Michael went out yesterday afternoon and picked up more supplies for our trip out to Artemas, PA this weekend for the Gaian Mind Festival. I have only mentioned this on my journal in passing but it’s something I’m pretty excited about.

From the website:

Join us for four days and three nights of Transcendental Dance in the open air – truly, a magical event which has quickly become an annual summer tradition for the global Trance Tribes!

The gathering includes a full weekend of spiritual dancing, tribal drumming, lectures and workshops, yoga, sweat lodge, swimming, feasting, relaxation, and much more in a sacred, sylvan sanctuary that only Four Quarters can provide.

Dancing! Drumming! Sweat lodges! Swimming! Feasting! Relaxation! These are my most favorite things!

It actually starts today, but we couldn’t take time off from work to get there. We’re taking a half day tomorrow and we’ll be leaving home around noon, planning on getting out there in time to set up our campsite and head for dinner at 5PM. It’s being held at Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary, which has a website that I wish was more navigable, but Michael spent a bunch of time combing the site to make sure we have all the information we need about our visit there. I haven’t been camping in years and Michael and I have never camped together, so it should be an interesting experience.

I was delighted to learn that a camp like this exists. It’s Camp Policies include fantastic rules like not allowing cars to be parked at your campsite (you drive the car in, drop off your stuff, and drive the car back to the community parking lot) and their clothing policy – “We do not have one. You may be as dressed or undressed as you prefer. In the summer very loose wraps and sandals are the norm and most people skinny-dip when in the river.” Cool. I’m still bringing my bathing suit though ;) It’s a very green camp (in both senses of the word) and I was like “lol hippy camp!” but that’s precisely the kind of camp I want to be at.

We were having dinner with a friend of ours recently when the subject of politics came up. I put up my hand and said I didn’t care about any of it anymore and I’ve given up. She protested, saying that the only way we can change what we hate about it all is by being involved, but even though I could respect her position, I wouldn’t be swayed.

It’s something I’ve gone back and forth about, and I’d like to think that even with my annoyance with all of it I’m still more informed than the average American who believes watching a half hour of the national evening news every weekday is more than enough to stay suitably informed. I listen to talk radio pretty much all day at work, and I can generally hop into any political discussion if the situation arises, I just don’t like to anymore. I’m much more apt to turn off the radio stream and listen to some science podcast if they start blabbering about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict or the newest developments in Iraq now.

Certainly there are issues I’m passionate about, like gay rights and abortion, but even these things I have had trouble discussing lately. I see red each time the subjects come up. I can’t even contribute anything constructive to my own side because each time I think of someone who is against gay marriage I think they’re a fucking bigot who is degrading the Christian religion by using it as an excuse for their hatred of people who are different. See? I’m terrible (but so are they! BITCHES! Er… sorry).

Maybe this makes me a bad person. I just think getting more involved in politics and political discussions is a waste of time for me right now. I’ll stay up to date, I’ll vote, I’ll hold an opinion. But as far as I’m concerned my time is much better spent writing wikipedia articles about local breweries (I am part of the WikiProject Beer) than having discussions and getting directly involved with politics. Besides, a good microbrew is all about peace and happiness and being involved with politics in America today is not.

Dear inventor of those kids shoes with roller skates in them,

Die.

Thank you,

Elizabeth Krumbach

I’m tired today. I slept enough, it’s probably just the weather, heat really takes it out of me.

Michael and I went out for dinner Thursday night and I suggested we check out the new Skippack Ale House on Route 73. It use to be Samuel Eatons, and I went there with a few months back and was terribly disappointed at just about all aspects of the place (food, beer selection, service, atmosphere…). I hoped that the name change meant new management and a better beer selection, but that wasn’t the case. When we sat down we were waited on by a young man, we asked to see a beer list and he said they didn’t have one and then rattled off the mediocre collection of beers they had on tap – it wasn’t as bad as the usual Coors and Budweiser list, but it wasn’t terribly impressive either. We asked about bottles and he replied “We everything in bottles.” Oh really? Everything? BWAHAHAHA! We decided not to embarrass him or ourselves any more and scooted out the door when he left the dining room. We enjoyed a nice dinner at the Roadhouse Grille instead.

The weekend was a good one, in spite of the 90F+ weather.

Friday night was spent with . It was nice to finally see him, he’s been so busy with school and work lately it’s been hard to coordinate our schedules to meet up. We went out to dinner at a local beer bar and then headed back to our house to watch some movies and chat for a bit.

Saturday night we had Bob over for an enjoyable evening. He brought along his Sparc5, a few beers, and we had a couple growlers from Sly Fox. We ordered some food from the pizzeria down the street and chilled out in our air-conditioned computer room. Beer, computers, friends, hooray!

Sunday Michael and I got up and drove out to Cabela’s in Hamburg to get some camping supplies for our trip out to Central PA this weekend. It wasn’t a bad drive out there, only took us about an hour. Driving up to the Cabela’s store was an interesting experience in itself, you come around a turn on Route 61 and then you see the giant building and Cabela’s sign on top of this big hill, like some sort of shrine. Route 61 turns into four or five lanes, two of which are turning lanes to go into the Cabela’s “complex.” I wish I’d brought my camera. The store was fairly busy, as to be expected, and heavily decorated with a whole outdoorsy hunting theme, including dozens of stuffed animals, several of which were posed on this big fake mountain in the middle of the store. We ended up buying a large tent, an air mattress and an LED lantern for our camping needs.

After leaving Cabela’s we went to downtown Hamburg and had lunch at a sub hoagie shop that reminding me once again a huge reason why Americans are fat – I ordered a “mini” sub and it was 7″ long, I could barely finish it! But it was a good sub. We drove home around 1 and spent the afternoon hiding in the air conditioning.

Sunday evening we had Nita over, her birthday was last week and we wanted to take her out. We ended up going down to Ortino’s Northside beer bar (after making sure they had the raspberry lambic that she enjoys). It was a nice dinner, and it was great catching up with Nita. We made some tentative plans for heading up to north Jersey next month for wedding dress shopping.

And now it’s Monday. It’s supposed to be hot all week, upper 80s as the highs. I’m hiding inside my office enjoying the air-conditioning.

Yesterday Michael and I went out to Koehlers Jewelers in Lansdale to pick out our wedding bands. This is where Michael bought my engagement ring and he was very pleased with the experience (and I am certainly pleased with the result!). Shopping for the bands was made easy for us by an attentive jeweler pulling out a whole array of white gold rings as soon as I asked. We kept things simple, I got a band that is the same thickness as my engagement ring, Michael got it’s male counterpart which is thicker but the same very basic band. We were sized for the rings and put down a deposit on them, we’ll be going back a couple weeks before the wedding for final sizing and then to pick them up. I’m so excited.

The next big thing will be the clothes. As I’ve explained in the past, I have my heart set on getting a sari (saree? I see both spellings everywhere, dict seems to be happy with either). This means I need to find an indian clothing store that is good and attentive to a woman looking for something as serious as a wedding dress. I wasn’t impressed with the Indian store in New Hope. Nita was the first one to discover Iselin, New Jersey online for my shopping needs. According to wikipedia:

“The downtown area is made up mostly of shops selling South Asian (mostly Indian but some Pakistani) food, sweets, clothing (particularly saris), jewelry, music, and other goods.”
…
The South Asian culture of this downtown area is known to attract visitors from towns all over New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland

And this article further explains:

…is not your run-of-the-mill bedroom community. In the last decade, the downtown business district of this Middlesex County hamlet — centered at Oak Tree Road and Green Street — has become a thriving retail mecca for Indians, who flock here to dine on authentic Indian food and to shop in the many Indian groceries, jewelry stores and sari shops.

OH MY GOSH! I am such a sucker for Indian food and clothing, I’d want to go there even if I wasn’t shopping for a wedding dress.

The plan is to head out there some weekend in July when I can coordinate things with Nita. Michael will be driving us out, about a 2 hour drive, even if he won’t be part of the dress decision he doesn’t want to miss the perfect excuse for visiting this place.

So, have any of you been there?

Ok, so one of it’s parents ate all my cucumbers in my garden one year, but they can be forgiven because they provided us with two very cute baby animals to look at this season.

*squee*

Even better, Michael was the first one to spot them, and shot a video of them and Caligula chirping at them, I uploaded it to Google Video this morning:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4209150651868988797

*dies of cuteness*

On Wednesday I left home around 8:30 for the dentist appointment scheduled for 9AM. On Monday they told me that it would just be “a quick 30 minute visit to get two teeth filled” and since they all acted very casual about it all I figured I would get out by 10 and be to work by 10:15, all ready to conquer the day.

HAHAHAHA! Boy was I naive.

First of all, the dentist office doesn’t unlock its doors until 9AM, so my 9AM appointment was actually at around 9:30. When I got into the dentist chair I had to choose my filling type, and they eventually got around to giving me my first two novocaine shots, one on each side of the mouth near the cavities. The dentist said he’d leave for 5 minutes to let it take effect. He was gone for about 10 minutes; I could hear him talking to another patient who was also getting a filling.

Upon his return, he started drilling.

“OUCH!”

“You can feel that?”

“Uh huh!”

“OK, I’ll work on the other side first.”

“OUCH!”

“Alright, I’ll give you a couple more shots of novocaine and return in 5 minutes.”

Of course 5 minutes turned into about 15, he left me to complete the other woman’s fillings. The drilling hadn’t even started but I was already sweating, enough so that I was sure I’d need to go home and change before going to work, and feeling unnaturally anxious.

When he returned he took a pick and poked inside a cavity on the right side.

“AAaaarg…”

“You can feel that?”

“Yep”

“Not just the scraping? It’s a pinch?”

“It’s definitely a pinch.”

“OK, I’ll give you another shot of novocaine, this time in the back. This should put EVERYTHING to sleep.”

This final shot also hurt a lot, and still is sore this Friday morning.

He scraped on the left side and I felt nothing, so he proceeded with that filling. When he started drilling I became nauseated. Oh brother.

I toughed it out and got the fillings done, it was around 10:30 when I finally was able to leave the dentist office.

I felt terrible. I later learned that novocaine has a whole bunch of side effects and I was lucky enough to experience a couple of them. Not to mention the whole mouth numbing thing, the right side of my tongue was asleep (a fun experience) and I could barely talk. I decided that the best plan of action would be to take a sick day. I left a voicemail for my boss (which must have been an amusing thing to listen to) letting her know I wasn’t coming in.

I went home, complained on IRC for a bit, drank water through a straw so not to dribble it all over myself and eventually spent the day watching movies on the Myth box. There are lots of things I could have been doing instead (like catching up on reading people’s journals) but I just felt miserable. It wasn’t until 2PM that the novocaine finally wore off and I got to really feel the pain of the novocaine injection spots. I was hungry, having not eaten all day. When Michael got home he took me out to Sly Fox for some ravioli.

It was a fine meal for my hurting mouth and the beer wasn’t bad either. Oh geez, look at me, I took a sick day and then went out to a brewpub! Don’t tell my boss. We brought our laptops along to take advantage of the free wifi they offer and I was able to chat on IRC with and others about the evils of dental work and what a racket dental insurance is.

I went home and watched more movies. It was one of the most highly unproductive days I’ve had in months.

Things have been pretty mellow these past few days.

Over the weekend we barely left the house. I spent some time on Saturday downloading Solaris 10 for x86 to toss on one of our spare machines, only to discover that the old, lousy video cards in both our spare x86 machines are old and unsupported. I shelved that project until I get a supported card and Michael gave me some disks for other OSes to try.

I succeeded in getting BeOS 4.5 installed on our old Dell server, which was fun for about 20 minutes. Of course installing it was not with the intention of actually using it, or even learning how to use it (no reason to, it’s dead) but more for the historical (in?)significance. As others have said, it was a pretty decent looking unix-based OS for it’s time (1999), especially compared to its Linux sisters. Installing was a breeze. I am not as sure about functionality though, again the old graphics card wasn’t fully supported (black, grey and white BeOS – woo!). The NIC wasn’t supported either, so I couldn’t fully try out any of their networked apps. Oh and there were plenty of jokes about the lack of programs for the OS, so taking out networked apps and those that needed a supported graphics card (like Quake 2), there wasn’t much to play with.

One of my next projects might be getting a NetBSD machine running. Considering the popularity of the BSD family it is surprising that I’ve never even tried to install it anywhere.

I also spent some time up in the Magic Room organizing and reading some of the fantasy book my father was working on before he died. It’s been on my mind a lot this week, there are certainly some great qualities about the manuscript (which is close to 100 pages) and some things that need a lot of work. I haven’t decided if I’m going to take on the chore of continuing his work, but I am going to try to devote some time to typing up the entire thing so I have it in more than just paper form.

The next couple weekends will be reasonably busy. We’re getting together with a friend we haven’t seen in a couple months on Friday night for dinner. Saturday we’re planning on heading out to the jeweler to discuss our wedding ring options (glee!). Then we’ll be doing some shopping for camping supplies so we’re fully prepared for the Gaian Mind Festival we’re heading out to Central PA for next weekend (so excited!).

Tonight we’re eating hot dogs made from bison meat. That is all.

The last time I went to the dentist was in the spring of 1999. I don’t like dentists and I wasn’t insured during most of the time between then and now. Honestly I was worried that I’d fork out the cash for a checkup visit only to learn how terrible my teeth were and have to pay for tons of work that I couldn’t afford. What I don’t know can’t hurt me!

But now that I am paying for dental insurance I realized I really should go. Oh and one of my wisdom teeth decided to show itself a couple weeks ago.

My appointment was this morning.

Did I mention I don’t like dentists? Does anyone like dentists?

Lucky for me, I have fantastic teeth and I take good care of them. I never had a cavity while growing up, and the results from this dental visit were pretty positive:

– 2 small cavities in the back, to be filled Wednesday morning in a quick visit (woohoo my first cavities! …er)
– The X-Rays of my wisdom teeth look great, they’re coming in fine and I have enough room in my big mouth (!) to accommodate them for the forseeable future
– I need to floss more (yeah yeah yeah I know…)

Alright, so it wasn’t that bad, but I’ll be doing the regular dentist visit thing from now on.

Work was busy this week, but it was my own doing. I wasn’t in the mood to be bored so I kept bugging my boss for more piles of work. What an oddball I am.

Speaking of work, a woman recommended BirkenstockCentral.com’s Bargain Page a little while back and I ended up buying some sandals from there:

I am in love with these shoes. I was never much of a sandal person because so many pairs I’ve owned were uncomfortable. But these, oh these are amazing, I don’t even feel like I’m wearing them! The first day I wore them to work the women in the office were all excited (this was also the day I came back from vacation when I had my pedicure). The woman who suggested the website even gave me a sterling silver toe ring to celebrate my feet freedom, what a sweetie! They’re totally ruining me ;)

Also speaking of work… being able to listen to podcasts at work has been fantastic. I’ve really been getting into the Speaking of Faith podcast (thanks for the recommendation ! And thanks to all who gave recommendations, they’ll keep me busy for a while). The whole podcast thing is quite a revolution in information being pumped into my brain, I once again keep up with current stuff just by listening while I’m puttering away with work and it makes the day go by so much faster!

Friday night Michael and I headed up to Ortino’s Northside, where I enjoyed a bottle of Delirum Tremens (oh how I love that pink elephant covered belgian brew) and a delicious burger with mushrooms and swiss. The weather played nice and we were able to eat out on the porch at the restaurant and enjoy the evening.

Today was just a chill out day. It was 2PM before I knew it and took a nice long bath. Yesterday I went to Whole Foods in North Wales to pick up some fish for the dish Michael is making tonight: Mixed Grill of Mussels, Clams, and Shrimp (without the chorizo, and with fresh green onions from my garden in place of shallots). I’m really looking forward to it, we picked up a bottle of Sterling Chardonnay to go with it and some nice, crusty sesame bread – yum!

And my tiger lilies bloomed: