Wonderful weekend

The weekend included...

Homework, which I really enjoyed and it helped me make sense of something that seemed totally useless before. Turns out it's not so useless.

Band Hero with friends, Rock Band with family.

Keeping an oh-so-pregnant friend company while she deals with the frustrations of being 9 months pregnant...

Homemade "Nuttie Buddie" ice cream - spanish peanuts are way better than regular

Playing with my several cats

Lots of time with friends and family

Making the ATK flourless chocolate cake with friends

Being understood and heard about sickness and grad school and thinking

Time with my soul sister, just being together, doing the trivial things of life and loving it

Finally seeing The King's Speech and thoroughly enjoying the movie and quoting the movie the rest of the weekend.

Exceptionally delicious brunch at my temporary home with fantastic people that I hadn't seen in too long. The menu included:

Fresh local peaches and blueberries with whipped cream

Omelets with fresh basil, sauteed green peppers, and cheddar or feta cheese

Local fresh bacon

Delicious coffee

Wonderful conversation

My birthday's in a week! There will be a pool party with an ice cream sundae potluck. Only gluten-free toppings allowed. Sound familiar, Ithacans? We didn't have a pool, but we did have delicious ice cream :).

Stories

I'm now in my housesitting house. It's a beautiful home. Floating in the pool in the backyard, the house really looks like it came out of a magazine. Inside it's also pretty - the kitchen is by far my favorite room, with the master bedroom suite a close second. The cats have been a bit of a pain - they terrify Ella, they only eat canned cat food (which smells really bad), and apparently they have rather sensitive stomachs and tend to throw up... their owners failed to mention that bit. Otherwise, it's nice to have my own space, it's nice to have a dishwasher, I love having the pool, and it's fun to be in a pretty house.

I have realized that one of the reasons I often didn't blog much when I was living at home was that I already had someone to tell my stories to, and so often I was too tired to tell them once and type them once. I'm going to try to get better.

Yesterday I really lived up all the perks here. I came home, got in the pool, swam some laps, tried to do my own water aerobics (I look ridiculous but no one can see me!), and then just floated. Afterward, I went to the veggie garden and picked a tomato and some basil. Then, for dinner, I had sauteed summer squash (from their fridge) with a tomato, basil, and cheddar omelet. The only thing I actually purchased for dinner was the juice I drank (raspberry pomegranate goji, yum). Everything else came as a part of the house. Then, I loaded the dishwasher and headed off to LSA.

I had a dream with Abdu'l-Baha in it the other night. That was interesting. I'd never actually dreamed about Abdu'l-Baha before. Overall, it was a cool dream. Reassuring, although the end was annoying. In the dream, I was completely exhausted and finally going to bed at 3 am, and then my (real) alarm went off and it was time to get ready for work. I still felt exhausted.

Last night I dreamt that someone kidnapped me repeatedly and forced me to use some special powers for evil, and I and the other kidnapees were trying to thwart them...

I think my new medication is giving me strange dreams in general, making me subconsciously not want to go to bed. I keep getting to bed far too late.

Today, my fellow new co-worker and I got a new "toy" - a new software program to do the things I've been wanting to do but not had the tools to do at work. I'm excited to go back on Monday and continue playing with it and getting it set up to do amazing things for us. :)

Now, off to Thursday Night Dinner with my family! Afterwards, I'll be showing friends how to make the flourless chocolate cake from America's Test Kitchen, which we'll take to Feast tomorrow night. Yum!

Back in Carolina, on the beach!

Day before yesterday I came down to join my family at one of the beaches outside of Charleston. We have a little house right on the beach - nothing fancy, but it's air conditioning, a porch, and guaranteed parking! Yesterday, we saw quite the wildlife - there are more rocks here on this beach than the one we usually go to, so at low tide, there are lots of crabs! It's so much fun to find them in and among the rocks. Yesterday we probably saw a dozen, the largest one about the size of two fists together. Being people, we poked at it with a huge clam shell that we found. The crab, of course, needed to defend itself and pinched at the shell with its claw. Even though I was expecting it, it delighted me and scared me, the feeling and sound of claw on shell :). I keep poking at it and giggling and shrieking when it clawed the shell. We also saw a bunch of sea urchins, and some tubular creatures attached to a rock. I think they're related to polyps and sea anemones, but they're not quite those. They're soft and shrink back when you poke them ;). The other creatures we saw were: a gecko, a bunch of pelicans, a tiny tiny hermit crab, another very small white "ghost" crab (my description) that buried in the sand. When you nudge the sand near it, it scrambles underneath the sand to another spot! We also saw a dead jellyfish that looked a lot like the ghosts from Super Mario World.

Today we went farther down on the island, where the houses end, and looked for dolphins and crabs, and saw both! Even J, with her broken foot, got to see a bunch of crabs, and I still delighted in poking at them with a shell :). Some scurried away, some pinched at me. Dad and I went a little farther and found some tidal pools among the rocks, and we saw crabs, larger minnows and two live starfish, as well as sea urchins. I felt like a 5 year old, perched on a rock in the middle of the tidal pool, poking and shrieking and giggling at the crabs. Dad very sweetly said that he hoped I always had that 5 year old inside me.

While we were walking back, I saw a dolphin way out, tried to use cloud shapes to describe where they were, but it didn't work. When we were closer to the beach access, we saw at least 2 if not 3 or more dolphins much closer in, and everyone got to see them!

I've been re-reading a fun book that J brought, and I thoroughly enjoyed these two quotes.

"How many times have you told me that everybody gets lucky breaks in business but not everybody is ready for them? Well, it's true about love, too. I've been planning my marriage my whole life beach I'm smart enough to know that's the most important decision I'll ever make, and now Roger's here, and I'm ready to go. And you two are going to miss it when it comes for you because you don't want to believe because if it isn't true, you'll be disappointed."

(talking about love and relationships again)

"You have to be sensible. It's not silly love songs and sloppy kisses, it's dangerous. People die for it. People die from it. Wars are fought. Empires fall. It can ruin your life." (the italics were in the book)

The first one I thought was interesting, the second I found very funny.

Pilgrimage was amazing and difficult and wonderful and indescribable. I did find some phrases in one of my favorite Baha'i books that I felt described the experience well. Those will come when I get home. Now time for more beach!