There is a fire truck with spotlights in our front yard.

It seems one of our neighbors, a 71 year old man, parked his tracter this afternoon, and never went inside. They are searching the woods, and even have a helicopter with nightvision circling around. The firemen said they were bringing in dogs, but I haven't seen those.

It is hard to believe there is anyplace they haven't looked yet. I do live in the woods, but it is not the middle of no where, and big chunks are under water. I have gotten lost in the swamp before, but that takes a boat.

I do hope the guy is alright, but unless he up and went to the pub or something, I think he would have turned up if he was out here.

This year the barn is getting a wood stove.  What does that mean?  It means that we can have a party in the hall in th cold weather!  Time to pull out all that warm wool and be so much more authentic than we can be at Pennsic with its 95 degree days. 

So, that date will be December 5th.  Nice warm medieval garb strongly encouraged. (Will find loner gear for anyone who needs it if they RSVP)  Location at our place.  We will do dinner, either buffet or pot-luck (or some combo of both).  Hopefully there will be dancing, and maybe some more card games, like last year.  If you think you will be making it, please let myself or C know, so that we can plan food and drink accordingly.

Let's all enjoy ourselves before the stressful holiday season truly decends on us!

It was snowing when I got up this morning.  It wasn't really sticking, but when I first looked outside, it was way more than your basic flurrie.  I am not ready for this. 

>:-(

So, C really wanted a jack-o-lantern this year.  I don't so much see the point.  They rot so fast in the southern exposure of our porch, and it isn't like we can get any trick-or-treaters to appreciate it.  We live off the (dirt) road down a long (1/5 of a mile) curving drive.  Still, he went through all the trouble of growing the pumpkin, scraping it out, roasting the seeds, and even processing its sister pumpkin for pie.  The least I could do was carve it, after he announces that he wouldn't know how.  Now my pumpkin carving skills have pretty much atrophied after junior high, but I gave it a shot anyway.  I hope C likes it.


     


 

I bought a pocket screw jig this weekend.  It is pretty cool and I am very happy with it.  I am using it to make wood framed screens for our barn.  It's just that reading the instructions for these things is always a trip and a half.  You think more guys would read them when they say things like this.

While the large part of the drill actually creates the pocket, the narrow tip drills the guide hole for the screw.

Yes, the drill bit is shaped like a condom, which makes the next sentence even funnier.

When you drill your first hole, place the bit about an inch inside of the drill guide, bring the drill up to full speed, and plunge the bit smoothly and consistently into the workpiece.

Oh, and the next page is a chart showing the optimum screw length for a given piece's thickness.

Forget guys, I think I love power tools.  I just can't make this stuff up.

. 

So it has been a busy last couple of weeks for me.  My family is very scattered all over the eastern seaboard (and a few that are farther afield than that) so we don't really have a day to day effect on each other.  However the last week and a half have been family time.

My father and his wife, who he calls Charley, were up to visit last weekend.  It was the first time he has come to see me in NH that the weather wasn't awful.  We went hiking.  The early autumn woods were gorgeous, and I remembered why I really really wanted to live here.  I also got to sit on a couch with my dad and watch a football game, a game that our favorite team actually managed to win.  Neither of those things has happened nearly enough in recent memory.

This past weekend I headed down to Virginia and Maryland to see my sister, the niece and nephew, and attend my youngest cousin's baby shower.  It was a 10 1/2 hour drive down, but the weather was beautiful and I had CDs and my iPod and phone, and I love driving my car.  The kids are SO cute, and I now have scribbley child!art on my refrigerator.  The three year old is already better at this on-line stuff than I will ever be.  I gave her a bow and arrow set, already trying to entice her into my favorite hobby.   And I gave her brother a plastic sword, because it would be unfair to arm one child and not the other.  I felt less bad about the sibling arms race once I caught sight of their dad's ping pong ball crossbow/sling shot thingy.

The shower was typical family stuff, good food, lots of sitting around.  My aunts and cousins seemed good, and I hope I have something near my grandmother's energy, grace, and fashion sense when I am 88.  It was good to see her, even if she does seem tinier every time.  She has never even aspired to 5 feet, but now she looks like you could hold her in one hand, but it is such a livily little package, that it is cute, rather than fragile or sad.  (although she is fragile enough to have broken her leg recently, but healthy enough to have healed it well)

Sunday I left early because I wanted to make it home before dark.  This time the weather was blah, all foggy and drizzle.  I had a hard time staying awake through PA when I could hardly see the cars around me.  But I woke up by CT and was a little over three hours from home, when I hit traffic.  There was a disabled car on the side of the road, and police, so of course everyone slowed down.  Then when we were just passed the officer and it seemed like we were going to speed up again, traffic dropped abruptly to 20 mph.  I had just enough time to congratulate myself on paying attention and braking quickly to avoid the car in front of me, while catching my iPod and purse to keep them from hitting the floor, when the car behind me, didn't.  Wack! 

Then, angry cop, very apoligetic other driver, and a car that won't go.  Still over three hours from home.  Took almost two hours to get towed, talk to insurance companies (at length) and determine that Yes, I am entitled to a rental car under his policy (he hit me) but because it is Sunday night, nothing is open, so I can't have one until the next morning.  Not acceptable.  So call C and get him started on the drive down to pick me up.  The only reason I didn't end up stranded in an alley behind a scruffy body shop, was because the people who came to pick up the guy who hit me were kind enough to give me a lift to the local Mall. 

Which closed less than an hour after they dropped me off.  There was a theater there, and my plan B was to catch a movie while I waited, but it turned out the fire marshal has closed down the place three days before.  How did I find this out?  Because I ended up eating a very llooonngg dinner at the Ruby Tuesday's and talking to my server a bit more than I usually do.  He gave me the gossip, since the crowd was light, most likely due to people not coming in to see movies.  C showed up, and we made it back by about midnight, but the car is still in CT and no word yet on the damage.  I really like that car, and it will be damn hard to replace, so I am kinda hoping they can fix it, but then I will have to get down to Waterbury somehow to pick it up, and that will be a whole other adventure.

So in review:  family doing well, cars not so good.

This one seemed interesting enough to give it a try, so here we go.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your journal and explain what they mean to you. Comment to the entry if you wish, I'll only give you words if you ask for them...

I got my words from kimboosan, she gave me, architect, archery, Dr. Who, Chris (Skelton), and fire.

Architect: On some levels this is so obvious as to need no explanation; it is what I am.  That, however, I do realize was a conscious choice I made while in school.  It wasn't so much that I wanted this particular job, as I wanted a job that would also be an identity.  I wanted something I could be, rather than just do.  Architect was just what I found that would give that to me.  I never would have made it through some hellish years of grad school if it hadn't.  My newly minted license doesn't do anything for me career-wise or in terms of money right now, but I finally have the legal right to call myself what I have felt myself to be for over ten years, and that feels....really good.  So, yeah, I am an architect :)

Archery: This was something I picked up because it was a major hobby of the man I eventually married.  I didn't think I would like it, or be any good at it, but I got tired of sitting around watching.  I do traditional archery as part of the SCA (recurves, longbows, wooden arrows) but sometimes the rest of the SCA can seem like a sideline to the archery.  We run tournaments, hold practices, and travel all over the northeast to compete.  I even designed our "barn" to include the ability to have an indoor archery range (important for practice in New England weather).  I have just finished rebuilding our group's target frames that we use for competitions, and this winter I am going to learn how ro make my own arrows.  It appeals very much to my meticulous (some say anal) side, and is a great outlet for my competitiveness.  But it is also a tempering of such, because I will never be as good as C, and I have become OK with that.

Dr. Who: For a SciFi geek, this is not something I thought anyone would ever associate with me.  I avoided watching this show as a child in favor of Star Trek or Buck Rogers.  Up until two years ago, i couldn't have told anyone more about it than "there's a phone box, time travel, and an alien who dresses funny".  Then my favorite LJ comm lifein1973started getting all sorts of comments about it.  Took me a while to figure out why, but it turns out that John Simm had played some guy called the Master.  I just had to check that out, and now I find myself with over 45 years of iconic science fiction in several mediums, just waiting for me to explore.  This may take years, possible a few decades, and I am looking forward to them all.  Yep, such a geek.

Chris (Skelton): A Life on Mars character I seem to have laid a bit of a claim on through fanfic.  I will admit here that I initially chose him out of shear laziness.  He was a character that we knew enough about that I didn't have to invent somebody from scratch, but one that we didn't know well enough that I thought I would get caught screwing up his characterization.  I was not really inclined to write, but I wanted to produce some contribution to lifein1973, and I was desperately avoiding studying for my exams, and so fic was born.  Now I have fallen just a bit in love with the potential that could have been in that character, and I mourn the fact that with only 16 episodes, the show never got a chance to go there.

Fire: This appears to have made the list because I mentioned it in a couple of posts, and it was odd enough to be remembered.  You mean everyone doesn't do the majority of their socializing around a campfire?  As a Scout for my entire childhood, and then as a member of the SCA, it has long been my very favorite social crutch.  A burning fire will naturally draw people together.  It also gives you something to look at while you talk, so my issues with eye contact (I don't like it, and have no idea how much or when it is socially required) are less noticeable.  How can you argue with good company, good booze, and a crackling fire?

There we go, a nice sized post, just to keep the journal from being too boring.  Oh, and in other news, C, who has long refused to do LJ on the grounds it is too stupid, has apparently made a facebook account.  moonstaff, this wouldn't be your doing would it?

I am posting this here a) so I don't lose it, and b) because many of you who might be interested actually do read this from time to time. I hope that by putting this out there, people who are thinking of running an archery tournament here in Stonemarche will realize how much excellent stuff we have available to work with. I also hope that if you are on the fence about doing one, that you will see that you don't have to reinvent the wheel, and the task isn't quite as daunting as you thought.

( Existing cardboard targets. Some of these are great artwork that deserves to be seen and appreciated many more times. )
( Target frames for cardboard faces )
( Miscellaneous other stuff )
I hope that these lists help and encourage the running of some great tourneys in the future! Good shooting everyone.

I believe I can now claim to be a licensed architect in the state of New Hampshire.  Vivant! 

The "I believe" part of that statement is because it appears that said great state is currently incapable of printing me the kind of fancy certificate of lincensure that are on display in architect's offices all over the country (and probably the world).  Instead, I got a little green card that looks like it could have been run off at any Kinkos and a letter stating that they are currently having technical difficulties with the certificates.  No proposed date of when it will be forthcoming was proposed.

Since there were no additional forms to fill out, or fees to pay in this envelope, I am assuming that the state is satisfied, and considers me licensed.  I am not so sure I could convince anyone else of this fact with the little card, which is by the way, poorly laminated such that I could stick my fingernail up under the card.

Oh well.  Since I don't want to spring for the very costly liability insurance, it's not like I can DO anything with license anyway.  So I will put the letter, the card, and the stamp away in a drawer.  If the certificate ever arrives, I may put it on a wall if it is pretty enough.

Now, enough of this bullshit about being qualified.  I have real WORK to do. 

Due to C having to work on Saturday, we will not be having our fire.  Sorry, everyone.

Hey Everybody!

We're back from Pennsic, and finally have most of the mud washed out of everything.  We were doing some yard work today and were considering getting a fire permit for next weekend to burn some scrap wood.  Anyone who didn't make it to Pennsic need their fix of sitting around the camp fire drinking beer?  Anyone who did go miss it already?  I can promiss less mud, and flush toilets.  Plus my dutch oven needs more curing, so there will be more of the corn bread as well.

We were thinking Sat so anyone who wanted to just stay after archery could do that.  Any takers?

In just about 18 hours I should have arrived at Pennsic.  For all of you already there, see you soon.  For the rest of you, see you when I get back!  Now for some sleep.

It may be obvious to some of you that this means I have finally watched "Children of Earth", and that I am a bit upset about it.  Further ranting will be under a cut to avoid spoilers, but my advice to you if you are one who hasn't seen it yet is to just read the damn spoilers and not watch the show.  I wish I hadn't.

( Warning: Spoilers and ranting to follow )

Been a while since I posted.  I have been spending my time doing sewing and woodworking projects for Pennsic.   Most are in that half-finished state that may end up lasting years, but this dress is finished (well, except for the sleeve buttons, which I hope to acquire at Pennsic). 

My fist attempt at a gothic fitted dress.  Charcoal grey wool fully lined with navy blue linen.  There are some issues with the sleeves that will make it possibly difficult to shoot in, but it is definitely wearable as is.  Since this is technically an under layer, I will be shopping for a fancy fabric to use for the over dress, and I hope to have that done in time for Birka.  For my next GFD I hope to make a lighter partly lined dress in all linen, and completely hand sew it.  Oh, and figure out what I did wrong with the sleeves and fix it.

 

Found out today that I did, in fact, pass the last of my exams.  Now all I need to do is navigate the complexities of the state paperwork, and I will be a fully licensed architect.  This is great news!  But the forms are making the IRS look helpful by comparison, and I am just too tired to deal with them anymore right now.  I may need to call the state office for assistance, that should be a hoot.  I think this is really a tenth exam in disguise, a paperwork and red tape exam.

Today while driving in to work I passed a car, a pretty cool looking Porche actually, with the license plate LXLTHR.  I was amused.  Guy driving looked pretty cute too.

And now back to your regularly scheduled work day.

First off let me just say that a three year old who decides that she must eat her noodles with chopsticks because everyone else is doing it, is the cutest thing ever.  She couldn't hold them correctly, but was creative enough to figure out a two handed method that actually worked.  She was so proud of herself.  She was even game enough to try both the sushi and the pickled ginger, but didn't like either enough to go back for seconds.

The little girl in question is my niece, who we had dinner with last night at a great sushi place (You You's in Nashua which I had forgotten was that good) along with my sister, brother-in -law, and her little brother.  Dinner was delicious, and the kids were better behaved than I ever realized two kids under four could be in a restaurant.  I guess my sister is pretty good at this parenting thing :)  Good for her, because I am sure not ever going to try it.  Still, I am human female enough that a fun evening with good food and cute kids was over way too soon.  I may need to go visit them sometime this fall.

This past weekend was Kings and Queens archery champions shoot.  Held on the cape this year, so it was much closer than in years past.  The tourney was pretty well run, and managing to finish before dusk, which often doesn't happen.  C made the top 8, which isn't quite as good as his two previous top 4 finishes, but still good.  The competition was out in force, and there were some truely amazing archers out there.  I know C doesn't feel at all bad about falling to that sort of skill.  I shot back in the middle of the pack, be that was not a bad pack to be in the middle of.  I had some bad ends and some very good ones, but overall I had a good time, and didn't come out ashamed of my skill, and that was all I asked.

After the tourney, we ended up at Friendly's with some of our fellow archers and the Strangeway crowd.  That was whole bunches of slightly rowdy ridiculous fun. 

Now I should actually get some work done, since I plan to leave the office early on friday to head out to yet another archery tourney, this one in NY.  If it will just stop raining, it should also be a really fun shoot.  To be followed by helping a friend move.  Maybe we can rest up from all this fun by doing chores over fourth of July.  Life is weird.

So last weekend we headed out to central MA for the local baronial archery tournament out there.  The weather could not have been more perfect, just one of those days you can hardly believe actually exist.  Add to that the fact that I was shooting really really well, and it was a pretty grand afternoon.  I managed the feat of hitting three skeet with three arrows, when they were suspended with no backdrop, something I am unlikely to repeat anytime soon, but was damn cool.  We also got to shoot up a whole menangerie of stuffed animals, which was also pretty fun stuff.  Of course, the competition was so good, I didn't even make the top 16 (although I may have been 17 and lost out on a tie breaker).  The location, plus the great weather brought out all the top talent, but they are a bunch of pretty cool people as a whole, and it was good the put my best foot forward in a group like that.  Then the strangeways crowd offered us cookies and shade, and we talked about Star Trek.  This was very nearly my perfect event.  The only down side was that it became apparent before we made it home that I had come down with a cold.

This bugger of a cold seems to be everywhere this spring, and is contagious as hell.  I caught it from my boss, who I barely saw all week.  He can't even think where he got it, and C got stuck with it from me, despite the fact that we are usually good at keeping from infecting each other.  It much have taken lessons from the swine flu or something.  Luckily it isn't that bad a cold, but damn annoying to be sick in the summer like that.

This past weekend was midsummers here in Stonemarche.  Poor C got drafted to work a bunch of gate shifts, because the person who was running gate got drafted to run the event, because she had the misfortune to be married to the guy who was supposed to run things, who got his vacation canceled by his employer, after it had already been approved.  Yes, general suckiness and stress all around, and poor C with his cold.  However, dispite the best efforts of Murphy's Law, Saturday was pretty lovely.  Hot but not unbearable, sunny, and things happened more or less how they were supposed to.  There was a day-board that I didn't get much of anything off of due to scheduling, but I hear that it was very good, and the sage tea bread I made at the last minute from a recipe that I got at random out of google, was well received.  Or at least all eaten. 

The tourney was a bit odd.  Not a bad shoot by any means, and I know that people put a lot of work into setting it up, but there very few points to be had on most of the rounds.  This kept the total scores very low, and made it hard to feel like like you were doing well as you went along.  Add to that the fact that I was comparing my scores against C (who can out shoot all of us most days) and two other girls who seemed to out score me on nearly every round, and you can imagine my surprise when I ended up winning the thing.  C excused himself from the final round, because he had won before and wanted someone else to have the honor this time.  Of the other two I had been comparing with, one of them had apparently beaten me on every round, but it wasn't always the same one.  Still, once we got to the head to head shooting, it was damn close, and I ended up meeting one of them again in the final round.  This time it took 16 arrows before one of us could break three skeet, but I eaked it out in the end.  It was a fun final though, and I wouldn't have minded losing to her one bit.  The weird thing is, that I just didn't shoot as well as I had the past two weekends, even though I won.  So I am almost less excited over it that I am about the 17th place finish the week before. 

Then after dinner, the weather hit.  Rain, constant driving rain that varied in intensity but wouldn't let up.  Still not too bad, as we had a nice dry building to hold up in and drink (oh, and there was a bit of a bardic too) but not good for C's cold, and it killed any chance of shooting the next day, and was hard on people's tents.  Ours was nice and dry inside, but we still have a mass of wet canvas drying in the barn.

Now C is feeling twice as bad, and I think he is worse from this thing than I was, but that is probably due to lack of sleep and cold rain.  I hope he feels better soon, both because I hate seeing him all crappy, but also because I hope we can both make a good showing at Kings and Queens archery next weekend.  This should be all the good archers from last weekend, plus the ones from the week before, plus a bunch of others.  C has a real chance a winning (he has placed second in this a couple of times before) but I just want to shoot well enough to not embarrass myself in front of all of them.  If I can shoot as well as I did last week, I aught to do that, not sure if this week's shooting will do.  Now all I need is for the rain to stop again, so I can get some last minute practice in.

Oh, and for all of you who made it to the end of this long and rambling post, and if I forgot to wish it to you at midsummers happy birthday! I know that there are a whole bunch of you who had one this past week or so.  Hugs all around, and I am off to bed, it got damn late on me.

I need to do a post about the last two events that I went to, and I plan to do that later tonight.  But right now I need to record the recipe that used to make the tea bread for midsummers before I lose track of it, since it seemed to go over well.  This is a random find from google, I may mess with it a bit later.

Sage Tea Bread

Ingredients:

1/2 cup milk

2 tablespoons minced fresh sage or 2 teaspoons dried sage

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

In a small saucepan, heat milk and sage just until warm. Set aside to cool. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt; add to the creamed mixture alternately with milk mixture. Pour into a greased 9x5x3" loaf pan. Bake at 350° for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.