"That's not writing - that's typing." --Truman Capote
If you were thinking of sponsoring me for the Poplar Springs "Run for the Animals," time is running short. The details for sponsorship can be found here . There are a couple of people I haven’t thanked yet, but I have a big group "thank you" in mind, so my apologies for not (yet) acknowledging your generosity!
The race is May 18, and just in time for it I actually ran 3 miles yesterday, meeting my goal of 36 runs in 12 weeks!
Eddie Izzard and sheep.
Eddie Izzard: oh, dear lord but he was funny. I mean, well – DUH, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this tour may eclipse all others.* I’ve compared notes with others who have seen it in different venues as he has gone around the East Coast, and it’s clearly much more fluid than his earlier work. Extended jokes that had us on the floor in Washington were only tiny bits in Boston. Philly got something new and different… who knows how it will be by the time it gets to the West Coast. I am only hoping that they’re filming most of them for a DVD spectacular.
I won’t go on and on about it, because (as John can attest) there are few things more tedious than someone repeating bits from a comedy show you haven’t been to. Suffice it to say, if you get a chance to see him, go. If you don’t, be on the lookout for the DVD from this tour.
Sheep:
This year was less about yarn than last year and more about spindles. My friend Rachel came up from Virginia with her beau Dan and since Rachel’s an experienced spindler, I took the opportunity to pick her brain and learn how to drop-spindle without so much of the dropping part. We ogled a lot of spindles until we came to Goldings, and there we pretty much stopped dead and said, “I want” in two-part harmony:
Could you blame us?
John enjoyed some of the collateral crafts as usual:
There was the usual assortment of adorable fiber-bearing beasties:
Some were apparently hilarious:
Some were arty:
And some were groovy:
The music tent provided a nice place to sip a root-beer float and rest after a lot of walking:
Or play:
And then it was time to go home, get a quick drop-spindle lesson (thunk!) and say goodbye to Rachel and Dan.
So, that was my weekend – how was yours?
ETA: More photos from this years MDS&W are here.
* Yes, even you die-hard, “He will never be as funny as he was in Dress to Kill ” people. I prefer Definite Article anway. Tomayto, tomahto.
I used to have a rule: no serious horror movies. Scary stuff would bubble away in the back of my head until it erupted – usually somewhere around 2 a.m. – and a mostly sleepless night would ensue while evil things scuttled around the corners of my brain.
Because the effects of horror movies were so bad, this has been my rule for years. Having married The Guy Who Watches Made for Scifi Movies, I have since found out that cheesy, campy, or just plain bad horror doesn’t bother me any. Which led me to a very bad mistake last night. John watched "The Grudge " and I watched it with him, thinking that the bad juju from horror was something I had outgrown.
Um. Right. Tell that to the insectoid Japanese female with the staring eyes and the death-rattle who stalked me hourly from 2 to about 5 this morning. Gah.
Cute cat photos…
…and also arty cat photos
Things I have done recently include:
I will (hopefully) talk about these things anon. However for now, the cute cat images will have to do.
Imagine, if you will, a fat "plokplokplokplokplokplokplokplokplokplokplokplok" sound from the kitchen.
Me: "What are you doing in there?"
John: "I’m filling the olive oil container. I kind of like the sound it makes."
Me: "Are you going to end up pouring olive oil all over the counter because you like the sound?"
So, what would you do if your cute man, the fixer of household brokenness, the chef de cuisine , the guy who cheerfully accompanies you to Maryland Sheep and wool (next weekend! yippee!), the fellow with the big booming laugh you just adore – yeah, that guy – what would you say if he asked you, "So, want to spend three hours on a Saturday stuffing bags for a library conference?"
If you’re me, you say, "Sure."
And you don’t just say yes because you know it scores points with the guy who already asked you to marry him, the one who loves the cats as much as you do despite the fact that they mean he has to take prescription meds just to breathe properly, the one who has never once yet said, "Do you really need more yarn?" Well, not just because of those things. You do it because you love tasks that can be finished. You love to be a cog in that "getting stuff done" machine that tends to whip up around big, intellectually undemanding, multi-volunteer projects. As far as I’m concerned, these kinds of things are fun. And in a world where too many tasks are constant, never-ending palavers with too many people having weird turf wars, it’s very cool just to show up and look around, see something that needs doing and just do it.
Yes, I may well be clinically insane. And yes, once in a while there is a really annoying person who whines or moans or gets bossy and tries to manage everyone else or who decides to monopolize the worst job in the place the better to reach their inevitable martyrhood that much sooner (and more vocally). But in this particular instance, there was nobody who did any of those things. There was just a big hotel conference room with long tables and a sort of endlessly evolving assembly line of stuff going into conference bags and people figuring out different ways of getting everything that needed to get into the bag into the bag with as much cheerful efficiency as possible.
The conversations were funny and fractured – I learned little snippets and bits about the people who were working my assembly line (I ended up assembling little packages of advertising cards that put me at a mostly static point, while other volunteers shuttled up and down the rows of tables). I learned that Len from New York is also an only child, has worked in three Catholic institutions, thinks that his work history is funny because he’s Jewish, and was a chemistry major in college. I learned that Corey has an autistic child, lives in Michigan, used to travel a lot, and has an outrageous sense of humor and a larger-than-life personality. The rhythmic to-ing and fro-ing, together with the short bursts of conversation, reminded me strongly of the way conversations during country dances are constructed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OeSKfEY3NEAnd best of all? I got to go home with the cute house-fixer, cat-lover, chef de cuisine and have steak for dinner and watch Battlestar Galactica . I win.
I have a real fascination with Rube Goldberg machines. I don’t have the right sort of brain to come up with them, but I love them. When I was out visiting Marie and her family, and her kids were playing with their Mousetrap game (as opposed to playing Mousetrap, which is a very different thing), I totally understood what they were on about.
That being said, this is mind-boggling:
I am in awe.
Okay – this one’s for the serious Milo fans…
…or the serious knitting content fans (“Look, ma! Knitting!”). I’m very lucky that none of our cats are terribly interested in playing with, eating, or otherwise molesting my knitting. So here’s Milo, modeling the current status of the “Bee Fields” shawl.
And just because I’m geeky enough to want to play with Flickr video for myself, here’s the Tiny Dictator demanding his dinner in a laid-back, yet acrobatic manner:
We have both here today. It has been pouring out for most of the day – a storm system stretches from north of us in the DC area down to Savannah.
For Milo, born in a summer drought, and having lived through one almost snowless winter, this is a novelty:
For Dash, who is terrified of thunder, this is a very, very bad day. He has been clingy and moan-y, sticking close to anyone or anything who can give him comfort:
Poor little guy.