reading list

monday, I drove 2.5 hours each way down to a meeting for nutrient management credits. The one state has decided that consultants don't get to do online programs for credits anymore, so I need to go to in person meetings now. Its not the worst now that I live closer. I made it down and back in plenty of time, the meeting was fine, I got a decent amount of knitting done and chatted with some folks from my old company that I haven't seen in years. 

Tuesday I cut and split more wood, my dad brought down more trees. I filled a wood bin full and got it under cover. 

Wednesday, I drove to Ohio. This trip was originally to purchase and pickup a used donut machine for the farm. Late last week, the ebay guy bailed on me, we had been negotiating prices in messages and abruptly, the listing was gone and he stopped responding. Not sure what that was about because he said he had two of them, but whatever. Since the donut machine was in Ohio, in the city where Tyronicbob (A- from crafting night) lived, I arranged to stay with her a while ago. When the ebay guy bailed, I let her know but figured it's February, I didn't really have anything urgent going on, I could totally drive to Ohio. 

I never did anything irresponsible or impulsive in my 20s, when I feel most people do their silly impulse trips, so why not now? 

It was a 7 hour drive which on the way down, I hadn't slept super well that night and the drive dragged, I was Too Aware. I stopped several times and took at nap at one rest stop just to make sure I could keep going. Snacks and podcasts got me to A's house by 4:30 or so. I have learned that Ohio culture is putting the name of the town on the overpass bridge in case you don't know where you are and all the other signs aren't helpful enough. The city A- is in had some traffic but overall, the drive was quiet. I didn't have any long haul driving buddies which always makes me a little sad. 

When I arrived, I was pretty tired, but we settled in and chatted and watched some olympics events as background noise and then we ate tacos that she had made ahead of time and put in the fridge. We relaxed, watched some stuff and chatted more, then we got talking about the podcast Kill James Bond and Abigail Thorne's writing/directing/performance of The Prince and A- put it on the tv. It was phenomenal! What a cool play, cast and performance. The recording is on Nebula, not sure if a subscription is required, but wow, super worth it if you do have to pay. The plot is that people get stuck in Shakespeare performances as the characters and are trying to escape. It's so full of feelings and it's so good as a recorded live performance. After that, sleep time for me. 

A- did some funky stuff to adjust her sleep schedule enough to be awake and aware during the daytime and we watched some hockey before heading over to the conservatory. It was absolutely so cool! There was beautiful glasswork interspersed with the plants and they had an orchid greenhouse on display with all sorts of winding paths and absolutely bursting with plants. They also had a desert greenhouse and a butterfly greenhouse although the butterflies were only just hatching and being released. Extremely cool and the colors of plants and different shapes and layouts, the rocks, the paths, the glassworks. Super cool and really awesome work. 

Then we went and ate lunch at a nearby market, which had a bunch of small food stalls inside a big warehouse building. We got somali food, which was stuff on rice, absolutely delicious and warm and filling. Then we got ice cream, which was from a local place, smooth and creamy and delicious. A- drove the long way everywhere we went to give me a tour of the city and all the neat things, then we headed to a historic neighborhood to an incredible bookstore. 

This bookstore is in two back to back connected uhh, closest thing I can describe them as is triplexes, but really they took these buildings and opened up some doors between them and created just a labyrinth bookstore. The website says it has 32 rooms, but they're all small and narrow and weirdly laid out and there's nooks of shelves everywhere. It's so cool. It took us over an hour to find our way up to the third floor where the scifi and fantasy section was. All the books they carry are new but they had a ton of more obscure books. Really cool. I bought a bunch of books, some nonfiction, some fiction. 

A- was starting to get tired, so we headed back to the house and I settled in to watch some snowboarding and she took a nap. We ate lunch leftovers for dinner and then watched more olympics. We created a delightful game as we watched the pairs ice dance free skate replay. So pairs figure skating is mostly about having dramatic feelings (love or tragic) and most of the music is pretty boring. So instead of listening to the music, we created better romance stories for the pairs based on an element of the performance and hashed it out to a movie plot. It was so much fun. For instance, the USA team had the flamenco/matador inspired performance, so we decided that the plot was actually about the movie that was being made about matadors, the woman was the talent scout for the local area, the man was the local bull wrangler who loved his bulls very much. The movie was a disaster due to the director's conflict with the lead actor and the talent scout pulled the bull wrangler into being her local guide and help until she got frustrated with the director and just shoved the bull wrangler into being the lead in the movie. He does it under protest and that's his only acting role ever. The talent scout decides to stay in spain to stay with the bull wrangler because he just wants to go back to taking care of his sweet little babies (the bulls) and she's a bitch with a clipboard (h/t to Sonnet from craft nights for this phrase/person type) and can wrangle people in spain who need wrangling and they live happily ever after. 

The only ones we didn't make up stories for were the Cleopatra performance (look ma, no hands was the absolute best lift ever), the matrix performance, the Dune one and the scottish performance (so oddly done that we didn't think they really thought it through. they could have changed the music and the costumes to be so much better, We Had Opinions). We came up with first mate/captain on the high seas Moby Dick style, jewel heist, spy romance, research historian/archivist, godzilla attacking the city and only the jet fighter/nuclear scientists could stop it but it's a tragedy so godzilla won in the end, an alien invasion blows up paris and they have to flee and he's secretly a parasitic alien and they blow up the other aliens and fall in love, and some others that I can't remember right now, but what an absolute delight to banter back and forth and build a little story out of pretty meh music. The performances were all great but honestly, dramatic/tragic feelings is very boring at this point. I wish I could find photos of everyone competing since that would help me remember all the stories, but I can't find a good feed for just photos and the replays have been removed, so oh well. 

I went to bed after that because it was responsible of me to do. 

This morning I got up around 6, ate breakfast and was on the road by 7am. A- did some split sleep to see me off and so she'd be good for work tonight and I drove home. I did have a tractor trailer driving buddy for a couple hours on the highway which was nice. I got into a good driving zone today, let the podcasts roll and the time passed quickly and I wasn't too aware of it which was nice. 

I got in, went and laid in bed for an hour, went to take a shower and my dad accidentally let the outdoor burner go mostly out so the water was cold, so I went and got that started back up and took a shower at my parents house instead. 

It was an absolute delight to hang out with A-, she is so sweet and fun and great to hang out with in person, not just on the internet. Her cat was a chatty little goof too. It was so nice and I'm so glad I went even though it was a long drive and a short trip. So much fun! That's 3/3 internet friends being absolute delights in person, so I'm on a roll.