Well, Prakash arrived…

Well, Prakash arrived last night, and I gotta say, it's nice having some company. I think he's only planning on staying at Kevin's a night or two, but even after that, he's not so far away. I'm about 8 blocks from Kev's, and Prakash is abuot 8 blocks from each of us, very roughly. A convenient little equilateral triangle.

I love having someone to cook for! Last night I fed him leftovers, the Moroccan vegetable tajine that David and I made last week. I had frozen it, and it thawed without any trouble. Today I'll make something new; probably curry, but maybe more of that lemon pepper walnut chicken. We'll see...

Today we both start equipping our apartments. First to the grocery store for things like toilet paper and dish soap. Then drop those off. Then to the Fred Meyer (like a Super KMart - everything + groceries) which is near his place to get things like bath mats and wastebaskets. We don't have a car 'til Kevin comes back, so we probably won't get everything we need today (the vacuum cleaner, for example, will have to wait).

Then probably break for lunch, and then it's off to the futon store. I'm planning on buying two (which will make a serious dent in my furniture budget), one for the bedroom and one to be a couch/sleeping place for guests in the living room. Roshani and Tom are coming to visit at the end of August; it'd be nice to have the place look semi-civilized (though actualy, we'll probably still put them up at Kevin's, since he has an actual guest room/study with a door they can close.

I know, this probably doesn't sound like such a thrilling day, but I'm actually reasonably excited. I like decorating a new place; it's funny, but I think I had really just finished with the House in Oakland. I'd gotten down to the nitpicky level of a small mirror for the guest room, and Christmas tablecloths...there just wasn't that much left to do, between the efforts of El and myself (what, you think the *boys* ever even thought about buying things for the house? Don't be silly...:-)

It's a little scary, in retrospect, how much things divided down gender lines. El and I did the bulk of the indoor cleaning/cooking (well, El did most of the cleaning once she moved in, but before that, I did), Ian did most of the heavy yard work, though El and I both did lots of gardening too, and Cliff took out the trash. (If this does not seem like an entirely equitable distribution of chores...well...it wasn't. Poor Ellie. I hope they get a neat freak in to replace me). I guess more muscles explains why the boys got the slightly heavier jobs, but really -- none of them required that much muscle. I could easily have taken out the trash; it's on rollers. I guess social training really is pretty hard to break.

Anyway, to get back to my original point, I'm excited, I'm having a hard time motivating to do online work right now, I hope Prakash wakes up soon, and umm...that's about it, I think. I guess I'll go quietly practice the guitar since I probably won't get a chance later and it's really about time for him to wake up anyway. :-) I've added "Red is the Rose" and "Star of the County Down" to "Streets of London", so I now have three songs that I can play really really slowly with some errors. :-)

Hmm...maybe I'll try to hunt up a couple more. Hey, David, when you pack that box of stuff, if you could toss the blue book in too, that'd be great. The Asian cookbook, the blue book, Fannie Farmer, the veggie pasta cookbook (pink), and anything else you can cram in (in that order)...(hmm...if Ellie's not home, then you probably shouldn't take any other cookbooks, since many of them are hers and you don't know which is which)

Oh, one more quick note, for those interested, from Jed, "My dict says: 'tiger-eye or tiger's-eye (ca 1891): a usu. yellowish to grayish brown chatoyant stone that is much used for ornament and is a silicified crocidolite.' Whatever that means.

It also says "cat's-eye (1599): any of various gems (as a chrysoberyl or a chalcedony) exhibiting opalescent reflections from within." So the word "cat's-eye" came first. My info about "cat's-eye" referring to the synthetics came from a street vendor; I suspect the true answer is that there've been gems called cat's-eyes for a long time, someone named a particular stone a tiger's-eye, and then modern science developed artificial stones that looked like colored tiger's-eyes and named them cat's-eyes. But I have no particular basis for thinking that.

Especially because crocidolite turns out to be a blue or green mineral... Maybe it's just that the commercial-grade blue and green stones are artificial, or maybe it was just the particular ones that particular guy had for sale..."

Thank you, Jed. :-)

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