Northwest Seth: Mustache March!

In a recent post I raved about the arrival of spring and sipping margaritas on sunny decks at happy hour. Well, I love love love how the northwest giveth and the northwest taketh away. I didn't see it, but apparently there was a dusting of snow earlier this week, here in the city. I felt it - cold, rainy, gray. I admit I typically prefer the cold and gray but I was really beginning to dig those warm sunny afternoons. Lucky for me, this slight emotional upset (tissue, please) was rectified when I learned that some students at my university of employment were promoting a fundraising event called Mustache March. I know, right? Nothing brightens a cloudy day like a big thick mustache. I carved this beauty a few nights ago - just before a dinner party where I met a lovely pair of retired doctors who seemed amused at the idea. It's funny that since our New Years mustache shenanigans, those furry lip caterpillars just don't seem so out of place to me anymore (I know, this is how it begins).

In addition to a great excuse to wear a mustache, March also has the honor of being my birthday month. Actually, not only is March my birthday month, but also the birthday month of my sister Kiasa and my friends Zack and Andrea. AND - get this - not only is March our shared birthday month, but March 9th is the actual birth DAY for me, my sister and Andrea, with Zack owning March 3rd.

What I'm getting at is that the universe obviously smiled upon 3/9/10 and our three simultaneous birthdays by showing me this sign:

Yes, that's a panda face in my blender. My typical morning smoothie was graced by a birthday miracle. Step aside, Jesus on toast. Right after this photo was taken, I blended that panda into oblivion and then drank it into my belly. With flax seeds. (The astute among you will notice the lovely "Wine Country" print oilcloth we use for a counter surface while we wait for the concrete counter top to be constructed)

Always incredibly thoughtful, Beth made my birthday a memorable delight. In the morning before work she let me open my gift - a large box which had been occupying an off-limits space on the porch for three weeks. It was an ice cream maker - joy! Old-fashioned style with the wooden bucket and you can actually choose between a hand-crank option or 'lectricity. I loved our old ice cream maker and used it often in Davis. When the old motor burned out, I never really made it past denial to reach the other four steps of grief...until now. Want to know what summer tastes like? Give me some cream, sugar, berries, ice and rock salt.

So attentive she is to my whims and whimsy that she also purchased for me an odd set of wooden letterpress blocks. I'm looking into a letterpress class and am generally fascinated my all things printed and...and she wrapped it so nicely with some textured paper - ooh, texture. The green parts felt all fuzzy on your fingers. The blocks were - curiously - all the number 1. Different sizes, different typefaces, but every one of them...one. We considered mounting them in some way, perhaps drilling holes into them to hang or to stake up but with the magic of Google I learned that such blocks are becoming rarer and that folks who actually use them to print have sincerely asked the world to collect them and display them as they like, but please don't alter them - so that they might at some point eventually reenter a printer's drawer. Turns out they look pretty nice just stood up on our mantle anyway: