I have Pandora.com playing (Current: Severina by The Mission UK) and have amused myself briefly by: looking for a Pandora app on Facebook (subsequently found and added to my profile, high honor indeed, because I don’t put many apps on my profile); looking for submission guidelines for some of my favorite imprints so I can get some of the 20 years worth of dog-eared manuscripts out of the drawers they’ve been locked in; eating a bit of pizza.
I am now sick to my tummy from the pizza. You stop eating that stuff regularly, you find you can’t take it when you eat it.
A last bit of amusing myself to lighten up from teh st00pid before I go to paint some more:
Projectland. Always. Finds. Me.
Oh, dude. I forgot I like These Things by She Wants Revenge. Heh. Thanks, Pandora!
Eh, where was I? Oh, yes.
Left to right: More knitting needles what I done made, simple blanks for the signet, slantboard for period-like calligrapy kit.
Some of the stuff in progress. Also did some cooking, recorded here. And I’ve nearly finished another little bag o’ holding, but I can’t bring myself to finish it. I don’t really like its proportions as a bag–but I do like it as a hat for my head in this cold, wintery world. Given how many hats I have queued on Ravalry, though, I don’t really want to make it into a hat. So it’s stuck on the needles for now.
My feet are cold. It’s quiet, except for the Pandora music… I don’t know this song.
Surely I must have something better to talk about, yes? Well, I do, but I’m reluctant to write in that style these past few years. ::shrug::
There you have it, geeks of the world. The Eleventh Doctor stepping out of the Tardis.
ETA: Yes. It’s a REAL Tardis. At least, as real as any Tardis can be. K is REALLY stepping out of it. Have you not noticed the depth and breadth of geek props we have available to us? Don’t you wish you could have had a Nana and an Unky Munkey like us?
2. Do you need Crash Space, before I donate mine to strangers?
3. Would you be interested in participating in The Travelling Feast?
*The travelling feast is period or period compatable dishes eaten quietly outside the main boar’s head building. I’m generally not able to eat feast any more; Boar’s Head menus are sparse on things I can eat. I’m looking for folks who wouldn’t mind eating food of their own prep outside the building (and, frankly, in a vehicle if it’s as cold then as it is now–I’m already thinking up ways to make the interior of my car a little more “ambiatic” because I don’t see the event steward allowing us to set up a shelter and a firepit. This costs extra, you see. Anyway, cosy in the car with sufficient sin-covering items would be, to me, an acceptable alternative to eating off site and returning for all meals.. or staving for 12-15 hours. It’s moments like these that I wish I had an SCA conversion van. Anyway. If enough people are willing to participate, we can figure something out for more room. And if I have to do it by myself, that’s fine, too, so don’t feel obligated.
I admit. I have been “cheating,” using the quick interludes with my camera to substitute for writing out my thoughts. The problem with this, of course, is that they slip out so randomly when I do that.
So, first, a little project reportage:
How doth thy garden grow?
The last few moments of working on the November installment of the Tusser project. I mistakenly identify my agricultural zone as 4. That’s only partly true. Wylcliffe is in Zone 4. This is taking place at Marihaus, though, and that’s Zone 5b.
I went out in a dress, and the cold winds blew up my skirt, and I slipped out of the timestream again. It’s always odd when you get those moments of temporal displacement and the world you’re looking at isn’t the world you are in: an interesting psychological phenomenon. For a few seconds, I was feeling like some poor schmuck somewhere in the early modern era having to make sure everything got into the ground in a timely fashion rather than a 21st c. woman experimenting with historical agricultural practice. Let’s face it. Unless the economy absolutely collapses, buying dried beans is always going to be the best way for me to obtain a year’s worth of legumes. Cheap, filling, easily stored, and not much physical labor involved.
I wanted to plant chick peas, my favorite period beans, but when going through what beans I had in the house, I discovered that everything plantable has already been eaten. One thing I am wondering is if the store boughten beans are in some way sterilized. Unless they are so, they should grow. If not, I’ll have to buy some in the spring and save them for fall planting–should I continue to try this experiment.
So I cleaned the yard a little before the snow obliterated any possibility of getting the various bits and pieces stowed away. I never did get to cleaning out the herb bed, and I have spent much of the day thinking about what I need to do for the garden next year. At minimum, I need to get the grass in the beds under control, move the vegetable bed–a main problem with this is that the area currently getting the best light is also the area that has some kind of powdery mildew issue, so I may have to spend the gardening season getting that under control before I move the bed there.
If only this thing could LJ Cut. Damn, I miss that. But since it can’t, you’ll just have to scroll past this useful receipt for a powdery mildew treatment: A mixture of one tablespoon Baking Soda, 2.5 tablespoons vegetable oil, and 4-5 drops of liquid soap added to a gallon of water will act as a fine, natural, and inexpensive fungicide (be sure to agitate spray bottle regularly while applying to keep the ingredients from separating). Another natural cure for this mildew is a mixture of one part milk (any kind or brand) to three parts water.
So, anyway, treat the mildew issue, move the veggi bed to the back south, move the clay pile over by where the veggie bed is now and just grass it over. Maybe try some herbs, they can often grow in some pretty crappy soil. The clay pile has been the home of the compost pile these past few years, but nothing is going to help that crap, so I’m just going to have to dig up the beds and move the dirt. The end, amen. That’s my plan–degrass all the beds and move the veggie bed.
Period Kit Apace
Not a lot here. Some progress on another knit bag for carrying kit around. I’ve been doing most of my knitting tracking on ravelry.com as of late, so I won’t repeat that here. I did commit to making something simple and presumably tedious as a present for Michael: A Tom Baker era Dr. Who scarf.
Oh, c’mon, you knew we are dorques.
And not much progress on the refashionista replacement dresses. I just have not felt like sewing. I should put together some ridiculously huge plan of action there, though. I always seem to work best after I write it all out–although that usually involves “writing it out” about 50 times. That would be why this blog is helpful–it cuts the repeated tactile thinking down to about 25 times rather than 50. All that’s happened here is that I’ve discussed some of the issues I have with Michael and found some similarly colored silk shirts–decent silk, not that paper thin shit ubiquitous through the 80’s and 90’s–to use as part of the decorated band. The thought of all that appliqué makes me want to puke, though, so it will have to be bloody simple.
Typing away with the Fingers of Flintstonieness +5
Yes. We managed 50k for nanowrimo. No. We don’t want to talk about the contents. It may have been the worst one ever. There may be a ceremonial burning.
Better work did occur, though. I did resume work on the Travelling Lunch, which is good. I have been stuck, unable to continue writing out my usual ridiculous amounts of “Information for Scadians Who Want To Try Everything” verbal explosion for years. While I do not wish to go back to nothing-but that sort of writing, I also don’t want to give it up.
And seriously, the web site totally needs revamping. As I have said before, I should just wiki it or put it all into wordpress. Done.
The Holiday Season is Upon Us. Crap.
I’m scrooging already. I alternate between curmudgeonly scrooging, which, at this early stage, is mostly just a decline in my mood when forced to enter a retail facility, and cheerful scrooging, ls right now playing out as indulging in my favorite form of charitable giving–dropping money into the Sally Ann buckets and wishing the bell ringer a blessed Yule. Ghod, I love doing that.
We did have Thanksgiving Dinner. It was very small this year. I was fine with that. Usually we have more people, but I just don’t feel like doing all that work this year. Or, for that matter, any other. We’ve been eating leftovers since–even with only cooking enough for four, there was still a lot of leftovers, especially when we are talking one plate of left overs a day. I’ve been partly off my strict food regime since Thursday, because there is more here than Michael can eat alone, and I’m starting to look forward to getting back to rice and beans.
Michael’s comment? “If you used an opaque projector, you could knock that out pretty quick.”
Hm.
I drew on the walls well into adulthood. Then I decided I wanted to be able to take my pictures with me, and I started using paper, instead. However, I’ve been feeling the itch to draw up the Closet O’ Magic, and the above only makes that itch worse.
It’s probably a good thing that the stuff I want to draw on the walls won’t be the sorts of things one finds in a standard art book. On the other hand, I own two opaque projectors, and I’m perfectly capable of drawing what I want myself. Do you know, I forget that I can draw these days? My job takes up most of my time. But I CAN draw, albeit outsider drawing. And I have my own 2 projectors.
Hm.
Meanwhile, a challenge to Jodi:
Continue the conversation, my dear. And bring other people into it, if you can. I have it in my mind that it could be an interesting bit of video record or art, in and of itself, if we either get enough people to do it with us, or if we continue it long enough between us. I tagged it arsartis. Dare ya!
The conversation I am referring to is based on her/my/your idea of what art is supposed to be, to mean. As mentioned in the video, I take the stand that art can be simply aesthetic. I also take several other stands, but I haven’t stated them yet, and I’m interested in seeing if the conversation will develop in a way that makes those points something to bring into the conversation.
I went to archery last night, shot briefly. Because of the back injury, I could not keep it up long. One of the funny-odd things that have happened in the course of my life is this: the Archery Marshall, Bill (William of Mann), was a Chemical Officer in the Army; he’s a bit older than I am, so he was out of Ft. McClellan before I got there, but our time in service overlaps, so we know much the same training grounds, and have experienced many of the same things, albeit from the differing officer versus enlisted viewpoints. We talk about it a little bit every once in a while, but not in the “American Legion Bar/Boy Them Was The Days” kind of way.
I’m thinking about this today because it’s Veterans Day. Once upon a time, Veterans day was Armistice Day, and I can remember calendars that read Armistice rather than Veterans Day–probably from that brief period of time in America when Veterans Day was celebrated on a Monday no matter what day November 11th fell upon. That was the early 70’s, and there was such a resistance to it that President Ford would eventually rescind the order that called for the celebration on Monday, moving it back to its original date. But no matter.
WWI saw the first use of modern chemical warfare. Tear gas, mustard agents, chlorine and phosgene were the primary weapons, and they ranged from incapacitating to horrifyingly lethal. To this day, the images I saw of the filmed and horrific deaths of the soldiers of that era dying from that exposure haunt me. I never forgot what those weapons could do. An older soldier in my family, who fought in Korea, was fond of recounting the use of mustard gas in his own days as a warrior, tales told to me in the months between first enlisting and reporting for basic training, but nothing really brought home the terror and helplessness of such a death until I saw those films. The clouds crossing fields, the nightmare spectre of the men in their protective gear, the brutal retching of the dying: no Hollywood effect can match the brutality of reality.
I’ve seen many “Thank a Veteran” messages today. It makes me feel good the see them, and my response is, “You’re welcome.” I am never sorry about my choice. And I am never adverse to being thanked for what really was a gift to this great country.
But at the same time, I pray you never forget that there is a very real reason that this is celebrated on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
it is about 1845 here; 2 hous ahead of home and yet I am as tired as can be after rising at 0330 to dress, get to the airport, and travel all day. I have phone service, so I suppose I could surf the net a little, if I wanted, but I suspect the cost would be prohibative.
It is nice. This is my first time on a Carribean island, and my first time at an all-inclusive vacation package destination. THERE ARE tHINGS i IKE, AND THINGS THAT ARE DRAWBACKS, SAME aS anything else in this world. It is very humid. We are right on the beach, which is a heaven to me. No mater what drawbacks there may be to this, it beats being at work by millions of miles.
One of the choices I made in prepping for this vacation was to leave projects behind. Usually, I don’t take a vacation without bringing something… No, a lot of somethings.. to do along with me. This time, a selection of books and a PDA cell phone to hold whatever I decide to write. This will force me to relax with the things I love best: words.
1 November 08
Angelique’s wedding went well; she is now Mrs Ted Kozuta. I hope everything will be all right for them. Ted’s a nice guy. They married on the beach, with the Wind and the Water in attendance. Just as when we went to Las Vegas and it rained, we have been here in a clime famous for sun and heat, only to find clouds and cool rains. This is no-never-mind to me, but some number of the people I have encountered here seem very disappointed. Which is to be expected, I suppose.
I find myself horrified by the conditions many of the nationals live in. The poverty is terrible, and the young woman who works at cleaning my room tells me they get paid about 50 USD for a weeks worth of work here. This is a little enclave of wealth, and the other night, while walking around, I noticed that the area is surrounded by high, barbed wire topped fences. Just inside the fence is a cement moat. It made me feel more like a prisoner than anything, although I understand it’s to keep out those who would prey on tourists. The thing is, though: why does it have to be like this? Why does the economy of this place have to be so desperately disparate? The era of colonialization is over. Why, then, is some Spanish mogul coming here to build a fantasy of luxury only to take most of that tourist money out of the local economy. Our Spanish mogul is not living in one of the shanty towns on the other side of the moat.
Change topics, sort of.
I’ve managed to hurt myself. Right now, I’m sitting on the balcony of my room, listening to patois and singing fauna in the tropical evening. There are occassionally bursts of loud and obnoxious song from groups of middle-aged Americans that remind me of why I always kept my mouth shut and tried to pass unnoticed among the ‘rads when I lived in Germany.
Yesterday, I scorned the pool and, instead, stepped into the sea. There are guards on the beach, and their job is to keep the ganja resellers off the beach itself. Instead, the seller stand off the land, thigh deep in the sea, and approach anyone who enters the water with drugs or lovers, and no one is safe from their approach. Everyone is fair game, and I have seen more than one nearly elderly woman on the arm of some handsome young man willing to do for her what golddiggers have been willing to do for men for centuries. They stand at the edge of the water because it works.
This, however, exactly interferes with my pleasures. I am a daughter of the sea. There is nothing they can sell me. And so the security guard come up to me and says, “go in now, dear, they have moved down the beach, you can go if you are quick.“
And I stood, and I ran into the sea.
But the tides had pulled the land away, making a small cliff, a sudden drop of two feet or so, and as I found no footing and fell, I twisted my back badly. I have been here in a wheelchair ever since. To see a doctor is nearly 300 USD, simply for a shot and a handful of drugs that will leave me so stoned that I won’t be able to remember this visit. And I want to recollect. Better some pain, better to be left behind on the resort while everyone goes off, and read and think and remember, than to be so stoned on painkillers that I sleep through it all.
I floated in the water for some while. I was boyant, didn’t notice how badly I had hurt myself until I tried to return to land. In that moment, I knew a mermaid’s pain, and would have turned back into the sea were I truly so fabulous a creature.
2 November 08
I spent last night in the tub; it was uncomfortable in some ways, of course, but the ability to recline, and to replenish the hot water that eased my back was worth it, and I got through the night with no pain to speak of.
Last evening, Michael pushed me in the wheelchair to the sea side, and held me as I hobbled to the water’s edge. I stood in the water, my skirt lifted away from the waves, and watched the lightening far off shore. More than any place in the world, I love the sea. I would crawl into it if I had to. And we sat in the reclining chairs and played sock monkies in the dark, with the sounds of the waves and our laughter captured and sent out to sea.
We briefly watched the evening show. No surprise: a Bob Marley tribute band. We drank a little, and I have been amusing myself by drinking Hurricanes, of course, because I am delightfully perverse that way. No barkeep here knows how to make them, and every one of them makes thing that isn’t a hurricane and yet calls it so, but as long as the concoction is fruity and not overwhelmed by the alcohol, I am content.
3 Nov 08
On our way home, on layover in Charlotte. I am glad to be back in the States. By the end of the stay in Jamaica, I was starting to feel like the resort was more a luxury prision. Don’t misunderstand me, I enjoyed my vacation, but the things I didn’t like about the all-inclusive concept were really beginning to wear on me. Of a certainty, the fact that the resort was located in the midst of poverty and one could not walk five feet off grounds without being confronted by someone willing to sell you sin-worse, even, than Las Vegas-did not help combat the feeling of entrapment.
But everyone I delt with was kind, and there are a lot of places I’ve been and people I have met who could totally stand to take a lesson in this from the Jamaicans.
We managed to get some snorkeling in, although the day was stormy and the water murky. I spent most of the vacation in a wheelchair, but in the water, I could move well, because I didn’t have to support my weight. And so I swam in the pool and snorkelled in the sea, and spent my nights sleeping in a full tub of water, concurrently treating my back with moist heat and sleeping in a way that also did not require that my back sustain further damage from trying to support me while I sleep. That sounds insane, I know, as the point of reclining seems to be allowing your body to be supported by whatever furniture you land on, but the fact of the matter is that the two times I tried to sleep on the bed, the back problem got significantly worse.
Of course, the tub has its own issues. I learned, much to my chagrin, that one can get lumps on one’s head from sleeping with one’s head against the edge of the tub.
It’ll be a much prettier sight than it was in ‘68.
Huh. I close my eyes and I can still see the cars rolling over, cover my ears and hear Daly say “Law and order will be maintained.” I was five then. That nightmare made an impression.
Wisconsin was called for Obama at 8:01 local time, one minute after the polls closed, based on exit polling. Since 2000, the idea of calling based on exit polling has made me extremely uncomfortable, should make anyone who thinks uncomfortable, but my perception is that this year, it won’t much matter. The mood of the country is much like the end of the Carter administration, when damn near anything would have been better than Jimmy. But Jimmy was the right man at the wrong time; I am not sure the same will ever be able to be said about Dubya.
I did not vote for Obama, I voted for McKinney. But given a choice between McPalin or Obiden, I’d rather see Obiden.
***
I voted for Gwen Moore on the congressional ticket, the Democrat–she’s done all right so far. Local election coverage is being projected based on early returns–about 20% of the local precincts have reported results.
***
I can’t believe Libby Dole went down… I can’t believe Al Franken is neck to neck instead of totally crushed.
I keep thinking “liddy dole” .. wonder what subconscious connection I’ve made between G. Gordon and Elizabeth.
***
The talking heads are blabbering about the future of the Republican party… will it become even more conservative as many people believe, or will it try to remain open to all who can find room in that tent, blah blah blah. Let it become ultra conservative, I say, let it be pulled so far to the right that it becomes irrelevant, and let the conservatives who can’t make that trip to the far right form up a party that doesn’t have to cater to the narrow minded beliefs of a small segment that tarnishes them all.
I’m changing to Comedy Central. Those talking heads are amusing rather than pompous. I have the internet with me for monitoring the local elections, I don’t need the crawl screen. And, hell, they have Steve Forbes as a commenter, so at least some politicos have a sense of humor.
Home today, telecommuting in. Ill like sorrow, like a river, like a lassitude. Whatevah.
I did finally get a new camera. Here are some pictures:
And the exciting movies made upon the camera:
K and I on a windy walk.
When you are too ill to eat but not too ill to be out, it’s always a good idea to take a walk in a cemetary while everyone else is eating. All random rambling.
Sadly, YouTube does not apparently allow the high quality video to embed, only the low quality. Oh, well.
Today, though, I went to work and got sent home with a pile of work to work from home. I had to take a lay down when I first got here, but now I should go back to work. Which will require all the effort of switching computer windows. I don’t know if I have the stregnth.
I’d like to say it’s been a hell of a week, but it’s actually been a hell of a fortnight. Fortnight is way better. There is not much opportunity to use such a fabulous word these days. So, actually, I suppose that I would not be happy to say it’s been a hell of a week, as it is a perfect moment to say “dayum, it’s bina helluva fortnight.”
There, that’s solved. Resolution is always fabulous.
Highlights, lowlights, no special order:
*My camera, she has died. As we are to depart for Jamaica for a fabulous vacation in a very short time, I suppose I will have to bite the bullet and buy a new one. Now. While I can be sure it will work with my creaky old Win2k machine.
*While working about a week ago, I witnessed an accident. I pulled over and proceeded to do what I could to help, provided my name and info to the police as a witness, and eventually went on my merry way. A few hours later, one of the women I work with came into my office and said, “Did you see an accident a while ago?” Of course, I affirmed this. She then said, “That was my mom and sister you stopped to help. Thank you so much for helping them.” Holy frak, small world.
*Angelique had a bridal shower today. It was nice. She’s home again, scheduled to move back permanently in the near-ish future.
*I’m so behind on everything. Working and working and making no headway.
*The house in Viroqua is at last in move in condition. The front half first floor has been completely redone and is now unrecognizable in comparison to the photos I took when we first bought the place (in the gallery). See that little reddish splorgh in the middle of all the greenery there? That’s me, having a seat in a cave. Michael took that picture of me a few months ago to show the scale of the landscape around the house. This is well back into the woods, of course, but it is worth hiking back to. It’s rather like having my own personal sanctuary back there. We’ll be moving Michael’s parents into Wylcliffe soon, probably next weekend. Another reason to get a new camera pronto.
*I need to write the Nanowrimo folks. I volunteered to be the Liason again this year, but it’s starting to look like I am not going to be able to squeeze it in.
*I got information on voting by absentee ballot the other day, as I will be out of the country upon election day. I want to vote, of course, as it is always what I prefer to do; I even had my picture in the paper back in April because I was the only one brave enough to be voting at the same time the camera guy was there. Whee! I think the ballots may already be in, as they’re supposed to arrive aproximately 3 weeks before elections, so I’ll have to call this week and find out. I’m torn between Obama and McKinney. No surprise there. ::dry mode on:: I suppose my conservative friends may prefer I vote for McKinney, seeing any non-Obama vote as a help to McCain. I have been kind of tuned out of politics lately; I catch little snippets of what is going on via YouTube excerpts of talking heads, but when it got to the point that crowds were yelling questionable things at rallies, I was out. I am glad I’m voting early this year, so I can just check out of this painful election.
Projectland
Not much to report regarding the thrilling adventures of makin’ stuff. Some minor progress on blank scrolls, yellow linen underdress refashion, rose underdress refashion. The progress most made?
Trying to create something that looks like reasonable scribal setup for dragging about to events. The inspiration pictures are:
1. Illuminated Manuscripts:Treasures of the Pierpont Morgan Library, ISBN 0-7892-0216-6,p.184, Tower of Scriptotium of Salvador de Tabara…ca.1220
2. folding chair, ca. 1550, museum citta di castello, italy
The folding chair I have has the triangle base rather than the x base. I might have some x-base folding chairs in the garage, but they are strangely more modern looking than the above pictured one; I am thinking its because the above-pictured one has the solid panels, whereas the others have slotted backs and seats. I am toying with making leather covering pads for an x-chair (presuming I am recalling correctly that the other sets are x bases rather than triangle bases) and thereby moving the appearance closer to the 16th c. There is also the wide time discrepency in the evidence pictures, but as I am concerned primarily with CHEAP and EASY portable, this will do. I spent less than $10 bucks on the above, and that’s a brilliant set up for that price.
I have stained and sanded the writing table top (in the other order, of course) in order to clean it up and make it more useful; I was going to paint my arms on it directly, but I decided I needed to have the slope back in service quickly. So I’ll paint a canvas bit and paste ‘er on, huzzah. Since my scribe box broke, and I’ve changed my public painting kit, I guess I’ll have to find the big wooden box and switch over to that.
In the archery championship, I placed second overall. I feel pretty good about that, and Simon very kindly complemented me on my improvement in form. I attributted this to practice, but as I sit here and think about it, it’s more likely due to 1) a random tip I received from a hunter who was shooting with me at lunchtime in autumn 2007, and 2) increased back and arm stregnth from both pulling the bow itself and riding the bicycle. I have noticed that I tend to ride with all my arm muscles clenched, and 75 minutes of.. what was the fashionable term in my younger days?…. isometrics! Yes, 75 minutes of bracing your upper body weight with your arms 2-4 times a week will certainly change your muscles. There is a noticable difference in my arms. Again.
Anyway, Simon tells me I used to drop my arm a lot, and I didn’t even know I was doing that. Oh.
Anyway again, as I said, I placed overall 2nd at the tourney and actually won one of the shoots in the tourney: the Norse shoot. This makes me laugh. The knife, however, I received from one of the fun shoots–I shot a mosquito. We put little balloons with red-colored water in them on the target, and whomever breaks the ballon wins that shoot. The knife was very generously provided by William of Mann. It’s a splendid knife. Now I need to make a sheath for it.
Weirdly, 4 of the repaired arrows, my scribal box, and my period reproduction pitcher broke yesterday; the handles of the box just snapped in my hands and the the pitcher jumped out of it’s place and did battle with cement. It only fell about 3 inches, but it impacted in just the right way, apparently. Fortunately, it was still bagged, so shards of pottery did not go flying about, and I have all the parts. Michael may be able to repair it. The scribal box, though, has no more swappable handles. I may need a bag to go around it, or I may have to committ to fixing up the wooden box I used to use. The wooden box is more period, but the tackle box is immensely more convienent. The arrows will, of course, have to be repaired, because I am again down to less than 6. Which sucks.
I managed to prepare food appropriately: I packed pickled herring and bread and hummas and apples and oranges for my lunch, and cooked a meal of lentils and barley for my supper, and brought grapes for the potluck table. I am excessively glad that I did not trust the pot luck to provide my supper, because all that was there that I could have eaten was the grapes and some breads. And I’m actually not sure that the breads were free of eggs and dairy. I just hoped. There was a groaning board there, and I would have left hungry had I simply hoped to rely on available foods upon it. So I’m thinking that I may have to volunteer to organize the pot luck at the next moot I attend.
And I managed to corral enough scribal stuff to be able to put myself into scribal mode at the event. That was nice.
I do have 2 regrets, though. I was not able to get any real persona time. This is one of the easiet events I find for slipping into persona without it interferring with anyone else’s fun–the event is so small and has several wood walks, so I can slip away and be my Tudor self on a wood walk, come back, sit quietly watching everyone else from a persona perspective, and no one else will know or feel obligated to strain themselves to either join me or avoid me. The second thing I regret is that I gotr a pretty sharp reminder of how well I hide my lights under a bushel. Really. I’ve practiced archery at some level of active since 1995. Granted, there was a long stretch of time that I’d merely take my target archery kit and shoot maybe once or twice a year, but for the last couple of years I have been steadily practicing, I talk about it on a regular basis, and I drag along all the people I can get to go with me; K is now a regular participant, my nephew Frank is now pestering his mom for his own kit so he can shoot down in Illinois, and Michael occassionally goes with me to revel in the fun himself. So I’m not just shootin’ on the range all by myself. And yet, I was approached by a number of people whom I know, and know well, who said well, congrtatulations, I didn’t even know you shoot archery! And a lovely lady who said, Really? I didn’t know you are a Laurel. And someone else who said You tell stories? You write poetry? I didn’t know you were a bard. and I didn’t know you can cook! And it was all kind of surreal. I’m walking in and out of these conversations going, shit, Leesie, you have mastered the art of non-self promotion, apparently..
No. No. Really, what I have mastered is getting other people to talk about themselves and not notice that I’m not talking about me. Maybe that’s why I like my little blog here. I get to report gentle news and blab about my projects at my fabulous leisure and not worry about whether the other people are bored to tears reading about how marvelous I am.
Because I am marvelous. You can’t help but be when you are clinically gifted. Har har har.
What a weekend. Week. Month. Year. Just outrageously busy. I thought I was going to have a quiet weekend puttering around the house. Clean a little. Cook a lot. Bake a little. Fix my arrows in preparation for Michaelmas. Work in my garden. Get projects together for future completion. That kind of thing.
But instead, we are watching the boys. I then scaled back my expectations–maybe get six working arrows together and clean the kitchen and respond to a letter from a well-liked acquaintance in Massachusettes, maybe continue my political rantings, and garden a bit.
Nope.
Saturday we took the boys to the PTO fundraiser at K’s school. The K had fun, and the rides and dunk tank and food were all topped off by a visit from the local fire department, who opened up a hydrant and used their truck to spray water all over the kids. This was hilarious, as I am sure you might imagine, and as a water baby myself, I was in that spray before K. It took some while to convince him to come in, and it was HIGH-LARRY-OUS to watch him trying to dodge the spray. He got into it eventually, though, and that’s why you see him in the first picture, wearing a hugely oversized T-shirt. We didn’t know that the fire brigade was going to sluice up the kids, so the only clothing in the car was one of my giant shirts purchased back when we visited Orlando a billion years ago. Once he got in the T-shirt, he was in no hurry to get out of it, so we let be. Today, Baby Ry hasn’t felt too terribly well, he’s been in “Hold me, kiss me, carry me, hold me, kiss me, carry me” mode most of the day.
So, yeah, I finally had my first meal of the day just now, as I am typing this, because there wasn’t enough baby-out-of-my-arms time for me to cook a meal for the kids and a meal for me. So I cooked for the kids. Le sigh.
But that is okay. It’s not like I can’t stand to lose some poundage.
However, one of the reasons to have a quiet weekend this week was to prepare some stuff that I want to get out of the way before Michaelmas. The weekend is now essentially gone, so I have to figure out how to get it all done before Friday evening between bouts of paid employment.
Here it comes…. Walking down the street… Projectland!
THE LIST
I’ve gotten off track with my “projecting.” Not that I don’t know what to do, but just out of time. What I would like to achieve by the evening of 26 Sept:
1. Havest what can be harvested out of the gardens (not much) and prep the beds for next year (September Tusser Project).
2. Complete a refashioning of several pieces of linen clothing into an outfit similar to this one.
3. Prep up C&I projects for public revitalization.
4. Cook period piscetarian foods to take to Michaelmas. There is very likely little to be had for me in the pot luck.
5. Repair arrows.
THE REFASHIONISTA DRESSES
Left to right: First thoughts for the pink shirt; yellow linen for the GK underdress; a maroon-ish linen skirt and top; button detail from yellow underdress; button detail from white linen shirts.
The first picture? Original collection of cloth for the dress I want to make: a pink linen shirt, a natural linen skirt and a couple of natural linen shirts to make the skirt. Since the idea of these linen refashion dresses is to create things that are, ultimately, undre dresses that can be worn as outer dresses in casual (Pennsic) and working situations (assisting the cooks, working as a scribe), the color disparity won’t matter too much if we make sure that the pink shows in places one might expect under dresses to show. Further, I was thinking about dyeing the whole thing when done, just to get it all someplace in the pink range.
I love me some pink.
(2) And the yellow dress is there just to remind me, I’ll bore you with those details later.
(3) Anyway, I found this rose carmine set at my favorite Sally Ann, and it was a relief. It’s going to require a little more work than the green linen jacket I used as the base for the green refahionista under dress (GRD), and, if I did not need a fuller skirt to get the look right, I could conceivably make it work with just the cloth that came in the outfit. But, of course, it is never that easy. So I’ll have to cut the skirt to make a third or fourth panel (I think I can get by with an exta third, but it may need 4) and then extend the skirt. I’m currently leaning towards a skirt that will alternate this way: carmine, thin stripe of pink from the shirt, natural linen, thin pink. I may get some paint and stencil a pattern in a pink or carmine on the natural linen, make it look a little richer, a little more coherent, but the world won’t end if I don’t. My first thought had been to take a compatable color of one of my fabulous fabrics and use that as the bottom layer (again, the best material showing at the skirt level) but that was abandoned for 2 reasons: 1) I want this to be all natual materials, and 2) No way will I do Pennsic with my best fabrics dragging in the dirt–one of the purposes of this dress is to prep up for Pennsic year round and improve my kit.
One of the problems with this dress, however, are the buttons. The GRD has plastic buttons, but they are pretty nondescript. The buttons on the carmine dress, however, are absolutely shiny plastic abombinations, and while I plan to change out the buttons on the GRD, they’ll do for now. The buttons on the carmine refashionista dress can not be used, period. However, the yellow dress has metal buttons and a couple of the white linen dresses have shell buttons of the appropriate size. Since one of the points of these dresses is to make them from reused materials, I’d like to swap out *these* buttons and need some opinions on which will be better.
THE C&I PROJECT
IN line with TRM Northshield’s request, I’ll make some blanks for the contest they called. Winning or losing is immatterial–I figure the situation has to be bad if it’s been turned into a contest. I could be wrong in that, but I have noticed that scribal motivation in Northshield has significantly decreased. There are a lot of reasons for it, of course, but several of us in CAM have some plans to each do what we can to address it. I’d like to get started by Friday. I’ll talk more on that later, already too long and running out of time here.
THE OTHER LIST ITEMS
Arrow repair is pretty self evident, as is cooking. The thing I want to remember is that I could handle this pretty easily by making something that I can let cook in a crock pot. I have turnips, parsnips, and tasty ingredients, so I could also make vegetable and bean turnovers, too. It’s a toss up right now between things I know I’ll love to eat and the ever burning desire to trry something new. I have to redo all the work on the Travelling Lunch, of course, which is a good reason for redoing some of those recipes, but I would be cheating myself if I didn’t try something new.
So, the needs are identified. Now I just got to figure out the schedule. Yah. No rest for the weary, eh. This has gone on long enough. Suggestions welcome!
(note to self: come back and check this for spelling errors sometime in the near future when you have some extra time. because you have so much extra time.)
At Pennsic this year, I went for a walk, wending my way up Runestone Hill with the intention of gathering information about a print class I intended to take. As I always do, I paused in my journey to visit the actual runestone. The morning was still cool, but there was a hint of rain to come, and I stood under the trees, looking at the stone, my mood suddenly as melancholy as the weather.
I was not sure what pushed me into that sad space. Perhaps it was the tokens left at the base of the stone, or the rocks that had been placed upon it, as rocks upon headstones in Jewish cemeteries. All I could say is that I stood there, suddenly weeping as if the world had ended, lost in the memory of my mother.
November 6th will be the 10th anniversary of her passing. It has been on the edge of my awareness through the year, of course, but as the date gets closer, my grief gets stronger. Last evening, already upset because of some other things, I pulled out some DVD’s my brother has lent me, transfers of old family films, so old that the film is disintegrating, and watched them.
And there she was, 5 or 6 years old, her red hair bright in the sunlight as she bathed her sister, or talked to her parents, or played a game alone. Mommie. Before the troubles of her life would hurt her, break her, kill her. When joy was still hers.
I found myself watching and rewatching a 5 second clip. She is in the front yard of the family summer home, the place she loved best in all the world. She is with her grandmother, the person she may have loved more than anyone else, the woman for whom I am named. She runs out of the shadows, to her grandmother’s arms. She looks back toward the camera, turns away, runs with her grandmother into the house, her arms flung out in awkward joy as she disappears.
I like to believe that there is an afterlife, but, of course, if we are honest with ourselves, we must face the fact that there is no real evidence that death is not the end. Still, I want to hope. So much, I want to hope. And I hope that this clip is a glimpse of my mother’s heaven, that somewhere, she has not just rest from her pains and burdens, but an eternal summer’s day, in the place she loved the most, with the person she loved the best.
I did not watch her speech at the RNC; there seems little point. I am already aware that her viewpoint is so offensive to me that, even though McCain seemed like a republican I could live with, the fairly terrifying thought that she might replace him ensures that I won’t vote for that ticket. No, no, no–no matter how much shock and awe I might endure upon being exposed to her apparently fabulous ability to read someone else’s words off a teleprompter. To hear her try to cut Obama down with an accusation of “just pretty words” would have been pretty fun, though. Oh, Sarah? Call kettle much?
Nothing quite like a lovely woman to serve as a marketing tool.
The Dems are not exempt from this, of course–I did not watch Obama, either, entirely certain as I was that no matter how handsome he and his family might be, no amount of cutesy can substitute for ability in a politician. I just did not want the DNC’s marketers shoving it down my throat any more than I wanted to watch the RNC marketers put on the Palin Dog and Pony Show.
Cynical much, Leesie? You betcha.
That said, this little rant comes as a result of conversations overheard at work: praise for how smooth a speaker, and isn’t her family pretty, blah blah blah–all the shallow sorts of assessments that make me wonder how humanity hasn’t managed to do itself in, because we may be just too stupid to live.
To continue as shorthand with a geek metaphor: it’s like Sharon Agathon asking Adama why the Cylons shouldn’t wipe out humanity.
No one talked about her policies–just her fashions. Oh. My. God.
So, to counteract the saccharine, three things.
1. A blog from a native Alaskan with a little more xp on what it’s like to live under her governorship: Mudflats.
3. An article from associated press on some of the fallacies in her RNC speech:
Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press WriterWed Sep 3, 11:48 PM ET
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.
Some examples:
PALIN: “I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending … and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere.”
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a “bridge to nowhere.”
PALIN: “There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.”
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
PALIN: “The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.”
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama’s plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain’s plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.
MCCAIN: “She’s been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America’s energy supply … She’s responsible for 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply. I’m entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America,” he said in an interview with ABC News’ Charles Gibson.
THE FACTS: McCain’s phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she’s no more “responsible” for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.
MCCAIN: “She’s the commander of the Alaska National Guard. … She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” he said on ABC.
THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under “federal status,” which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska’s national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.
FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin “got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.”
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor’s election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: “We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.”
THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.
___
Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington contributed to this report.
This OpEd piece says most of what I think about Palin’s daughter, so I won’t repeat it all here; while, on the whole, I’d say private behavior should stay private, once you’re pregnant, your behavior isn’t private. I can’t believe they are going to shotgun those kids into marriage–one hopes the father isn’t actually some 28 year old who should have known better than to mess with a teenager. The kid is pregnant. She’s going to be a mother at 17. She isn’t going to have the opportunity of any kind of choice here–adoption, single momhood are as much off the table as abortion. Have any of these people checked the statistics on the divorce rates among marriages when one or both partners are teenagers? That’s right, they’re dismal. They always have been, and they always will be. Who you are at 17 isn’t who you are at 23 isn’t who you are at 28. Few marriages survive that growth period.
Palin’s love letter to her daughter apparently reads: “Dearest Child: My family values are so strong that I’m willing to wreck your life for the sake of my appearances.”
Many people reacting to this are appalled/gleeful that the kid is preggers. Me, I don’t care. I was pregnant at 19; Angelique was pregnant at 17. It happens. What happened to us at those ages happened because we made our own choices; my mother’s morals had little effect on my actions beyond a moment of regret that I had not lived up to her expectations. What appalls me as a mom is the fact that the kid really has no choice, she’s marrying the babydaddy. Maybe she wants to, maybe she doesn’t: it doesn’t matter. That kid is getting on that train and riding that track to the crash.
Hooray for family values.
-*-
We watched Across the Universe last night; Michael saw it at Suncoast and picked it up with the expectation that since it was Beatles music, it stood a good chance of being something we would like. And we did. The story that strings the musical numbers together is light; it’s better viewed as a bunch of musical vignettes that speak of the characters’ journey through the sixties. They work best seen in the context of of the movie, of each other, but they are each separate little stories.
By far, the creepiest vignette is Max’s induction.
We watched this and I thought about what’s happening now, about the riots at the Republican convention, about the waste of military personnel and equipment in Iraq–yes, I know, much good has been done, nobody reports that, I understand, but the humanitarian aspect will always be outshone by the god damn death toll, both military and civilian, and the amazing fraud perpetuated by civilian contractors–about all the vets coming home in pieces, and I just want to scream. Wasn’t Vietnam enough? Why don’t the warhawks get that?
Now that McCain has chosen Palin, well, I’d like to shoot myself.
And I don’t know if I want to shoot myself because the guy who wants to be president is so furry in the brain that he thinks liberal women will vote for a “creationism in schools is good”, anti-choice, pro-death woman just because she’s a woman, or if he’s right, and there are a sufficient number of liberal women willing to be stupid out there.
In some ways, this is the worst election ever. Even the third party candidates are awful, awful, awful. Bob Barr? OMIGHOD no. Nader? No. I just can’t. Cynthia McKinney (and, hey, all you folks wanting to vote on exterior looks, here’s you chance to vote for a black and a woman)? I dunno, she’s done some dunderheaded things, although none so impressively offensive as Bob “I Hate Pagans” Barr.
Excuse me, I’m going to go cry myself to sleep now.
Jack. Bobby. Where are the men and women of my generation with your spirits?
I want to finish writing out my stuff. But right now I’m working so much that I’m exceeding 8 billable hours daily. If you’ve never been driven by the tyranny of the billable minute, that may not seem like much (especially if you are accustomed to lawyer-type of billable minutes, which means that 30 seconds get billed out as 15 minutes rather that they system I live with, which is billed at one minute increments–and increments of less that a minute are my gift to the federal government) , but if you have, then you know that this translates to 10+ hour days, and that’s just the time you can _remember_ working.
Meanwhile, when my Firefox asked me if it should upgrade to the newest version of Firefox, I said “yes.”
The Middle Kingdom’s viewing stand, with observers watching one of the battles.
Yeah, not a lot of time and energy for this. But we are back and safe; the weather was far better than last year. This bubba will be choppy. Not unusual there, eh?
Poopie the Pirate contributes to the recap on his blog, here.
This is the thinking post, rather than the xp recap.
Some things I have determined to be true:
1. Because of the effort it now requires of us to go to Pennsic and the amount of de-stressing it takes before we can relax and feel like we are on vacation, Pennsic will have to be a two week experience, even if it means time off without pay. I’m just so stressed from daily life that I couldn’t unwind until it was almost time to leave.
1a. It would really be better to set up more kitchen space, now that we have so many different dietary styles to accommodate. I had my kitchen box with me, but we never got around to setting it up (see #1). Also, don’t really need 8 beer coolers.
2. I’d really rather have the opening to my tent face the lake.
3. Being right next to the camp kitchen is fine. I like it. I also like being under the tree. I see how it is that Casa Barducci became an elaborate series of carports.
4. Pennsic prep HAS to be viewed as a year round thing. I simply can not leave it the way it is.
5. If I sleep in a chair, I’ll have a reduced noise, better sleep night. It works better when I have a cot for my legs, because then I can stretch them in all directions and still have support for them. A narrow box in front of me does not allow as much comfort and makes bigger backache issues.
And, because I have to go prep for Border Skirmish, I’ll end this for now with the thinking list o’ projects that I started on the way back from Pennsic:
Things to keep in mind:
Landscape fabric for tent
cheap fabric with stenciled patterns for decorations
brilliance of having hanger for dresses
trestle table
letter press
a and s fifty class challenge
contact camp crook,d cat and ethan
hanging lantern
indoor outdoor carpet
privacy area to back
hemp dresses style of late period flemish /french sort sleeved dress and thirteenth c.
Chaise lounge.
Article on cheap garb from thrift store.
Purple linen dress.
Bed spread.
Period sewing basket.
Period ablutions set up et boy was that soap fab.
Flemish partlet.
Set dummy per current measurements.
Scabbard and silverware holder.
Sheet walls.
My heraldic banner w cross st geo, water bouget, laurel leaf, through adversity motto.
Repaint thrones.
Make shoes.
Make stockings in three sections.
Side tables i.e. Tray tables.
Tablet weaving black yellow garters three sets.
Sell sca stuff I am done with.
Get everything in crates, for fraks sake.
Yoga. Take it up.
Jobst or other stockings to support my poor achy foot.
Clock in box.
(private).
Set c n i area back up.
Set up a writing area.
Chaise longue next year. Maybe a wooden one. Like the aindirock kind, maybe. So important in needs to remembered twice.
It’s not all warriors and politics. It’s also a little girl’s dreams.
If you want
a) A Pennsic Postcard
b) A phone call on Whiskey Cell Phone Night
c) A brief in-Persona letter from Pennsic
Then drop me a line either in the comments AT THIS BLOG’S MAIN SITE** or send me email at merouda at hotmail dot com with your phone number and/or address. Please know that my cell phone, which stored all this information, died a death most horrible, and so I lost everything. Do not assume I have your phone number and address anymore, because if I haven’t called you in the last 6 days or so, I DON’T.
Of course, if you have my cell phone number, you can also just call me, and I promise to dial ya back, come WCPN.
**(I do not check where this feeds to regularly; there is no way I can follow all the feeds, so you’ll have to come to the main site, and all comments require admin approval before they appear, so you don’t have to worry about sharing your private information)
So, here’s the thing. As usual, much to say and little time to say it. Let’s start with something utterly innocuous: Projectland.
At last, I have finished the green linen refashion dress from last year’s Pennsic list; it’s currently accessortized as if it’s late 15th-early 16th c. Flemish working woman, but it’s more strongly based on a specific sort of dress that shows up in Flemish paintings of the mid 15th c., such as are seen
LiveJournal
The house in Viroqua is at last in move in condition. The front half first floor has been completely redone and is now unrecognizable in comparison to the photos I took when we first bought the place (in the gallery). See that little reddish splorgh in the middle of all the greenery there? That’s me, having a seat in a cave. Michael took that picture of me a few months ago to show the scale of the landscape around the house. This is well back into the woods, of course, but it is worth hiking back to. It’s rather like having my own personal sanctuary back there. We’ll be moving Michael’s parents into Wylcliffe soon, probably next weekend. Another reason to get a new camera pronto.
Har har har.
