Damn, has it been that long?

Holy crap, have I let this blog sit around this long without a new post? Yikes. After coordinating the crane events in early April, I guess I fell busy with work sucking all life out of me and just getting the case of the blahs. I notice that I seem to go through a phase of non-blogging around the same time of year. I keep missing my blogiversary because of it too. I keep thinking I'm going to do something special for my next blogiversary, but I never get around to it. I guess I can say "next year" again, eh? By then it'll be my 5th blogiversary, so maybe I can plan something special then. Or I'll most likely miss it yet again. We'll see.

Just so I can get caught up, I'm going to fill you in on what I've been up to as of late, mostly via photos. The paper crane folding event was a huge success, as we brought in over 2000(!) over the course of 2 events over the weekend. The count as it stands right now is over 8600, so my friend's project is going really well!

A knitter friend I met on a knitter's retreat back in March took some photos of one of the two events my friend and I coordinated. She took a really great photo of my mom and I at the event:

Some more photos from the crane folding event:

Photo below are of some of the cranes from the event lined up on my living room carpet, I think that was about 1000 there. My friend L and I want to get a photo of all of them (the goal being 20,000 to reach the numbers closer to the number of people lost). Even having 1000 paper cranes on the floor of my living room puts things into perspective when you think that each crane represents a life lost from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

It was really amazing to be a part of (and coordinate) an event that my local community participated in. We had people of all ages, all backgrounds stop by the cafe and many folded cranes for the first time in their life.

We even had the local paper and tv news people cover the event.

One of my favorite shots: some of my co-workers were challenging each other on who could make the smallest crane. Mine is the larger of the two shown below, but with the penny there for scale, they're both rather small, aren't they?

And then spring finally showed up in the NW (took long enough). I had never seen real robin's eggs and couldn't believe that they really were that gorgeous hue of blue! When they say "Robin's Egg Blue" they werent' kidding. This was taken in a tree in Bear's uncle's yard.

And along with the good, some not-so-fun stuff came around as well. I've been experiencing some heel/foot pain in my left foot for a few months. I thought it would gradually go away, but as it gradually started to get worse, I finally gave up and went to go see the doctor.

Turns out I have plantar fasciitis in my left foot. So now I'm going to physical therapy twice a week to see if it will help me heal. I've been going for about a month now and although it hasn't been cheap, it's definitely helping (and it doesn't hurt that it gets me out of that hellhole of an office for awhile) and I'm not hobbling around in pain as much as I had before I started going. So I will be doing some exercises to strengthen my foot as well as my core and hips, while having my foot taped up for a little while longer.

I've still been baking and this is a photo of my father's strawberry cake that I made for his birthday, topped with (a lot!) stabilized whipped cream. It was fun decorating this cake! I think I went a little too crazy with the whipped cream, though really, can one even have "too much" whipped cream and strawberries? I think not!

We've been getting local rhubarb in our local veggie/fruit delivery box, so I've been making a lot of strawberry/rhubarb crumbles. I looooove rhubarb!

It doesn't hurt to have a little ice cream served alongside (although I have to remind myself that we can't be eating this every week, lol)

I've lost my knitting mojo recently, but I've promised a friend that I'd knit 2 hats for her baby. Since they're taking a little longer than initially expected since I'm lacking the drive to knit these days, I'm making them a little larger so that baby can enjoy the hat in colder months later on this year.

Throwing in a gratuitous photo of Frank, just because :)

And last but not least, the photo at the top of this post was taken just about a week ago. Bear and I went to a sustainability fair and we got to listen to and meet Ed Begley, Jr.! He was very, very nice and I really enjoyed his talk on how he got started making changes in his life to live simply, which in turn benefits the environment. After his talk and visiting the various vendors and booths at the fair, Bear and I both feel inspired to take on more changes in our household in order to live simple but fulfilling lives.

That's about it for now. Hope to get back to regular posting again, if I can get back into the swing of things.