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dragonlady7Am backing up my computer using Time Machine, as one does. I had not done so in about a month and felt a bit guilty for being so dumb. It has a nifty little animated thing in my apple menu bar thingy up at the top, whatever that's called. It's like a start bar only it's at the top and has an apple instead of the Start button, for those of you more used to Windows. (Z tells me it's called the "Apple Menu". Well good.)
I clicked on that and it offered me the menu option "enter Time Machine", and I thought OK, I'll see what my preferences are or whatever.
It rolled my whole desktop away and showed me a trippy space scene and older versions of my desktop stretching backward towards a black hole.
Holy #@($)(#$@*&^#%%!!@#)!! How did I not know that was there?!
I exclaimed, and Z looked up and I said "Noo I'm Entering Time Machine!"
"Click "cancel" quick, before you fall into space!" he said.
I don't know why I had to write that down, it just made me laugh.
Anyhow. Z has yielded up the power adapter so I can elaborate on my previous post.
I zoomed out of town Tuesday afternoon with Z, home to see my folks in Melrose. Mostly this was so Z could get the hell out of town so the office would stop calling him. (He wound up working 15 hours on Monday.) But it was also, explicitly, so that I could pick up the rest of the things I was borrowing from my parents for Pennsic.
Conveniently, we got to stop enroute in Rochester to visit Liesl and Dave, who are respectively one of my two still-in-contact high school friends, and my senior year housemate from college. I introduced the two of them senior year and they have been dating ever since, much to my pleasure-- selfish pleasure though it is, I know, but I know Dave is so bad at correspondence that I would have lost track of him long ago if not for Liesl, and I am terribly fond of Dave. Liesl, of course, it goes without saying.
And Liesl was kind enough to haul out all her Pennsic garb and give me everything that fit, so I now have about three times as much clothing as I did. Most of her garb is stuff she purchased-- she's very crafty, but not a sewer. Oddly this is reassuring to me-- I feel like if I get it too muddy or tear it or something, I can much more easily replace a purchased piece than something lovingly hand-crafted from, like, flax her mother grew, or something. So I have a bunch of garb and also a folding cot, which is a thousand times better than the air mattress on a tarp I was going to go with. (It wasn't a real air mattress either, but an inflatable pad that's meant to prevent bedsores in old people. Yeah, I know, but it was free.)
Also I got to have six or seven hours' worth of conversation with Liesl and Dave, which was incalculably wonderful. I do miss them both and now they live only an hour away and I still have not managed to go see them. We've all been busy, but Liesl and I both have the summer off so it's like, well, duh... Oh well. Now gas is a zillion dollars, and sixty miles is a long way. But we've resolved to do something.
I had a lovely time at my parents' house, and ate very well. My mother supervised as I taught myself to cross-stitch-- something so simple can't really be taught, though I admit French Knots still elude me. (She did two for me, then I did two perfectly, then the next two I tried were so awful that I had to cut them out of the finished work.) Still and all, I did a tiny cross-stitch of a K with a little floral design behind it [K being my last initial and also Z's last initial, by coincidence-- we don't have to get married to share a monogram], and I'm absurdly proud of it. I also borrowed a kickass book of charted Celtic designs from the Book of Kells and the Tara Brooch et al., so that will be a lot of fun to play with. I am going to buy some linen at Pennsic, if I can find any that's even-weave enough to cross-stitch on-- I already dislike the look of the Aida cloth.
But anyway. I learned to cross-stitch, and can't find my camera battery charger or I'd show you a picture.
I was overjoyed to discover that the poles for the tent I'm borrowing fit into my tiny car-- I had remembered the ridgepole as being eight feet long, but it was actually shorter than the upright poles, which are around seven feet (judging by my standing under them). This simplifies my use of the tent immensely.
We got back today, and Chita was hungry and bored and had completely demolished a ball of yarn all over the floor of the house. It's unwound in several tangled laps around the house, and it's so funny I'm leaving it for now. I did take photos and will eventually upload them. I almost immediately set up the tent I borrowed from Dad, because it was starting to rain and I wanted to see how "waterproof" the thing was. It's 35-year-old canvas, and has been languishing in a trunk under a leak in the roof in the barn for at least two decades, so I was more than curious.
It was simplicity itself to set up the tent. There's a ridgepole, and two uprights. You put the pegs of the uprights through the holes of the ridgepole, making two right angles-- it looks like a square upside-down U. Then you put the canvas down on the ground, and put the ends of the pegs, which protrude from the ridge pole, through a grommet at the peak of the canvas at each side. Pick up the ridgepole and push it upright, shoving the pegs at the lower ends of the uprights into the ground. Then use stakes through the loops at the bottom of the canvas to hold the thing up. It's triangular from the front, with flaps that hang and have ties so you can close the tent's entrance. At the back, there's a little extra canvas, which bells out with extra tent-stake loops so that you can make it into a little extension to store equipment. If you fear wind or heavy weather, you can use a guy rope from each upright peg to stake it down at the front and the back. It requires no further staking.
Two people could live comfortably in it. During the Revolutionary War, by regulation it was meant to house six men. They couldn't be more than about five feet ten, and couldn't be very wide either, but I can see how they'd maybe fit in there. It's probably about the footprint of a four-man Coleman tent.
I sat in it during the rainstorm, playing with Chita and watching the rain drip from the lower edges. It stretched out a bit, and got soaked through, but the rain didn't come through. But I understand now-- people said, "Don't let anything touch the sides of your tent, especially if it's a canvas tent," and I totally get it now. The canvas is soaking wet, and if you touch it, water comes off on your fingers. (Chita was lying with her haunch pressed against it, and got rather wet-- she doesn't care about water at all, though, and was frisking out in the rain with no real reaction to it.) But water doesn't drip through-- not even at the grommet holes, or at the seams.
So I am very pleased by that. We'll see how I feel about the tent after I've lived in it for two weeks. I have a tarp for the floor, as well as numerous rubber floor mats (I was expecting to have an air mattress on the floor, remember), so it should be pretty cozy! We'll see.
I also scored a gorgeous 18th-C pierced-tin candle lantern, which is indubitably the wrong period, but it's just so pretty.
And I just got a pair of black Mary-Jane-style Crocs (the kind without holes) in the mail, so I even have waterproof but not screamingly non-period footwear. *dances around* Go me!
I am officially On The Schedule to work: I will be working at the Turkish coffeehouse, Your Inner Vagabond, the first week in the kitchen and the second week as a waitress. I don't have a whole lot of shifts, but that suits me just fine-- I'd rather work when it's not busy, and if I like it a lot I'll happily pick up more shifts if any are going spare, but if I'm having a ton of fun with the rest of Pennsic, I'd really rather not work too much. I'm only taking the job for a little extra pocket money and to offset my guilt at all the shopping I expect to do-- I plan on going nuts with raw materials, since JoAnn's has been so disappointing on so many fronts for so long (no wool to speak of, no linen of any kind, little cotton, few decent notions... really, what the hell do they even sell? Nothing I want!)
Chita is wandering around providing commentary on the evening's lack of proceedings, so I think I will go and pay some attention to her now. And give Z back the power adapter. And maybe... just maybe I'll find the power adapter to my camera and recharge the battery so I can download the photos of the Unspeakable Yarn Redecorating Project Chita undertook while we were away, and possibly the tent and the cross stitch. Yes! Exciting times ahead!
I clicked on that and it offered me the menu option "enter Time Machine", and I thought OK, I'll see what my preferences are or whatever.
It rolled my whole desktop away and showed me a trippy space scene and older versions of my desktop stretching backward towards a black hole.
Holy #@($)(#$@*&^#%%!!@#)!! How did I not know that was there?!
I exclaimed, and Z looked up and I said "Noo I'm Entering Time Machine!"
"Click "cancel" quick, before you fall into space!" he said.
I don't know why I had to write that down, it just made me laugh.
Anyhow. Z has yielded up the power adapter so I can elaborate on my previous post.
I zoomed out of town Tuesday afternoon with Z, home to see my folks in Melrose. Mostly this was so Z could get the hell out of town so the office would stop calling him. (He wound up working 15 hours on Monday.) But it was also, explicitly, so that I could pick up the rest of the things I was borrowing from my parents for Pennsic.
Conveniently, we got to stop enroute in Rochester to visit Liesl and Dave, who are respectively one of my two still-in-contact high school friends, and my senior year housemate from college. I introduced the two of them senior year and they have been dating ever since, much to my pleasure-- selfish pleasure though it is, I know, but I know Dave is so bad at correspondence that I would have lost track of him long ago if not for Liesl, and I am terribly fond of Dave. Liesl, of course, it goes without saying.
And Liesl was kind enough to haul out all her Pennsic garb and give me everything that fit, so I now have about three times as much clothing as I did. Most of her garb is stuff she purchased-- she's very crafty, but not a sewer. Oddly this is reassuring to me-- I feel like if I get it too muddy or tear it or something, I can much more easily replace a purchased piece than something lovingly hand-crafted from, like, flax her mother grew, or something. So I have a bunch of garb and also a folding cot, which is a thousand times better than the air mattress on a tarp I was going to go with. (It wasn't a real air mattress either, but an inflatable pad that's meant to prevent bedsores in old people. Yeah, I know, but it was free.)
Also I got to have six or seven hours' worth of conversation with Liesl and Dave, which was incalculably wonderful. I do miss them both and now they live only an hour away and I still have not managed to go see them. We've all been busy, but Liesl and I both have the summer off so it's like, well, duh... Oh well. Now gas is a zillion dollars, and sixty miles is a long way. But we've resolved to do something.
I had a lovely time at my parents' house, and ate very well. My mother supervised as I taught myself to cross-stitch-- something so simple can't really be taught, though I admit French Knots still elude me. (She did two for me, then I did two perfectly, then the next two I tried were so awful that I had to cut them out of the finished work.) Still and all, I did a tiny cross-stitch of a K with a little floral design behind it [K being my last initial and also Z's last initial, by coincidence-- we don't have to get married to share a monogram], and I'm absurdly proud of it. I also borrowed a kickass book of charted Celtic designs from the Book of Kells and the Tara Brooch et al., so that will be a lot of fun to play with. I am going to buy some linen at Pennsic, if I can find any that's even-weave enough to cross-stitch on-- I already dislike the look of the Aida cloth.
But anyway. I learned to cross-stitch, and can't find my camera battery charger or I'd show you a picture.
I was overjoyed to discover that the poles for the tent I'm borrowing fit into my tiny car-- I had remembered the ridgepole as being eight feet long, but it was actually shorter than the upright poles, which are around seven feet (judging by my standing under them). This simplifies my use of the tent immensely.
We got back today, and Chita was hungry and bored and had completely demolished a ball of yarn all over the floor of the house. It's unwound in several tangled laps around the house, and it's so funny I'm leaving it for now. I did take photos and will eventually upload them. I almost immediately set up the tent I borrowed from Dad, because it was starting to rain and I wanted to see how "waterproof" the thing was. It's 35-year-old canvas, and has been languishing in a trunk under a leak in the roof in the barn for at least two decades, so I was more than curious.
It was simplicity itself to set up the tent. There's a ridgepole, and two uprights. You put the pegs of the uprights through the holes of the ridgepole, making two right angles-- it looks like a square upside-down U. Then you put the canvas down on the ground, and put the ends of the pegs, which protrude from the ridge pole, through a grommet at the peak of the canvas at each side. Pick up the ridgepole and push it upright, shoving the pegs at the lower ends of the uprights into the ground. Then use stakes through the loops at the bottom of the canvas to hold the thing up. It's triangular from the front, with flaps that hang and have ties so you can close the tent's entrance. At the back, there's a little extra canvas, which bells out with extra tent-stake loops so that you can make it into a little extension to store equipment. If you fear wind or heavy weather, you can use a guy rope from each upright peg to stake it down at the front and the back. It requires no further staking.
Two people could live comfortably in it. During the Revolutionary War, by regulation it was meant to house six men. They couldn't be more than about five feet ten, and couldn't be very wide either, but I can see how they'd maybe fit in there. It's probably about the footprint of a four-man Coleman tent.
I sat in it during the rainstorm, playing with Chita and watching the rain drip from the lower edges. It stretched out a bit, and got soaked through, but the rain didn't come through. But I understand now-- people said, "Don't let anything touch the sides of your tent, especially if it's a canvas tent," and I totally get it now. The canvas is soaking wet, and if you touch it, water comes off on your fingers. (Chita was lying with her haunch pressed against it, and got rather wet-- she doesn't care about water at all, though, and was frisking out in the rain with no real reaction to it.) But water doesn't drip through-- not even at the grommet holes, or at the seams.
So I am very pleased by that. We'll see how I feel about the tent after I've lived in it for two weeks. I have a tarp for the floor, as well as numerous rubber floor mats (I was expecting to have an air mattress on the floor, remember), so it should be pretty cozy! We'll see.
I also scored a gorgeous 18th-C pierced-tin candle lantern, which is indubitably the wrong period, but it's just so pretty.
And I just got a pair of black Mary-Jane-style Crocs (the kind without holes) in the mail, so I even have waterproof but not screamingly non-period footwear. *dances around* Go me!
I am officially On The Schedule to work: I will be working at the Turkish coffeehouse, Your Inner Vagabond, the first week in the kitchen and the second week as a waitress. I don't have a whole lot of shifts, but that suits me just fine-- I'd rather work when it's not busy, and if I like it a lot I'll happily pick up more shifts if any are going spare, but if I'm having a ton of fun with the rest of Pennsic, I'd really rather not work too much. I'm only taking the job for a little extra pocket money and to offset my guilt at all the shopping I expect to do-- I plan on going nuts with raw materials, since JoAnn's has been so disappointing on so many fronts for so long (no wool to speak of, no linen of any kind, little cotton, few decent notions... really, what the hell do they even sell? Nothing I want!)
Chita is wandering around providing commentary on the evening's lack of proceedings, so I think I will go and pay some attention to her now. And give Z back the power adapter. And maybe... just maybe I'll find the power adapter to my camera and recharge the battery so I can download the photos of the Unspeakable Yarn Redecorating Project Chita undertook while we were away, and possibly the tent and the cross stitch. Yes! Exciting times ahead!
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 01:28 pm (UTC)Don't pack up the tent until it's thoroughly dried out...I'm sure you already know that but I would've worried all day til I told you.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 02:20 pm (UTC)I just discovered to my dismay that it's supposed to rain basically all week, which I did not know when I set the thing up, so now I'm worried that it won't have a chance to dry out! But if it rains again, I can always bring it up to the attic and hang it up there-- the ceiling's high enough that it will be able to dry there. It would just be a huge hassle and the thing is very very heavy when wet.
But yes, I know, and I know it's even more important with canvas-- I think this is probably cotton canvas, and cotton doesn't stand up well to being wet for prolonged periods.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 02:24 pm (UTC)Oh good idea. Maybe I'll do that.
My mother did the first one for me with no problem, and then when I started on the second one, I asked her to remind me, and she suddenly couldn't remember, and had to take it back and try three or four times before she got it right. And she said there was definitely a trick to it but she wasn't sure what the trick was. Added to the complication, she's very strongly right-handed, and I'm sort of ambidextrous, which is not actually cool at all but just means that I never know whether I should reverse directions or not. (I can only write left-handed (well, I can write right-handed but it's usually backwards and I don't realize that), but can only use scissors right-handed, and I sew with both hands interchangeably without noticing I switch, which means I sometimes accidentally reverse directions because I don't realize I've switched hands. It's maddening.)
I just have weird brain wiring. I mean really weird. I don't know many adults who are as utterly helpless to distinguish left and right as I am. It's pretty sad. I should be better at stuff to make up for my many handicaps, but I'm not. Bummer.