bzzt! bzzt! fizzle....
Which is kind of how I feel at the moment. I'm in one of those too, too much on my plate loops that periodically roll through everyone's life. Many of the things crowding the plate are things that are steps towards things that will be very, very good when completed... but are a little sticky now. Like the house-- I know that I will love that we're in the house when we're unpacked (I already love that we're together, even if we can't find way too many things).... but at the moment it's a bit of an anxiety not being able to find things, or having the boxes of books still in boxes (not all, but a quarter of the total or so) in the dining room. Making so that seven weeks after moving in we still can't use the dinig room table. *sigh* And of course Artomatic, which is going to be soooo much fun, and which I'm very excited about, but one our millionth trip to Home Depot for screws or whatever yesterday kind of made me want to throw up. There's still lots to do, but hey,it will all be done soon and then we can just enjoy the show! :)
One casualty of the busybusybusiness has been, sadly, my photography, which I haven't done much of the last couple of months. I *did* get to bust the camera out for the Lobsterboy Revue at the Birchmere on April Fools. It was really really nice to get the cameras out.....
There was a belly dancing group, who were very good....
The high point of my weekend (which involved a volunteer shift, a temper tantrum thrown at me, painting the last corner of the space where we are showing, a trip to Ikea and a trip to Home Depot) was when Phil dropped me off at the Chinese restaurant next to the Despot. It's a Chinese restaurant owned by Sino-Vietnamese people. There were certificates on the walls from some local Vietnamese organizations (I now live in Saigon America 1975), the Catholic Vietnamese society of northern Virginia, the Republican party, notices of being added to some local papers' resataurant lists. The owner has a Vietnamese name, but everyone was speaking to each other in Chinese (not Mandarin, I think in Cantonese). When I arrived there was a waiter trying to get the take out order from a woman who was there with her mother. Half of what they asked for was something they weren't making, couldn't make, were all out of, don't make anymore. The man kept repeating back what she had already ordered, and said over and over:
Egg foo young, Communist platter, fried rice... Egg foo young, Communist platter, fried rice...
And I kept thinking, Communist Platter? I wonder what that entails. It took me a little while to realize that it was a combination platter. But I sat happily contemplating the intricacies of a Communist Platter for a while, waiting for my order (which took a while to settle on, as I had to go through a similar retinue of items that were listed on the menu but that were things they weren't making, couldn't make, were all out of, don't make anymore.) After a while a Russian guy showed up and said, "HI AM CHERE WIZ CAKE. HWEDDING CAKE." They looked at him blankly. "HWEDDING CAKE. HWEDDING CAKE." "Oh oh oh, wedding cake wedding cake..." They waved him towards the back of the restuarant where, in the distance, tucked into the many rolls of ruffled lavendar gauzy fabric there was a big gold and red double happiness on the wall behind a dais. As my food was arriving the Russian man was slinking out of the building. The owner of the restaurant-- a short, round, gray-haired man with glasses-- yelled at him as he slunk out of the building.
What is this? What kine business you run? Huh? Huh? You bake cake, but you don know how to set up? What you think I know how to set up? We not bakers! You baker! You set up! What kine businessman you are? Stupid!
Looks like someone's wedding cake wasn't going to be tiered....
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When we we're moving stuff out of my parent's house after they died ('95) , there were some boxes I recognized from the garage of their previous house, sold in 1986.
When we moved in that house ('58), they'd been stored in the garage and never moved.
Ends up they were papers from when they sold my grandmother's house in 1951.
I have the boxes....