Goings-on

Life suddenly got busy.

I am playing on a work softball team. We had two practices and our first game was yesterday evening, wherein the mercy rule was invoked after the 4th inning (this is when one team is up by more than 20 runs) and after that we just played for practice, but I got an RBI in the 5th! And another hit after that!

I am voluteering with an organization that my cousin is involved with. The main purpose of the organization is a focus on women's rights in countries where that is not always easy, and my responsibilities are primarily to help facilitate ESL-type communication via chat room between women in Afghanistan and native English speakers in other countries (most of whom have ESL or EFL teaching experience).

Dan is finishing up final projects for school and will be graduating on the 17th of May. Because of this, I'm planning a graduation party for him for Saturday the 16th and because my family will be in town for his graduation I'm planning a belated Mother's Day brunch the morning of the 17th in honor of my mom and his mom. That's two parties and a graduation in one weekend. Hold me.

My Iron Chef battle #2 is underway. This time there isn't a theme ingredient but a theme theme, and the theme is PICNIC. There are a lot of restrictions on what we can do (no cooking at the picnic site, have to assume a significant amount of time between food preparation and consumption, etc.) so I am finding it to be challenging. Interesting, of course, but challenging, especially since so many typical picnic-type foods don't involve a lot of cooking or recipes. I myself am fond of simple things on picnics: breads, cheeses, fruit, and wine. But I have some ideas and will post them like I did last time when they are finished. My deadline is tomorrow (Saturday) at midnight my time, so if anyone out there has suggestions for picnic foods that are interesting or unusual or just even want to tell me your favorite things to have on a picnic, I'm all ears. Or eyes, since this is primarily a written form of communication.

I'm in the middle of judging the scholarship applications for the 6th year in a row. It's going more slowly than in previous years; perhaps I'm jaded or maybe I'm just too far out of high school to be impressed by some of the accomplishments listed by the kids.

Also, there is some work stuff. I won't get into it. Maybe later.

This weekend, I will be:
Preparing my Iron Chef submission
Cleaning/organizing/purging the house
Party prep/planning for the graduation party and brunch
Sleeping (I hope)

Dan and I are heading out pretty soon to go see Star Trek. If you haven't been reading his blog this week, he's been posting some Star Trek- themed Top 5 lists. Go check them out!