Laurabelle's Blog

Jeff and I never did manage to go hiking on Friday, but last weekend was great anyway. In fact, the whole week was great. Jeff accompanied me to work on Wednesday afternoon, which was pretty uninteresting. Thursday I tried to get us organized enough to get everything done and have a good night's sleep before hiking, but in the end I had a kind of mental collapse and declared myself unable to organize anything other than a nap. Jeff took over and directed store trips and dinner, and I was very grateful.

Dinner was salmon with horseradish dill sauce (from a recipe on the package of crème fraiche that we bought for chicken supreme a few days before), creamed spinach, and couscous. The salmon was baked with lemon juice and white wine (also left over from chicken supreme) and probably would have been exquisite except that the recipe called for far too much horseradish in the sauce, and I found it completely inedible. Jeff had also managed to buy the grittiest bunch of spinach in the store, and not all of it got washed out (as it almost never does). The grit made the spinach unpleasant as well. The couscous came out lovely (it's really hard to mess up couscous!), so I ate mostly couscous, and Jeff had everything else.

We didn't go hiking on Friday after all, because Jeff and I were both too tired. Instead, we each slept late and then went down to visit Jeff's family, a day earlier than we had planned. Traffic was unpleasant, but we survived. On Saturday I finished up my latest braille assignment, and in the afternoon we went to the Capital Food & Wine Festival, which would have been more fun if it weren't so crowded and loud. I had very small sips of the beers Jeff tasted (yup, still don't like beer) and bought my own taste of a lovely organic Washington white wine. Unfortunately I think the alcohol and the noise got to me, and I got Jeff's younger brother Jim (the designated driver) to give me a ride home.

Sunday morning Jeff changed his oil, and then we drove back to Seattle and up to Edmonds, where a fellow SCAdian was moving house. Some of us packed, while the others hauled boxes and trekked to the storage locker and the new house. We were at it for about 8 hours, which was longer than I had expected to spend, but we stripped those rooms of everything that Galina can't move by herself. We were a very effective team, and the experience helped me to form some opinions of my own responsibilities if I ever ask other people to help me move.

I guess that extended weekend doesn't sound very relaxing. I woke up on Monday morning feeling stiff and sore from unaccustomed labor, but my mind had recharged. It probably wouldn't have mattered what I did over the weekend; it was the mere fact of my not being in class or in the office (and having finished my portfolio) that freed up my mental space.