And so it was that three friends caught art from the sky and walked together in search of dinner, two dressed for the chilly Spring weather and one dressed more optimistically. The Birthday Boy arrived later, completing the tango quartet. Spring in Portland.

Yesterday S. and I drove over to the Designing Women art/craft show at Woodford's Church. On the way, we stopped at the ReStore, a building materials depot run by Habitat for Humanity. It's been open for 6 months, said an employee. Trim, posts, deck hardware, sinks, lighting, doors everywhere, appliances...and for cheap. This is my new favorite store, partly because they have some great stuff in there for incredible deals, and partly because you never know what you'll find. Plus, now I know where to donate a stove or fridge or sink or...whatever, when I start remodeling the downstairs apartment this summer.

To get to the ReStore from downtown, take Forest Ave. north almost to Morrill's corner. Turn right on Morrill St., just before Meineke (or turn right across from Goodwill, either way). Drive towards the train tracks. At the end of Morrill St, turn right into what looks like a driveway and the ReStore is in there, about halfway down on the right.

P. and I danced at a benefit in Auburn last night. I was a bit nervous for the first set, but by the end of the second set we were just having fun. Afterwards people kept marveling at the footwork and at my new heels (they do look a bit dangerous). I have no idea what my feet were doing, for the most part. I know exactly what the core of me is doing, and my feet just go under me. I think this is why I don't enjoy a lot of tango classes that focus on footwork without talking about whole-body movement. Anyway. I arrived back home at around 11:00 and unwound by putting a new hard drive into my G3 PowerBook, with Bonita's [un]help. And I marveled myself that a couple hundred people were watching three perfectly good feet and one foot that still feels just a touch wonky. But any foot that can dance in a spike heel has to be doing pretty well, I think. Or maybe I should say that if a wonky foot can dance in a spike heel, my abs are a lot better than they used to be. Now knocking on wood and thinking about taking both feet and pointing them outdoors.

I was thinking that once the Murphy bed is done, I would sleep downstairs, but now that it's Spring, I can't imagine giving up my bed by the attic window. Waking up in the trees, the maples with their foofy umbrellas of yellow flowers, the forsythia burning in the background, the darker green of the lawn, my newly-planted keyhole garden bed just visible, with its supports in place for peas...it's extremely hard to get out of bed with all of that to look at. Coming out the front door, I want to just stop for a while and stare at the almost-blooming honeysuckle and the flowers of the plum tree that are drooping over the porch. I arrive home from school and find myself dallying in the yard, checking out all of the plants that are coming up: iris here, oregano bursting up, chives, tulips, primroses...what a lot of fun Spring is!

I bought my G3 Powerbook some years ago and I still love it, but it was reaaally choking when I was editing images, and the 20GB disk was full. At that point, the whole machine just crawled because, with only 256MB of RAM and a full disk, it would spend most of the time swapping with hardly any swap space anyway. Argh.

I finally got fed up with it and stuck in 1GB of RAM and a new Hitachi TravelStar 80GB hard disk. I'd like to report that I can take out the Airport card, heat shield, heat sink, processor card, RAM, and hard disk, disconnect the PRAM battery, replace the RAM in both the upper and lower slots, change the hard disk, and reassemble everything in under 4 minutes...because I was cooking breakfast at the same time and completed the whole operation just before the 4-minute egg timer went off. :-) Unfortunately, the reason I am so fast at it is because I had originally ordered what I thought was the right kind of RAM, but ended up being G4 RAM, and had to [dis]assemble the thing too many freakin' times before determining that it was the new RAM that was bad. Feh.

I do notice better performance with the RAM in place, but I really notice the new disk performance. My old hard drive was 4200 rpm and the new one is 7200...and is so quiet that I sometimes have to listen carefully to figure out whether the machine is on. Wicked stealthy.

Now that I have my new version of OS X installed on the new disk, have my shell set back to zsh, have fooled around with important stuff like setting my prompt ("ooooh!") and aliasing rm to rm -i ("ahhhhh!"), I can settle down to styling the printable schedule for PATHSFEST with Prince. I loved Prince before, but the new version...well, it just keeps getting more and more fabulous.

When I was putting the hose away after watering the peas, I heard Bonita meowing from under the front porch. On the one hand, I was overjoyed to find her since she had been missing all day. On the other hand, it was a major pain getting the lattice off so I could get her out. How did she get under there in the first place? Argh.

Now she's back in the apartment after being a wild animal for a day, and she's conflicted, alternately rubbing my legs and hissing.

MS Anniversary #6 has almost passed. Last night was another crazy musician party at T.'s, with some really excellent players. This morning my eyes opened right at 6:00 a.m. and then, satisfied that I was in one piece with all body parts moving, I went back to sleep until 8:00. Today featured a bicycle loop to South Portland, back to the East End Beach, up to the Promenade, down to Whole Foods, and finally home, where I finished shimming the Murphy bed and screwing it into the closet walls before heading to my parents' for a cookout with their friends. Now it's so perfect outside that it was hard to come in from the garden, but Bonita is chirping and the bed is calling. Four more years to go until I can apply for long-term care insurance. Woo.