The livin' is easy

Yesterday jb and I walked to the farmer's market and picked up some veggies and sunflowers. Just a lovely summer day with blue skies and green parks. It's so nice to hold hands and be in love in the summer.

"A joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful"

Laying Low

jb and I spent a nice night in with tuna sandwiches for dinner, a good game of scrabble and the DNC on TV. Today was my first day back at work since returning from Denver and to make the transition back to the daily grind easier, jb brought me a bubble tea back from when she was out running errands. Bubble-tastic. Speaking of the Denver trip - in my last post I mentioned that I hoped I'd get to return to Colorado with jb - well, ha. I have a compulsion to bid on silent auction items - and at the Stonewall convention I apparently had the winning bid on a Rocky Mountain resort package - so wish granted, I suppose. :)

Pike's Peak

I've been in Denver the last few days for the Stonewall convention but am heading home today - right before all the DNC fun starts - boo. Denver is so beautiful - the Rockies on the horizon are breathtaking - especially at dusk. I hope I can come back one day with jb to do nature-y stuff. It's sad when I go somewhere I've never been and don't get out of the hotel. The convention has been good. I didn't have a workshop to facilitate, so it's been really low key. It's been great to see people - Mara, Mark, Jon - of course Jon has been crazy busy, but I was able to see him just last week when he was in Pittsburgh working on the platform. Still, I'm alway happy to be heading home - and jb and I both have tomorrow off!

Trientona

The birthday curse was broken with this camping trip. We had such a great time hiking, cooking over the campfire, kayaking, swimming, and playing games. It was great to have some family time before mom and the kids went back to Mex and Steph was off to Korea. jb was able to be there for most of the time, too - thanks to our new hours and taking a day or two off - so that made me super happy. Hooray for vacations, hooray for family time, hooray for beautiful nature. Life is overwhelmingly good these days.

pleasantlyfurious is go

We got a new car! A Honda Fit in blue. I love it - it's cute, but not too cute. It's perfect for all the cafe errands and I think it's going to be a great camping/roadtrip car - we'll be testing it out next week when we go on our birthday camping trip.

Shattered

Today was not a good day. Our car is out of commission. I have killer cramps. The damn vampire book is sold out. And worst of all, I dropped my iphone and the glass screen broke.










It fell out of my purse as I was getting out of the car (not our car - since ours is not working) and fell to the sidewalk. Oh, it was a sad moment. AT&T doesn't offer insurance on these phones, and the Apple warranty doesn't cover damage, so my options aren't that great:

1. Purchase another iphone at the non-AT&T-contract price.

2. Purchase a different (inferior) phone.

3. Pay Apple $250 to replace the screen for me. (notable: this is more than I paid for the phone)

4. Go rogue and buy a cheap knock-off replacement screen on ebay and attempt to make the repairs myself.

Well, the ebay replacement screen has been ordered and I'm reading up on how exactly to do this. In the meantime, the phone works fine, I just have to be careful not to cut my finger or face - yikes. Oh, I'm sad.

Ketchup

The abbreviated version with the usual apologies:

• Nick, Larissa and my Dad are in town!
• Bowling with jb, Nick and Larissa at Arsenal Lanes.
  
• Went to see The Dark Knight with Nick and Larissa.
• Kalina got me hooked on vampire novels written for teenage girls. I read about 2,000 pages in a week - and am eagerly awaiting the next one. The good news is that Larissa is reading them now, too!
  
• DC trip rounded out nicely with getting a lot done at work and seeing lots of friends. Tsoghig (and her adorable new baby), Nancy B, and even Val and Dezzie.
• Then I was in Oakland for a week for the CA Labor Fed. and the resolution I wrote re: prop 8 passed unanimously!
• The kittens all reached 3 lbs. (perhaps with the help of a couple extra servings of wet food) and are currently available for adoption at the humane society.

And the most exciting news of all:

• We shortened the cafe hours! I know this isn't good news for everybody (sorry!) - but I'm simply over the moon about it. Since we opened 8 months ago we've been open 99 hours a week and jb has worked just about every one of those hours. We want the cafe to succeed and thrive - but we also don't want it to be the only thing in our lives. Now we are going to be open 60 hours a week (7 am - 5 pm Tuesday - Sunday) and we will be closed on Mondays - a whole day...every week!
  
  jb of course assured me that she could work 99 hrs/week indefinitely, but I have a preference that she not keel over at 30, so I lobbied hard for a more moderate approach. We do hope to one day expand our hours again - but in the interim, I think this will be good for us. It not only frees up personal time, but also time to do cafe related things that kept being put off because of the demands during business hours. We also plan to open in the evening should anyone want to hold a meeting or event - it's all still pretty flexible. I do hope no one is too put out by this change and our customers will continue to support us!