I am a kitchen goddess. In addition to cleaning the cupboards, I have made the perfect quesadilla, made of goat gouda, roasted red pimento, roasted Anaheim chile., and sharp white cheddar cheese, all on vegetillas, cooked until perfectly browned. On top is home-made mango salsa, made from mangoes with the skin on, some rice vinegar, and a couple jalapeños and hungarian wax peppers.

Or she’ll stay another day. I miss her, but she’s having so much fun!

Aside from the fun of the fourth of July, it’s stressful. Ouray feels like downtown Victoria tonight: all sorts of young people I don’t know out late. I want to know them all, but instead I feel faceless, so small. There are so many people. So, so many. I’m not used to crowds.

It doesn’t help that my blood sugar is all wonky right now.

I spent a good portion of the day in Ouray today. I skipped the parade, instead opting for Coffee as usual on Sunday, then to the farmer’s market. I bought a pound of cherries and a pound of apricots. Neither made it past noon.

The waterfights were great. There’s something to be said for the brutal, gladiator-style two-teams-in-a-ring, nobody-leaves-until-it’s-over action. The crowd was eight deep on all four sides of the interesection. One team managed at least six change-offs, only to lose to the absolutely solid stance of the others. I’d love to try my hand at the 1½ inch hose with someone. Ruth talks about trying to get an inter-departmental waterfight challenge going. I think that’s a great idea.

Tonight, the fireworks were fantastic. They managed not to start any major fires, and the boom of the fireworks echoed like the most fantastic thunder down the valley. I think we were right in the sweet spot this time, too. The echoes seemed tuned for us.

In other news, Carrie comes home Tuesday morning. I can’t wait.

I do not feel like working in the slightest.

The phone is silent. My brain feels like a truck with a dead cylinder.

And now I’m up, but it’s late. Grrrgh. Stupid server crash throwing my sleep just a little too far off.

Awoken by a customer, and still tired. Going back to bed now.

Server’s up, but the moon is not supposed to be over there in the sky. I am up way too late.

Rargh. My main server went down at almost exactly 2am, and I have no idea why yet. What a time of day to have to call and have it restarted.

The name “Samantha Anne Stewart” has crossed my mind more than once recently.

Five might-have-beens

1. One in which I decided to persue theater. I go to New York at 17, and live poor for a few years. Several messy relationships with people I work with later, I finally give up on New York, move to a small town with a big theatre like Creed, and really get going. After that, head to college and take theater courses and a side in music. Get side-tracked in music and eventually become a permanent fixture at the school, half teaching, half studying. Then move on and study physics and music.

Live a long time in a house full of books and musical instruments, all meticulously disorganized.

2. One in which I wore a blue shirt instead of grey to Independence on May 5, 1995. I never got asked if I wanted a job. I ended up working in a restaurant, then cooking, then building things, then dying falling off a building during a dip in blood pressure.

3. One in which I fall in love with someone local, and end up having a kid early. We rent a series of apartments, then eventually move some place cheaper. We drive a beat up Celica, and struggle to make rent.

We eventually make ends meet, and buy our house. It’s thankfully next to the library, and I hide there whenever possible, reading all the time.

4. I realize that I am transsexual at fifteen, and I start on hormones early. At seventeen, you’d never know if I didn’t tell you. I manage to be successful at repairing computers, and I babysit sometimes. Camp changes me in wonderful and beautiful ways. I spend a good part of that year in a heap at the end of my bed, trying to figure out romance. I pay attention to my art, and it grows. I journal compulsively.

Eventually, I decide to hang out at university. I move to a nice city, Portland, perhaps, or Victoria or Montréal, or decide I want to go to London. I study music. I discover dance. I sing.

5. I start transitioning to being a girl early. It works fairly well, but something’s not quite right. I feel terrible and end up on some nasty drugs.

And some futures

1. I start selling DSL service. I find a niche giving rural people internet service, and expand. I eventually sell the parts I don’t want to maintain, keeping a small service for myself.

Carrie and I marry, and shortly after, buy land, and start building a cottage on it. We happen to have limited water rights, which we use to irrigate our garden. We live simply and well.

I hire someone to work while I travel, and we travel the world, starting in Ireland, then around Europe, then to Northern Africa, then Asia. We end up in the Pacific and stay a while.

2. I start taking hormones. My parents are only vaguely supportive, and living here in town has its ups and downs. I take the extra money I have coming in and travel. I make frequent stops in Portland, because having friends there is a good thing.

3. My blood pressure drops at an inopportune moment, and I fall down the stairs. I end up paralysed. (Have you ever wondered why I hold onto things tightly when I stand up?)

4. I go to MIT and learn in the AI Lab. I join the Logarhythms or the Toons, and sing a lot. Life is good. I’m one of the few girl geeks on the campus. I end up pasty from being indoors at too many hours. I take long walks around Boston, and eat too much palate-scorching Sichuan food.

That’s nine. That’s pretty tough to come up with without inventing your death to get out of it too often.

That was fun.

I just got back from a gallery opening, the Cimarron Art Glass company. I’ve been watching them get ready now for two months, and today they threw a good party and open house. Monroe is damn good with glass: his demo was making a blown rondelle, and the final stroke was to take the spherical vase shape, heat it up to glowing red at the top half, and then give it a quick spin facing the audience, who were rewarded by its opening up like a stop-motion film of a rose blooming.

The caterers were superb — I am entirely too full of cheese, including the brown Norse cheese that I can never remember the name of that I love.

I missed Frisbee to go, though, and I feel bad about that: Mary’s really been wanting to get a game on, and there haven’t been enough people.

Shelley was there, too, and she told me that two of Carrie’s necklaces have sold. Hooray!

Now off to work on projects.

In the past few weeks, I have:

• gotten to know Fiona and Jem a lot better,
• spent entire days basically alone,
• made projects work that I’ve been working on a long time,
• eaten home-made nachos that made Greyhound Nachos look really good,
• talked about British cooking,
• watched two couples break up, and get back together,
• sent the billing with no major errors,
• had people calling me with updated credit card numbers,
• missed Carrie,
• listened to a lot of Indigo Girls and Suzanee Vega,
• and done a lot of thinking.

I worked the store this evening for the first time in a long time. It felt really good to change mental gears and do something less brainy for once.

I miss Carrie. Ruth gets home just about now.

In other news, Liferea 0.5.1 is a good improvement on 0.5.0, and the new Cheddar we got at the store has turned out to be a particularly bland Process Cheese Product. It goes really well with the also surprisingly bland (read: low salt) Green Mountain Gringo tortilla strips. At least chips low in salt are acceptable.

I got coda working, on a modern kernel, with modern tools. Now just come cleaning up the init scripts and getting down to packaging the bad thing and I’ll be very, very happy. I have been working on this off and on for a long, long time now.