I baked 50 of these little morsels, all from scratch. Mixed and rolled the dough, grated the meat & vegetables, stuffed, folded, & sealed each and every single little pie (and found the dough press I bought this afternoon to be completely worthless - good thing it only cost me $6) and brought them all to hot, flaky perfection.
I Want To Ride My Bicycle, I Want To Ride It Where I Like
So, I bought a bicycle a couple of months ago - nothing fancy, A used Raleigh Mojave 2.0 that a friend needed to sell for quick cash. But since then, I haven't really had time to do anything with it until yesterday, when I added a few doo-dads and gee-gaws to make it a little more road-worthy (pedal stirrups, mud guards, a new lock, & lights), and finally took it out for a test-drive down to the Theatre for our monthly late-night cabaret.
I'm still a little sore.
First off, I haven't been on a bicycle in, well, I'm not exactly sure how long, at least 9 years by my estimate. I haven't owned a bike since I moved onto the boat, which would have been back in July of 2000, and it was stolen right off the bike rack at the marina shortly thereafter. I can't recall having been on one since then.
So, there's that period of adjustment, getting used to the new center of gravity, and balance, and all that. Fortunately, several years of scooter riding helps somewhat, but not completely; you're much higher up in the air, so the center of gravity rises accordingly. Also, the balance feels very different because the bike itself is so much lighter in comparison.
Then there's simply the act of pedaling; getting the seat and handlebars adjusted to balance between comfort and efficiency. Right now, the seat feels about right, but the handlebars need to come up quite a bit, so that will get fixed today.
Seattle is a city of hills (seven, according to the local history, just like Rome; you can spot the newbies when they try to name them, and get into arguments with the natives over which of Seattle's currently existing and/or long-vanished promontories qualify as the "original seven") and I happen to live on the back side of one of the larger ones, while just about everything I need to get to is on the other side. Fortunately, I'm close to the top, but getting to the summit is a somewhat steep climb for those few blocks; going over the first time, I ended up switchbacking over a few side streets that have a little gentler slope than the main street, although I did manage to make it up Union on the return trip. Still, it was huffing-and-puffing all the way to the top; but then, that's sort of the point, isn't it?
Of course, riding on hills also means dealing with gravity - going both directions - and having prior experience in terms of being hit on these same hills on "Little Nellie", I'm just short of paranoid when it comes to traffic, particularly coming off side-streets, alleys, and driveways. So, I probably won't be doing any speedy descents anytime soon, given that I know what it feels like to fall off a scooter at 20 mph, and that I'm sporting even less in the way of protective gear (the obligatory helmet aside) which means I can anticipate major "road burn" - or worse - in the event of a crash. And it's a given that, until I get in better shape, climbing is going to be the hardest part of the deal for a while.
But, still, it's a start. I may not get up to the level I was at back in high school, when I could do 70 miles in a single go, climb two-mile long hills without getting winded, and looked not unlike those bike racers from "The Triplets of Belleville": legs thick as Douglas Fir trunks, and a toothpick-skinny upper torso (why, oh why did someone not explain to me the benefits of upper body training back in those days?). But, if in the process it increases my lung capacity, improves my cardio, and burns off a few pounds, well I won't be complaining.
I'm A Lover, I'm A Sinner, I Play My Music In The Sun
For some reason I completely forgot to bring a camera with me to the annual Artopia/Georgetown Music Festival on Saturday - not even my trusty low-rez phone camera. So, no pictures of the event, although it was fun, and a good excuse to get down into a neighborhood I enjoy, but seldom visit. The bands were ones I'd never heard of before, but that's sort of the point, since they're apparently all considered "up and coming", and probably not familiar to more than a handful of people who are much more connected to the new music scene than myself. And the art was interesting to some degree, particularly a couple of installation pieces.
I don't spend nearly enough time wandering through either of these particular communities; I have a hard enough time just staying on top of what's happening locally in theatre, so it's a pleasant diversion to spend a bit of time visiting some other artistic realm - and the combination of these two previously separate events provided an excellent opportunity to do so.
Horrible picture, I know, which does not come anywhere close to expressing the sheer, giddy joy of sitting around with a bunch of your friends watching puppet karaoke at midnight - and of course, the song selected was, as referred to above, highly appropriate.
In The Summertime When the Weather Is Fine You Can Reach Right Up And Touch The Sky
Summer officially begins today, and in Seattle that means the commencement of the annual Fremont Fair & Solstice Parade. I missed out on the parade (the only rule: no signage or printed words) due to a work teleconference, and got there just as crowds were heading away from the parade route, but did hit the fair itself, which is an annual fundraiser for Solid Ground (nee Fremont Public Association), a social services agency for which I worked back in the early/mid-'90's.
I Think About The Implications Of Diving In Too Deep
I just finished putting 100 1 1/2-inch stainless steel screws into the marquee for the theatre I built last spring. The plywood facing is starting to warp just a bit, which is creating just enough of a gab between it and the plastic tracks so that the letters are falling through the gap between them. So, I ended up putting in a bunch more screws into the tracks, on roughly 2-inch centers, in order to push it flat against the plywood.
It sounds like overkill, I know, but I initially tried adding screws on 4-inch centers and found places where the letters would still slide out of position, so overkill it had to be.
