Fun with celandine

Yesterday was such a fabulous day. There's something so wonderful about being with a friend who understands fandom and the balance between being with each other and also keeping up with our online communities. We spent much of the morning talking, drinking coffee and looking at LJ and I did some writing on a HP story I'm hoping to finish in the next couple of days. The early morning and through the morning there were intense thunderstorms, much to her dog, Juno's, great displeasure. She's not a huge fan of loud and close-by thunder, and was quite needy, shaking and looking for lots of scratching and affection and giving us scolding looks when we couldn't make the thunderstorm stop.

After our leisurely morning and showers, she came up with the great idea of going to see Prince Caspian and, if the weather held, going to the zoo. So we did both! It was celandineb's third time to see it, my first. I quite enjoyed it, though I was about halfway through when I realized I'd been thinking more about Voyage of the Dawn Treader thanks to seeing Reepicheep. Caspian was delightful eye candy and I'm glad I saw it with her. From there we went to the zoo after applying sunscreen as by this time it was bright and sunny and hot. Many of the animals were gone from their pens or simply hiding so we didn't see as many as some visits she'd had, but it was fun to walk around for a couple of hours, talking fic, primarily her Narnia stories (some delicious Edmund/Caspian slash, including How to Love Each Other being a recent example) and our HP fics.

Last night there was an absolutely scrumptious dinner of chicken saltimbocca; I won't even try describing it but it was so very tasty. As most of you know who know of Cel, she's an amazing cook and gets lots of fresh vegetables from their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group including carrots. I had no idea that carrots came in such a wide variety of colors, even purple! But there was a yummy, herb-infused cooked carrot salad with festive and naturally-colored carrots of orange, yellow and purple. She and I and her SO talked and talked and talked, then we had some computer time on the couch until time for bed.

Today I'll be heading over to my college friend kymyrra's house until Friday morning when I head off for a full day's drive to Albuquerque. But before then, Cel and I will hang out and chat and go to AAA to get a map or two of Portland so I can have a sense of the neighborhoods and where they are since I've been hearing from people on their craigslist about temporary housing.

Hope you all are doing well!!

Visited places meme gacked from celandine

As part of my trip, I'm not visiting any new states; I've been fortunate to be well-traveled from a young age. 48 out of 50 states, and I have this somewhat wacky idea of going on an Alaskan cruise or somesuch for my upcoming 39th birthday.



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Not as well traveled internationally as I'd like, but not too bad:



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Definitely tending toward the countries where people have pasty pale skin like mine. And when I was in Russia, back then it was the U.S.S.R., at the very end before it fell apart. I do hope to get to Germany and Ireland in the near future.