...are AWESOME. I still can't follow them (like Tatum, bring on the Bach!" moment in a couple weeks, which means my musical sense is totally rewiring.

The Hunt for Gollum: good film? Nope. Impressive nevertheless? Oh, yeah. It's a fan film with enthusiastic volunteers and no budget, yet they managed to make something that looked like a studio-produced prequel (of roughly Star Wars ep. I quality) with suspiciously look-alike actors.

Elsa's plane was delayed, so she crashed at pika last night (and I think I went to sleep about an hour before she got up). Also last night: pika party. (Yeah, it's the third time I've written about it.) I believe I've mentioned before how the theme was Labyrinth - a somewhat scarring movie involving Muppets and David Bowie in weird pants - so decorations were everywhere, and impressive costumes, and I was... curled up with my laptop and books in the non-partying basement study room. Come to think of it, that's kind of what I do for pretty much all parties. Try-new-things FAIL. Next time I'll grab a much more extroverted friend and ask to shadow them for the evening. A lot of this goes against my habits and personality, but I will never know unless I try.

I spent most of the day (literally) running across Boston trying to find aunt and cousins - from pika up to Mass Ave and across the river past Berklee to the Orange line, which I took to the New England Medical center right before I raced completely around (and then across) the Commons until we finally found each other at Government Center. Every couple minutes I'd have a phone conversation like this:

Me (gasping): I am... at $newlocation... where are... you guys?
Them (loud parade music in background): WHAT
Me (breathing more normally): $NEWLOCATION WHERE ARE YOU
Them: BEAR STAR MOO?
Me: nonono, where are you. You. Where.
Them: Oh, we just marched to $otherplace.
Me: *RUN*

And then I was pretty exhausted. So of course we went and got some Chinese grocery ingredients for Melanie's birthday noodles (tomorrow!) and I biked from Newton to pika and it took an hour because I was tired enough to have to walk up a few of the uphills. (I mapped it afterwards; I ran about 6 miles and biked twice that. I should do this kind of thing more so it won't hurt quite so much.)

Lissa made Magical Tofu and some pretty ridiculously awesome squash for dinner. I relaxed and mostly stayed away from keyboards for the day (this evening for a few hours is an exception), the consequence being that I need to, er, hit the library again soon. (Information gets consumed when I am bored.)

Tomorrow: share triumphant packaging results (...I hope), pika trip to farm, meeting with Mafe, non-RH inbox zero, practice piano by actually touching it this time (I was trying to do ear training while roaming Boston today - dominant flat 9 scales are hard to hum!), rub out knots in my hands and arms and muscles as best I can, plan for the upcoming week. I actually momentarily feel like I might have something like half my act together - this is pretty awesome. Incrementally improving!

Somehow, from these scattered improvisations, a life emerges.