Thoughts

Last Thursday during a fall (I tripped over a low curb) I broke my left pinkie in a really impressive Y-shaped green split fracture and dislocated sundry bones in my wrist and palm. We were only two blocks from a quick-serve medical clinic (Patient First) so in I went. Three X-rays and a splint later, I was out again. The fracture had set itself, thank goodness, but the misaligned bones were unremarked. There was no attempt at actually setting anything, just a splint to stabilize and the advice to visit an orthopedic office to be treated. It took three and a half days before an opening was available - I used a lot of the pain drugs before that happened. But now my left hand and wrist is in a pretty light blue cast and there is only pain when I do something stupid.

My husband thinks my brain flew out the window. I made him drive me to the store to buy socks to go over the cast. Right now it looks like an obscure bondage device. Even though we bought pretty socks. with two holes cut to allow the un-casted fingers and thumb out, the whole thing is covered to mid-forearm. And I can now move my arm, or get dressed, without the rough exterior folds of the cast catching on any clothing it comes in contact with. being a female, you can imagine that my bras are much safer than they'd been.

We went to a noisy restaurant for an SCA event staff meeting this evening. as my broken hand is also my dominate one, I ordered finger food so it was easier for me to keep up with the discussion than it was for most of the attendees. It looks like we'll have a good event, notwithstanding the autocrat's lack of organization and attention to the details that don't affect the Royal guests. Other staff members are (disgustedly) taking note of the things she's unconcerned about to ensure that they get covered. She's overbooked herself with her modern job and her time is fleeting - she's on the road a lot, even leaving the 1900 meeting to make a 3.5-hour drive to another city for a job that starts at 0500 this morning. She is a department head for a very busy Pennsic service. I sure hope this isn't an example of how things will go there!
But those folks are accustomed to punting so I have no major worries about them as long as they have electricity, internet, and plenty of crayolas.

So while Bossman and I were shopping for replacement trim for that pesky cooler, there was a woman in the trim section looking extremely bewildered. She had six summer dresses on her cart and was trying to match them up with lace or gathered edgings. It turned out that she was a third grade teacher, returning to school after a 27 year hiatus. She realized that her dresses were too short and was looking for something to lengthen them... I offered a suggestion and she lit up, "Oh! Do you sew?" She was hopeless. She wanted to hire me on an ongoing basis "For when I pull a button off, or need pants hemmed." I did agree to help her with her school needs and ended up making 42 pillowcases - four large and 38 small - for her classroom. The large pillowcases were jungle print cotton, no problem. They will cover pillows for her reading nook. The small ones were for seat cushions (really just 14" pillows she bought) for each desk. She'd already purchased the fabric. Black fleece.

I've never sewn fleece before. Please Deity, I never will again. I only averaged six pillows an hour because the upper thread shredded through the tension gauge once to four times (I think even more often occasionally) on each pillow. And that was after I went online and read all the 'sewing with fleece' tip pages I could access. That is some nasty stuff.

Today was the first day of our Great Printer Search. Man, I hate looking for 'large' electronic equipment... we went to two stores and then I was done. I believe we may have one picked out but Bossman was opposed to buying it right then, while we were in the store with it on sale and stocked, because he wants to do further research on it. Which he is apparently doing from his easy chair while watching Thursday Night Football. *sigh* I married him...

I will be online after I finish this researching high speed scanners. Until we were looking at printers I didn't know that one could buy a simple single-function scanner. Given the number of files I must process in order to convert our Kingdom heraldic records from paper to electronic format, I think we'd be justified in purchasing one. If it will last all the way through that task, it could be passed on to the Golden Dolphin herald for 'everyday' scanning of forms, too, and save her primary printer for other jobs.

It is cold & windy here and has been for the last few days. It appears it will continue, too, for the next few, so our Christmas will be dreary on the outside.

I'm cooking the weirdest Christmas dinner I've ever cooked in my life. Yankee Pot Roast. I asked the guys (there will be three guys and myself at the table) what they were interested in having and this was the surprising consensus. Must be because two of them are bachelors and of the two, only one of them cooks - if you can define 'cooking as "messing around with various pre-mixed spice packages to add to either rice or beans". I know for a fact that our youngest son hasn't had pot roast since he left our house years ago. But still - it is very weird for me. Everything else will be our normal fare; saving Savoury Toasted Cheese, which I deliberately left off of the menu for once. We'll see how that plays out.

I've been incredibly slothful for the last couple of months. I have barely even looked at anything heraldic. Last night I finally went through the unread messages in the email list, the earliest of which dated to the second week in October. That's pretty sad. After laying down my office that same week I think my heraldry-brain just shut down. I'm starting to regain my enthusiasm for it now, off and on, with the 'on' growing longer in time daily. Perhaps there was more stress involved in it than I had realized. Instead I've been sewing, sleeping (yay head-cold & sinus/ear infection!), reading novels, and taking apart Lego buildings that have been waiting for almost a year to be disassembled. Oh, and I built "Santa's Workshop", the newest of the Lego Winter Village sets. But mostly I've been sleeping and playing solitaire on the computer.

I had to have a ring cut off of my finger last week. It was my dedication ring, purchased 25 years ago to commemorate my dedication as a Wiccan priestess. I've not removed it since that night, saving surgical necessities. Right now it is sitting on my altar looking sadly misshapen. I don't know if I shall ever be able to wear it again as the reason I had to have it removed was because of developing arthritis. The knuckle just above where I'd worn it is still swollen and the doctor tells me that while the arthritis isn't very bad, there will likely always be swelling at that spot, especially if I should wear a ring on that finger. He had the same sort of experience himself, he said, and now wears his wedding ring on a chain around his neck. The X-ray didn't show any signs of damage to the bones so my arthritis is slight. I'll just have to be a little more aware about how I use that hand.

Growing old isn't for sissies.

I have beef stewing on the stove. With luck, it will be a hot lunch for us tomorrow. I am currently stewing the beef to rags, along with two onions and a triple handful of chopped celery. I don't normally put celery in beef soups. It is generally a go-to for chicken ones, or for gumbo. I hadn't really noticed the difference in the smell of the cooking until Bossman said he'd woken up thinking I'd made gumbo. Guess that green stalky stuff makes a real difference after all! Later tonight I shall add mushrooms and parsnips. We're going to Atlantian Coronation so I will eschew potatoes and orange carrots. Deciding that we wanted (as daytrippers) to have a hot lunch necessitated a trip to Target and then Walmart to find a wide-mouthed thermos (type, not brand) to make sure our soup would truly be hot six hours after leaving the house. Between the two of us and the google-function on my phone, we finally purchased, yes, a Thermos-brand thermos. (What are those things called, anyway?) And then I stitched up two bags to hold the large one and the small one, so they'd have extra insulation and not offend my medievally focused sight.

In two days the last Letter of Intention (heraldic submission letter) that I shall write will be ready to work on. People are making last-minute comments on it right now so even though I am itching to get started, I shall school myself to patience. It is a long one but looks to be pretty straightforward. And then I am done with my current Kingdom job. We'll be doing the turnover for the position in a couple of weeks.

It feels odd. I've had three years of working around an imposed schedule, doing things I was only half-trained to do (so it took a lot longer in the beginning than it does now) and other projects were set off to the side. This is not good for a procrastinator! I've got unopened boxes of Lego kits that are three years old! And fabric purchased for my experimental merchanting booth at the end of November, still sitting there waiting for me to apply scissors and sewing machine to it. And yet I still feel an internal governor-brake, as if there is something looming on the horizon and I daren't get started on a project which may last into a week or longer and be quite intensive... well, I suppose the looming thing is true given that I grabbed that last letter to do and told my successor that she didn't get to draft it. (Honestly, she needs a freedom-break before she gets tied to the schedule too. She's been alternating with me for months, pushing to do more as our turnover date got closer, and not realizing the difference the office title is going to make in her daily life. Sort of like babysitting a lot before becoming a parent and thinking you have a good idea about what is ahead. The difference has to be experienced to be understood.)

We weren't planning on attending tomorrow's event until just a couple of days ago. I am getting so excited about it! It has been a while since I've approached an event with anticipation rather than pushing myself through a heavy curtain of resistance and inertia.

[Edit: 2:00am. The soup is finished and I had a bowl of it for 'second dinner'. Yum. Bossman may not like it (it often surprises me, what he chooses to turn his nose up at) but I am finding it wonderfully delicious.]

Known World Herald's and Scribes Symposium is becoming more and more addictive. Mostly because I am easing into becoming a part of the community so each year I meet up with faces I miss during the rest of the year. It was so lovely to see my Brothers here right off the bat, and Istvan, Marie, and their baby (when she was sleeping it was obvious that she has her mother's face so clearly!), Shauna (this being the only time I see her) and this year there was eKat, and Eilis, who I usually only see at Pennsic. Yay! And there was Bruni, and Alys, and Lillia, & Emma along with Umaka, who just HAD to go to a Japanese persona so I can never remember his name (I looked it up for this). The folks from Avacal were fun to chat with. It was also so nice to finally put a face to "Yehuda" of the EastRealm, who praised my protégée Isabella (soon to be my successor as Golden Dolphin) and our Maddog, who I hadn't noticed all that much in Atlantia but will be paying more attention to now.

The next one will be in Toronto. If I have a herald's staff-type job, I will have to get a passport and make arrangements to attend it. If I don't, I think I might give it a skip. That's a lot of household budget to spend just for my personal enjoyment even if I'd be sniffly about missing it. Although Bossman said something about maybe driving to it as a mini-vacation for the two of us. It's only about a 12-hour trip.

The classes I attended were well presented. There was one disruptive person who (unfortunately for me) was in four of mine but it gave me a chance to be awed by Alys' handling of zir. She did it so well that I don't think ze was aware that ze'd been weighed, measured, and found wanting. Ze works in the same area as I had started working in at Pennsic and I found zir difficult enough there that I would go out of my way to ensure I wasn't at the desk in the same time slots as ze. Go figure that we'd meet again here and with duties alike enough to be in the same meetings and classes. I rather like the way Gabriel Laurel handled zir during the Roadshow, too.

I find Las Vegas to be boring. I'm sure that is because I'm in the hotel district and unable to get to the lovely desert areas around the city. Going out for dinner with my Brothers on Saturday was fun, if very crowded, and the crowd-watching was amusing for those seated facing the strip (we ate outside) but my view was of the outer wall, the wait staff's till, and a (silent) television... our conversation made up for that though and it was so very nice to relax. Speaking of 'nice' - "Nine Fine Irishmen" serves a very nice shepherd's pie and their band was quite talented.

My Eldest took me to where he and his sweetie work - a hookah lounge called "The Olive". I didn't find the fumes all that difficult, not like regular smoking areas (Oh the lobby of this hotel! STINKY!) and there was an R&B band playing who were talented and crossed genres enough to be more entertaining than I expected... they are all Samoan and young enough to be my sons but they ended their show with acapella renditions of old Sha-Na-Na tunes. They had no bass singer, though, so it seemed a wee bit off.

I did try gambling, finally, this morning when I woke up at 5am. I got bored with that, too, rather quickly and found I'd come out even when I cashed out. To tell the truth, I don't know if I was using the machine correctly and realized early on that I didn't care. As slot machine games go, I prefer the solitaire games on my computer instead. I didn't attempt the tables.

The hotel room is okay. It isn't designed to encourage a person to linger once they are out of their bed. In fact, it seems specifically designed to chase a person out of the room as soon as possible while still giving the illusion of comfort. The chairs are the sort which cut off circulation just behind the knee so one cannot stay in them for long. and rather than a desk, there is a slab of marble sticking out of the wall with a mirror mounted above it, with an 'atmosphere' type lamp mounted to the middle of that. Besides the single lamp between the two beds, that is all the lighting source there is. I much prefer hotels designed for business travelers! But I was able to secure a refrigerator (rental is on a first come/first served basis) and had fun with that - they put it on the floor, my little 24 inch tall fridge, so I had difficulty actually reaching the back of the fridge where the temperature control was. It seemed rather warm when I arrived so my son adjusted it to a colder setting before he left. The next morning I woke up to ice-cold bottles of soda, which then turned into true ice immediately after I opened each one. That was amusing. Even the rock-hard grapes were amusing. I could have used them as ice cubes had I alcohol in the room.

This morning I have discovered that the Oscar-Meyer's "fully cooked bacon" available as a non-refrigerated item can make about three good sandwiches. It is very greasy, though, so bread is needed, which I didn't have in here so a washcloth stood in as a napkin. I really needed the protein-fix. I'm going to have to remember that for later trips. It was an easy protein fix, and bacon. You know - bacon.

There is already a method* to contact a commenter if you want to carry on some long obscure discussion.

We do not need more buttons - we need to use the tool for the purpose of which it was designed. Email lists and Facebook are for conversations.

You want the programming changed? Can you write code? Do you have a day job? "yes" "no" and "yes"... then shut it.

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*email addy is available in the roster list.

I guess 'dread' is not as 'on hold' as I thought. During my active hours, I don't think about Bossman's illness much beyond what we need to take care of next. But when I'm trying to sleep all the worst-case scenerios play out, over and over, driving me from the bed to the computer or a book. This will likely pass after we get through this week.

He couldn't sleep in the bed last night. The pressure on his ribcage was too painful and it has caused swelling again. He bundled up on his easy chair and fell asleep there. Now he's still in that chair, watching "What Decided the Shapes of our States" or some such title, lulling away the day with tidbits of trivia. I'm working on heraldry stuff that needs to get done although I suspect I'll be joining him for some TV later when my brain goes to mush.

I and some friends made chawettys on Wendesday and I mistakenly boiled too many eggs, all of which I peeled before we did the assembling of the chawettys. I had egg salad sandwiches for lunch AND dinner yesterday... we have about a gallon of egg bits still to use (I already chopped them up). I'll be making more egg salad in a little while since Bossman didn't get any yesterday and wanted some. I wonder how long hard boiled eggs last in a sealed container in the fridge. If they could last until the kids get here next Sunday, I know that the boys would decimate the supply. But a week & a half already chopped? I don't know about that. Right now the chopped eggs aren't mixed with mayo or anything as I've been taking out a measured amount to use one batch at a time. I should go to the SCA cook's list and see if anyone knows how long those suckers are safe.

My biggest problem with this cold snap is that it is blocking my efforts to do laundry. In the realm of hazards, I'm lucky it isn't all that dire... except I'm running out of innerwear. I'm going to be reduced to hand washing things in a sink if the weather doesn't heat up a bit soon! Our washing/drying area is in the garage and the temperature difference between that area and the house is amazing, especially considering we live in a duplex attached at the garages so the area gets the benefit of temperature protection on two sides. I haven't even attempted to go outside yet. I will some time this afternoon, when the temperatures are at their pathetic highest. I need to take out the kitchen garbage. Oh, the challenges of huswifery!

Yesterday I also had one of my protégées come over to work on sewing. We didn't get any done, however. In fact we didn't get much done at all. A less-organized person I have never met... small piles of fabrics (most of them inappropriate for SCA-period clothing), vague ideas of what she wants, and most challenging for me - a total aversion to using any kind of pattern. "I'll just copy off of this already-finished piece of clothing" is her starting point, using the fabric that she expects to wear... make a muslin attempt first? Why would she want to do that? It takes too long and she knows what she is doing! The afternoon was a tad stressful but I've got her to the point where she is willing to make a muslin first and work from there. Believe me, that was a huge concession.

I've been filing heraldry stuff for the last two days. I'd not expected it to take two days of labour but it has - we found (Bossman helped yesterday) that two containers of 'notes' from the previous submission herald were actually files, some of which are duplicates or each other and others are duplicates of ones already in the 'recent' file holders. Luckily, none of them are duplicates of the permanent files. But still, sorting through two sets of files is time consuming. And why am I using two sets? Because our permanent ones will have to be readjusted, as they are too full to put more stuff in without adding another file cabinet to the mix. Which we have waiting, I just haven't gotten to it yet. Somehow that seems a little silly given that we're going to be converting all of the files to electronic copies and shredding the paper ones sometime this year.

4:30 in the morning.
I should be working on heraldry stuff but my reaction to the GD'ed Fracking Cat who sprayed our doors and house corners last night is still causing me trouble. I have a very strong reaction to the smell, very close to one needing an epi pen. I took meds for it and even managed to go outside and sprayed down the areas with some handy 'animal odour remover' stuff so I just have to wait the reaction out. My eyes sting like Hades, though.

But for now I'm too miserable to think. What I should do is colour in more of the submissions. On Wednesday I travelled south to a group in North Carolina, met up with Bambi there, and we did an extensive heraldic intervention for the group... lots of submissions were hammered out and their baron and baroness can start to rest easier about the awards they've been giving. But it was a long night and only one page of each submission was coloured in, and three of them weren't even drawn up. They're approved by the group, though, and of the ones that were drawn up, each had one page coloured so I could scan them in for OSCAR when I got home.

That is, until I got home and realised that the Letter of Intent wasn't done, the April 1 letter hadn't been started because none of the 'submissions' were actually sent to me (I found them in the archives of the discussion group) and it needed to be finished too... so I've been a tad busy. That works out very nicely for the two heralds who sent me late submissions that would normally be waiting for next month's letter. Can you say, "squeak"? I knew you could.

I learned from Bambi-conversation that I have been an 'interim' submission herald and that it is expected that I won't seek a second gig at the job. Damn. I was having fun, especially now that I'm catching on to it all well enough to not drown. (Not to mention that my approval rate on submissions has been about 85%, which puts me squarely in a "B" grade - not great, but certainly not bad!) Luckily my boss called me this evening and I asked her about it. She was surprised - she doesn't want me to step aside when my warrant runs out. Good. As long as Laurel doesn't have a problem with me, I'm staying in. We need a couple more years of training and practise before there is going to be another herald willing and able to take over the job (I'm excepting Bambi, who could do the job but really shouldn't.) We need to create a solid pool of qualified heralds in the Kingdom. And besides that, it is my firm belief that one of the foremost duties of an office-holder is to train at least one replacement - and I haven't quite achieved that yet. Although I have a few likely candidates in mind if I can give them another year or so to get comfortable with their knowledge base.

I'm getting the kingdom files this weekend. Can you imagine? I have been doing this job for about a year and a half and now I'm getting the records... I expect that part of this month will be spent reshuffling the folders I have in temporary storage into their permanent home, and toting up how many binders I wasted as duplicates. Hopefully I can flip those inside out and reuse them.

We had to get rid of three bookcases to make room for the files... Bossman and I sorted through books and offloaded about 200 titles to Goodwill. Wow. Most of them were things that no one will really have any use for; two sets of encyclopaedias (our Britannicas were over 35 years old!), Time-Life sets on home repair and other subjects (remember the era of "pay $14.95 monthly for each book in the set"?)... predominately subjects too easily found on the Internet nowadays. And a huge load of hardback novels that we both have in electronic form now. And boy, did I rediscover my Craft library. ("Craft" as in "Wiccan/Pagan and comparative religion studies.) Some of the titles made me smile - "Magical Rites from the Crystal Well", "Drawing Down the Moon" (which had photos in it of people I later recognised from my SCA kingdom, once I became a member, which made me grin), the writings of Marion Weinstein, and a book by the firebrand Leo Martello - who most modern Wiccans have never heard of. As well as a couple of books that I bought just because their authors cited me in their work. Ah, the old days, when we had to sneak into little side bookstores and buy our books by special order, delivered wrapped in brown paper so the titles would not shock the other customers or get us lynched. How things have changed. I'd forgotten about them in amongst the more recent titles.

Foxit Reader worked a treat and I actually originated a submission form with all of the lines typed out. YAY! (I used "typewriter" for the typing rather than the 'fillable field' bit because Atlantia doesn't have those in its forms.) That was great! Now I'm going to have to download the program onto my laptop for consults away from home. I do love getting printed forms rather than hand-written ones and now I can generate my own. And it is going to rock to not have to manually cut & paste the documentation into the bottom of each name submission form I do.

I formatted my new chip for my Nook, which I don't need right now. But I will, grasshopper, I will. And in searching all over my document files and the temp-download files I've recovered most of the books and short stories that I had previously had on my first Nook, which I had foolishly not saved in the Adobe Digital Edition files. It's even possible that I've found all of the short stories - it is hard to tell with things in the Liadan 'world'.

Next up is coloring in a set of submissions for a friend so I can get them up in OSCAR faster, and then I shall tackle - the Dreaded PicDic. Yes, me and a large pad of sticky notes are going to emend all of the changes that I can find concerning the various charges in the book. I expect that my efforts won't be 100% up to date but they will be better than what is currently in the book, which is no changes at all since its publication date.

After that - creating more traceable art for my set, and then... (le sigh) learning how to do IGI searches. But at some point, all of that is going to go out the window because now I have a copy of Neil Price's The Viking Way, which I am going to read from cover to cover, and then read again. And take notes.