Root vegetable mania

Last night, my friend D hosted a root vegetable party. I made an un-original sweet potato pie, which was delicious but not too thrilling. The most impressive item by far was the centerpiece created by D's mom--it was a small forest of many of exotic root vegetables (watermelon radishes! taro root! parsnips! celery root!), complete with adorable labels. So of course I didn't bring a camera or take any pictures. Altogether, we surprised and pleased ourselves with a variety of delicious dishes, ranging from beet stew to a root vegetable lasagna to carrot-beet cake. We eat well.

It was so nice to spend the weekend among friends--on Saturday night, a few of us went out for dinner at Cafe Lalibela, one of the nearby Ethiopian restaurants. Afterwards we went to visit trifold_flame, who had earlier gotten into her second car accident in the past few weeks (once again, not her fault). She seems to be coping well with the whole debacle (*waves to t_f*), though her collection of bruises is quite ghastly.

This all reminds me that right before my cat went on the fritz (she seems better again--I think she had some kind of bug), I was about to note that life is pretty good these days, proposal-writing aside. I'm so fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of amazingly kind and considerate and creative friends who all help remind me that what's really of utmost importance in life is how we treat other people. It is a tremendous joy to spend time with friends and depart with elevated spirits.

With that, I shall return to the abyss that is proposal-writing.

The satisfying sensation of getting underway with a project

For quite a while now, I've wanted to make a bike guide book for good ol' P-town, and at last I'm getting underway with it. At first, I was stymied by the problem of figuring out which map to slice'n'dice and sacrifice for the cause, but then I recalled that the Greater Phoenix Area Bike Map is actually available as a .pdf! Eureka, I shouted, and commenced to download it and convert it to a Photoshop document. It will still require some modifications (the preexisting contrast isn't sufficient to see all of the street-level detail that can be lifesaving when one is traipsing about the town and in search of sweet back routes), but it's a whole lot better than anything else I've come up with so far.

Now I've reached the point where I need to start monkeying around with making map pages and my own personal guide to my favorite local businesses (coffeeshops will be predominately featured). I also have to commit to a page size--I'm trying to decide between making the guide out of a pocket-size Moleskine or a large one.

This is going to be one sweet book when I'm done. It will be so much easier than trying to juggle a full map at an unfamiliar intersection. Eventually I bet this idea would be marketable, but not to a group of any meaningful size. It's a good thing that doesn't matter.