I was hoping today was Friday, but it’s not %(

Things are still a bit soggy here. Yesterday on my way to work I had to turn around on one road because the creek had taken over the street for as far as I could see. Michael faired worse, as he was stuck in traffic for over 3 hours before he could give up and turn back home (he can work from home if he needs to). Luckily we don’t live in a flood plain and besides the hassle of having so many roads and bridges in the area closed we aren’t worried about the excessive rainfall.

I did see some sun yesterday. I took a walk to the library during lunch, first time I could do that in over a week. It smelled very… summery outside. The temperature was hovering around 82F, the grass was wet and I was brought back to summer when I was younger and could get my bathing suit on and play in the yard, then hop in the neighbor’s pool. Good times. I was brought back to reality by the honking horns of Lansdale traffic, and remembered that I was just on my lunch break and I had a stack of work on my desk rivaling the Empire State Building.

It has been a busy week. I’m not stressed out about it, all the vital stuff has been processed and now I’m just wading through “other stuff that probably should get in before month end” pile. By the end of each day this week I’ve been pretty tired. I’ve never been fully convinced until recently that a lot of accounting paperwork can make you physically tired.

I sure was tired when I wrote that last entry, it makes sense but I repeated myself some and fell into laziness and rambling.

I woke up this morning and the clock said 6:47. I groaned and got out of bed, feeling sore and like I hadn’t slept at all. I gave in and had a cup of coffee (I drink less caffeinated tea usually) late this morning after not being able to focus on my work due to sleepiness. Plus it’s raining today, I usually like rain but after being damp for 3 days it wasn’t terribly appealing. I’m now chilling out at work now during my lunch break, not going outside even though the rain has stopped for the moment. I am pretty sure I’m actually dry now, but I still feel damp. The forecast shows rain for the entire week.

Whine, whine, whine. It’s all worth it for the fun I had this weekend.

I realized the other night that we have no plans for the 4th of July weekend. The floating holiday at work is Monday, and we have off on Tuesday for the actual 4th, so I have a whole 4 day weekend with no plans! I hit the Beer Yard website to see what events were around, but none that I’d be interested in/are close enough exist. Does anyone local want to swing by for some BBQ sometime this weekend? Or know of anything fun going on that we’d be interested in?

I had a blast at the Gaian Mind Festival this weekend.

We managed to get two pictures out of the whole weekend (sorry !), but we were running around and having fun, and dragging a camera along when the chance of rain was always hovering was not the best option.

Friday night they had an opening ceremony for the festival and we did some dancing when the DJ sets came on. It was all based in a rock circle on the highest part of the camp. Tons of stuff that glowed with the black lights that were all over the place. I’d never been to such a thing so it was quite and experience. We had glowsticks and really got into the whole thing.

The rain was pretty intense Friday night, so heavy that it came through the tent. Everything got damp, but our tent is big enough so we were able to pull everything in from the edges so we didn’t get as wet as some of the other people in our camp did. Michael and I hit the bed around midnight, which was pretty early since the music and partying went on all night. But we didn’t get much sleep, the partying went on all night and the bunch of college kids who pitched a tent next to us were very noisey.

People were still dancing in the morning, which is when Michael shot this photo:

Saturday was pretty fun. The rain stayed away all day and we could enjoy the weather. We met up with a girl in our camp named Jessica (who was not with the wacked out college kids next to us) and went to a sweat lodge with her. That sweat lodge was the beginning of a new friendship! She is a really cool chick, my age and is really into a lot of the same things we are. It’s always great to meet smart people who you can just talk to without having to explain all your references, she just got it. She had been camping with some friends, but due to the rainy conditions they headed out in the early evening for another party and she ended up chilling with us for the rest of the weekend.

After the sweat lodge we went swimming. We spent a lot of time walking around the camp and hanging out by our camp with a campfire. We went to a talk on the year 2012 and the “impending global mind shift” which was interesting but not really my thing. We had dinner around 6 and then went back to the camp to enjoy the fire some more.

We got more neighbors in the late evening, a couple of really nice guys who turned out to be from Phoenixville. Jessica, Michael and I went with them to a black light show that preceeded the dancing and DJing of the evening. The rest of the night was spent hanging out with people at our camp, eating smores and going up to the rock circle to dance when the mood struck. I really got into the dancing that night, and there were many more people than Friday night. The vibe of the place was great and we had an awesome time. When we finally got to bed around 2AM I was still really into it all and wanted to stay out and dance but I was exhausted.

This morning we got up and showered. Packed everything up and then it started pouring again – arg! We had to walk up to the car in the upper parking lot in the rain, take down the tent in the rain and pack up the car. We were dirty and drenched by the time we drove out of the camp around 10:30AM.

On the way home we swung by Stoudts Black Angus Restaurant & Pub, right next to their Brewery. I was tired, but couldn’t pass up an IPA, which was good but not as dry as I generally like.

We got back home here around 4, parked the car in our driveway and took a 2 hour nap. It was only after the nap that we unloaded the car and I got a real clean shower. I feel civilized again now, but exhausted, hopefully this entry makes sense, hah!

What a great weekend, we’ll have to go back next year.

I was listening to NPR yesterday afternoon and heard an advertisement for the evening Marketplace program about female entrepreneurs. Marketplace is one of my favorite radio programs of all time, but the timing of it’s evening show (6:30 on weeknights) makes it so I rarely get to listen live, but I had to check this one out. Luckily because Public Radio has such fantastic web presence they have a page with the program to listen to in RealPlayer format, so I checked it out this morning: Marketplace: The gender gap in venture capital. It was a good report, even if it was all stuff I’ve heard before.

I’ve found that “breaking through the glass ceiling” articles fall into two general categories:

1. Women need to act like men to succeed

I don’t like this one, it makes me feel like as a woman I don’t have any useful skills and I have to pretend to be a man to succeed. It actually reminds me of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas that says “In order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, women must become men” but instead of the kingdom of heaven it’s “the realm of successful business.”

I’m not a man, I am not going to act like a man.

2. Women should use their inherently female skills to succeed

I might have reservations about this one, since it tends to be stereotypical, but it is the view I like to see in articles. This Marketplace report takes this view, certainly we need to be more assertive but we can still be successful just by taking advantage of our talents.

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*