Weekend fun fest

Never before having been a student on a residential campus, it came as a surprise to me in grad school to learn that the Eastern Washington University library closed early on Fridays, and wasn't open on Saturdays, and opened late on Sundays but stayed open into the wee hours. Of course, this is completely logical: students, tired of a full week of classes, bail out as soon as possible on Friday, and, even if they remain on campus, don't really get back to any serious schoolwork until Sunday afternoon comes and Monday morning looms ahead.

It seems this same activity pattern can be applied to community college instructors. Despite my best intentions, not a lot of items got checked off my rather ambitious schedule this weekend, since I really haven't had my mind on my classes, but rather on having some fun. To my credit, I did get the most time-sensitive stuff done yesterday, and since my schedule had a lot of slack built into it, I'm not really in a crunch. But I still should get some stuff done today.

The fun agenda, however, was filled in spades.

On Friday, we had a slow, quiet day; maybe it was the waning summer sun that encouraged indolence, or maybe it was that traffic seemed to be so bad everywhere that nowhere seemed worth fighting our way to. Otis visited her grandma, I had to go to Antioch for an errand, and we went back to the Ridge for lunch at Chef Liao's, but the most of the day was uneventful. In the evening, we walked over to the Barnes and Noble in U-Village, where I converted a gift card into three graphic books (oddly enough, two of them were non-fiction).

Saturday morning I got some work done and Otis had a massage client, and then we made the most of the clear weather and took a bike ride out to Ballard. We had intended to go to Matthews beach, but the B-G was full of people in purple walking to the Huskies game, so we went the other way. It worked out okay, cuz we stopped at the Freddy's and Otis got a new boombox for her massage room - one that will actually play homemade CDs. Now she can use all this cribbed woo-woo music she has acquired.

We got back in plenty of time to get set up for the party. It was a delicious affair: I made spaghetti with veat sauce, Dingo made a nice masala, and O brought a yummy vegetarian chili; sweet eats were provided by Stella (who had fetched some delicacies back from Ireland) and Biker Lin (who got her cookies on a discount).

Silvio brought his own sort of sweetness, and our visitor-from-a-far-land Wheylona luxuriated in the whole northamericanness of the scene. Entertainment came courtesy of J-Force (stopping by during her week-long birthday revels), who provided a silly and fun guessing game, and from Johnbai, who demonstrated how a decorative stairwell bannister cannot support a 6'-4", 200-lb man seven-foot, quarter-ton mutant. (We'll be spackling and sanding some weekend soon.)

The conversation and fun went on long into the night; it was great to have the house filled with such good friends.

This morning brought new cause for not-working: Liz and Missy were up from Portland for a conference and visiting, so we had some great breakfasts at the Sunlight cafe and took a walk in the park.

And now, there is nothing to keep me from digging in to my portfolio assessments but blogging, so here are some gems I have found lately but did not have time to share:

Other Walakas dept:



Walaka is the most dramatic of the bunch, not to mention the biggest casting ... There's no two ways about it. Walaka makes a statement wherever he is placed.

Pretty accurate description, too. (From Tikis by Seamus.)

What might have been dept:

This is more what I expected when I went through the Chunnel that what I actually got, which was just a tunnel. It would have been so much cooler.

Quiz dept:

Remember that geography/map quiz I linked to a while back? That can't hold a candle to this one. Be prepared for humiliation. (Just click "start challenge" to play on the whole globe.)

Last but certainly not least dept:

You don't want to miss this video of Johnbai displaying the same agility and grace that so characterized his performance at the party last night.