Sunday, April 25, 2004

Dinosaurs, Garbanzo Beans, and Button Hook Contras

The weekend Lacey-visit was much fun. This was the first time I'd been to the Skyline house, which I like very much, especially all the skylights and slanted ceilings on the top floor. Plus, Hugo has a really cool computer set up, involving his TV, a couch, wireless keyboard and gyration mouse. Very spiffy.

On Saturday Lacey and I went to The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I loved the dinosaur exhibit, rubbery robotness and all, though the T-Rex was a bit dangerous. In addition to dinosaurs, we met a chameleon and a computer-generated, 50-year-old me.

Lunch was Lebanese food. I had no idea you could do such wonderful things with garbanzo beans. Wow.

We went to the Portland contra dance Saturday evening and found Kevin and Barbara playing the music, which was a very pleasant surprise. The whole dance was fun, but it would have been worth it just for the "button hook" move we learned in one contra, which went like this (indulge me for a minute here): The ones cross the set and head away from their partners to meet a trail buddy in a hands-across star with a couple of twos. Balance the star, go all the way around (passing your partner and then going away again), balance the star again (note how this makes some interesting phrasing -- in contra dance terms, at least) then the twos raise their hands in an arch and the ones pass through underneath to find their partners and swing. So it's mostly a move for the ones but Lacey and I actually had a lot of fun as twos. We weren't tall enough to hold the arch very well over all the couples, and usually just had to let go. So we decided to just go with it, and turned the last balance into a great big leap, throwing our hands up into the air, making a very amusing send-off for the ones passing underneath. Highly amusing, at least for us.

Today we just took it easy, eating strangled eggs, leftover Lebanese food, and homemade banana nut bread, plus futzing around with computers and music and just hanging out. Never quite got around to hiking through the beautiful woods up there, but that can happen on another trip sometime.

As I ended most stories in elementary school: "I had fun. I came home. The end."

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