disaster

 Kinda depressing more personal comic to start the blog off on, yes?

But sometimes you can't be all goofy. Sorry for lack of blog but I've been working and didn't feel like it. Uhm. I worked a medium shift, then a short shift, then a longer shift! I turned rooms, I pulled weeds, I double teamed with Ginger and we got five rooms done in under five hours. I got a bahn mi because I was lazy. Love that sammich. Weather got hot then chilled off for a few days. I drew. I played vidya games. I ate otter pops.

And yesterday I had my mp3 player in my pocket and I accidentally washed it in haste to get my sweater in the washer. And now a good replacement is hard to find. That player had excellent options and could save places in podcasts and audiobooks. Turns out few players do that these days. I got one on the way home (well I went out of my way to Sequim to get it, and a portable phone recharger because I don't want to get caught with a dead phone) and it has a pedometer which is cool, but the interface is garbage. The music stops if you exit the music menu, there's no shuffle or play all it's just....really bad. So I'm going to return it on my errands run today. I hate returning things but I think I can hold out sans mp3 player for a week or so (and use my phone for driving tunes).

Unless Ma still has that one I gave her (which isn't so great but better than other options).

So today: return player at the Poulsbo Office Max. Go to Seabeck and pick up my mail/maybe mp3 player. Go to Bremerton and get comics. See Karen for a bit. Go back through Trader Joe's and get food. Home! Chill!

sweet frozen sugar water

Back to work! And I was on laundry, the most brutal of the shifts. Lots of stairs, lots of time minding, lots of constant go go go because if you're not go go going, you've done the timing wrong. Still wound up with the duvet tumbling wet at the end of my shift. Needed to get it into the wash sooner. I could also delay sheets a bit? Towels didn't start coming out till the end of the shift. There were six sets of sheets to be washed! And six rooms worth of laundry! SO MUCH!

And my curry is a'ight. Chicken a bit dry and the rice is undercooked, but it's still edible and tasty.

After the exhaustion I took a long nap at home and planted this lavender I got at work and spread out some mulch on the front porch garden. Drew. Watched the new three part adaptation of And Then There Were None. Relaxed. Now it's nighty night time.

comfortably busy

Almost a week behind at this point, I think barring my road trip I've never gotten this behind.

So where do I begin? Oh! I think I'm going to get my own internet because it's much too difficult to troubleshoot when I'm boosting it from Celia's and a reliable connection would be awesome, and then I can move my wifi booster to the garage so that it extends up there for guests!

Work was fine. Did I cover that I double teamed rooms with Ginger? We did it so fast when we worked together! I also did some gardening. Simple weeding. And a deep clean on one room and now it looks so good. The main offender was removing scuff marks. I need to learn how to make spam musubi. It's so good.

The power went out, and I remembered after the fact it was scheduled. The batteries in the big lamp are dead so I got the propane going no problem (barring maybe turning it up a bit too much to start).

I decided to go down to Portland for Bridgetown Comedy Fest. I want to see more comedy this year and the shows seemed fun and there were some people I wanted to see perform (Eliza Skinner mostly) so I thought, why not take a day and go see a few things? And then since Doug Fir was close to Mel, I asked if she wanted to see a thing with me and she said yeah! So I left at 3 and got to a very warm Portland at 6:30. Parked in residential, met up with Mel and off we walked down Burnside to the Doug Fir, which is a venue I've been to before for a Violent Pink show.

The first show of the night was Baked! which was a combo music and standup thing. Steve Agee and Brendan Smalls fronted a band and did some jokes and there was a bassist and piano guy and drummer and they jammed and I left the program I grabbed at Mel's so I can't double check the names. So they played songs and mashed some up and joked and had doughnuts as it was National Doughnut Day and an audience member tried to stuff one in her face on a dare and she couldn't do it.

Eliza Skinner killed it. She was hilarious and she sung a song with the band and it was AWESOME. Sara Schaefer also killed it. Both excellent hilarious ladies. Julian McCollugh wasn't such a great follow up, though it's interesting to see someone not do totally well. But hey, Portland isn't the best city to make moderately racist jokes in. He wasn't booed but he did get the light (the timing light) and I wonder if that made it so Jonah Ray couldn't do a set. He stilled jammed with the band and was an excellent drummer AND singer. But I'd have liked to have seen him do a set (limited time at the show, ya know). Still, it was excellent and I was happy to have Mel there with me. She's an awesome person!

We hugged and I hoofed it down to Yamhill to see the Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction show at Refuge PDX. A bigger space and I met Evan Dumas there (one half of Man's Face Stuff) who had a pass to the show and is such a great guy that he'd be willing to see a very filthy comedy show with me. The eight comedians were divided into two rounds. One half had prepared material, the other half had suggestions and went on later in the show. So they read out loud written fan fictions about different topics. Slaughterhouse Five, DB Cooper, Party of Five, Star Wars...and it was raunchy and gross and hilarious and awful and amazing all at once. Sabrina Jalees won for her Party of Five piece (which was well deserved and I hollered for her the loudest). Star Wars though, by Dan Telfner (Tenfler err I could Google but I'm lazy) was a close second.

The next round had Gus from The Simpsons by Bill Dwyer. Jurassic Park by err... John F D'Onnell. Another guy did Pantera and he'd obviously not heard of the band and had wikipedia'd them and it was a pretty brilliant piece of writing with lots of references to their song titles followed by "like our song?" "yes, like our song". And Moshe Kasher, you know...from NPR, closed it out with an eloquent narrative about Cthulhu that was...yeah. It was pretty gross and visual. He won. Tried to get Madeline to come to the show but she was tired.

From there, Evan and I walked back up to Burnside for the late show at Doug Fir. We had a nice chat and he ended up not watching the show due to being tired. But it's all good. I sat in the front and sketched and had a blast. Zak Toscani was MCing and he had a nice jacket. Matthew Brossaud Brossard Browhatever is MY AGE and recorded a special. He had really nice hair and a few good jokes. Andy Wood informed us that Ali had died. The murmur of us not knowing rippled through the audience. Bill Dwyer had kinda basic marriage material. Wasn't into it. Nick Youssef was hilarious and had a very tight and well paced set. I tweeted the drawings I did of him and he's retweeted him so he's pretty much my favorite right now, haaa. Sabrina Jalees was on this set too and she was great! My alarm went off during her set and thankfully it was timed well. I felt bad though. Totally forgot it was going to go off (it's a daily regular alarm reminder). Brooks Wheelan was drunk but in his defense it was after midnight in a fun city. And while he also got the light, he wasn't a total mess and did get some good jokes out. Dwayne Perkins closed it out with some kinda dated material about Americans not knowing the PM of Canada. Now they've got that dreamboat Trudeau...we know who their PM is. Still funny. A great set to end an amazing day on. I walked back to Mel and Alain's and we chilled for a bit then went to bed (they have a guest bed). In the morning Mel made AMAZING oatmeal with coconut and bits of apple. And her coffee was great.

After breakfast and chatting, I got in my car and headed north. I used the spare change of clothes I've had in my car for emergencies for several years. Always good to have a spare, and the pants fit better now than when I decided they would do in an emergency pinch (they were a bit tight at that point but not something to be thrown out). So in full pants and a black shirt I drove north and melted and got sweaty and gross and hated everything. I swung through Silverdale and ran errands and went home and stripped down and stood in the Hood Canal for a while to cool off. Then I napped and drew and cleaned house and went to bed.

So I think that brings us to today? Yeah Sunday. Baby shower day. I tidied up a bit. Did some laundry. Went up to Port Townsend for Raechel's baby shower. Coworker, ya know! She had the baby very quick. Early by a few days. I got to hold him for a second. The shrimp I gave to the boss were turned into the meal at the shower. A nice sort of ... shrimp thing to put on toast. Mixed with basil and tomatoes. Really good! Got compliments on the quality of the shrimp. Glad I could contribute. Cake was lemon curd and raspberry and was yummy. It was a nice turn out of most of the crew and everyone was nice. I like my coworkers and bosses. They're a good bunch. AND they said I could put stickers on my work bucket, huzzah!

I helped tidy then I went to QFC and managed to remember all the ingredients for the curry I want to make (I left the list at home). Took me a while to find the coconut milk. At home I got that crock potting, and I washed the car because it was getting a bit dusty and bug splatty. And now my curry is smelling pretty good. So I think on that note I'll go have a bit for a late dinner (actually I need to get the rice going) and tomorrow starts another work week. Then a four day weekend that includes a wedding!!! Then more work. Then might go to Seattle to see John.

My life is comfortably busy and I love it.

I know I'm many days behind but I've been busy having fun.