weekend

Friday:
- revision was IN
- afternoon was OFF
- Bellevue Art Museum with m-pig (paper teahouse, bamboo basketry, Nikki McClure, bizarre fiber arts; unfortunate photo-taking nitwits)
- cheesecake
- acupuncture
- La Cocina dinner

Saturday:
- napping
- working in the garden
- making tasty food

Sunday:
- brunch with Wim's dad and stepmom; giving of the adorable snow monkey magnet in trade for Inuyama HDR dahlia print
- tromping over Cougar Mountain (Anti-Aircraft trailhead, Shangri-La Trail, West Tibbetts Creek, Bear Ridge to Fantastic Erratic -- a huge fern-clad boulder -- and back, Tibbetts Marsh; then to the "million-dollar view" of Lake Sammamish)
- Central Library, including my first time parking there
- more tasty food

Today has had many fine features too:
- paid rent
- ordinary pleasures of walking in to school
- found theses online and in the library to review
- Mt. Rainier visible from campus
- undergrads discussing the personal lives of the fountain's ducks with some vehemence

(Annoying things from today include a committee member trying to make it my fault she didn't tell me about her sabbatical -- oh no she didn't -- and certain journal publishers failing to provide dissertation reuse policies on their web sites, wtf, everyone in the world does this, just post your permission like a good journal.)

smells of spring

Yes, it's spring here starting at Candlemas, the beginning of spring. I am sorry for all of you whom the wheel of the year fails in this way.

Witch hazel: subtle and spreading, musty-beautiful in the morning changing to fruity notes at night.

Sarcococca: the perfect designer perfume (with no white musk whatsoever), almost too floral and too strong but blissful.

Viburnum: politely soft and sweet.

Clematis armandii: almost ready -- like roses and apples and vanilla; somewhere I have a stationery design that I drew with these flowers and lyrics from "The Flowers of Guatemala".

Daphne odora: not yet -- the campus ones have been sad for the last few years, but the smell is glorious and pervades the Medicinal Herb Garden bus stops when they're doing well.