Saturday morning I did a little work on my bike, replacing the turn indicator light I busted when I crashed a few weeks ago. I went over to Kirkland for lunch with Ava, then we headed up to Capitol Hill and had a look around Red Light. She found a really sharp cafe-racer style motorcycle jacket and some boots. No more borrowed ski jacket! We’ve been riding a lot lately, since I’d pretty much always prefer to ride the bike than drive the Rover when I have the option, and I’m really glad she has some nice solid gear of her own now.

Saturday night we headed out for Phil B.’s housewarming party. It was a fun little event – Alexis was there, Amy S. showed up with her neighbor Marlo, but otherwise everyone there was new to me. We munched on vegan cupcakes and talked about music. After a couple hours we bopped over to Ellen’s punk-rock-princess birthday party. We didn’t bring costumes, but showing up in motorcycle gear was close enough.

Sunday we had a lazy sleep-in, then I did some gardening while Ava attacked her new boots with shoe polish. After then working her way through a bunch of my shoes she got bored of it and came down to work on the garden. We planted a few big clumps of redwood-sorrel, which has been thriving along the entryway, and half a dozen salal bushes next to the driveway. A new ninebark in the raised planter bed should help spread that area out, and Ava put in a couple more violets since the one we tried a few weeks ago has been doing so well.

After that we went over to the Rocket Factory and cleaned up all the Burning Man gear. We got thoroughly playafied, but all the bins, chairs, cookstoves, tents, and other accessories are now out of sight up in the loft. We even got the sewing table and one of the workbenches cleared off, and dumped a lot of the random trash that had been hanging about. We worked hard and got a surprising amount of work done in only a couple of hours.

We wound up spending the evening over at Adam & Janet’s playing poker. Janet won.