deep breath
Jun. 7th, 2010 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Flew to Chicago Friday. Arrived Chicago by 1pm, took CTA train to downtown, walked 4 blocks to Amtrak station and confirmed my ticket (scanned barcode from online purchase printout). Then realized I had 3 hours to kill and the climate control sucked in there, so I wandered back out into the sunshine to find a Chicago hot dog.
I walked for about 45 minutes looking for one, and finally, as I was giving up and about to go into one of the fifteen McDonalds' I'd spotted, I found one. Max's. Some hole in the wall. Good stuff. So I had one. It was tasty. All-beef, and the French fries had pepper on them as well as salt. Mm.
Then I went back and got onto the train and spent 3 hours there. Then Ann and Zack met me at the station, which was terrifyingly decrepit-- being remodeled. There was no sign on the wall saying you'd arrived; it was lying next to the wall, pointing vaguely downward. Creepy.
Ann and Zack drove me to their place, nearly an hour away. The station was Mattoon, which isn't a large city. The nearest big-ish city is Decatur, but it isn't serviced by any public transport.
Their farm is super-cute. It's not a farm so much as it is, well, a house in the middle of nowhere with a reasonable yard. Many of the surrounding acres are "under conservation", which means they've been... rented by the state? I don't know? You're allowed to mow them once annually, and can grow no crops nor cultivate or use the property in any way but perhaps light recreation. I think it's something about prarie regeneration. OK there's a word my spellchecker doesn't know. I'm just gonna not look up "prarie" and see if I'm right.
Anyway. So they only have a couple acres or so to play with, so they've got in some peas, some beets and radishes, a bit of cabbage, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and an assload of tomatoes. A few other things too, including a cute little Three Sisters bed, which i'm rather jealous of. I know more about it than Ann, apparently; I wanted rather badly to try it-- corn, beans, and squash together-- but haven't the space. I'd only need like a ten by ten foot square, but I don't even have that. So boo. Ann does, and so I helped her plant the beans and squash around the corn, which had all sprouted. I also got to scuffle-hoe it to get the weeds down, which is what organic types do instead of RoundUp.
It was a nice visit. I picked about ten pounds of cherries off Zack's dad's tree, and we visited a winery. I bought four bottles of wine and am kicking myself for not buying more, because we're getting wine for a cousin for an upcoming wedding and duh, it would've been really nice to give her some from there, and Ann's flying so she can't bring any. Duh duh duh. Oh well. I can give her what I bought and then not have any, but that would make me sad!
So instead I just went and bought her about $100 worth of New York State wines. Mostly that's all I drink; in lieu of developing actual taste, or buying the cutest label, I have been buying wines from local or local-ish wineries. I have been on tours of several, so I got to taste before I bought, and also have stories of them. I sat just now while eating dinner and wrote down little summaries of my stories with those wines, which I'll attach to the necks. Unless that would make it seem too me-oriented, which I'd rather not do-- my whole family is chipping in on this.
Wednesday night I drive to Mom and Dad's, which is about 300 miles/ 5 hours. I plan on leaving straight from work, which will shave off about an hour-- it's well east of where I live, so going home and then turning around to get on the road would definitely be an hour. It'll still take at least 4.5 hrs from work, but maybe I'll be home before everyone's in bed. (Probably not; 10 is later than Mom and Dad stay up.)
Then Friday morning we'll drive down to New York City. Our cousin's wedding is that night. I'd love to stay down all day on Saturday but I have a bridal shower back up in our hometown to go to that day, so I may have to drive separately from everyone else.
I haven't bought the bride anything. Fuck. I've probably spent about 8 hours and $300 so far on the dress I have to wear for her wedding, and have probably 20 more hours of work to do on it, but you can't really just say That's cool, I didn't get you shit, girl. I know little about wedding etiquette, but I know that much. So shit, I don't have much time to figure that out. (I'm already in the shitter, etiquette-wise; I'm the maid of honor, theoretically, and haven't so much as lifted a finger toward this shower idea. I know nothing, people. I live 300 miles away. I live 220 miles away from the bride, who I don't regularly speak to. So I'm really not on top of anything and don't have the time to make it my business. Yeargh.)
Then Sunday, back to Buffalo. The following Saturday I go to Rochester. Then the next weekend is something derby-related, I think-- I hope not, I'd love a day off. I may not have anything the weekend after either, but I don't know; the one after that is the wedding I'm in. Oh my, that's not a lot of time left to make the dress. Sweet. Let me count again. Two free weekends. Sweet.
Then after that I've two weeks until Pennsic. I've got nothing ready for that either, really. Lots of things begun, not a lot completed.
Tonight, at least, I swung by a TJ Maxx Homegoods and bought a bunch of random crap, including a king-size yet cheap blanket so we don't have to huddle in the bed in the tent, and a mattress pad so the damn thing isn't so cold/slippery, and a couple of lanterns I can put candles in or hopefully some powerful LEDs I want to get either online or at the hardware store (I'll look tomorrow).
OK bed. Too much running around, not enough sleeping, of late. Z is in Baltimore until Thursday, when he'll go to NYC where I'll meet him Friday. I don't look forward to what a colossal grump he's going to be for a while / has already been for a while-- he does even less well than me with this whole run-around-like-headless-chicken bullshit. Which is an absurd price to pay for a social life, but there it is. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone I loved lived in the same town and came over twice monthly for tea? That'd be nice actually. But I'd probably be bored because that's human nature.
I walked for about 45 minutes looking for one, and finally, as I was giving up and about to go into one of the fifteen McDonalds' I'd spotted, I found one. Max's. Some hole in the wall. Good stuff. So I had one. It was tasty. All-beef, and the French fries had pepper on them as well as salt. Mm.
Then I went back and got onto the train and spent 3 hours there. Then Ann and Zack met me at the station, which was terrifyingly decrepit-- being remodeled. There was no sign on the wall saying you'd arrived; it was lying next to the wall, pointing vaguely downward. Creepy.
Ann and Zack drove me to their place, nearly an hour away. The station was Mattoon, which isn't a large city. The nearest big-ish city is Decatur, but it isn't serviced by any public transport.
Their farm is super-cute. It's not a farm so much as it is, well, a house in the middle of nowhere with a reasonable yard. Many of the surrounding acres are "under conservation", which means they've been... rented by the state? I don't know? You're allowed to mow them once annually, and can grow no crops nor cultivate or use the property in any way but perhaps light recreation. I think it's something about prarie regeneration. OK there's a word my spellchecker doesn't know. I'm just gonna not look up "prarie" and see if I'm right.
Anyway. So they only have a couple acres or so to play with, so they've got in some peas, some beets and radishes, a bit of cabbage, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and an assload of tomatoes. A few other things too, including a cute little Three Sisters bed, which i'm rather jealous of. I know more about it than Ann, apparently; I wanted rather badly to try it-- corn, beans, and squash together-- but haven't the space. I'd only need like a ten by ten foot square, but I don't even have that. So boo. Ann does, and so I helped her plant the beans and squash around the corn, which had all sprouted. I also got to scuffle-hoe it to get the weeds down, which is what organic types do instead of RoundUp.
It was a nice visit. I picked about ten pounds of cherries off Zack's dad's tree, and we visited a winery. I bought four bottles of wine and am kicking myself for not buying more, because we're getting wine for a cousin for an upcoming wedding and duh, it would've been really nice to give her some from there, and Ann's flying so she can't bring any. Duh duh duh. Oh well. I can give her what I bought and then not have any, but that would make me sad!
So instead I just went and bought her about $100 worth of New York State wines. Mostly that's all I drink; in lieu of developing actual taste, or buying the cutest label, I have been buying wines from local or local-ish wineries. I have been on tours of several, so I got to taste before I bought, and also have stories of them. I sat just now while eating dinner and wrote down little summaries of my stories with those wines, which I'll attach to the necks. Unless that would make it seem too me-oriented, which I'd rather not do-- my whole family is chipping in on this.
Wednesday night I drive to Mom and Dad's, which is about 300 miles/ 5 hours. I plan on leaving straight from work, which will shave off about an hour-- it's well east of where I live, so going home and then turning around to get on the road would definitely be an hour. It'll still take at least 4.5 hrs from work, but maybe I'll be home before everyone's in bed. (Probably not; 10 is later than Mom and Dad stay up.)
Then Friday morning we'll drive down to New York City. Our cousin's wedding is that night. I'd love to stay down all day on Saturday but I have a bridal shower back up in our hometown to go to that day, so I may have to drive separately from everyone else.
I haven't bought the bride anything. Fuck. I've probably spent about 8 hours and $300 so far on the dress I have to wear for her wedding, and have probably 20 more hours of work to do on it, but you can't really just say That's cool, I didn't get you shit, girl. I know little about wedding etiquette, but I know that much. So shit, I don't have much time to figure that out. (I'm already in the shitter, etiquette-wise; I'm the maid of honor, theoretically, and haven't so much as lifted a finger toward this shower idea. I know nothing, people. I live 300 miles away. I live 220 miles away from the bride, who I don't regularly speak to. So I'm really not on top of anything and don't have the time to make it my business. Yeargh.)
Then Sunday, back to Buffalo. The following Saturday I go to Rochester. Then the next weekend is something derby-related, I think-- I hope not, I'd love a day off. I may not have anything the weekend after either, but I don't know; the one after that is the wedding I'm in. Oh my, that's not a lot of time left to make the dress. Sweet. Let me count again. Two free weekends. Sweet.
Then after that I've two weeks until Pennsic. I've got nothing ready for that either, really. Lots of things begun, not a lot completed.
Tonight, at least, I swung by a TJ Maxx Homegoods and bought a bunch of random crap, including a king-size yet cheap blanket so we don't have to huddle in the bed in the tent, and a mattress pad so the damn thing isn't so cold/slippery, and a couple of lanterns I can put candles in or hopefully some powerful LEDs I want to get either online or at the hardware store (I'll look tomorrow).
OK bed. Too much running around, not enough sleeping, of late. Z is in Baltimore until Thursday, when he'll go to NYC where I'll meet him Friday. I don't look forward to what a colossal grump he's going to be for a while / has already been for a while-- he does even less well than me with this whole run-around-like-headless-chicken bullshit. Which is an absurd price to pay for a social life, but there it is. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone I loved lived in the same town and came over twice monthly for tea? That'd be nice actually. But I'd probably be bored because that's human nature.
