Listening to Jess play my banjo in the kitchen - of course she's never played the banjo before but that doesn't stop her from picking it up and immediately strumming away, clinking plucking dinging in a way I have never been able to even after a year. Some people are just talented.

Monday morning meeting: lasted for over an hour as Bruce, Peggy, Erin, Jess and I gushed ideas and talked about the future and exciting things while we tried to talk about what we were doing for the rest of the week...picking raspberries early tomorrow!

Weeded onions at Alvin's in the morning, the field had been irrigated so at least the weeds were easy to pull up. The onions are in the most serious trouble - last week Bruce said he was just going to "spray em with roundup" and I convinced him to let me weed them instead. Alvin came by and showed me how to set up the irrigation channel for the millet and we moved the irrigation dams and fixed the channels. I like him. a lot. He couldn't help but continue our political gush-session from friday and started in on reagan again

"..aw man, them republicans, they were smart to pick that Reagan, I mean OH BOY he was a poster child"

and then I told him about the Eat-In school lunch campaign I'm going to start (via Josh Viertel, Slow Food because he asked me to and their campaign was missing Montana and he kind of guilted me into it...in the best of ways I'm sure) and Alvin leans over to me and whispers, even though we are in the middle of millet field in the middle of nowhere.."I know who you can talk to on the legislature in town...a little secret, 95% of the courthouse is on OUR side" and he winks. Yes, I really like him.

After lunch I worked on getting together the Eat-In and brainstorming about what it would entail, watered the sweet potatoes at the community garden and weeded the other potatoes and then I started making/painting a huge "welcome" sign for the community garden. It's kind of ugly...yellow and purple...but we have all this free paint in the basement and I just got so excited to use it and and and...

Some exciting things that happened today:

Jess and I got our food stamp cards and we each have about $120 EACH to spend on food a month. omgomgomgomgomomg

I got my health insurance card

I got reimbursed by Americorps AND my first stipend (aka I feel richer than I have in MONTHS)

Jess made me go on a wild goose chase after work today...let's just say we ended up at a pet store/adult entertainment store/head shop in a trailer park. Kind of scary. Definitely smelly.

Peggy, our boss, invited Jess and I to her LAKE HOUSE this friday. omg. We're going. Obviously.

Jess is making fried rice because we were craving chinese food and just couldn't let ourselves do it so we'll see how this vegan version turns out, it'll be no Ollie's but a girl can dream.