trouble with claiming a favorite, though, is that not long after, i always find one like this one which argues and tries to take its place.

i save comics that i like a lot, so that i can devour in batches when i am sad about things like how my great-grandmother just had a stroke.

my small orange friend is back in town, which is fantastic.  he is getting along well in our new household.  i bought a car.  that’s how he got up here, me driving for thirteen hours from san francisco to olympia.  it was a good idea in my head.

it seems like my new apartment comes with built-in trans friends, and also crafty friends?  so that is pretty neat of it.  i’ve been stepping up my knitting game due to peer pressure, yarn donations and halloween (all combine, actually, to equal – remember what i said last year?).  knitting is good.

this is like i’ve taken all of my boring entries and combined them into one meta-boring-entry.  i mean, i got bored in the middle of it.  i’m going to go back to cleaning the house, and you know that means something.

CIMG4072

Originally uploaded by geoffy

i found my missing login information! that’s always a good thing.

i’ve been wandering around the puget sound region lately, sleeping on couches for the last month. currently i’m in des moines, at the kindness of my grandparents. their house is one of my favorite places, it has such a beautiful view of the water – i just wish that it were reasonably public transportationable.

the region is making me antsy, and i’m hoping that opportunities elsewhere pan out soon. for now i’ve been making mini-trips to pretend that i’m going somewhere; last weekend a friend and i explored bainbridge island. it was very very warm.

also last weekend i met up with some of my (now) favorite strangers from the internet, in BALLARD of all places. i got to go to archie mcpheeee where i found a fantastic green dinosaur finger puppet (see photo!) and spent too much money.

ALSO last weekend, the derby liberation front beat the throttle rockets, which was delightful but also sad as it was mommacherry’s last bout with the team. the team, mascots and all, did their introductions in aprons in homage to mommacherry, which amused me since i was wearing an apron that day anyway.

this weekend has, unsurprisingly, been calmer.

it’s strange, to have so many blogs in so many places. i’m also trying to get more involved with some online community that i love (i imagine that you all know who you are, but i would love to know who’s reading so i can make sure that i’m reciprocating!), because… they’re really nice kids.

that community loves to play picture your day, so i took my shot at it yesterday. you can see the album (with captions) heeeere. ♥

…now i have to start rushing for the bus again.

it’s me! it’s 2008! it’s a new domain for a new year! … or something.

at any rate, greendinosaur.net is much more cuddly than buttoning, i find. because dinosaurs! that are green! so good.

more later, i’m sure. once things have been updated a bit all about.

i’ve decided that if i wait just a little longer without changing the layout, this blog will be in season again.

although truthfully, i’m in a web design class and i need to figure out *something* to design for my final project.

i’ve been in seattle and olympia for the past few weeks, staying with various people and seeing lots of exciting things. it’s dreadfully warm here. so i’ve been knitting, of course. i designed a little mouse finger puppet, which i adore. i gave it to a girl that i have a crush on, but she’s not dating new people right now, apparently. i learned that through observation, not rejection. thank goodness.

there’s a thing about blogging that the longer you spend not doing it, the harder it is to pick it up again because you feel like you need to say something profound to make up for your absence.

cubbie and i broke up a while ago. i get teary a lot, still.

ok internet, i have decided on what i want to do for my birthday. it will include a staple from both queer and hipster culture: camp.

that’s right, folks, it’s the tonga room. it must be recalled that perhaps one of my favorite things ever is the enchanted tiki room at disneyland.

then i wanted to go to either bonkers or portal one, but since happy hour at the tonga room ends at the same time bonkers closes, it seems like portal one. some other time, bonkers? you seem like a good warm afternoon place to go, but that’s just because i’m thinking you’ll be overly air conditioned. portal 1 is open until eleven.

hopefully cubbie doesn’t work too too late on friday (i’m afraid he works until ten) – if he does, can we make these thursday plans? that might be better, anyhow, with the less-busy, ja?

so, if you’re in san francisco and interested in doing these things starting at five on thursday the 26th, let me know – either in comments or by email. hurray!

edit: it’s friday again, actually. same plans, just change of date. xo

i haven’t updated many things in the back end of the blogs recently – nor the front end, for that matter (this is the part where i look shiftily at my “it is beginning to be autumn!” image). but! today, tonight, i updated wordpress to 2.13 (apparently 2.2 is coming out very soon and has tags…) and i created a tag cloud… list… for our categories. hooray! while i was turning off all of the plugins so that i could do the installation, i got seven spams in two minutes! insanity. thank goodness for the amazing spam filtration of akismet.

so, those are things.

also, i made a marble cake today. except that i don’t know where the baking powder is, and the molasses/baking soda suggestion… worked, but not so much. so it’s a half-risen cake, but that’s *much* better than my not-risen cakes of late. i substitute things much, and it’s a bad plan. i need to either recipe or not, i think. at least when it comes to baking.

do any of you want a blog here? especially those of you without blogs – i keep meaning to ask. there’s plenty of space.

what else? oh! i’m almost done listening to my music in alphabetical order by song. that means that i can return to listening to biased random mixes. i’ve been missing some of my favorite artists, who just don’t have as much music out as other folks.

i really want to go to daiso! my mother trained me to adore asian things by first doling out infrequent trips to uwajimaya, and then moving us into the fringes of an asian neighborhood in san diego (not *the* asian neighborhood, although i spent time there after school sometimes, but definitely a neighborhood that had lots of asian groceries). so, i miss mostly the shiny cookie aspects of these communities, and chamalyn, although amazing, isn’t doing enough – it’s too tiny. besides, where else could i get dinosaur origami paper? or mini bamboo furniture for aviva alexander?

i’m glad that you understand.

things are feeling a little better, planswise – i had double advice to let time figure things out, so while that’s hard to explain to people sometimes… that’s what i’m doing. mostly. :D

tonight i made seitan. well, today i made a few things. we had a stale loaf of bread, so i had some of that for lunch with garlic and butter, and then i wanted to make…. something… so i made breadcrumbs and then wanted something to fry in them, so i made seitan. it wasn’t from the ppk recipe, which i had used before, but it was very similar…. here! i used garlic instead of powdered garlic, and… we didn’t have some of the flavorings, so i used extra veggie stock for simmering. and molasses. it turned out fine, a bit soy saucey (becuase i used the high end of the suggested amount – i wanted flavrs!) and was completely underwhelming when baked in breadcrumbs. alas. now we have a bowl of seitan and a bowl of garlic butter in the fridge. i’m not sure what to do with them, but it’ll be… something. i stood on the phone with my father and cataloged things i could cook in breadcrumbs – green beans? a beet? squash? … none of them seemed appetizing. i wouldn’t have done well cooking on rations.

tomorrow i have a midterm, and then after that hopefully maybe i will go to a self defense training for trans and genderqueer folks. we discussed hate crimes in one of my classes recently, and that was a major suggestion (of course) for survival. but, i’ve never felt comfortable in any of the self-defense classes that i’ve taken. this one seems like it would be optimal, but it actually starts *during* the midterm. rawr, says dinosaur puck.

sleeping is optimal for children and other living things. and extinct things. including dinosaurs. goodnight or goodmorning or whatever works for you. xo

yesterday, before class, i went to glam.  queer youth are always the same, it seems.  it was awesome.  i couldn’t hit the high alto notes, but i felt comfortable in the baritone range.  also awesome.

today i visited a myofunctional therapist, who told me where my tongue is supposed to live, where it would if i were a normal person.  afterward, cubbie and i wandered around a bit – we went to the palace of fine arts (before actually), and afterward we walked along the marina, and then we took the bus down fillmore, where we had lunch at crepevine, and then dessert at bittersweet.  and then we went shopping for paper products.  and i found an umbrella that was being thrown out because it didn’t have a handle.  it is yellow and pretty.  it was a lovely day.  i like cubbie.
now it is movie night.  yay!