Well, Abi and I have been having a very good week. It’s really nice, if you’re unemployed, to have your friends come and visit you, if they have jobs and are willing to sleep on your futon. I have been feeling like I want to go on a road trip lately. In a Eurovan, the kind with the pop-up bed. I am sort of a wuss, and so I’m afraid to go on a long trip when I don’t have a job, apparently because the idea of sitting by the phone all day waiting for the chance to go to an office and sit non-ergonomically under fluorescent lights appeals to me a little more than the joys of the open road. Nice, right? But, to do my houseguest justice, I have to say there hasn’t been much sitting by the phone this week. Here’s what she has to say about it all:
So I decided to spend my summer vacation (all one week of it) in Northern California and Seattle attending the aforementioned party in Sunnyvale and visiting friends. After the party I stayed a few days with my dear friend Brian with whom I did a whirlwind tour of San Francisco which included the Musee Mecanique (a museum of all sorts of turn of the century, coin-operated toys), Golden Gate park, and a play by the beach. I got to Seattle on Tuesday and have been staying with Chiara ever since. The highlights of my time in Seattle have been:
Getting a quesadilla bagel on my first day here and eating a poppy seed bagel every day for breakfast
The folk life gallery store in the U District where I found some pretty art pottery for my parents and a cute bobble-head dragon for my sweetie
Eating chocolate for lunch at a yummy chocolate store in Capitol Hill
Going on the Underground tour and finding out that until Bill Gates made it big the largest single monetary contribution to the Seattle public school system came from a madame who set up shop right across from city hall
Eating sushi with Chiara and Mark
Watching the fish guys at the Pike Place market and buying a big bunch of sweet pea blossoms
Hanging out with Chiara!
and, of course, Mugwort!!!
Thanks, Abi! Great to have you on the show! You’ve been a good sport about having to go to bellydance rehearsals with me!
And, speaking of mugwort, My Friend Kat has this to say concerning everyone’s favorite herb:
- If you dry it and smush it up it becomes a special chinese medicine. I have had it in combination with acupuncture, where the acupunturist sticks you with some needles and then lights a stick of mugwort which she uses to heat the needles, or takes a small pinch of it and places it on your fingernail and lights it and it burns until you feel the heat, then she flicks it off.
In addition, it is good for pigs. At ARI they tried to prepare the mugwort (I think it is better to buy the commercial stuff, it is better packed, ours was too loose). Then they put some Vaseline on a special spot on the pigs just above their tail and stuck the mugwort on, then they lit it, it burned until it fell off. It is used to increase fertility in the pigs.
When Abi and I heard about the fertility thing, we wondered if perhaps liberally dousing ourselves with such a thing (it’s Venus’ plant, you know!) was such a wise idea. I guess we’ll let you know. It’s been really nice to have Abi visiting. Those of you champing at the bit to write your own guest entries, you know you’re welcome any time. Actually I think the next entry will be from my mom, who is safely back from Europe and has scheduled the next stop in her whirlwind jetset lifestyle at the purple futon. Oh, and you know what else? Craig just called to tell me he cracked a rib from wrestling me. So let that be a lesson, of sorts, to you all! Okay. I think I’m done here, for the moment. A more serious meta-entry is in the works, so stay tuned.