maravelous, darling.

It's November already?!

Life has been busy, that's for sure. Still working hard at work. I've been been spending my days working on CAD drawings and everything else --getting portfolios up to speed and preparing presentations. I still love it. That fact has taken me by surprise, a little bit. I thought that by now the novelty would have completely worn off and I'd be resentful of going to work all the time. I'm so glad to have found something I love to do!

Life at Grace is also keeping me occupied. Along with the usual Community Group every week, I'm taking an intro/membership class AND another class on Sunday mornings before church.
It's a good kind of busy, but thankfully my weekends are slowing down. Until last weekend, I'd had visitors or some big plan every single weekend. No time to feel homesick! Although, it's obviously been a while since I was home because last week I actually got an email (*gasp!) from my brother telling me that it wouldn't look good on my review if I didn't make it home to Oregon more often. I hope Thanksgiving comes quickly enough and my ratings don't plummet terribly.

So, . . . since I've written last:
One major portfolio restructure and deadline, met.
One weekend retreat with Grace Seattle, spent at Fort Flagler --an old base. Met people, listened to people, and played sardines in dark, scary bunkers. Took the ferry! (beautiful)
One visit from parents. Novel idea, to host your parents. When they came to see me at school it was never for very long, and I didn't really act as a tour guide in any sense. But now hopefully my mom is satisfied that I am not living out of boxes and that I eat food, and meat, occasionally. We toured through downtown Seattle ( I marched them up and down the hills, like the taskmaster I am) to show them the market, the library, and my place of work --that last one especially is in all the latest tour guides. :)
One flat tire, not complete disaster because it involved
One rescue, tire change by friendly church people.
One visit from dear Molly. This entailed the drinking of local pumpkin beer and the cooking and consumption of some lovely pumpkin soup among other things.
One pair of heels, RIP. I pound the pavement pretty aggressively, apparently.
One cookie frosting and decorating session.
One baking semi-disaster (this does not involve the aforementioned cookies). I tried to make my mom's "koek" --spice cake- recipe. First, I tried to soften the butter and then managed to over-melt it AND slosh it all over my cute and clean kitchen. I'm not ALWAYS that klutzy. And then I kinda messed the baking soda up by not letting the batter cool enough before I added it. So it came out a little flat, but edible. Not just like mom's, in other words.
One meeting in Bellevue. I got lost on the way. Thankfully, it was an absolutely gorgeous sunny day and I was just along to check things out. (In this case, I was glad to feel inessential!)
One more design awards event. Cocktails!
One trip to the symphony, my second visit since I've been here. A friend in my CG who is also taking the membership class had tickets for Thursday night so we played hooky. Ravel and Debussy. (The first visit was with the British invasion. A science fiction themed something-or-other. The tickets were bought while I was dress shopping for that last dress-up event. They mumbled something about John Williams on the phone, but the combination of my distraction and their accents made me wonder if I heard correctly. But I did. They didn't tell me all about it on purpose! There were Darth Vader sightings at that event. I think that those were the only tunes I recognized, actually . . .)

and finally
One lovely, unplanned, completely relaxed and uneventful Saturday.