So this is what it's like to have a free weekend...

So yesterday's plans kind of went out the window, but it was a great day nonetheless. moonandtree, who is now moved in, helped me out in the garden. He got the weed-whacker going, and I laid waste to the oceans of creeping Charlie in the back. By the time I was done I was covered in green shrapnel. It was pretty funny. The cherry tomatoes are sulking but not dead, as are the cucumbers, and everything else appears to be doing pretty well. The garden is really starting to take shape, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this summer puttering around in it.

On a whim I invited my friend Glo and her boyfriend JF to dinner, and moonandtree as well. We went grocery shopping, and then came back in order to do a ton of cooking. Glo and I cooked (she did most of it, but I helped), we all drank beer, listened to music, and discussed jobs and geeky things and generally had a fantastic time. Glo made a couple of incredible dishes (a ricotta spread for oven-toasted bread, which we complemented with marmalade and onion jam, and angel hair pasta with veggies, rosé sauce and chicken cooked in lemon, tarragon and rosemary), and I made rhubarb and strawberry sauce which we poured over ice cream with a bit of fruit salad for dessert. It was scrumptious.

This is the kind of thing I had envisioned when I moved in here: spontaneous dinners with guests. Good food, good company, a little bit of alcohol, and everyone leaves happy.

Today I am going hunting for wedding clothes with luvenditti, and I will try to get all the other errands done that I didn't get to yesterday.

All in all, what with the gorgeous weather and the laid-back time, I'm having a glorious weekend.

A meme!

The five topics meme. Rules: if you ask for them, I give you five topics and then you expand upon them. You need to use the words "pick me" or some other variation thereof in a comment for me to give you topics. Otherwise, I'll assume that you're commenting but not wanting to play. Questions from bodhifox:

TEOTWAKI:

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!"

fearsclave introduced me to this acronym that's commonly used by survivalist types in various internet communities. I don't use it much, but I like it because it can refer to so many different kinds of the end of the world: everything from slow economic collapse to the zombie apocalypse. So I get to use it in a tongue-in-cheek fashion whenever I'm discussing survivalist stuff with my friends.

Off The Grid:

This is one of my long-term goals. Eventually I'd like to get a house in the country and set it up so that I'm entirely self-sufficient. That means going off the grid: disconnecting from publicly (or even privately) distributed electricity and plumbing. The telephone and internet are likely to be trickier, but the idea is not to depend on outside sources of power.

Like-minded Individuals:

It's pretty much what it sounds like. Again, fearsclave introduced me to this concept, likewise used by survivalist types. It basically means people with a similar mindset: those who are concerned about TEOTWAKI, about being more self-sufficient, who think peak oil is a reality and that we are going to see drastic changes to how we live in our lifetime, and sooner rather than later.

Mythmaking:

Myths and mythology have long been one of my ruling passions. I've neglected it of late, but when I was younger I used to read books on mythology all the time. I am always interested in seeing how myths are built and made, both on a societal scale and an individual one. People make up their own stories, their own personal mythologies. Part of the reason I love fantasy and science fiction so much is because the authors put so much work into building their worlds, and world-building necessarily means mythmaking.

Loyalty:

This one's tough to explain. Loyalty is one of the virtues I admire most, and one that's practically hard-wired into my system. Once someone is part of my fremily, it takes a lot for me to go back on that. I am occasionally loyal to the point of stupidity. I've become a little better about that, and no longer let people walk all over me or use me as an emotional punching-bag, but I'll still put up with a lot from friends before I'll start to pull away.

Basically, if I'm your friend, I stay that way forever. We can part ways for a while, but if you reappear on my doorstep after 20 years and need a place to crash, my sofa is yours.

Productive Weekend

I didn't get my grocery shopping done, but otherwise I had a thoroughly productive weekend. I caught up on my laundry, mostly (I still have some leftover), and I got a TON of stuff done in the garden. Another week or so, and I'll really get the garden into shape.

Hey, does anyone around here know where I can get rid of excess garden debris? My poor compost bins are overflowing, but I don't want to add to the local landfills if I can help it.

I've been revisiting my list of 101 Things To Do In 1001 Days, and I'm kind of running behind, I think. There are a few things on that list that involve longer spans of time (1 month, 1 year, stuff like that), which I think I'll start on in June. In another week I'll have completed my challenge of posting once a day for a year, so if I could manage that, I'm sure I can manage some of the others.

Here's what I'm going to start in June 2009:

6- knit a blanket (I'm knitting a baby blanket for a friend, so I'll finish it in June)
15- make all my food from scratch for a month
16- cook 1 new (preferably exotic) dish every week for 3 months
23- read 10 books outside my "comfort zone" (I'll be reading one)
25- read 20 "classic" books (ditto what I said above)
32- send a birthday card to all of my friends in a timely fashion every day for a year (whose birthday is next month? This may be a glaring flaw in my plan. ;) )
35- host three barbecues over the summer
51- get certified in first aid & CPR by St. John's Ambulance (or equivalent)
52- obtain PAL & learn to shoot
70- bike to work every day for a month
88- write one poem a week for a year
89- maintain a paper-letter correspondence with someone for six months (bodhifox has volunteered to send me a letter already)
90- schedule writing jams with a friend once a month for a year (tcaptain is coming by when he gets back from his honeymoon)

That's 13 things to either do, or get started at the very least. Concrete goals.