1. I saw a deer today. She wandered across the road in front of my car, very slowly, and made her way into some bushes to hide. She was lucky a car wasn't coming the other way as it's a blind bend and they probably wouldn't have seen her.

2. I'm finished with work for a week. Well, ten days if you count the weekends. There is so much crap going on at higher levels, with mixed messages and headless chicken management. All of us lower down the food chain are feeling the strain.

3. My kitchen is full of the aroma of warm scones. I'm having a 'tea and cakes' party on Sunday, as a thank-you to the neighbours who were so patient when my garden was being landscaped (it was a nightmare - skips (dumpsters) taking up 3 parking spaces in our tiny close, deliveries of materials, noise, mess, but ultimately worthwhile). So I made a test batch of scones, which have turned out ... alright. The next lot will be better.

3.a I bought some nice jam to have with the scones from the Turkish supermarket. Their jam selection is amazing. I got a lovely strawberry preserve, with whole berries in it and some rosehip marmalade, which I've never tried before, but it sounds lovely. They also sell rose petal jam, which sounds intriguing, but which might be a bit floral for my tastes.

1. This weekend I'm going to Cape Cod for my niece's wedding. She's the first of that generation of kids to get married. I met her when she was eight and she was a flower girl at my own wedding. I feel old.

2. I hate my job and want to quit it but don't know how to even begin the process of starting over.

3. This is my first post on Metachat.

Happy Friday!

1) My tooth broke and fell out during lunch with my manager on Wednesday. I'm now sporting a flipper with a 7-9 month road to a dental implant ahead. I am surprisingly calm. Lispy but calm.

2) There are tons of lovely fall festivals this weekend but my husband's a high school teacher and planning anything on the weekend in September is subject to how exhausted he is. Even if we stay home, I have a glut of books waiting for me.

3) Today is cleanup day at the office, which is much more fun than it sounds. It's good to take an afternoon to just go through my desk/cubicle/files and purge the old.

1. My application to join a local Reform synagogue was accepted and I am looking forward very much to going to Shabbat services tonight and Torah study/more services tomorrow. And I'm planning my food purchases for a food drive for Yom Kippur next week. And I have a Holocaust Center luncheon on Monday. Suddenly I am Super Jew.

2. I boldly updated my iPad and iPhone to IOS 9 despite all the hullabaloo online and am such an Apple nerd now that I'm picking up a new iPhone 6s tonight. Hopefully the Apple store will want my current iPhone and if not someone I know is about to get lucky.

3. It is really, really cool to see the new bunnies here. Welcome bondcliff and everyone else!

1. I came back to Metachat and managed to get over my nervousness and actually comment on some things!

2. I had to deal with a grown adult throwing a tantrum this week. Unbelievable. I managed to not let it get to me too much.

3. I went back to an exercise class that I had been actively avoiding for a few weeks and did pretty well in it.

1. The weather is going to be glorious this weekend. Maybe we'll go to the zoo even though I heard it's not that great for the price. I thought about walking around the estate near downtown that has animals but the bike race starts this weekend and I refuse to get caught in that mess of a traffic.

2. And I should clean. I hate cleaning. The only thing I hate more than cleaning is cooking and yard work. Guess it's a good thing I didn't become a homemaker...

3. Work is fine for me at the moment though we're all waiting with bated breathe to see if/when there'll be more layoffs.

1. Signed up for a job interview training seminar at a well known internet company. They want you to take the seminar to teach you how to prepare to be interviewed by them. Haven't actually scheduled an interview yet, not sure how long I want to prepare.

2. Taking an intermediate photography class. Had to take 100 different pictures of the exact same object for last night's class. I now have a lot of pictures of a faux-concrete planter full of dying flowers.

3. Actually enjoying my job lately and feeling slightly guilty that I'm searching for a new job.

Welcome bondcliff!

1. Me too, divka! I had to deal with an adult tantrum. And I dealt with it by not backing down and calmly stating my position. I don't know whether it's because I've learned how to be less sensitive (a good thing) or that I just don't care anymore. Probably both.

2. I keep trying things to meet new people, and it never works. So the options are to either never try anything, or keep doing things that don't work. Argh.

3. The Book of Life is open!

THREE ENTIRE POINTS OF UPDATE DROPPING NOW

1. I'm in Minnesota now. That's different.
2. I have only one dog now. That's been the case for a while, but possibly I haven't posted to MetaChat in the meantime so it's like an update. I miss my Old Girl, although the (now 6-year old) Wee Lad is as good a companion as you could hope for.
3. My posting here dried up because I just didn't want to talk much. I feel like I've aged as much in the past three years as I had in the twenty previous, and I haven't been an awful lot of bubbly fun. But the post on MetaFilter prompted me to dig out my password.

POINTS: UPDATED (3)

1. RedBud and I are driving to the Seven Feathers Hotel tomorrow. We'll have a congenial supper with two other couples, then attend a Marty Stuart performance. I've come to appreciate him only recently, having been put off because of his costume--big hair and nudie suit. I happened to watch one of his TV shows last year, and I was taken by his genuine warmth and talent. He brings traditional country musicians to his show, or pretty much anybody else he decides to feature. I saw his lead guitar man match Tommy Emmanuel note for note, a thing I'd not thought likely, but I have to believe the evidence of my own two ears. It can't get much better than excellent, except when it's transcendent, and that happens now and then in the jams. After watching a few of his shows I realized how impressive he is. He's married to Connie Smith, one of the heavy-weights in the genre. I was hooked when he brought Don Maddox on, and let him do his thing. Don is in his mid-nineties now, but he can still fiddle with the best of them. He's the last of the incredible Maddox Brothers & Rose.

2. We'll come home Sunday morning in time for me to load the PA and instruments in my car and toodle on down the road to Medford, where some of us will perform for one of the Senior Centers. This particular venue is usually well-attended and enthusiastic. We are stars here, doing what we love to do for people who enjoy our show. Our crew is a branch of the Oregon Old Time Fiddlers. I'm not a fiddler, just a low-rent rhythm guitar man, but I do love my job, and would do it for half the pay. (0-0=0)

By the way, Don Maddox is one of our members, and I am tickled pink to be able to share a stage with him.

1. Today is my chore day and I need to get moving but I'm just feeling so incredibly lazy. I've been just leaving things everywhere since I got home after midnight on Thursday and was out shopping all day yesterday. (The Turkish Restaurant Week dinner on Thursday was super delicious and fun though, so it was worth getting home late.) I've already taken Anubis' collar off so he can run around nekkid for a while.

2. I need to work on the latest Lauzli piece today. I've got some ideas for the costuming I want to wear but it's going to depend on how well it works with the floorwork parts. We're currently working on a Poe/Raven themed piece with a classical song that has a dubstep remix. It's going to be a lot of fun. (For example, this is from our latest rehearsal:

" Everything in the beginning is apprehensive, sort of thousand-yard-stare-y
Cane is (literally hardy har har) our crutch, so this part is a little stronger and even a little defiant
It's a facade we can't maintain so we drop our canes and go back to being scurred, but with a little extra defeat this time"

.) I'm so happy with how things have worked out the Lazulis. We have so much fun together and have meshed so well. :) (There's also entertaining parts from rehearsal like 'now we're doing to feel each other up but then we're slightly ashamed about liking it' and 'when you hear the knock, it's unexpected pizza delivery' which is different than our last piece where it was a case of 'yay, my pizza's here!')

3. I had a followup appointment with my orthopedic on Thursday too and since my back isn't hurting anymore, he said that we're just going to leave it alone and not bother with any other meds or go to the cortisone shots. (It's a massive herniated disk.) I'm perfectly okay with leaving it alone until it acts up again.

1) I now have a cousin living nearby. This is very unusual for me -- I'm used to having no family within a day's drive. We got together a couple of weeks ago and then again tonight, eating at the same Ethiopian restaurant twice. It's so good to have her out here.

2) There's a house party going on in my neighborhood. I can vaguely hear what sounds like slow-dancing music for teenagers. Do teenagers ever still slow dance nowadays? I remember it from high school as a hilariously embarrassing/exhilarating kind of standing, shuffling embrace, during which one would be horribly conscious of the song lyrics as they did or didn't pertain to the person.

3) Dog and self are going out shortly for a late-night walk.

and also 4), because why stop at three? I'm getting on a plane in a few days to see my parents/brother and another batch of cousins. I've been feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable lately and want to bask in all the connection I can, which is coincidentally why I'm glad things seem to be reactivating over here.

Ooo! So happy to see new folks and old friends in this thread!

1. Luxuriated in reading a book off and on all day yesterday. The second in a Yugoslavian noir series by Alen Mattich. Still quite behind on my Goodreads reading challenge, though.

2. Sat at the bar at a favorite restaurant last night. Have always sat at tables until recently; not sure why my preference has changed, but I'm enjoying the vibe, and mr. init is enjoying being able to freely watch the games without feeling he needs to hide his interest. ;-)

3. I need to buy a new mattress. I'm skeptical of the memory foam and sleep number and other seemingly gimmicky ones, but the pillowtop I have now is killing my back (after an embarrassingly long time of owning it).