you don't have to go to college

WHEW! what a strange few days it's been. i just got back from a very quick trip to california for porcini season. i dove right back into my school routine after arriving on a three-legged, fifteen-hour, red-eye flight home. inevitably, i got sick the very next day. to top it all off, i got a flu shot on friday which resulted in a pretty high fever and achey bones for the next 24 hours. moral of the story: don't get flu shots when you're already ill, or, ever maybe.

 i came home feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of catch-up work i have to do. i felt totally defeated and lacked all motivation. now that i've spent three solid days in bed, i'm ready to get things done! yesterday i got out of bed and immediately broke down a paper grocery bag to make a giant to do list to post on my door. some of the things still on it for today? make pizza dough (just got a new recipe from a fellow mushroom-hunter-flickr-friend) for dinner tonight, clean up for the landlord who will be here tomorrow, UNPACK, aaaaand of course all of the schoolwork that has piled up. i added this blog post to my list because i've decided that writing positive updates about what i've been doing is crucial for my sanity, happiness, and motivation to do other good stuff. that being said, here're some pictures from my california vacation!

   

 1) so i had never picked boletes (porcini) before, though perry has been bringing them home to me the entire time we've been dating. turns out they are a LOT of fun. they get really, really big and wormy so the trick is to find them when they are buttons. even as buttons, they can be pretty big! one thing i loved about them is that they grow in all kinds of situations -- in deep duff where you have to dig for them, in grass where you have to pat for them, even in a mowed lawn! you have to adjust your mushroom-senses for each scenario. so even though you can pick a lot in a short period of time, it's still quite challenging to find that first one in a patch. ESPECIALLY considering perry was taking me to all of the spots he spent years trying to find.

 

2) perry got out to california two days before me, and had a head start -- here's what he picked in that time. i'd say we picked about 4x this amount over the next few days?

 

3) here's the processing station. the wormy ones get dried and any fresh ones we plan on selling get halved to prove that they're perfect. yes, perfect.

   

 4) aside from picking boletes, i also got to catch up with all my sonoma county loves! here's a picture of noelle (west county alpacas) with her herd!  noelle first told me about her dream of raising alpacas about two years ago.  i thought, YES! now that's a good dream to have!  big, but certainly attainable.  i didn't doubt that she could make it happen, but never did i think she'd get this far so soon! it made me really happy to visit the alpacas and see that it's all really, really happening.

and, now that i've been home...it's been my job to be newt mama while perry's still away. perry has six? kind of newts -- three of which are housed separately...so....9 newt houses?  and we have a one-eyed toad named willie.  it's a lot of work.

   

 they are very good at letting me know that they are hungry.

 

and, finally, last night at midnight, for the first time in many weeks, i worked on some embroideries for my thesis (or...that will help me figure out what my thesis IS.) they are really small...wallet photo size. feeling pretty good about getting back into SMALL, quick and dirty stitched work.

 now.......pizza dough!