So Much To Do!

I'm one of those people who makes to do lists.  I make about one a week and hope that by a week's time I'll have done everything on the list.  It hardly ever works out that way.  I'm not sure that it has ever once worked out that way.

Let's see...this week we have (I wrote this past Monday and hoped to be complete by the 4th)..

To Do

10 Blog Entries - (that's not happening)
Bunnysitting - check
Clean Wayne's Pen - check
Craigslist, Bunny Ad - check, did that a few hours ago
Reschedule Interview - check, and I'm super excited!
Clean - check!  My room's really clean!
Alda's Birthday - check? I sent a text and a facebook message...that's not enough I don't think...I feel like a bad person.  I hate that feeling.
Uke Songs, at least 3 perfected - Not yet, but I could get there.  I'm working on We Belong, Cryin', We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, Party in the U.S.A., House of the Rising Sun.  I need to chill out and focus!  They are all fun and pretty easy to play but I need to get 3 perfect rather than 6 so-so.  I want to be able to play these in my sleep, or rather, play them in a fun, drunken stupor.  Folk Fest is coming and I want to be wonderful!

"I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful!" ~ Marilyn Monroe

This very well may be the closest I've ever been to completing a list.  Maybe I'll bust my butt and try to whip up 8 more blog entries.  This one will be my second.  I thought it would be nice for my one-year anniversary of blogging to be completely up-to-date.  That would be at the end of this month.  I'm about 20 behind on my reading blog and...sigh, 17 behind for my movie blog.  I thought if wrote 10 entries a week I'd be all caught up.  Seems unlikely, particularly for the book blog because I haven't been reading regularly.  Well, I'll try my best.  It's a good goal to have and at least all the other blogs are in tip-top shape.

Lost Glasses

Two Wednesdays ago, I went out to do my wash.  I brought a book and sat reading and drinking my ginger ale I had bought across the street.

Wash is a pain in the sense that, the times that I have money and time to do wash, hardly ever meet.  As a result of this, my wash piles up terribly.  More than many things, I wish I had a washer and dryer.  Or at least a washer and a place to hang my clothes. 

The place I do wash is a 15-20 minute walk which is especially annoying when wash has piled up to the extent that mine always does.  I often do my wash after work when I'm already halfway there.  It's hard to say what I prefer more.  Not having to bother with three-hour chores on my day off or adding three-hours to an 8-1/2 hour work shift. 

So two weeks ago, I was doing my wash and as I pulled my finally finished clothes out of the dryer, it began to rain.  Correction.  It began to pour. 

I wasn't going to wait around.  I had songs to practice on my ukulele before it got too late! 

So I put my glasses in my laundry bin and started on my way home.  Once I was home, I could not find my glasses.

I thought that my glasses were safe.  My wash was not overflowing from the bin.  I guess my glasses must have fallen out through one on the spaces.  I didn't think that the spaces were big enough for my glasses to fall out but I've been wrong before and I was wrong again now. 

I walked back and forth a few times trying to find them.  It's annoying to have to look for missing glasses in the dark because you can't see!  I didn't find them.  I am now wearing my contacts. 

Prior to this loss, I wore my contacts about three times.  I didn't really care for them.  I've now learned that there is a right way for the contact to go in and wrong way.  Between taking the contact out (which is a bitch) and putting the contact in the solution container, they must sometimes get flipped around.  It's really uncomfortable if the contact is in wrong and it's not always noticeable right away. 

Since losing my glasses, I've gotten comments and compliments.  When people hear the gloom in my voice from my missing glasses, they insure me that I look better without them, which is sweet of them. 

I had those glasses for six years.  They were very me.  I saw lots of amazing things with them.  Shooting stars.  Birthday parties.  Good and bad movies.  Conan O'Brien.  Tina Fey. 

In the end though, my glasses were just a thing.  Perhaps they have made it to a river and are helping a poor, farsighted fish see.

When Your Wish is a Vegan Dish!

This past Saturday was eventful, meaningful, and delicious!

I got to cater at an entirely vegan wedding!  It was wonderous!

Miss Rachel of Miss Rachel's Pantry was awesome enough to take me on board and in a sense, under her wing.  I am in awe of her hard work, talent, and niceness!

Miss Rachel's Pantry is an entirely vegan business run by a real vegan.  Miss Rachel started her business a few years ago and has been amazing vegans and non-vegans alike with her creativity and her consistency to serve things that are oh, so good!

On Saturday, she and three other lovely ladies, and myself, worked to prepare and serve a small-ish wedding which took place on a gorgeous horse farm.  I got to see horses roll around in the grass and kick their feet up in delight!  I've never seen that before!

The food consisted of about 10 plates (not including Hors D'Oeuvres) for 10 tables.  With each warming of food there was a new, mouth-watering smell in the kitchen, with each placing of the plates on the tables there were "Ooos and Ahhs!", and with each dish there was a lot of walking back and forth.  This part would have been easier if I could have found shoes that were more exactly my size (6-1/2 Wide) but wide sizes are harder to come by.

At any rate, it was all worth it when people were done eating and the team could sit down and chow down.  The food was perfect!

After our meal, we started cleaning up and I heard the Mother-of-the-Bride tell Miss Rachel that she was now thinking of ditching her current "veg" lifestyle and just going vegan because of how impressed she was with the food!  I got teary I was so touched!

I want to do more work like this.

"I want more!"

I Protest!

Since going vegan almost a year-and-a-half-ago (January 8th, 2010), I've become increasingly involved as an animal rights activists and general advocate for equality for all animals, human and non-human.  It's good to get out and stop wasting time arguing with idiots on the internet, although I think that these debates, if you can call them that, did their share in preparing me for real-life discussions.

My latest addition to my activist life has been protesting.  I've gone to two "Ban-Horse Carriages" protests.  I had never been to any protests before.  Something that I like about PAN's protests are even though they are singling one issue out, they use this single-issue as a gateway to deeper discussions on animal use.  The leaflets that we gave out detailed out thinking on this, and I was sure to wear my vegan shirt.

The protesting takes place in Old City, directly across from where the carriage horses and their drivers are waiting to take customers.

A few years ago, I wouldn't have seen anything wrong with horses pulling people around the city but now my thought process is this:

1.)  I wouldn't like to be doing what the horse has to do.  The weight that I can carry is not the weight that I want to be carrying.  And I wouldn't want to be carrying this in smoggy traffic where people are in a hurry to get to where they are going.

2.)  As many carriage drivers will tell you, many of the horses that they work with are rescues.  "These horses would be dog food if we didn't save them!" they'll inform you.  To me, there's the problem.  The horse can be dog food or they can live the life I described above.  How horrible is it that the lives we bring into existence we only see as valuable as in what ways they are useful to us.

3.)  Horses used for carriages also have to endure a stressful training process.  Horses have loud noises set off by their ears and are purposefully frightened in a variety of different ways, just to get them to not be as scared when it happens "on the job".

4.)  Some would argue that the horse has a good deal because he is fed and housed in exchange for his work.  I wrote a reaction to this here on my vegan blog.

5.)  I don't doubt that the carriage drivers, for the most part, treat their horses as best they can.  But how well can you treat a piece of property?  At the end of the day, the horse is seen and treated beneath his human "master" and there is no reason for that to stay unchanged.

6.) There's also things like this that happen: