Just regular folks.

After about 5 weeks, I have plateaued to my natural air pistol shooting abilities. I don’t have an air pistol yet, so I’ve been using the club’s pistols during the weekly competitions. The club owns a bunch of Russian-made Baikal IZH-46M which is probably the most affordable & accurate air pistol on the market today. It has a single pump air mechanism, so each time, you load a pellet and then you pump the lever once to compress enough air for the shot. The first two weeks I shot with one where the seals were not completely intact, but I had no idea of this (though the person (Susan) who was showing me the ropes could hear the air not quite right and slightly escaping from unknown places) and my scores were fine, but not exciting to me. Maybe I’d lost my touch, but then Susan found one in the closet with proper seals and I’m doing much better. I won the handicapped rankings two weeks in a row. Very pleased. Though I did not win this week – again because I’m only shooting thirty pellets a week (maybe 10 minutes?). Now I find myself knee deep in air pistol lore – the Baikal is still in production today, but because it is Russian, it’s not available for purchase new in the US. So people look for them on ebay. Do I want to buy a gun off of ebay? I’m not so sure. Do I even want to own a gun? Even if it is a gun that may not be able to kill a squirrel? Also, not sure. I will think about it.

Though I did go on ebay to find a pair of binoculars. I realized that I often could not see where the shot landed on the target – it is dark closer to the bullseye and you can’t see a black hole against a black background. So I needed a pair of binoculars. (Now I did own a pair of binoculars which I hadn’t used in about 20 years, which I clearly remember decluttering, but this is the risk of decluttering that you may get rid of something you want later, but I’m at peace with this. I know this is a luxury, but I decided that I will just buy another one. The vast majority of stuff I get rid of, I never think about again). I wanted a small pair from the 90s for a good price (90s optical glass, I’m so fond of because that’s when I was the most into camera, film, B&W photography – Nikon, Leica, Canon, Zeiss, etc, all those glass things, I love them – which ones were sharper, which ones were more contrast-y, which ones were so expensive and beautiful one could only dream about them, (this was because I was part of the yearbook, which really was a photography club) – we all held our precious cameras and lenses like our little babies cradled next to our bodies – remember no one carried a camera with them all the time in those days except us), so I found this lovely Nikon travel pair for about $30 which I used happily yesterday to excellent effect. It has signs of wear, so I can wonder who owned it before and what they used it for.

The snow was so beautiful this weekend – this is what we woke up to on Monday morning. Edda’s day camp was cancelled, so she hunkered down with us. I’m glad we didn’t get two feet of snow like the northern cities, just enough for a day off and some beauty. Schools are open today and the snow will be gone soon enough with the warmer temperatures.

I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about the capital campaign for our church. There is a building that really needs to be renovated – it was built in the 60s with no significant renovation since then – the hot water is not working well, the electrical panel is stuffed full with no extra room for solar panels or car charging, the bathrooms are itty-bitty with terrible wheelchair access and they are literally 15 feet away from where we serve the food, the walkways are not accessible by ADA standards. This is going to be probably a 2.5-3 million dollar project and I think I may slowly become the reluctant head of this. Which makes me nervous enough to not sleep well at night. I mean, it’s not only my money – it’s other people’s money and what if they hate it? Like what if I spend all this money and….the bathrooms are too small? Or there isn’t enough storage space? Or…it’s just ugly (I’m not a designer – I’m an engineer, so mainly I just want it to work well, I don’t want to spend money on beauty. I mean, it’s mainly beautiful because it works well. I hate things that look beautiful, but are totally crappy for their intended use). I learn from all the people around me, my parents who have done so much building construction on their own homes, my in-laws who have fundraised for institutional buildings, my husband who loves watching and learning about energy efficient building methods, my daughter who has taught me about accessibility, and my son, who has become the reluctant leader of many things.

Vince had been getting more and more involved with the Graduate Student Association (GSA) at UC Irvine- they want to have parties and get the (introverted) graduate students to get to know one another. There have been a few parties and some issues with having enough money to buy pizza (it is very difficult to attract the mysterious and often hiding species of Graduati discipulus without the display of free food) and the entire time Vince was telling us about the trial and tribulations of the GSA – he was like, I’m not going to run this, I’m not going to run this, I’m not going to run this and the last time we talked about this he said with a big sigh – I’m running it. We voted on the president and everyone else voted for me and I was the only one who voted against myself.

The other big news that we are celebrating this winter is Dani (Vince’s partner’s) acceptance into a funded Master’s program at Oregon State University in food science starting in a few weeks! I’m so happy for them, it has not been an easy year.half since graduation – the job market has been miserable for technical folks, but Dani persevered through many disappointments (along with slogging through many holiday shifts at the Pottery Barn) and this got this wonderful opportunity and we are thrilled. A side effect of this is that Vince and Dani will be living apart for a while and Vince will lose access to Dani’s car, and therefore, will not be able to grocery shop as easily. So we finally bought Vince his graduation gift which is an ebike and he got this weekend. Jeremy bought it from the ebike company, had it shipped to a bike shop where they assembled it and Vince rode there on his non-ebike and picked up this beauty and rode it home and then left his old bicycle for them to tune it up. Vince rides his bike everyday – so we are hoping this will help him grocery shop. I am a little nervous about the fast bike riding (as I alway am with Jeremy as well), but he promised me he’d wear a helmet and the bike is throttled to not go more than 20 mph per CA regulations though it can go 28 mph (yikes!). At least I’m not one of those ski jumping, skeleton zooming, half-pipe watching moms. OMG.

We had a lovely Chinese New Year dinner with my 2nd cousins, the kids seem great. There was Peking duck (delicious) and we ordered our favorite mayonnaise coated fried shrimp with candied walnuts which does not exist at all in any restaurant in China but is a favorite of all of ours. Edda tried on many occasions to push away from the table and slide ever so slightly under the table, so that took a bit of wrestling to calm down.

I am baking a lot and had a good run of cookies this week: This is raspberry salted caramel cookies (all got eaten at choir practice).

This is oatmeal raisin with chocolate chips (all eaten at coffee hour after the service today). I love church because I can bake as much as I want and just eat what I want and then deliver it later to a group of people who each will only eat one! I love it.

In the last few minutes before we fall asleep, we’ve been watching some olympics. I enjoy the biathlon. Jeremy likes the long track speed skating. We’ve both slid away from the judged competitions – like figure skating or half pipe skiing, though we do watch those a little bit. We still don’t really know the rules to curling. Most of the winter olympics looks super scary to me – it’s not entirely relaxing to watch.

Anyways, here are some winter olympics I propose which I might be interested in watching:

1. ice carving (individual & team. speed & long form). you get a block of ice and an an appropriate theme. For example, this year could be “pasta” or “authoritarianism” and see what happens
2. ice fishing (individual & team). includes building the hut on the frozen body of water and camping out there. Do you win for the most fish? or the biggest fish?
3. ice cutting (individual & team) – go out to a frozen lake and cut blocks of ice and haul with your team of horses to an ice house. Most ice harvested in a certain amount of time wins.
4. igloo building (individual & team) – points for both speed and beauty?
5. sock knitting (individual – how would you do a team sock knit? perhaps a relay?)- points for both speed and beauty (this might be very boring to watch and to commentate on, but who knows?)

I regularly have meetings with providers for Edda’s services – some of them are annual, some of them are quarterly, some of them are every 45 days and some of them are monthly – at least none of them are weekly or daily, though I do have paperwork tasks that are both weekly and daily. Often, it seems like after I finish a group of them, I immediately turn around and do another set of them. I do not track them, I just get random emails from random people – time for our check-in! I’m like…didn’t we just check in? And we have the meetings and generally Edda is…the same as she was two weeks ago – two months ago. (A good thing).

Sometimes these meetings can happen without Edda, but often they must happen with Edda (because she is suppose to be her own advocate). I used to try to schedule these outside of her day program hours, but everyone (else) prefers to do it during day program hours – so I trek over to her day program to do many of these meetings which I like (sometimes) because I can say “hi” to her personal aide and say hi to some of Edda’s friends. (I also want to take credit here and say that I protect Jeremy’s time with these meetings and almost never ask him to come unless I deem it critical for his presence. He is grateful and will bring home cookies for me from time to time. He will also say “I’m so lucky” with a big bear hug when I feel sort of put-upon and suggest that he tell me that he’s so lucky to not go to the ten thousand meetings I’ve been to. (Mainly I need him there when I think I’m going to cry or when I think they are going to reduce services or tell me some other bad news bear type of news. He doesn’t cry – he says nice things that smooths things over for everyone.))

Sometimes, at these many meetings, the questions are strange – like “Do you have an emergency plan?” and I’m like, for what? Like a zombie apocalypse? Does anyone have a general emergency plan beyond – run? hide? or in the case of covid, sit on your couch and watch tv? (I know some people are preppers with both food and guns, I’m not one of those people. I know the country is going down, but, like the captain of the Titanic (or in my case, only the co-captain of only my household) , I’m going down with it with the string quartet playing. Not moving to Portugal, not moving to France. I’m not sure this is the emergency plan they had in mind, staying on the sinking ship.) Then the questioner leaned over and said – this is more for people on ventilators or what not and the power goes out. I nod and then I say confidently, “Yes, we have an emergency plan”. And then the questioner asks, “Does Edda approve of the emergency plan?” I tilt my head ever so slightly – like…does this meeting even need to happen? do these questions need to be asked? And I say confidently, “Yes, Edda approves the emergency plan for the zombie apocalypse”. And we both laugh.

I love lighting candles for breakfast and dinner – especially in these winter months when it’s so dark. I usually light only one at at time, but last weekend I came into possession of like 4-5 candles and then I decided that it would take me a lifetime to burn though these – so I’m burning them all at once which feels a little scandalous and dangerous. I feel, not like a zombie, rather like a witch. Witch-y! Did you read Circe? I really enjoyed the entire book, but loved Circe’s ability to be a witch with her plant-y spells. Highly recommend!

Happy Chinese New Year! We celebrated by…doing regular Tuesday things.

I’m in the middle of sourcing a new copier for the church. Our current machine one is not serviceable anymore and is about 8-10 years old and in need of new drums and skips pages and it is trying very hard (go little engine!), but not performing very well (alas, missing the top of the hill).

I first noticed this at choir practice when our choir director squinted at the score copies and semi-cursed at the extra horizontal lines that the copier put in. A regular musical staff has 5 horizontal, evenly spaced lines telling you which note it is. The copier had put in extra lines so now the staff had 6 or 7 irregularly spaced lines and the notes (to him) were willy-nilly and frustrating to read. Was that a F#? or a B flat? Who is to say? (I’m embarrassed that I didn’t notice this before his under-the-breath curse – goes to show you how critical I think the note placement is when I am singing. hahaha.).

So as taking apart and putting together machines is a favorite thing of mine, I went to go look to see if I could clean the glass or replace the drum ordered from ebay or whatever. I watched youtube videos, I poked around the machine, I got toner all over my fingers. I decided that it wasn’t going to be particularly easy or cheap. I talked to one the Director of Congregational Life who said (not that the copier had lines, that was not her main complaint), rather – every Sunday when she went to make Sunday copies – the copier would give her random error messages and then she’d open all the doors, take the toner out, shake it around, close all the doors and then maybe it would work. I asked her – so every Sunday? And she said – yes every Sunday.

So I spent a bunch of time talking to a bunch of people about copiers. A copier is about 10-13K, so there is financing involved and honestly, I do strangely enjoy talking to people about copiers. They seem like fun people. Though it is like buying something you have never seen, never tried out, you can’t really go online and read reviews about them on reddit. Do I want the Canon, Ricoh, Kyocera? I put my hands in the air and shrug. I just want it to work, to be under budget and for people to not be mad at me.

A few days ago, I asked Megan if she was at all interested in fly fishing. She was very apologetically texted back saying she did not like anything to do with water. I’ve been dreaming of fly fishing. A few things fuel my interest 1) I have a strong vision of Brad Pitt (again) standing waist deep in a river dappled with sunlight and casting from the film a River Runs Through It (which I have never seen nor read the book from which it draws its inspiration), 2) a this American Life episode about a young flute player who steals a bunch of dead birds from a British museum to sell the feathers on the feather underground (ebay?) to avid fly tying enthusiasts in order to buy a golden flute and 3) a recent chance meeting with a very fun person with bright pink hair at a party who said – we are a women’s fly fishing group, come join us, we have a lot of fun together (all their trips are waiting list only now, I checked).

Then Megan texted back, I can cheer you on from shore while you fly fish and then I admitted that what I really was to invite her to a fly tying class which can be completely separate from fly fishing and involves absolutely no water. Crafty! I said. (No one likes crafts more than Megan). And she was hooked (lol. see what I did there? punny). Look at this gorgeous fly – I can see why some folks want real feathers from real, dead, extinct birds to do this…

We made nothing so lovely. I made a worm from yarn. This worm lure actually has a name: San Juan Worm specifically designed for the San Juan river in New Mexico. Then I got semi-excited because maybe Gila, NM where we often visit is right near the San Juan river….and no. It is not, it is in the complete opposite direction. But there is fishing in the Gila. Anyways, Megan and I had a really fun night tying fake worms to hooks and learning about fly fishing and fly tying.

Yesterday, I went to olympic weightlifting in Frederick. Various lovely opportunities have sprung up for the young adult crowd at the gym and, as is typical for young people full of potential, they took it and they have left the gym (all on pretty good terms). Good for them! But then I find myself strangely and inexplicably a core member of Central Maryland Weightlifting. Perhaps the core member of an olympic weightlifting gym – it is as strange as if I have grown green feathered wings from my back, or if I became a Formula I race driver, but what can I say, life is full of strange and unexplainable things. Just look at our current administration.

My main coach Ward, who learned of this under-30 departure few weeks ago, told me that perhaps they were going to close down the gym and give all the equipment to the young folks and then 25 years of CGM would come to a close. And then I got…sad. Would I have to give up my dream of flight as a green bird? Or my other dream of kissing Brad Pitt driving around a fake race track? I was like – maybe I’m done with olympic weightlifting.

So I showed up yesterday unsure of my continued participation and they said that they were going to keep it going and that they would slowly build up the gym again. I’m not sure this is possible, but it made me…happy. I was there about an hour and a half and I did about 10 snatches. And they were the most beautiful snatches I’ve ever done. In the middle of moving this weight, there is a weightlessness to it. A easy sensation where the bar is almost floating in mid-air, suspended. And your body is moving quickly, but relaxed. This is the feeling that I always want in everything – doing a hard thing, but floating through it, relaxed, but effortful. I was elated, coaches were elated. It was about 35 pounds, not even up to a typical empty barbell. I will be thrilled when I can just do that empty barbell.

I went home and told Jeremy and said – that took almost 1.5 years. He was encouraging – ahh, you are doing great.

What is a snatch? I’ll show you a video of a favorite of mine – this is 206 pounds a weight at which I cannot even begin to lift up off the ground: unbelievable

How quickly I have traveled in age. It just seems like yesterday, in my very early 40s (which really is now more than a decade ago), that I was still able to flirt with college aged men because they thought I was in my (late) 20s. And then there was a moment in my early mid-40s when I realised that the college-aged boy I was semi-flirting with was nice to me because he was humoring me like he would humor his mother. That stayed with me for a while and so I adjusted. And then now in my mid-50s, this is the year. The year I was asked if I qualified for the senior discount, if I’m retired or not, if I have time to go bowling at 10 am on Friday.

I would love to go bowling at 10 am on Friday. I will make a good retired person, I think. I have already too many projects that take up my extra time. Work has been harder than usual the past few months and I think it will get better soon, we’ll see.

So…it’s cold. We are very happy it’s supposed to be above freezing tomorrow. I spent the weekend hunkered down – a lot of my activities were cancelled and I felt under the weather for some reason and we just stayed inside. Jeremy took Elka for some short walks, but her feet hurt her sometimes for unknown reasons (cold? salt?). I had to rescue them in the car on Friday afternoon. Here’s Elka trying to keep all four feet off the ground.

I baked a lot – rice crispy treats

And fig bars.

I got this delicious ita bag from Dani’s brother Josh – I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to be cool with it.

This is how we spent a lot of the weekend

All curled up together on the couch.