Hey, Jenny's birthday!

The Master Gardeners classes are held in a county building (which makes sense, since it's a county program). The county building houses a large number of county offices, so the visitors at the building are interesting and varied. In the bathroom today, as I was doing my business, another woman started talking to a woman standing by the sink.

"So, you know," (I'm not sure the woman at the sink actually did know) "for that college class, we have to write a letter to our teacher introducing ourself."

"Mmmmmmmm," the woman at the sink indicated she was listening.

"I wrote her 20 texts for mine."

"20 texts?"

"Yeah, well, it was 10 texts from me, but she replied, so it was like twenty," was the answer.

The 20 texts woman then went on to complain for a few minutes about how the teacher didn't respond well to her completing her assignment via text messages instead of writing a letter, and how unfair it was that she had to write a letter, even though she had introduced herself to the teacher.

I couldn't help but think, gee, I'd give you bonus points for originality and creativity on your solution to the assignment, then fail you for not completing the actual assignment. Ever think that maybe, just maybe, learning to think in a format longer than 4 words would be a GOOD thing?

Last month, I convinced Kris that he didn't hate brussel sprouts. We had been receiving them with our weekly box of organic vegetables, so I figured I'd better figure out how to fix them so that both of us like them.

I pulled out my newly purchased "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" cookbook, and flipped through to the brussel sprouts section. There were several recipes. I chose the "braise and glaze" one, because anything completely covered in butter is inherently delicious. I've since adjusted the recipe, using vegetable stock and white wine to do the glazing, but the brussel sprouts were still delicious even without the full fat flavoring.

We've made the recipe numerous times, and have enjoyed the sprouts each time.

Since we have been enjoying them so much, I put a large number of them in my Whole Foods lunch box today. I had seen two varieties at the end of the hot-food bar at the nearby Whole Foods, and was quite excited to try them.

I could not have been more wrong.

The brussels sprouts were so uncooked they were closer to raw than cooked. They crunched when I bit down instead of melting the way the braised and glazed sprouts do. Worse, they were so overwhelmingly garlicky I thought I might have been eating a clove of garlic.

I didn't manage to eat them all, though I tried.

From now on, I think I'll be wary of any stranger brussel sprouts.

This morning's velocity was brought to us sideways by the number 2.

We had two rounds of:

20 side wall ball slams, each side
2 50m sprints
20 side box jumps
2 50m sprints
20 side lunges
2 50m sprints
20 barbell side bends
2 50m sprints

The wall ball slams were pretty standard, done by standing perpendicular to the wall (left shoulder close to the wall, right shoulder farthest away from the wall) about a foot away, heaving the ball from the outside hip to the wall as hard as possible for 20 bounces, then turning around to heave the opposite direction.

The box jumps were also done sideways, jumping onto the box sideways.

The side lunges were a heck of a lot easier to the right than to the left. Yay ultimate. I did have to work on my form, not really keeping my butt out and my knee aligned correctly over my ankle. The second round I wasn't able to drop down low enough, having to focus on that, too.

The barbell sidebeds were done with an empty barbell across the shoulders, along the back of the neck, shifted over so that I was holding the edge of the bar, the bulk of the bar hanging out to one side. The bends were done so that the end of the bar hanging out to the side touched the ground. Oh, to be shorter and able to touch more easily! I found this exercise difficult.

When I ran my sprints, my first few were strong. During the second round, however, my first two sets of sprints were sprint down, hunch over so as not to puke, stand up, sprint back. I noticed, however, when stepping over on my side lunges, Kris was sprinting down, planting, turning, and sprinting back. He didn't stop after 50m, he ran the full 100m in one burst.

Aha. Yes, that was how I wanted to run these sprints, which is how I ran the last two sets of sprints. Unfortunately, this didn't cure my urge to puke.

I need to sprint more.

Clearly.

"Do you think you can get two weeks with that table clear?"

I have a habit of dumping my stuff on the dining area table when I arrive home in the evening. I dump the mail on the table. I unload my bag on the table, and start working at the table.

This unfortuate habit means that the table is rarely available for actual dining. When we're having guests, I'll take all of the stuff off the table, dump it into a box, put the bx in the office, and hope that I remember to clean out the box before the bills invaribably continued in teh box are actually due.

i'm not always successful with this mode of operation.

I think that Kris recently became annoyed at the requirement of eating in front of the television, when he asked me if he thought I could go two weeks with teh horizontal space not completley filled with crap.

Two weeks. Good lord, how hard could that be? Keeping a horizontal space clear? Easy!

And I can run a 6:00 mile, too.

I asked for a few guidelines, including if I can actually use the table for working. Yes, I could use the table, I just had to clean up from using the table afer I was done. Nothing was allowed to just sit at hte table if I wasn't there with the stuff.

So, today is actually day three of fourteen. Saturday and Sunday were fairly easy, since I was in the office working. I think that most days are going to be easy, as long as I stay away from the area, working in the office.

The office. Now THERE'S a big horizontal space that needs cleaning.

Okay, yes, I know I've said my follow classmates make or break a class for me. Today simply and completely hammered home the point for me.

Today I went to the last of the three class progression that is required before I can rent time on the San Francisco Center for the Book's Vandercook letterpress proofing printers. The last Letterpress class I had was good, with the photopolymer class not so hot. I'm very glad I had taken the photopolymer class, if only to learn that I'd rather have someone else make my plates since doing so is less expensive, less time consuming and less error prone. If I hadn't taken the class, I wouldn't have known this, so lesson learned.

So, today's class was remarkably and happily hands off from Katherine, the instructor. She gaves us the text of the poem, and the framework of the project we were working on today, but didn't provide much more guidance than that. She showed us where supplies were, and guided us along the general steps, but (appropriately) did little else. This is the last class we take before heading out on our own on the communal printers - if we didn't know how to start the press, mix colors, or clean the printers, we had no right to rent time on the printers. Worse, we risked damaging the printers, so a hands-off approach was pretty much required.

For our book, I set the text for the "about us" page. I spent a good half hour trying to find the dingbats I had imagined when I mentally designed the page, so was still setting text when everyone else was off setting up pages for printing. I did print the background patterns for most of pages, running the printer on pages with translucent white on the pattern. I did manage to share somewhat, but not as much as I could have.

The books turned out nicely. I ended up with books numbered 2, 3, 4 and 6, bartering away my 2 for the book numbered 47. Much nicer.

My classmates were awesome. Once again Ann was in the class. We chatted throughout the day. I'm glad I met her. I hope to see her again.

Who was NOT in my class, I'm happy to say, was the guy who would not shut up in my photopolyer plate making class. I mention this only because he was at the Center today, taking a book binding class. I saw him around class walking back in from lunch. I chose not to acknowledge that I recognized him, still being annoyed with him for not shutting the hell up when I was listening to the last teacher.

Now that I'm trained, it's time to make the May party invites!