Postcards

Elizabeth at Screw Bronze wants to send people postcards. She's feeling terrible, and still wants to make other's lives better; that's what Beth does, though. The worse she feels, the more she cares about others.

So if you happen upon this entry, and you would like to receive a postcard from someone who wants to send postcards anywhere in the world, or if you know someone whose day might be brightened by receiving a postcard in the mail, please go to Beth's Postcard Project page here, and send her an email with your snail mail address. Or your friend's.

And if you're reading this, Beth, I just have to say that I'm in awe at the range of cards on your project site. I hope you find a use for the cards I sent you!

Since I can't currently comment to Beth directly, I'll wish you all what I wish her at least every hour in my thoughts and most days on her comments pages: Love, Zen hugs, and positive thoughts.

Self-reference

The silly bunnies at Blogspot have gone and played with the comments boxes. I tried replying to Dawn's last comment, and got nowhere. I tried commenting to Beth, and got nowhere, I think.

I also couldn't change the font of the last post after I changed it by accident to something disgusting.

I think technology hates me tonight.

More to the point, I think Blogspot needs to make sure the comments feature is working properly. Other bloggers have noted the problem in the help section, so I'll assume it's not just me.

Bicycles again

You will remember that I bought a propane stove in July, and carried it home on the bicycle. Well, the piezo-electric starter on the darn thing failed on the second one pound tank during the first weekend of use. I took it to the local service people, only to find that they didn't believe it was malfunctioning. I told them to check it again, and they called three weeks later to say it was ready. I checked it before taking it home, and it STILL wasn't fixed. So they tried again; this time, after a couple of weeks, they called to say that it was ready, and had been replaced, since it couldn't be fixed.

I went last weekend to pick up the new stove, but the repair folks were closed for Thanksgiving.

Today I finally got the new stove. And I brought home by bicycle, with what will probably be one of the last rides of the season. I didn't bother taking photos of the bicycle this time, since it looked the same as when I first bought it in July. Of course, here are yellow and brown leaves around the yard now.

It's autumn now, and soon it will be winter. We won't be using the stove before next summer, but at least it's finally repaired.

A Wee Bit of Music

I downloaded a Kate Rusby song last night (don't worry, I paid for it), and listened properly today. It's called "Underneath the Stars" and there's a video of Kate singing it here.

I have enjoyed Kate's music for some years, partly because she sings in her Yorkshire accent, which is rather endearing, but mostly because she's a fine singer and musician.

Another End

We've had to have our wonderful Siamese cat put to sleep.

His name was Oniko, and he was eleven years old. But in the last year, he was having trouble jumping onto chairs, due to arthritis.

He was losing a bit of weight in September, which would be a good thing. Except that starting on Wednesday of this week, he was unable to eat or drink, and on Thursday evening, he was in obvious distress. My Beloved took him to the vet on Friday; he was diagnosed with diabetes, which had damaged his liver and possibly kidneys. They transferred him to a 24-hour care vet, who called yesterday (Saturday), with the news that he was showing extreme jaundice, and wasn't responding to treatment. They could have done an MRI and inserted a feeding tube, but they could not promise any quality of life, and didn't think the prognosis would be at all good no matter what interventions we paid for (and pay we did!!).

So Middle son and I bicycled to the vet yesterday to say our goodbyes to a friend and companion. And Onkio has been given his chance to fly...

My summer

Okay, enough procrastination.

I ws trying to make photos small enough to fit, and anonymous enough to prevent legal issues, but it's not going to happen. So here goes.

Quad war: August 1-4: We rented a van that turned out to have a third row of seats that folded down, but wouldn't come out. That took up a quarter of our storage space. Things we forgot to put into the van: ALL the archery gear, and a Rubbermaid tote with the towels and dishcloths. They wouldn't have fit, anyway...

We has a great time anyway. Middle son took a class on how to make a wax tablet (medieval pda), youngest son did an hour of archery with borrowed equipment, then started to create a pendant with an amber bead. Youngest and I both attended the fingerloop braiding class, and I also learned flat felting. My Beloved took some Merino roving to a dyeing class (and said, as the instructor began preparing, "We who about to dye salute you."); she also attended a lecture on the seven deadly sins. There were eight, bu two were combined for brevity...

There were 515 people at the event, 59 of them children. We all ended up buying new leather pouches, and drooled over sharp knives, clay goblets, many gorgeous dresses, a warm cloak that was unfortunately too small for me, and the garb (clothing) of a whole bunch of excellent seamstresses.

There were battles fought, and very minor issues only for first aid (I'm the Principality Chirurgeon - I oversee first aid for our Principality, which takes in Saskatchewan, Alberta and eastern BC). Archers shot many targets, the equestrians had a great time (and we missed seeing them), the rapier fighters went swish, poke, and killed many of each other. Repeatedly. That's the good part of the SCA: the battles to the death are sometimes the best two deaths out of three.

There was a large, loud party on the Saturday evening that we deliberately missed. It was adults-only, and it was mainly an excuse to get puking drunk, which we don't do. BUt fun was had there, too, I'm told.

My Beloved helped get a bread oven fired up after some maintenance was done on it, and next year she's going to take the ingredients to actually USE the oven.

Yes, next year, we are going to attend again. We won't forget the things we did this time, and we'll be better prepared. In general, we had a blast this Quad War.

A Time for all things

This week, my Beloved and I are preparing to go to war. To be more specific, A war. Quad War, it's called. It's the largest annual gathering in the Principality of Avacal. Oh, you've not heard of the Society for Creative Anachronism? See sca.org for beginner's information on the SCA. See also http://www.sca.org for more information on the Society, and http://quadwar.avacal-sca.org/index.htm for the website of the event known as Quad War.

For now, we have acquired a new tent, two new foam-filled air mattresses, stove and fuel... Now we're getting the clothing ready. We each need garb for four days - and water for four. My Beloved is sewing at every spare moment, and I am attempting to braid four cords with the lucet, to be used to tie collars and cuffs of children's shirts. The stove works: I heated water for tea last night on the back steps. The air mattresses took a long time to inflate decently at first, but they're very comfortable. The sleeping bags will be checked tomorrow evening. Life is good.

Since I practice only modern first aid on our injured populace (if any injuries occur), I am not allowed to carry leeches, except the gummi variety. Gummi worms will be taken, and prescribed as needed. "No., no, don't swallow it whole; you have to grind it up by chewing for the medicine to work!"