I can see in my future....

.... and it says that I will be trading out my new glasses for my old ones whenever I want to read on the computer or do embroidery. Oh yes. Oh yes, indeed.

No strain, no pain, and no holding things on my knees just to see them.

Holy Toledo

Curiosity led me to (briefly) subscribe to the Chirurgeon's List since I'd been told that Brise was being roasted alive and didn't want to believe it. I can say that my respect for some of the Chirurgeons I've worked with at Pennsic has increased tenfold. I can also say, catagorically, that a certain cook/blacksmith can write the most poisonous viper-dripping rumormongering texts I have ever had the misfortune of making myself read.

Wow. Asbestos glasses should have been required. I feel like someone wedged my eyelids open and stuck bamboo sticks under them. (Yeah, I acknowledge that 'someone' was me but in my defense, I kept reading in the hope that calmed down, rational thinking would emerge - and it did continue in the posts of those I'd already learned to respect (in fact, in the posts of someone who had come across as quite irrational at Pennsic but I can now assume was just based on their initial shock. I'm glad I didn't base my whole opinion of that person on just their Pennsic interactions with me) but I just couldn't force myself to read the last three pages of the archives. I just couldn't. If it got better and I missed it, someone else tell me.

Wow. Just - wow. It's good that SCA policy doesn't allow Courts of Courtesy or Chivalry over email communication and slander.

Wow.

I think I need a drink. And a cleansing wash for my eyes.

Night of the Recently Dead

Today Arn and I (and two other friends) went down to the beachfront to help clean up the "De-Feet Domestic Violence" walkathon. They did it very well - 5 miles along the boardwalk, short, pretty, and easy to patrol. So there we were, waiting for the raffle to be finished so we could help tear down tables and chairs, put away decorations. Our first job was to store away tall person-sized wooden cutouts that were shaped like people. Each one had a gold plaque on it - the story and age of a victim of Domeestic violence. The youngest in this line up was a 14-year-old-boy. The oldest - a 70 year-old-grandmother. All killed by their loved ones in a fit of anger...

*sigh* They are not recently dead. But the stats are that every 3 minutes someone is beaten and abused in a domeestic situation and too many of them will be dead, tonight, for having no place they are able or willing to turn.

So my honoring tonight, which should be for someone I knew and loved, is for all the strangers out there who will not see the morning, who are not sitting at a computer with a loving spouse/housemate preparing for bed in the next room. I'm so sorry I wasn't there to protect you.