A long catch-up post

[rowanf]

Well, I suppose for my own bad memory I should try and capture what I've been up to lately before the computer crash took my brain away.


Friday I went caching and found a half dozen up along the foothills. I had mentioned in my "crash notice" that mr_kurt and I found the cache at Buck's finally. Buck's is a Woodside institution. Lunch hangout of venture capitalists and their clients. I think they like to show out-of-town folks how weird California is. The food is good but expensive and the decor is worth the trip. There is a narwhal horn, the rainbow false teeth, the racy cigarette cards, the velvet Elvis painting, the letter about buying Lenin's body and so, so much more! You can imagine that a geocache in amongst the clutter isn't an unreasonable thing. The cache is called, of course, The Purloined Letter. *laugh*

Saturday was the Pagan Alliance parade and festival. The parade was much reduced in size from previous years and I was disappointed that there was no banner for CoG or for NROOGD. Kurt & Arthur & I just joined the Pagan Alliance contingent but it was pretty lame all around. The festival was bigger though with more vendors and a good mix of folks on stage. We stayed for the ritual which was a fun circle done with ribbons and fairy dust by the Radical Faeries priestessed by Joi Wolfwomyn in a gorgeous green gown. The first music set which was Fontain's MUSE. We tried to get people up and dancing for Spiral Dance with some small success. It was fun, dancing in the sun with Kurt and Zaina and lots of folks I don't know. Greg was taking pictures and has a flickrstream up.

Sunday Kurt & Arthur & I went caching bright and early. We found a 4* terrain cache but we couldn't log it. We could see it but there was no way were could retrieve it. Oh well, we found others. Then at about 11am rimblemethis came down and we worked on legal papers for AMUH. We got a lot done and then I got a massage from him. Yay. Folks sloooooowly started arriving for the CoG meeting. We didn't have a quorum until about 3pm I think. But quorum we had and we actually got alot done. Owl Moon is now a member of CoG. After folks left I zoomed up to Palo Alto to meet sbisson and marypcb at MacArthur Park for dinner. I realized I hadn't been there in about 4-5 years! I used to eat there quite often. The food was still very good but the service we got was abyssmal! I don't know if they were short on staff or if the patio was just outside their mental space but it was amazingly bad. They comped us a dessert in apology. Mary brought me some soap. I am really thinking of biting the bullet and buying hundreds of dollars worth of soap. Classic Yardley English Lavender just isn't being available anymore. If I bought a case (75 bars) I'd be set for several years and not have to worry about it until then. Russell thinks I'm crazy. Anyway, Mary & Simon and I had a nice visit and they are travelling around the country doing cool journalism.

Monday, after a poor night's sleep, I went to work. Petra cancelled dancing because of an out-of-town guest and that was a blessing as I got to bed by 8:30pm. I was just sooooo exhausted from the weekend.

Tuesday after work Laurel and I went up to the Interfaith Center at the Presidio second Tuesday potluck. I had hoped to corner Paul and get him to record an introduction to one of the talks he has sent me for my podcast but things were too crazy. After eating, we watched a promo for Beyond Theology, a new PBS series on religion in the 21st century. It looks really interesting and I hope it airs here on KQED. We used the things folks said in the video as a jumping off place to talk about what is up for each of us spiritually. I talked about the tensions between the values of hospitality and caring for the stranger around immigration and my concern for the earth and overpopulation. As the Dalai Lama says, "All life is sacred, but there is too much sacred life."

Wednesday mr_kurt, saffronrose and I had lunch at Miyake with Reap's friend, Kathy. I really like her. She is an instructor for Impact amongst her many talents. I've always wanted to do that since back when it was still model mugging. Hmm. Kurt & I grabbed a new downtown Palo Alto cache very close to the restaurant. We have gotten most of the easy caches within a reasonable lunchtime distance of work so it is nice when a new one appears. Wednesday evening Kurt and Russell and I and spidernette had dinner at Bella Mia before Kurt, Nette and I headed off to see the Rep's version of Iphigenia at Aulis. They did an interesting mixture of stark modern sets, modern military and classical lines in the costumes. The Chorus was San Francisco's Dance Brigade who did some amazing taiko drumming and interpretive dance in addition to their lines. The young man who played Achilles did an amazing Keanu Reeves School of Acting performance. I thought it was actually a wonderful way to show his callowness. So, this definitely was *not* a classical production! But it was powerful and moving and I left the theatre heavy with tears.

Comments

[dalbino83.livejournal.com]

So how was the cache placed, so that you could see it but not reach it? What would it have taken to reach it?

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

It was in a tree along a branch about twice my height off the ground on the top side. The tree was on a slope too so the drop on other side was, erm, fairly dramatic. We didn't have any climbing equipment and didn't feel safe free climbing. My DNF log was something like "we came, we saw, we left - so that's a 4star terrain!"

Hello Georgous!

[hereatwitsend.livejournal.com]

Greetings from Oregon. I enjoyed reading the post. It's nice to know what you are up to (an amazing amount, as usual)

I'm sorry to hear that the parade was less well attended than usual. In my experience, many active Pagans have moved out of the area within the last few years. Even the well organized groups seem to suffer "these days.

Speaking of events, I just got this from Chris P.
You probably know about this, already, but just in case:

....please spread the word about the event to your gay male clientele: www.betweentheworlds.org"

Funny you should mention Impact. My fella was one of the instructors, back when it was Model Mugging. Great group.

I've added you to my friend's list. Thanks for the instructions!

Love,

d.