It's really beginning to get downright frosty out here. It's been dipping into the freezing temperatures around here the past few days due to the very clear weather. amazingly clear for this time of year, in fact. a bit disconcerting.
i'm making some amazing rosehip-hawthorne berry-apple jam this weekend. i just started the process today by grinding all three together and extracting all the seedy bits. it's this thick stew of great healthiness. i'm excited to work on canning it on sunday. i'll let you guys see and read how it ends up going. should be great, though. nothing quite as tasty as home made jam.
in other news i'm doing well in my classes. it's kinda amazing. soon enough it'll be the end of my first quarter at Bastyr. it's a bit freakish how much i've actually learned these past few months. it's intense how many species, properties and local medicinals i know at this point. i fondly greet at least 3 species on every single trip i take around town now. it's really a cool feeling.
how are you all doing?
what's new in your life?

alright. by popular demand (yes by all two of you,) here's a blog.
what's happened? oh, rockies made the playoffs (WTF?) and then lost, which is more like their style. bush plumbed new lows in approval ratings, go figure. i've been living into our new house. it's lovely and bright and just about right as far as i'm concerned.
i've really picked up myself and found my home at school. it's a great fit even if thinking of paying for it is ridiculously stressful. especially given the fact that the government is behind the times on funding education from birth to grave. surprise? nah, it's a cumbersome giant that needs to be trimmed down. this is just one more proof of that.
and yeah. i need to go to school because i already blew off my o chem review session. i held my own last night.
i'll be checking on all of you soon, be well!

well, y'all, i just will not be around here that much for a while, it seems. school and work are taking up a lot of my time and knitting and getting our herb garden ready for next year is taking the rest. so i will talk to you guys in a while. be well and happy.

well all, fall has arrived and with it a new hat i've just finished. knitting is a pretty good hobby to have around here what with the coming of the short days, long nights and almost constant cloud cover. honestly i'm really digging it. not as much as the one i made for sara but it's more me than hers was her. hers was a very simple little thing, 2 2 rib all the way up with a simple but cool pattern set up by the yarn she chose- cascadia yarns is the brand and they are FANTASTIC!

so past that...motorcycle valves are ticking right where they should be, master cylinder and seals are next. i'll be doing one and a professional the other. going to be talking to slave to the needle since i haven't got any more sun or swimming to look forward to for a while now and... it's gonna be a great winter. i can already feel it.
i adore winter. it's a great season. i don't really have a favorite season, i guess, but i don't really favor summer all that much. i like the cool, cold and changing seasons.
hopefully everyone out there is doing fabulously, i'm sure i'll be talking to you all soon.

i've got turn signal lust.
and i know that sounds very funny but it's very true. i want these turn signals but i have to save my tips for them. but they will be brighter, more energy efficient and just plain better looking than the current set.
past that i've been working like a madman. put in about 24 hours in the past two days. i'm not exhausted but i'm certainly not my spunky self, either. can't wait for a break this thursday and friday. i think i may go camp out because the weather is supposed to be ideal. we'll see.
that's all the more i'm going to say for now. i've got to go check up on you all!

i think that we can all agree that we have about reached the limits of our extractive culture. there are so many little signs of a system that is out of balance and teetering towards a complete meltdown.
for instance, we are currently- that is we taxpayers- shoring up the financial sector of the economy, specifically the banks, to prevent a world-wide panic and likely depression like the last great depression that my grandparents remember. the only thing between us and that is you and me. but the high-risk investments of the banks continue and they will continue as long as they have our carte blanche. basically here's how the system is working right now: the banks don't have the confidence in each other' solvency to loan money freely which means that your average bank doesn't have any money to lend. since they don't have the money to lend they can't make interest payments to the shareholders and folks with savings accounts.
add to this the dramatic failings of a supremely extractive and environmentally inattentive country like china and you see where our system is going. it is time now to begin the changes to locally sustainable economies instead of the gentlemanly global capitalism that we have now. when 80% of manufactured goods are provided by 1000 corporations you have a problem. there is nothing local about a group producing half of a percent of the global total of goods.
we have got to focus on sustainable solutions to our economic needs. we're too far down this path to just drop the machinery, put it into the ground and live off the earth like the nature-bound cultures before us. there are just too many of us. but we can prevent the wholesale slaughter of the animal life of the planet in favor of a more sustained, balanced approach to life.

as much as i've seen that makes me believe that we are all going south in a handbasket and that we are going to, through laziness and greed and misplaced confidences, ruin the entire terrestrial ecosystem with us, I have just found a few great reasons to be excited for the prospect of living out the beginning of the end of things.
it's really weird to see the possibility of the end of life in the universe (because it's truly possible we are alone in this great, vast cosmos that we've come to try to understand) but to be more focused on the immediate fellowship with others. I'm not talking faith, either. I have none of that anymore. I am talking about the very fundamental experience of being human: genuine belonging, acceptance and love of the group you've created around yourself. I can truly say that I have entered a new phase in my life and that it is going to be amazing. I've been waiting for it to come to me for a very long time so its coming is a breath of air to me.
today, for instance, i went skinny dipping in lake washington with some friends. i threw off the burdens of society for a while and just enjoyed the lake water, the cold and warm currents and the pre-autumn sun. I feel renewed and filled with energy at the prospects of my life right now.
to be sure there are a great many things that are going wrong but many more are going right.
and so i leave you with this little snapshot of my happiness. i hope that it has left you feeling light-hearted because you are my friends and family and some of the many people i want to be happy in this life. don't lose sight of that, please. there are so many things that can make you sad, angry, hopeless and listless: make sure that you don't sink into them.
that is all.
and thank you, grandma. it's good to be called to your senses every so often.

just started my new job at a little mexican joint out here this week. it's been really intense and tomorrow night is my first shift busing a section by myself- on the busiest night of the week, no less. i'm glad i've got today to recover a little bit and get set. it'll be fun. it's also my first night being tipped in, which i'm excited for.
past that i've signed in on a house in the ballard area, a great little neighborhood here in seattle where the scandinavians have traditionally lived. it's close to my climbing gym, close to a regular gym and is a big place.

past that i've got a story to relate from a friend of mine. i found it hilarious and witty.
he works in a fishery that collects geoducks. for those of you who haven't tried them, they're great and featherless. basically they're big ass clams. and something has been eating them. so yesterday he set up and underwater cage match between a starfish and a particularly powerful geoduck to see who would emerge victorious. but the funny thing is that he's trying to figure out what's eating his clam. and he simply can't figure out why anyone would eat a guy's clam.
so yeah, funny funny. bawdy humor will always get me to laugh.

creation. i have said this before and i'll say it again, i love that this spot doesn't let you "post" or "write." no, you are creating. you are the creator of a story, a thought, a rant or anything you chose to create. i love it.
that being said, i also love my life right now! my arm is feeling better every day, my knee is solid most days, i've got a new job, a new house to be in and a new school to get a new career. i love change and this is the king of changes.
that and i read this fantastic report on the BBC. That war report would make bush blush with its obvious lies and tenuous grasp on the truth. but i digress, this is supposed to be a happy time!
and i'm totally wasting time that could be spent on posterity or posterior, at the very least.
summer, is seems, is drawing to a close early here in seattle. i hope against hope that we'll get an indian summer here this year but i'm not going to hold my breath and will be ready for rain.
i can't think of a single other thing to say. i'm drained of creativity since i pounded on my djimbe for an hour the other day.

today i walked down the 80 blocks to a park just to get my legs warm and stretched out, add a little sweat to my brow and enjoy the feeling of living. it worked.
i caught a glimpse of mount rainier in the sunset as it hung, a pure pink behemoth, over the top of a building. it was absolutely beautiful. it's the sort of sights that makes you smile at how insignificant things can make you believe so deeply in the perfection of the living planet.
i've been trying to keep myself sane by reading the past month or so. i think i've now surpassed 2000 pages for the month, which is something i'm pretty proud of.
it's starting to turn ever so slowly back to fall here. the days are becoming surely shorter and i'm enjoying the changes. it's really beautiful just to feel the earth changing in its own slow ways as you go about your many little facets of life.
it's a beautiful world we're killing here.