I stabbed myself yesterday while setting the mail on my newly de-junked glass workbench. I don’t know what did it and I thought maybe a just bruised myself for a few minutes. I pierced the back of my hand an inch below where my pinky & ring finger meet. It didn’t bleed much like palms/fingers which made me nervous because I don’t want anything in my hand that was on the mystery object. The gash is about a centimeter long.

Paul went to Vancouver B.C. for the weekend for a NW Shambhala Administration meeting of some sort. For all of the freedom and free time I accomplished the following this weekend:

• produced 2 x 70 minute Podcasts
• was interviewed by a Portland State University Student
• hung 8 pictures at Fuego
• went grocery shopping
• dropped off items for the salvation army
• 1 batch of laundry
• 1 load of dishes
• cleaned the bathroom
• organized my bookshelves
• watched 6 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while crocheting a shawl
• cleaned the dining room
• oiled the kitchen table
• ran 4 miles
• defaced my jumbo Thoth tarot by cutting off the borders (big improvement)
• drank tequila and spend 6 hours organizing my spare room while listening to the shins.

I think I lack imagination …

Very shortly after I spent the weekend clearing my garage a new space for my Study Group opened up. I’m hoping good things come from this weekend cleaning too.

Paul surprised me with tickets to the shins. Feel free to sing along while you play the video … The Shins relocated to Portland a while back. At the moment they are my favorite band in the world. The concert was at the Crystal Ballroom. It was a complete surprise. They had been sold out for a month. I was tired and cranky waiting for the shins to start. It became very clear to me why I don’t see bands on week nights. There were some people 10 years younger than we were talking about how they were usually in bed by now. So I didn’t feel quite so bad. The lead singer, James Mercer was a bit squirly and didn’t really seem to want to be there. Its probably why I like him and his music. He appears very creative, strange and anti-social.

Frozen into coats,
White girls of the North,
Fire past one, fire the one
They are the fabled lambs,
A Sunday ham,
The ancient snow.

And they can float above the grass,
In circles if they tried,
A latent power I know they hide,
To keep some hope alive,
That a girl like I
Could ever try,
Could ever try.

So we just skirt the hallway signs,
A phantom and a fly,
Follow the lines and wonder why
There’s no connection.

And weakened falling eyes,
In cheap shots from the tribe,

And we’re often in Marcus’ porch again,
For another afternoon of the goat-head tunes,
And pilfered booze.

We wander through her mama’s house,
The milk from the window lights,
Family portrait circa ninety-five,
This is that foreign land,
With the sprayed on tans,
And it all feels fine,
Be it silk or slime,

So, when they tap our mundane heads,
To zombie-walk in our stead,
This town seems hardly worth our time,
And we’ll no longer memorize or rhyme,
Too fall along in our crime,
Stepping over what now towers to the sky,
With no connection.

Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo

So, when they tap our Mundane heads,
To zombie-walk in our stead,
This town seems hardly worth our time,
And we’ll no longer memorize or rhyme,
Too fall along in our crime,
Stepping over what now towers to the sky,
With no connection.

Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo
Oooh waooooooo waooooooo (repeat to fade)

Prior to the Shins we went out to dinner. Paul’s directorship of the Portland Shambhala center finally has an upside to it. Many weeks ago, he got an e-mail that a sangha member had written an book and would be in town. A general offer of hospitality was offered; rides, billeting, meals, etc. In the last few weeks, in part due to an appearance on the daily show, Ishmael Beah has taken the world by storm.

We took him out to a very spicy Indian dinner. He is really such a nice guy. He said something about color and language I thought was very interesting. In his native language, the word for blue is the same word as sky. It can be used in either way. But when you are describing something as blue you still picture the essential nature of the sky.

Ishmael also talked about being on the Daily Show. Said Jon Steward was really funny. (good thing) What impressed me about the whole thing was how touched Jon Steward was.  I listened to the Fresh Air Interview, and while Teri Gross got some interersting information out of him, I thought Jon Stewart better captured what it was like to interact with Ishmael.

I have had various personal interest websites over the years. Many of which have fallen into disrepair and various states of stagnation. I’ve decided to pull them into wordpress because I really can’t be bothered to maintain them as html files and it seems sad for them to disappear all together. I pulled my handwork pages in and they are very dusty and broken. I’m sure its been 3-4 years since they have been touched. Some one e-mailed me and asked why a link was broken. I wonder how that happened.

It took as long to set up redirects as it did to convert the pages. Now they all look very 1990 but it is moving forward.

I’m wondering today if it is really time to create a proper theme for my blog instead of casually switching free wordpress themes.

Last night Beth and I went to the Jade Sauna. Sunny treated us rough with her ex-foliation mits. The last time I went was my birthday last year.

Afterwards I went to Uwajimaya which is an Asian superstore in Beaverton. It is a huge and disorienting place. It is very interesting to see what is considering to be food in other parts of the world. I try to pick out something new every time I go. I’m not super adventurous and only pick things that look reasonably promising. One favorite is Ka Pi Duc, Rice Cake.

Ingredients: Rice, Salt, Water, Red Bean Paste or Green Bean Paste, Sesame Oil, Mug wort or White Bean Paste.

My niece Eden fell in love with them when she visited at 9 months or so. She was teething. I have a conditioned response to them and want to paint a room in my house.

Years ago I tried out a snack and fell in love with it and had never seen it again. It was a peanut wrapped in rice/flour shell with soy sauce and seaweed flakes. I have looked and looked and looked. I have wondered if I would recognize it. Out of no where, and sub-verbally tempting fate I found a package. A very small package.

It is called Kasugai Peanut & You. Even with a bag in hand I’m not sure what they are called. Kasugai seems to be a brand name. There are the words (Soft Mame) that might describe it. The Kasugai website is as strange and confusing as you might hope.

My valentines gift came early too but it was PINK and engraved with a bible quote.

It says “Love knows no limit to its endurance”

The card reads as follows:

Love knows no limit to its endurance no end to its trust, Love still stands when all else has fallen – Corinthians

I LOVE YOU, LEISA

Totally yours-Paul

I’m not sure what is more suprising, the pinkness of it all or the quote. Pink is the last color on the frontier for me of color preference. Pauls says he is trying to expand my color boundaries. This is coming from the man who pink and other girl colors burn like holy water on a vampire.

Pink

Any of a group of colors reddish in hue, of medium to high lightness, and of low to moderate saturation.

From Wikipedia

The color pink is now associated with womanhood and little girls, just like light blue is associated with little boys and manhood. However, in 1918 “Infant’s Department” (an industry publication) said the reverse was the “generally accepted rule”, describing pink as “more decided and stronger” while blue was “more delicate and dainty” [1]. Pink continued to be used for both boys’ and girls’ clothing through the early 1960s, though it is becoming more and more associated with femininity.

boys.

Pink

At right is displayed the web color Pink.

This color is identical to the color Tamarisk, the color of the flowers of the Tamarisk plant.