act, not together

In small ways over the past few months, I've been busy getting more organized. Several departments have been severely neglected, this damned blog included, but I haven't forgotten about it. I've been putting so much effort into other things that I wasn't even remembering to check Kate's blog, which I used to do on a regular basis. I just realized that last night and was feeling pretty harebrained.
Kate and Ron are getting a secretary from me for their wedding- I've been trying to work out the drawings so I can start picking out and milling the wood I'll need. Designing furniture requires a lot more imagination and foresight than just building it, and I'm definitely noticing the need to be able to reference previous projects in my head to figure out what will work and what won't. It's also the first thing I'll have made myself that wasn't designed around pieces of scrap or a table top of predetermined size. There is one of those floating around, but it's in a store in Fort Point and I haven't taken any photos yet. I intended to make something for my friends Nate and Amy, who also got married recently, but they won't tell me what they could use, and I'm having a hard time pulling something out of my ass. Any ideas?

Also, for the past couple of months, I've somehow been very motivated to learn to speak, read and write Japanese. For real this time. I'm not sure what changed, since I've been interested for at least 10 years without ever having done much outside of a single semester... but something has, and now I'm spending a lot of time working on it. It's complicated and intimidating, but I like it, and as a happy accident I think all the studying is helping to improve my short term memory, which has been completely shot after spending too many years riding in traffic. I'm not dreaming in Japanese yet (though I did once, years ago), but I've been dreaming about kanji, which is a good sign!
The CMWC just so happens to be in Japan this year, but I don't have enough money or even a passport, so I'll have to wait a while longer before I can actually fly over there for any reason. I'd rather go out and work or go to school than just vacation (or go for a big weirdo bike race), anyway.

I'm also finding out that 2 bags of produce a week is really difficult for one person to eat. I bought a small share in a CSA with Parker Farm in Lunenburg this year, and pick up 2 full bags of vegetables every Wednesday in Cambridge. So far it's been the time of year when leafy green stuff does really well, so I've been gorging myself on salad (eating an unprecedented amount of dressing, which is unsettling) and I'm still having to pawn off a lot of lettuce on people. And then there's all the other stuff, like bok choy and chinese cabbage. Got peas last week, and soon enough it's going to be all yellow squash and cucumbers, tomatoes and corn. I'm looking forward to finding out how much healthy food I can actually get myself to eat - it's just going to be a lot of work making sure nothing goes to waste, since the stuff doesn't have much of a shelf life.