The weather remains beautiful so it’s a really nice walk to the Max. My neighbor was there today so we talked about code and testing as usual. Nobody ever jumps in on these conversations of ours. Weird.
I got to class early and Lukas was nice enough to allow me to push my changes up to Github before class got going. We weren’t going to be using our computers at all so I really appreciated that. Dia was flying in to hold an all day workshop for us in order to help us tell our story. We have presentations to give next week so this help is SO appreciated! It also made me really nervous. I was just thinking about what we might have to do and hoped I’d be able to do it.
We began our morning with check-ins and I think at least a few others were nervous as well. We’ve kind of fallen into a nice routine and today would be completely different. The tables were pushed to the back of the room and we had all of the chairs in a big circle. It sort of forced us all to be very present which I thought was great.
I could go into great detail about the workshop but it’s really something to be experienced more than documented. We did spend half the day doing theater type activities which I had never done before. They were really fun and interesting and I laughed a LOT. Some of them seemed ridiculous while we were doing them but when Dia explained the purpose it totally made sense.
We broke for lunch and it was awesome! I think it was from Pastini Pastaria. So many carbohydrates. Yum! I of course ate too much. I think a lot of us did because it seemed many of us were pretty sleepy after we ate.
We got right back into our workshop but Dia was changing gears. Now it was time to sort of build the scaffolding of whatever our talks would be. We pretty much all vapor locked at this point. The contrast was fascinating and probably a bit disturbing to Dia. We were all very unclear about what we were supposed to be talking about and needed some clarification. She tried to talk us all down off the ledge but it wasn’t working so off she went to get Kronda and Lukas to come and give us the details we felt we needed. Once we had a better idea of what to expect we were able to move through the exercise. Whew! I didn’t end up figuring out what I am going to talk about but I have to do it so something will reveal itself. Probably.
The day was done, check-outs were extremely varied. Some loved what we did and some were totally stressed out by the day but I think it was excellent for everyone either way. It was dinner night so Carmen headed home with me. Wayne had a giant pot of chili simmering so I started making corn bread. People started to show up and it ended up being a pretty large group of us. We had Carmen, Yenni, Jen, Kronda, Jess, Sarah, Roberto, Frankie, Spencer, John, Glenn, Alice, Jason, Brigetta, Chris, Lauren, Sean, and the five of us.
Everyone was eating, talking, laughing and enjoying each other. It was Chris’ birthday so we sang him Somber Birthday. It’s accidentally become a tradition. At one point I had one of those movie moments where I sort of sat back and looked around the table at everyone and was just so incredibly happy to be surrounded with such a varied group of wonderful people. I am so, so lucky!
People filtered out here and there while the rest of us sat at the table and talked. I have no idea how the subject came up but Jess was nice enough to share with us that Kronda has, I’m pretty sure the word ‘several’ was used here with an emphasis on several, journals/scrapbooks dedicated to Xena: Warrior Princess! Finally some Kronda dirt!
It was a really great night and as always it was over too quickly. I offered to drive Kronda, Jess and their bikes home but they laughed and reminded me it was only about 2 miles away. Wayne and I drove Carmen home and as we returned were able to again take in the beauty of downtown Portland at night. The buildings, and lights, and river, and bridges. It’s breathtaking every time.
Today I learned what a pannier is. That Jess and her fancy words! So fancy.