Rowan's Round of Days

This has been a busy week. After an absolutely wonderful birthday I dove back into the office. I had started a project last week and figured I had about 8 hours to go on it... and it was something I could do from home. So Tuesday I banged away at that and it turned out to be more like 9-1/2 hours so I had a bit to finish up this morning. But I'm done with that.

At lunch yesterday I popped over to a local TB hotel and grabbed a travel bug that is on its way to Australia. I'll get it as far as NZ and that should help.

I realized the other day that I hadn't done the updates on my hobby statistics that I usually do at the end of a year. So nothing special about 1/9/08 but here I go:

Where's George:

You have entered 15,382 Bills worth $72,181
Bills with hits: 2,293 Total hits: 2,708
Hit rate: 14.91% Slugging Percentage: 17.60% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,100.93
Your rank (based on George Score) is #762
(out of 50,618 current users with a George Score. [98.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in California is: 60 out of 10,286 [99.4]

Milestones - a state county bingo in Hawaii (got the Kauai hit today!)

Geocaching:

*Total Caches Found 716
Traditional Caches * 616
Multi-caches * 30
Virtual Caches * 31
Letterbox Hybrids * 1
Event Caches * 10
Unknown (Mystery) Caches * 17
Project APE Caches * 1
Webcam Caches * 2
Locationless (Reverse) Caches * 4
Cache In Trash Out Events * 2
Earthcaches * 2
NGS Benchmarks 18

And I've hidden four caches

Total Trackables Moved/Discovered 258
Total Trackables Owned 129

Obviously caching hasn't been the obsession in 2007 that it was in 2005-2006. But I think it is picking up again. I'm looking forward to looking for caches in New Zealand.


I'm not sure what metrics one would use for Second Life. Falkenrath has 5,958M of land (between Scar & I) plus I have the 512M Ros' Mermaid Grotto on Vargas (which is for sale since I never visit). I am on more hours a week than I care to count. Ninetails doesn't wear a tracker so my inworld stats aren't up-to-date. I have almost 2500 images on flickr of which over 2,000 are of SL. Anything else you'd like to know?

This week has pretty much been taken up with hard work during the day and watching olympics at night. Not much to report. Last night I went with Kurt & Marina & Arthur down to Santa Cruz to go English Country Dancing. It was fun. We saw naomifine and other friends. It was a pleasure to dance again.

Today I pretty much spent the whole day working on the second episode of Interfaith Today which has now been uploaded. This one has a talk Charles Gibbs made on the URI's Vision at the conference I went to back in August. I'm still plagued by the learning curve. I re-recorded my little intro like 4-5 times trying to eliminate machine noise. I have somewhere between 57-77 listeners based on downloads of the first episode. Go me!

In hobby news, no caching today but I did get a George hit in the elusive state of West Virginia. Only three states to go before I have 50 state bingo - KY, DE and WY. West Virginia is a really hard one for west coast Georgers so I'm pretty stoked.

I'm off to meet Russell for dinner at Habana Restaurant. Fried plantains here I come!

The week is flying by! I feel like I have so much to do before the handfasting on Sunday... but I can't quite think what. gwebbyhead came by last night and dropped off my silk blouse. It doesn't look very piratical but it is just lovely! And the blue skirt sets it off beautifully. If it wouldn't be in the way I'd wear a merkaba circle veil as a wrap. Another day for that. It will be magnificent!

And the hat! The hat isn't really for the handfasting, I just couldn't resist getting Gwen's professional hand at the decorating. It is a red hat I bought at the last Dicken's Faire. One of those lady's top hats that works for either Elizabethan or Victorian costume. Gwen did a wonderful job of using the ribbons and feathers and the killer black-with-stars tulle from Mendel's to turn out an extremely stylish confection. Since I did give people the option of wearing "big hats" at the High Tea reception I may have to change out of my rainbow silks into something I can wear the hat with. Or not. We shall see.

I really I mostly want to dither around worrying about what I'm forgetting... but since I was out last week and will be out next week, I am actually being really good about buckling down and getting work done. I have finished a couple of searches and am working on two totally killer searches that are out of my usual area of expertise. There just aren't humanities resources the way there are tech resources! I hate feeling less than competent!

I finished Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince Tuesday night (it came Monday as it had to come from England... I refuse to read the "translated" US versions). Huh. I hate cliff hangers. Not a bad read though. I love that it outsold summer blockbuster movies on its opening weekend. The last figure I saw was it sold 8.9 million copies in the first 24 hours.

I called around to banks yesterday and found that Union Bank in Menlo Park has new $1 bills. I went and got $200 worth. Oh fresh new, serial number order bills! I don't care if they are San Francisco FRB. Entering serial numbers is so much easier when you can cut and paste and just change one digit! They had fresh $5s too. I will have lots of georges to spend in Vegas next week. :-) I did hit the elusive, George Score of 1,000 today, coming in at 1000.65.

Okay, I'm going back to work now. Hopefully Russell and I get to see Howl's Moving Castle tonight. I understand it strays a good bit from the book but is wonderful Miyazaki animation. I am glad Kurt mentioned it was in town!

My it has been a busy weekend. Saturday I helped get ready for a couple of initiations. It was wonderful to have a large cross-section of the NROOGD Elder community gathered in my home. We had a wonderful kick-ass couple of rites (but please no more doubles... lots of energy expended). And then we feasted. And oooooh my, the food! There was a "Low Carb Beefed-Up Meat Loaf" with a layer of proscuitto in the middle that was incredibly tasty. Plus two kinds of lasagna, goat meatballs, pine nut and veggie balls, homemade cheesecake, chocolate cake, an amazing fruit salad, a green salad and lots more that I'm just not remembering. [Hmm. I think there is one more left over serving of meatloaf. I'm making myself hungry!] Folks left around 1:30am Sunday. I fell into bed by about 2am (even I had to tidy just a little just so as to not face it in the morning). And got up by about 7am because my body is just used to getting up at 5am or earlier and thinks 7am is incredibly late. *yawn*

I puttered around, cleaned up, played Snood, read more of the 4th Obernewtyn book, The Keeping Place, and was ready to head off to Sacramento at 1pm when Gremlin arrived. We got to Hukilau Island Grill at 16th & "O" Sts just on time at 3pm. The traffic was fairly heavy but we allowed plenty of time. When we got there R.J. and Diane were already there. We were joined by Todd, Rogue Noir, Wendy Sue, Edna, California Girl, Ratster and George-celeb guest, Holly by Golly (HbG) from Oregon. Holly was the first person to host a George gathering back in about 2000 or 2001. We had a great time. Our waiter, Sean, had never heard of the site through he thought he had probably seen marked bills before. We had a back room space and were able to be loud, move around the table and generally revel. The pulled pork was very good. I had some leftovers for breakfast this morning. Oh happy me! This has been a great eating weekend... and there is neighborhood BBQ yet to come!

This morning has been really lovely. mr_kurt came over early. We did an interview via Skype with polyweekly. Which reminds me, someone asked for the link to the list of sexy podcasts and since I don't remember who that was I'll just post it. I have been having fun listening to folks. The world is probably really glad I don't have time to take up podcasting! I'm not sure what my topic would be. Probably something magical/interfaith rather than sex. But the whole be-your-own-radio-producer thing is just sooooo cool!

gwebbyhead and spidernette came by and visited and I got to give Gwen my favorite outgrown cowgirls shirts that I had been agonizing over giving to Goodwill. *happy dance* I am so glad to have thought of that. And she is even moving to Texas in a month so probably having a few more western shirts in her wardrobe is all to the good. *laugh*

In another couple of hours it will be off to the BBQ and then on to fireworks tonight. I love fireworks.

( meatloaf recipe with notes by the friend who brought it )