Snowed In

Dinner Co-op is buzzing along. Kensy made some awesome chili on Thursday. Camille and I are going to cook lasagna tomorrow night. We’re getting 10-12 people showing up each night, which is a good number. There are a couple issues that are hard to navigate… one is that I want the co-op to be a neighborhood event, but I also want to invite all my cogsci friends, and they don’t live in the neighborhood. The whole point is to have a quick, easy, local gathering, but inviting people down from La Jolla makes it more of a production.

But it’s been awesome having the energy of people coming down from La Jolla. And hopefully they can then form the core of a dinner co-op up there. So I think I’ll just continue the policy of inviting La Jolla folks who show an interest in cooperative eating, which has worked well so far. The other issue is that dinner co-op inevitably turns into dinner party. There’s wine, there’s friends, there’s good conversation… people want to stay and soak in all of that. But again, the original purpose was for it to be a low-committment, convenient neighborhood gathering to eat. So keeping it less party-ish is a good idea.

But I think Kensy had the right idea… he suggested that Thursday nights could be more partyish and Tuesday could be more in-and-out. And as the thing expands to more days and locations, I think a sort of party gradient would emerge.

In other news, I can’t find my camera. It might be hiding somewhere in my room, but it’s not in any of the usual places. So, things which I would post pictures of, if I had not lost my camera:

• My face, which looks like it was in a bar brawl, but was actually in a collision with the ocean floor whilst surfing at Ocean Beach on Saturday. If only I could stay on my board…
• Our food box, which contained all manner of goodies: several avocados, oranges, tangerines, one very large lemon, yellow chard, rappini, spinach, garlic, baby bok choy, apples, red butter lettuce, and of course one succulent cherimoya. It’s a feast for the eyes, and a feast for the pallette. And the cherimoya gives Kensy, Kaya and I an excuse to get together during the week (as soon as it’s perfectly ripe!) to feast on juicy custardy goodness. For late-lunch I just ate a red butter lettuce salad with avocado, walnuts, raisins and homemade sweet wheat croutons I baked this morning.For those who don’t know… I learned about the concept of a food box from my big brother, who was doing it in Boulder, I think. Also known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), the way it works is that you sign up for a weekly delivery of produce from a local farm. You don’t choose the contents, you just get whatever’s in season. You pay a weekly amount (in our case it’s $30/week split between three people). It’s awesome. You get more variety in your diet, you support local commerce, you conserve fuel (the food gets to my house via my bicycle), and you get fresh, delicious, organic produce for a good price. And these programs are everywhere! Here’s a database where you can search for one near you.

  But back to the missed photos…

• Kensy and I, decked out for Gabby’s 80’s prom party on Saturday. We were stylin’.
• The self-portrait I painted on my new canvas bag during Gender Buffet at the women’s center on Friday. The flyer said there was going to be discussion of “self-identity, self-worth and lovin’ yo self!” and there was.
• The new DCog/HCI Lab weekly yoga group, which consists of about six students in my lab. This was Amaya’s awesome idea: each week after lab meeting, several of us do yoga together with the aid of an awesome yoga podcast that Amaya found. So fun.

Anyway, these images are forever lost to the march of time. I wonder how long I’ll last before I break down and drop another $300 on a camera.

And one other note… This weekend I’m performing Beethoven’s Ninth with the La Jolla Sympony Chorus. If you’re in San Diego and want to see it cheap, contact me and I’ll tell you about the free, open-to-the-public dress rehearsal on Friday.