I am feeling a lot better this weekend. Last week I felt like my head was going to explode -- long story, no need to go into it here.

On Thursday I left work early and we went to Salem to see Jamgrass at the Oregon Garden. The show started at 6pm and we got there at about 6:10pm. The venue is a beautiful grassy bowl and when we arrived the full family scene was out with lawn chairs and picnics and all kinds of people kicking back enjoying the music. I heard someone say they ran out of beer before 8pm -- I don't know for sure but a new act came on each hour and by 8pm the family scene was slowly clearing out and "the tribe" was bouncing around and dancing along the fringes. By 9pm when Yonder came on, the lawn chairs were gone and the area in front of the stage was crammed with dancing fans. My first Yonder show -- finally after several close calls -- and I can see why Bob and Walker are such huge fans. They're whacky, funny, talented and very cute.

Yesterday I had the day off and for the most part I kicked back and caught up on some odds and ends and then watched several more episodes of the Sopranos. I'm almost done with Season 1.

Today we went to the Farmers Market early and I'm about to go to the kitchen to get the stuff cleaned up and put away and start making some fun food for the weekend. Tonight I'm making peach ice cream. Other ideas for the weekend are grilled vegetable sandwiches on homemade foccacia (too lazy to look up proper spelling), hummus and salsa. We'll see how far I get.

Yesterday I checked my page and noticed that it's all goofy and there are dead links. Funny, because those links weren't dead when I put them up. I checked my directories and the stuff was gone. How does this happen? Actually there is a whole bunch of stuff in there that looks goofy -- duplicate files and stuff that I don't remember putting back up there. So a project for the next week will be to get that all cleaned up and reorganized. I've been spending all day on the computer at work so when I get home I don't even want to look at a computer.

My latest thing is The Sopranos. Am I the last person on the bandwagon or what? Auntie bought the first season and it's been traveling around the family and finally made it to our house and Bob already zoomed through it and so it's been sitting here. Last Saturday I wanted to watch a movie so I started watching Kiss of the Dragon and about 20 minutes into it I decided it was too violent. So then I was going to finish watching Phantom Menace since the DVD player is back upstairs -- but the cables to attach it to the TV were not so I was like, "Hm, what should I watch? Hey, here's this box with the Sopranos." And ever since I run home from work every night and park my butt on the couch to watch some more. I LOVE Tony Soprano.

Earlier this week I made some fabulous pizza sauce. I roasted a huge tray of tomatoes along with a big red onion and about 8 cloves of garlic. I ground the whole thing up in the food processor and then ran it through the ricer. That ricer is handy -- I need to find a better place to put it so I can grab it more often. When I was ready to make my pizza I put the sauce in a pan and added several teaspoons of Penzey's pizza spice and let the thing cook down for over an hour. For the crust I used the Cook's Illustrated recipe for deep dish -- the one with a potato. And for my topping I roasted a bunch of squash and zucchini with Italian spices and then stirred in some marinated artichoke hearts - spread that on the pizza and sprinkled the whole thing with parmesan cheese. Came out excellent.

This weekend I finally fixed my One Click -- I don't know what I did to it but it was all goofy so I reinstalled it and invested a teeny bit of attention and know have advanced from a basic user to an intermediate basic user. For my power hour yesterday (in the yard) I hacked back Rhodies. I don't know how healthy these plants are. The one out front looks mighty peaked and the super tall one in back -- I'm trying to whack it down to my height which means I'm going to have nothing but sticks when I'm done. Yesterday was our 6 yr. anniversary and Bob took me to see Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and we had a nice dinner.

So can you tell that I have these major dry periods where I can't think of a thing to blog about?

Well first, I think this opinion column from The Onion says it all: "while watching The Empire Strikes Back, the second act of which is practically all Yoda, not once did you wonder what he looked like naked?" And even though I think the article is hilarious -- I have to admit, in all my endless wondering about Star Wars things, I never once wondered about Yoda naked.

In other news, Bob bought a digital camera this week. He's already made a couple of movies which he showed me yesterday. One was "Bobman makes iced tea" and featured music by Topaz from High Sierra. Another one was called something like, "What my kitchen looks like, blurry." Tonight he went to the Jazz Fest and train tracks for more footage. Yay.

My garden has finally kicked into gear -- better late than never. Last weekend was my first tomato harvest -- I got 6. (My early girl remained a single stick all summer long until I finally pulled it out to save it from complete embarassment.) Today I got about 46. Last weekend when I saw Mom she gave me about 10 lbs. so yesterday I made pasta sauce and today I made minestrone with the leftovers. I think I'm going to make some pizza sauce and some salsa and get caught up for the rest of the weekend. Gardens have a way of making you hate them.

Finally, my cousin Kathy gave me an Obi-Wan Kenobi bank. You put money in (or press a button) and it lurches around with a light saber and says stuff about the Jedi. Then you can wave your hand in front of it and it will keep going. Now I have a Darth Vader phone (rings like the Darth Vader theme), an interactive Yoda with light saber, the Obi-Wan *and* and Darth Maul action figure. I take everything out of the box and actually play with it. Screw this collector stuff.

Oh, also we saw Great Big Sea, The Young Dubliners and Seven Nations on Tuesday night and it was super fabulous.

We went camping at Crater Lake this weekend. We met a whole bunch of the family there. The camping part was super fun -- we had a great campsite with lots of room for everybody. But the smoke from the fires was bad and when we drove to see the Lake on Saturday, it was too smokey and we couldn't see it. And the drive home today seemed to take forever and I'm unspeakably tired and will have to fill in more later.

Go to Trader Joes and buy the chili-lime mayo -- then use it on everything. It will change your life.

I screwed up the configurations on my newsreader and now I can't read news. I thought about emailing support but I've been trying to give up my gossip group for years now and thought perhaps this would be a good time. I could add 1/2 hour+ a day to my life and use that time for writing. But I'm completely addicted and actively resisting. It's been 4 days now, but yesterday I cheated and looked at a few items using Google. This is sad to admit but I got about 90% of my news from that group.

This morning I saw Tiger on my walk for the first time in at least 2 months. Tiger is one of the coolest cats alive. I saw him sitting on a rock and I called to him and he looked at me and yawned and turned his head. Snotty little cat.

Bob and I ate dinner outside tonight and when Bob was carrying his dinner out - when he got to the door of the shop I heard some loud expletives and he stomped back into the house. I ran into the shop to see what happened, looking for salad strewn across the floor or a drink dumped onto his plate. All I saw were a few drips on the floor. He came out of the house and said, "I almost lost it all." "Oh," I said, "I ran in here. I thought it would be funnier."

I slept better last night yay. But the beastly heat is moving in so it's a lot to hope for that the whole week will be filled with good sleeping. I screwed up my newsreader yesterday and now I can't log in. I'm wondering if this might be a good thing. I can probably add a couple of hours a week to my life by ignoring that stuff. But I'm so addicted. H'ep.

In the meantime, you can find out All About Coffee.

Last night I could not fall asleep. It's not like this doesn't happen fairly regularly and usually I just stay there in pre-doze and try to think sleepy thoughts. Last night it was making me mad so I finally got up and finished watching The Claim that I taped off of Sundance. I've wanted to see it for a long time and for the most part I loved it but the story is pretty grim. Did Thomas Hardy hate his readers or what? After the movie I crawled back in bed and it still took another hour or so to fall asleep -- I think I got to sleep at 2am.

Also last night I watched Rock Star. Was that movie made for me or what? I loved it except for the totally lame story. But the soundtrack was fabulous -- I think I own every non-original on it already. And seeing all the rockers made me very happy.

Who invented conference room chairs and tables? Because somehow they managed to figure out a way that no matter what, you're straddling a table leg. That would seem to be impossible. If they can do that why can't they solve other impossible problems?

I'm off to the Willamette Writers Conference. I'm not hungry but I'm trying to eat since I figure I won't eat again until this afternoon.

Last night I had another dream about working at Jack-in-the-Box. That was my job in high school. That's the second Jack-in-the-Box dream this week. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

The new taste treat: toasted cinnamon raisin English muffins with tahini.

So, do I not get tables or what? I thought I could throw something up in a big fat hurry and this is what I end up with. Isn't it pretty? I'll get it together but I'm warning you this is a minimum computer weekend. My wrists/forearms/elbows/shoulders are very unhappy and need a break.

Let me be the person to tell you about Great Big Sea a super fabulous band from beautiful metropolitan Newfoundland. We're seeing them in a couple of weeks and I'm listening to them right now and this is the first time in a Very Long Time that I have been won over by a band in less than 10 notes

Today I got out the box of new letterhead at the office and was depressed to notice that it said #10 instead of #6. We bought it over two months ago and I didn't see how the printers were going to muster up any sympathy for us after all this time. I'm pretty sure it came in when I wasn't there but I'm not sure I would have noticed anyway. I brought it in and re-ordered, asked them to make sure our file had all #6 in it and gave them the box and asked them to make scratch pads out of it. What a giant waste of money and paper.

Tonight I went to my first yoga class since April. I dropped into Bill's new place at the Galleria which should probably be called the Ghost town (The Galleria = ghost town. The yoga studio is fabulous.) This was not the power yoga class and thank God because I'm not quite as strong as I used to be. I need to get my practice back up to speed. Tomorrow I bet I am going to be sore.

My garden is pretty pathetic this year. I picked tomato number 3 today -- not counting two tiny romas about the size of my thumb. There's one puny cucumber out there and it looks like 2 turnips and a whole bunch of beets. My most successful crop is something you don't want to eat by the bushel. It rained a bit yesterday so I used that and the mild weather as an excuse to not water. The watering is getting very tedious. I hate to complain. I mean, what if I had to depend on my garden to survive and I had to haul buckets of water uphill? That would suck.

This week I got a thing in the mail from my reunion for "Keepsake Photos" -- for $89.95 plus $6 shipping I can get 2-8x10, 4-5x7, 4-4x5 and 16 wallets of this faboo picture that I'm going to scan and stick up here eventually. What the hell am I going to do with all these pictures of my mug? I'm not sure I would even want to see it in an 8x10 -- why would anyone else? Does anyone reading this keep pictures of adults, other than a spouse, in their wallet? (For the record, I don't have any pictures in my wallet except ID photos.)

The squirrels have completely destroyed the sunflowers. I think there are 3 left plus one big one that they've completely eaten around the edges but left on the stalk. Yesterday when I cleaned up the yard I pulled a bunch out and thoughtfully piled them against the fence, hoping to encourage them to continue snacking on the ones that are already ruined. About an hour later I looked out in the yard and here the last pretty one was just a tall stalk with some leaves dangling and the remains of the flower sat under the rose bush. I need someone to loan me a very big dog with sharp teeth.

In a shocking development -- I'm still trying to get organized and going nowhere fast. This seems to be the lesson of my entire life and I seem to be incapable of learning from it. Oh well, maybe in my next life. I ran some errands this morning and the city of Vancouver has managed to destroy just about every street you'd ever want to drive on. There is no easy way to get anywhere.

For you entertainment I suggest checking out the trailer for Episode III. High speed connection strongly recommended.