Recently...

Highlights of the last week or so:

- We have had some lovely weather and some craziness (during the institute there was fog, rain, snow, hail, and a couple of hours of sunlight- good thing that was all indoors!). The never ending snow seems to have stopped, fortunately. We were experiencing some pretty intense cabin fever.

- Tanya and Dante came to visit! We went chasing waterfalls on Wednesday (Glen falls is a fairly intense hike!) and yesterday went to Asheville- which is my favorite city and always absorbs far too much of my money.

- Wednesday morning I got to hold Sabine and Brian's four month old baby Myra while Sabine met with the other YARs. Discovered that she loves waltzing as much as I do. Or at least she would start fussing whenever I stopped waltzing. I am glad I do not have a baby of my own yet but it was really nice to borrow a particularly adorable one for a short period of time.

- The farm is coming along! Brian got the field tilled and our chicken coop has almost three walls and the ground was finally unfrozen enough to start setting up the greenhouse (which is really a hoophouse but that's not what we call it). Mostly I end up working on marketing projects, but I really enjoy the days when I do get to go down and help out.

- We hosted one of our Institutes- basically weekend long workshops run by activists. This one featured Dr. Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock. I was in over-awed fan shock for much of the weekend (kinda like when Meredith Monk came to Bryn Mawr), but had a good time all the same. Though I'm definitely not used to that much singing!

- Also during that weekend learned more about labyrinths. Am now even more obsessed then before. Labyrinths are awesome.

- Senior High Con the weekend before that went well. Favorite quote of the weekend was from a poem read at the coffeehouse- "I'm not perfect, I'm not always sane, but I'm here and that's beautiful". woo-hoo for Mountain Youth! Most meaningful compliment of the weekend- one of the PAL Mentors looked me in the eyes Sunday and said "you're very cool". Small thing, but it made me feel awesome. That was the Con where I shadowed Brian- this weekend I'll be running the Con. The Con full of Middle Schoolers. Aieeee!

Update- it was 70 degrees and sunny today and I taught Myra the two step and cha cha.