Elf Sternberg

Saturday, Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I woke up early, had a good breakfast, then loaded out bicycles and drove out to a local bike path for a quick up-and-down ride along the Des Moines Creek Trail, which is fairly short but is all uphill on the way back, so it was good exercise. Since I've been doing nothing but short four-block hops on the bike ever since the weather turned nice, I worried about my ability to ride. When it was done, though, I was barely winded: a winter of lunges and leg exercises really pulled me through, and I was able to ride without any discomfort or pain.

I drove Kouryou-chan to her dance class, then Omaha to a volunteer event she had at the Burien Strawberry Festival. I went home and wrestled with Skype for Linux, which is crashing badly on certain QT calls. After I gave up, I pretty much lamed out and played Half Life 2 for the rest of the day.

Omaha made a Moroccan beef stew with cous-cous recipe for dinner that was fabulous.

Sunday, I awoke to have the girls cooking me a Father's Day breakfast. They made awesome pancakes, and Storm made highly caffeinated mud for my coffee. It was tasty, but wiring.

We went out to the Strawberry Festival after that, this time to enjoy ourselves as a family. I had a bit of a headache, but some painkillers and more coffee helped, and then we watched Stormy do her hip-hop dance thing, ran into other people we knew either from school, dance academy, or politicking. There was a car show with everything from gorgeous, well-kept AMX's to utterly wrecked and rusting Mustangs, as well as a few open bonnets showing the intimidating and no-user-servicable-parts-inside nature of electrics and hybrids. The food aisle was pure Americana, living fully up to America's Food Rule, although I managed to get just a bratwurst with lots of veggies and skipped the starch and sugar entirely.

The local business row had two political tables (both Democratic; the Republican Machine in our area is a cash-raising, call-center focused organization with no accountability to or accessiblity by local citizens), a dozen chiropractic quackeries or woo-laden colon blow resellers, plus the usual knicknacks, "start your own business" pyramid schemes, and a few local artists.

We had dinner at a local steakhouse, and had a great meal, although Kouryou-chan was so strongly anti-steak that we had to kajole her into even looking at the chicken portion of the menu. I ate poorly most of the weekend, but I can survive if I behave myself through the week.