Berkeley things
A whole week of kitchen manager training, six hours a day. We watched hokey videos about restaurant sanitation (lesson: wash your hands), acted out scenes of various issues in kitchen managing, discussed organic food and free trade coffee, and ate free samples of coffee cake, danishes, and enchiladas from food distributors. Technically, a co-op kitchen is a commercial kitchen, so we're supposed to be held to the same standards as a restaurant, which would be a major cause of worry if the city inspectors weren't open about being more lenient about cleanliness in our houses. As it is, most of us are pretty sure living in a co-op has at least made our immune systems stronger.
Partway through the week, I decided my room needed to be repainted. No more yellow ceiling, no more green curlicues, and no more scuzzy cream-colored walls. Everything is pure white. The tiles on the fireplace are gray. The moulding around three doors, two windows, and a fireplace took three days to finish. Painting is hard work, man, but it's a great way to clean things up.
You see the darndest things in Berkeley. This is for Tobin:
Also, half a house. There was a man with a metal detector outside.
Saturday was just about the most perfect Berkeley day imaginable. I somehow ended up in the company of four Canadian mathematicians, and we biked to Vik's for lunch. On the way back from Vik's, we stopped at the Berkeley farmer's market for watermelon and gelato for those who didn't want watermelon, and ate it sitting on the grass in the shade watching some drummers who had collected nearby. The sun was shining, children were playing in the dappled shade, there was music from many sources, and bicycles and happy hippies cheerfully buying their organic local produce.
I came home and inventoried Ridge's kitchen. Fabulous, I know. The first non-perishable order for the kitchen contains some 80 items, and took me at least 3 hours just to look up the items in the catalog, do cost comparisons, and type into a spreadsheet.