penny pressings.

it's been a busy weekend. a weekend packed full of activities, none of which have been cleaning. cleaning on weekends is for responsible people.

friday night i went with fatima and daman to their friend's raw food potluck. fatima and i separately researched what to bring for our respective contributions and ended up making the exact same thing. the minor differences to our dishes involved a different type of mango and her predictable addition of pepper. you see she told me she was making salsa. what i later came to understand was that she was arbitrarily named the salad we both brought as 'salsa', most likely in an attempt to justify her wanton use of the pepper spice. what was our respectively samesalad you ask? it was mango avocado salad and it was good. it's a simple recipe with olive oil, lime juice, cilantro and black sesame seeds.

i almost exploded in my effort to finish the salad and get to fatima and daman's in time only to find a non-stressed couple peaceful in the belief that arriving late to potlucks is the coolest choice. because of their fine example, i rethought my own combustible attitude and adopted theirs instead. after all, as brian says, fatima and daman have rock star auras. this is something i had overlooked about them, but now that brian brings it up, i can see it very clearly.

when we got to the potluck we were greeted by brian who was dressed in a dealer's bib/apron and green visor. this potluck was not in fact allowed to be a potluck. it was euphemised as a casino night--with no gambling, but with the luck and laughs that raw foods provide. brian had all the casino trappings including a cards themed magnetic dart board, hanging cards emblems, card table covered in a black jack green felt thing, and the best, i thought, was one of those picture things. in this case the picture thing was a king of hearts and a queen of diamonds with the head cut out and you put your head in and get your pic taken. you know what i'm talking about. anyways there were some raw foodists in the living room, some of which who were colouring in colouring books. we shook hands with a number of them and exchanged names. brian got fatima and i a colouring book and we dove right into the colouring. there was a guy named wayne who really took a shine to fatima. he was acting strange right off the bat which i took as "oh he's an odd person" and nothing else. fatima said he was drunk already. maybe we're both right. anyways wayne kept offering fatima crayons like a waitor suggesting a fine wine. then he started colouring on her page. he drew a very strange picture of some kind of white beast-roast. meanwhile i was intent on my own colouring of the lotus which i did a very good job at. in the midst of this i lost my sock. literally. it just so happened that i was wearing the world's most slack-lazy-good-for-nothing socks, which as soon as i got to work that morning proceeded to find their niche in my shoe, snuggled half way down my foot in the cozy arch pocket. so when i kneeled down at the coffee table to colour, the slightest movement would take my sock right off my foot. well i was busy colouring and i didn't want to deal with the lazy sock in question so i put it in my pocket and forgot about it. so when i was done with the colouring and sat back against the wall, i looked for my sock and could not find it. "i lost my sock." i said to fatima and daman. "how can you lose your sock??" they questioned me incredulously. "it must be in your shoe." said fatima. "it isn't." i insisted. gradually i made myself understood that i had had socks on entering the living room. after sitting there a while i suddenly thought of my pocket, reached my hand in and pulled out the sock. "i found my sock." i told fatima who relayed the information to daman. it was best that we were all on the same page about my sock's whereabouts.

there was a competition for prizes. we had to label our food. fatima and i put our respective same rawfoodsalads on opposite counters. mine was named mango avocado salad #1 and hers was #2. other foods there included the raw taco--i never had it but everyone said it was really good. also a raw food version of mashed potatoes--this was a bit baffling to me, because it was the only thing i ate that i didn't like, but all the raw foodies were exclaiming in delight over it. maybe your taste buds change a bit. anways there was also a caesar salad with almond croutons that i really liked and a salad with almonds, and peppers and tomato (i think) that was quite tasty. someone made almond milk, there was raw chocolate, ice cream, fruit salad, and a very good chocolate banana pudding. unfortunately the last thing on my plate was the 'potatoes' and the guy who made it was sitting near by so i felt compelled to eat it. fatima had a similar experience with her 'potatoes'. well one does what one has to do.

brian had some people, including himself eat blind folded so as to taste the flavours more completely. daman filmed brian eating and interviewed him. fatima and shared a chair and participated in some antics designed to get daman's attention but only succeeded in amusing ourselves. we also occasionally threw in our own two bits on such things as the tips for blind eating as learned from adam via little house on the prairie.

we ended up sitting at the green table the rest of the night, only when my bum became numb fatima sat on daman's lap instead. our new friend sanjay joined us too. he wants us to watch earthlings. he says it's dubbed 'the vegan maker'. we talked, goofed around, played magnetic darts and took photos. daman let me use his camera. he had this new flash that i absolutely loved and really really want. "you should give it to her." fatima said to daman. "she wants it." ha. what a good buddiji she is to me. for some reason daman didn't want to part with his new 300 dollar flash, but since it wasn't pentax compatible, i wasn't too broken up about this. besides he let me play with it all i wanted. it was fun. unfortunately i kept putting the flash right in sanjay's face. i dont' know why he was such a baby about it. sanjay shared with us about how changing to the vegan lifestyle changed his life.

we did some improv. this was involved making animal noises and not much else. this girl amy showed us a card trick and this other guy richard, a mind trick. both of these had sanjay right off the wall. he was funny to watch. then we voted for the dishes in each category that we liked. we kind of stacked things in our favour for the salad, so we won for salads and overall 4th place. what we won was a straw goat from ikea. fatima and i are splitting it. we're going to take it to various locations around vancouver. right now it's on her balcony enjoying the yaletown view.

just before we left we all squished into the kitchen. i don't know why--just because we could. pictures of this event can be seen on fb. on the drive back to fatima and daman's we discussed the evening and all agreed it was a lot funner than we thought it was going to be and very interesting. daman admitted to us that he didn't really like any of the food (except ours of course). he wanted fried chicken.

we were going to watch movies when we got back but it was already 11:30 so we talked instead. daman gave me a copy of photoshop. he gave me the whole shebang. now i just have to master installing it and all my photoshop dreams will have come true. daman went to bed sometime and fatima and i kept talking. i started to feel tired, and got up to go. that's when i looked at the time: 2:56am. you may wonder what we can talk about for so long. well we've always been this way together. i remember talking all night some nights when i had my separate phone line in nanaimo. we have a talking problem.

i got to bed a little after 3:30 am and dad woke me up at 9am to ask if i could take esther to gramma's party. i had actually meant to email her and tell her i could but didn't get around to it. so i needed to get ready right away and drive to her place and pick up the keys to her car, drive to evan's army base, switch cars, drive back and pick them all up and drive out to peace arch hospital, hogg pavilion. and that's what i did. i got temporarily lost in the army base, but soon enough found my way. a nice army guy held the door open for me and another nice old army guy behind the desk happily took my key. he reminded me of a ward clerk.

we stopped at save-on so i could buy a rotisserie chicken. this year i splurged to get the herby one with a lemon shoved into it's cavity where organs and guts used to be. this year's birthday bash was more subdued than previous years. less people, notably auntie heather dictating line-ups and stuff. but we did miss her and uncle dennis. i took a lot of pictures which i will post after i get said installation success. they would have been a 100 times better if i had a FLASH. this is my new photography equipment goal. perhaps a tax refund treatsie. so anyways there was a lot of good food, and katie and girls were there. we suffered equally with the overpowering heat of the room. we had cherry cheese cake. we talked. there were piano and singing performances. madelaine, michealah, mary, evan jr. and i all went outside for a while, fooled around in the lovely mild coolness and took fun pictures. evan and mary played hide and go seek.

we took a group shot photo which i discovered i look hideous in. ugh. why did i have to pull my face back into my neck like that?? you would have thought i'd have learned not to do that!

we got back to evan and esther's after 4:30. evan wasn't there. he was late coming home because he threw my key in the garbage. at first esther and i thought he was kidding. it's something i would have said to him, afterall. but no, he really did throw it into the dumpster and had to go in after it.

i played with carmen and evan. we read stories and made up stories. evan particularly liked it when i changed the story to have him and carmen in it and changed everybody into cousins. carmen went along with it at first but then had to have the real story told, which evan resisted. esther made really yummy roast chicken (with a lemon in the orifice) and roast veggies--the perfect way--with the crusty carmalized edges.

evan road on my back to bed. he found great delight in steering my head into walls and furniture. i told them some bed time stories about a prince evan and princess carmen with flying black horses. carmen added details as we went. one had a moral about helping each other because they loved each other and the other about helping with chores around the house. ha! i just made it up as i went.

we watched the ghosts of girlfriends past. it was ok, but super casual about sex which wasn't my fave. it was funny the way they spoofed 'a christmas carol' with it.

i slept downstairs with many afghans and wasn't too cold.

i woke up when i heard evan and esther leave. i got up and had a shower in which i used up all the rest of the hot water. carmen woke up in the middle of my shower and came in to pee. "oh well." i thought about the clear shower curtain. "auntie laura, girls are different than women." she explained to me. "they are?" i asked. "yes" and she proceeded to explain the physical additions that women have as opposed to girls. i told her she had to leave when i came out to get dressed. she touched my underwear on the counter "grown ups wear jammies under their clothes." she said. "that's grown up underwear." i explained. she said grown up underwear was so big because grown ups had such big bums.

carmen sat on the counter as i got down the cereal. the way she looked at me i wondered if perhaps she wasn't allowed but i didn't say anything about it. "evan wants the tiger kind." she told me. evan confirmed this was true. "i want the nesquidk..." she said this with a cute little accent that sounded like 'nesqueek', "noo... give that one to isabel.... i want captain crunch." and so they watched barbie movies pulled up to the computer and i got ready and esther came home and we all got ready and went to church.

evan and carmen both wanted to ride in my car. evan especially wouldn't take no for an answer. every time i brought him back to his car, he would run to mine and try to get in. he looked like he was on the verge of tears when i handed him over to esther. she suggested we race auntie laura. and so it was that we arrived at the same time. "we won and you won!" exclaimed evan as he tumbled out of the car.

we were not late. "this just goes to show it's all evan's fault." said esther as we walked in. she said he doesn't know how to hurry and his routine takes so long. haha. we sat in the second row. evan dropped a penny down my shirt and i just remembered now. it's probably still there. ha! it is and there is a penny imprint on a certain location of my waist line.

i took care of isabel during sunday school. she was not happy to stay in the class. i tried to keep her in for a while but after a while we ended up roaming the halls. there sure is a lot of people who don't go to class. isabel really enjoyed the revelation of the water fountain. near the end of class she was so tired and kept walking around with her fists in her eyes but would not fall asleep. she was just falling asleep on my shoulder when esther's class got out and i handed her over.

rs was really good. it was on elder bednar's talk on improving our homes. i only got to the part about telling people you love them and showing it and then i left to go to primary for carmen's talk. i filmed it for esther. they have a really big primary.

after primary was choir in the same room. i helped put out the chairs and gather hymn books. we are singing the morning breaks next week in sacrament so we practiced that a lot and then this temple song that i don't like too much and besides my voice was too tired by that point to hit the high notes. i need to build up some endurance in my vocals. i wish elicia was here to go to choir with we loved to sing together in choir. anyways i was sitting next to a woman named suzanne. she's the primary president and she asked me if i wanted a calling in primary and mentioned the sunbeam's class so that may be my future. we'll see. i've had to tell a number of people again that i don't have any children. "well all of you look a like and so your siblings kids look like you." is a common explanation. fair enough. the sister missionary who lent us that pen when sarah was here, passed me and isabel in the hallway "there is no cuter face than that." she said.

well you're all going to be happy when i do nothing on the weekends.