teamEggers

Sesa’tube

Look moms, I’m famous!

Okay, this is ultra lame, but I’m ultralame. And if you’re here anyways, I have to assume it’s because you love it.

In other ultralame news, I won my first ribbon at toastmasters last night! woo.

Pinkerton

I wanted to share a quick picture with you – because no, I didn’t dye the *whole* thing pink.  That would just be preposterous.  :)

You can see it mostly from the back…

…and in the front only if I pull it forward a bit.  Aside from its hot-pinkness, it’s pretty subtle.

Clammin

We live in such a cool state.  For those of you that I’ve yet to convince to move here… if you can just get past the rain, I really think you should reconsider and join us. Ann & Rick – maybe you’ll do a year in the pac northwest?  eh?  eh?  yes?

Anyways.  Today’s adoration stems from the incredible food we’ve got going on up here.  No, not awesome chefs or the abundance of great restaurants, but actual food that grows locally and is only available in the area.

Like razor clams.

In Washington, you can go “recreational razor clamming“, and load up buckets with these little buggers (thanks to the Washington Goverment for the lovely photo)

photo c/o wdfw.wa.gov

…I mean, assuming you’d want to.  The easier way to get these little guys in your kitchen is to make friends with someone who likes being in nature more than me.  One of jon’s coworkers, Andy, gave him a bag full of them already shucked, cleaned, and filleted.

Talk about lucking out!

Jon doesn’t cook often, but when he does, it’s always wonderful.  I think we’re both waiting for me to make a bit more money so he can quit his job and be a house husband.  Maybe if he had his days free, he wouldd go clammin for me and cook these up again.  But never mind the cooking… look at the crazy head of hair on this guy!

Besides Washingtonians, razor clams are a tasty treat for dungeness crabs and birds – but I don’t think any of them think to fry them first in panko.  Really well done, jon.

Toast of the Town

A few months ago, after noticing that my new years resolution to “be less judgy” was failing miserably, Damon suggested that instead of a “new year resolution”, I should have a “new quarter resolution” – and try to at least remember what I’m working on for 3 months.

In the spirit of Damon, I bring you my Q2 resolution: Nevermind the naysayers, I’m going to Embrace My Ultralame Ideas of Fun. Because you know what? I like planning obsessively. And I really like staying at home on a Friday night, reading a book with a glass of wine, and going to bed at 9:30. And to really fully complete the quest of turning into an old lady, I joined Toastmasters.

If you haven’t heard of it before, Toastmasters is a club that encourages public speaking, leadership, thinking on your feet, and articulation. They meet once a week in various neighborhoods (my local chapter is just up the hill from my house), and each time there are 3 speeches, 3 evaluations of those speeches, and a few fun think-on-your-feet kind of games.

I… really like it. There’s about 15 people in the group, and it seems like they’re a really welcoming, caring community. I’ve been there twice now and so many people from the group have gone out of their way to make sure I feel welcome, establish a connection with me, and encourage me to get up in front of the group and participate. How exciting.

So stay tuned for more on that. I’m trying to get more involved in the Speakers Bureau at work, which is taking two different directions at the moment – one of them’s actually happening and the other’s purely in my head. One of my nearterm goals in life is to travel around the country and talk about the web (standards, our products, our research, etc) for Sesame. The real part of this story is that I started teaching online classes last January. Kind of exciting. I wrote up a curriculum of 10ish topics to talk about throughout the year, and I do about two per month. Keeps it interesting.

Let me rephrase: it adds to my growing “to do” list that keeps me so busy I often look like my hair is on fire. But i kind of like that. And I dyed my hair hot pink this week, so I suppose it actually *does* look a little like it’s on fire these days.