We went camping last night in the living room. I'm not really sure why, but Tim suddenly got the notion in his head that we should set the tent up in the living room, and go camping with the dog.
The last time we did this was in Rochester before we left on our bike trip. Navi was an itty bitty puppy at the time and she was very confused that night when we zipped up the tent door and laid down to sleep. She roamed the tent, poked her nose in every corner and did not understand that she wasn't sleeping in her crate that night. She'd settle in a corner and make us believe she was going to sleep. Our eyes would start getting sleepy, start closing for longer and longer periods of time, and then right as sleep started to come, nope! Navi would rise again, sniff all four corners of the tent, imploringly stick her wet nose in our faces, and lick our fingers until we petted her, soothed her, and lulled her into a curled ball in another corner.
So in comparison, camping in the living room v2 went much smoother. The tent was dragged out of the closet and when we opened it up, dirt from all over the country ended up being dumped all over the living room floor. Navi was very curious about what was unfolding in the middle of the room and when it was finished, she explored around the tent, then wandered inside to explore there, and got pretty excited. We watched TV and played video games while sitting inside the tent, and she curled up in a ball between us. When it came to actually going to sleep though, she got a little iffy. She stood in corners acting like a sentinal, staring into nothing, and eventually we ignored her and drifted off to sleep.
She's going to have to get used to it soon, because she's coming backpacking with us.
Yesterday, Tim, Navi and I wandered to Berkeley to go look around the farmer's market. When we arrived, Navi got stopped by a sign stating that no dogs are allowed in any farmer's markets in the state of California. As a result, she and Tim played in a nearby park and made lots of friends while I wandered through the farmer's market. I was in search for fennel bulbs, blackberries, and peaches. I first found the fennel in a small stand that had a lot of baskets full of salad greens. When I went up to the lady to pay $1.50 for three bulbs, I told her that Tim and I had tried to dig up wild fennel along the bay trail with a hammer and a spoon only to discover that wild fennel doesn't have the bulbs I wanted. She laughed herself silly for a few minutes and then told me that the kind of fennel I was buying is a hybrid produced so that it has a large bulb. Go figure.
I then went to a stand for peaches. I never have been able to tell if a peach is ripe, so I asked the guy at the stand. He kept ignoring my question and telling me to try his blackberries. I did want blackberries, but I was looking at peaches, so for some reason it rubbed me the wrong way. I don't really like people who are overly pushy while selling their products. I'm not going to reject free food or tastes, though, so I ate one of his blackberries anyway. It was a good blackberry, but all blackberries are good, so I wasn't more impressed than usual. They were also more expensive than other blackberries I had seen. So off I went!
I found peaches at another stand with friendlier, less in-your-face people. They showed me a few ways to tell if a peach is ripe, and then I picked a few out. When I went to pay, they told me one peach was overripe, and let me to pick another. I liked them more because of that, so I was really proud of my peaches. I also found some good blackberries for a more reasonable price at another stand, so I emerged from the farmer's market feeling very successful.
Then I couldn't find Tim. Turns out he was hiding behind this big sign because he had expected me to walk out of the farmer's market from the other side. There was a kid whose dad loved Navi and he was in the process of trying to convince his daughter that Navi was soft and fuzzy and really fun to pet. The little kid wasn't as sure, and kept running away from Navi. Navi ignores a lot of little kids now because she knows half of them are terrified of her for no good reason other than they are not used to large animals that pant like a stream train.
So today, I started to make a peach and blackberry cobbler with crystalized ginger with my farmer's market finds. I got the ginger from the chinese market just down the street. Even though it's always at the top of my mind that chinese crystalized ginger is much more potent than the kind you buy in a typical supermarket, this fact always escapes me when I'm actually cooking. So I put the requested amount of ginger in. The result is pretty darn delicious...and slightly overpowering on the ginger side. Oh well. I'll definitely make it again, and would recommend it to others. I'll just go easier on the ginger next time.
We also went to REI today. We went with the goal of purchasing some hiking boots for me. We left the store having looked at every single thing in the store in depth...except the hiking boots. The shoe section was really crowded and we couldn't get anyone to help us, so we decided to look everywhere else in the store and come back for hiking boots on a quieter weekday. I tried on quite a few backpacking backpacks, and I fell in love with this one pack. It was bright green apple colored, but that's just a happy plus about the pack, not why I bought it. I bought it because it fit really well, and I even liked it after wearing it around the store with a ton of weight in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment