Happy birthday dear blo-og...

Yes, Distances turns 1 today! Amazing.

Three in one

I've come up with tons of good blog post titles recently, although minus the requisite blog content, so here's a summary:

There's "The A in August is for abandonment" wherein the post consists of me talking about how everyone is leaving in August - Eric, my interns, Eric, Julie P., Eric, Julie S., Eric... Everyone.

Then there's the "Truths of our lives" post where I go off very profoundly and abstractly on how I've been thinking a lot this summer on what ties all the aspects of my life together. Although the answer to that question in high school was "42", and in college was "Kristian", I've been musing over what the links are currently. Between work and SpeakOut and karate and Glen... And I think really what it is is the SpeakOut motto - "Telling the truths of our lives". Everything I do has to do with the truths of someone's life. VIA obviously so. SpeakOut too. In karate, different masks come down depending on what the person in the front of the room says and what places they reach in me. (Having to do rather vaguely with talking about breathing and how that seems to me about as intimate as you can get with someone short of actually physically touching them. Flashback to drama club and theater games in high school where we talked a lot about focusing on breathing...) And with Glen - well, there's a lot to be said, but much less concretely and coherently.

Finally, there's the "Chalk angel of death" post. Some kid had drawn on the pavement just down the street from our house last week. (Note that there's a mental health clinic which seems to have a kids program right there...) And the drawing was very obviously an angel of death. It was a person, with wings, holding a dripping knife, laying in (what I assumed to be) a puddle of blood, with x's for eyes, and a frowny face. Pretty disturbing.

Hailing frequencies are open, and other "in" moments

Eric's leaving. And, per usual when a good friend is leaving, you suddenly and accutely realize how much they mean to you, and wonder why you've been taking them for granted previously. I hate that Eric's leaving, and I'm not shy about telling people that. In the last month, I think Eric and I have gotten closer, more friendly. It's a little odd, since we've known each other for eight years, and lived together for six so how much closer can we be, but we've talked more in the last month than we have before, and I think of him more frequently. Yes, sure, some of that was spending a night in the emergency room with him hoping he wouldn't continue bleeding, and some of that has been because he's been out of work since July 1, and likely is happy to see Glen or me come home after he's been here on his own all day. And some of it is me, missing him already.

Eric has recently joined our phone plan. I'm glad he did, despite the rather lengthy issues it has caused me with Sprint of late. But I'm glad he's on our plan because it makes me feel like he's not going so far away, and that he'll still be in touch. And hey, I can call him for free! The week after he got the cell phone (which, if you know Eric, is truly something - in fact, hell must be freezing over...), he had some errands to do in my work neighborhood and we were arranging to have lunch together. I suggested we IM to work out the details the next day. Or, I said, you can always call me. "Hailing frequencies are open!" he responded. I had to laugh. That was so quintessentially Eric: cute, sweet, funny, and a little bit of an "in" joke to reference Star Trek.

Yesterday, as you know if you've read the post two down from this one, we spent the day at Water Country and then IHOP. We had a few more sort of "in" moments, like when Eric informed Glen that yet another song that Glen liked was really a cover, and Glen got slightly annoyed, as Eric had predicted to me some days ago. But I had such a good time all day, and really enjoyed spending the whole day with him, laughing and having fun, and not worried about anything else. I'm going to miss him very much.

Lemonaded tea recipe

Inspired by Starbucks' "Shaken" drinks, including one that's half lemonade and half green tea, I managed to create a beverage that I think is at least as good, at much less cost! I took advantage of our industrial strength juicer, of course, to help with the citrus fruit. What I created was really the "concentrate" that I then diluted with water in pitcher-sized quantities. The concentrates seem to keep alright in the fridge for about a week if you cover them well.

For the lemonade concentrate:
Combine 1.5 cups boiling water and 1.5 cups sugar. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Add 1.5 cups lime or lemon juice. (I used a combo that was mostly limes, and one lemon, since our lemon stash was found to be rather blue and moldy!)

For the tea concentrate:
Boil 4 cups of water. Steep 8 tea bags for 5-6 minutes. (I used 4 green tea and 4 Lemon Zinger green tea.)

To drink, mix 1 part lemonade concentrate, 1 part tea concentrate, and 4 parts water.

Next up, I think I'm going to try it with mint green tea.

Best day in a long time

Yesterday was our "engagement party at a water park". Basically, we invited a bunch of people, got a group rate, and spent the day waiting in lines to go on a few rides. After coming home and showering, Glen and I went out with Eric to IHOP for dinner. And I had a really good time.

Despite traffic both to and from Water Country and the long time it seemed to take us to get lockers and actually be ready to go on the slides, I really enjoyed myself at the water park. I tried, as much as possible, to talk to everyone who had come with us, although that was easier done with some than others. I was glad that there were enough of us to group up so that no one was hanging by themselves, too.

Eric had been pushing for IHOP for a few weeks, since it's on his "To Do" list of things he wants to do in Boston before he leaves next week (ugh). Of course, we were in no condition - exhausted and sort of punch drunk - to create dinner for ourselves by the time we got home last night, and IHOP seemed an acceptable solution. There was almost no one at the restaurant, and we were quickly served. Over dinner, we laughed a lot and talked about various 80s music and artists we could hardly remember. Glen made a lot of voice memos on his phone to himself which seemed hilarious at the time, listing types of syrup, lines from songs, and artist names.

We got home exhausted, and I didn't even remain awake long enough to tell Glen I'd had a good time!

Drink Koffee?

See? I'm back even sooner than I thought. I am about to run out and get some coffee this morning, but I have four and a half (the number keeps going up as I write this - I started at 2!) things to relate about it first.

1a) Glen and I were in New Haven on Friday. There is a very cute little coffee shop called Koffee? that we were in (twice), and they had Vanilla Buttercream flavored coffee that day. Very tasty.

1b) Glen claims that coffee flavored with a shot of syrup after brewing and coffee flavored while in the bean state should taste the same. I disagree with him, and think that coffee flavored with syrup tastes much more sugary. (Hence, I prefer the flavored-while-still-in-bean-state varieties.) Thoughts?

2) Eric put the entirety of his American Express cashback on my Starbucks card yesterday. I think I'm now funded for coffee through the end of the year!!

3) Apparently, there's a magnet out there which shows a woman trapped in the 50s drinking a cup of coffee with the caption, "Drink coffee. Do stupid things faster and with more energy." Heh. Sounds about right.

4) The placebo effect. Generally, I go get coffee, drink a few mouthfuls of it, and then the rest of it sits in the cup on my desk the remainder of the day. Yet, somehow, I usually still manage to think I'm caffeinated. Someone suggested to me that that's how decaf works, but I think if I knew it was decaf, I would be just as sleepy after the entire cup of it than before! ("We've secretly replaced Jen's usual coffee with this cup of decaf. Let's see if she notices!")

You know you're tired when...

...you get to work at 7:30, read some e-mails, surf the web, and, although you have the distinct feeling that "something bad happened" because you're kind of upset about it, by 7:53, you can't remember what exactly it was that is causing you the unease.

Additionally, I know it's been a LONG time since I posted anything, and I do have some stuff (mostly cute titles for entries), so I'll be back "on the air" shortly.