saxikath

Some accumulated brain clutter from the past couple of weeks:

• California apparently requires very explicit warning signs when smoking is allowed somewhere. My hotel had signs everywhere saying "Smoking is allowed on this floor. Smoking is known to the State of California to cause cancer." There were similar signs warning about chemicals in use in the facility.
  
• I am in awe of the teachers I met with in Fresno. They are working in very difficult circumstances (a district that's 80 percent ESL, and in which 70-90% of the students in each high school represented are on free or reduced-price lunch, and where there are few financial resources), and are clearly very dedicated to what they do.
  
• I visited King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks one late afternoon/evening. (They're technically two parks, but they're managed as one park.) I took some photos that I haven't uploaded yet; unfortunately, I didn't get any good shots of the deer I ran into in a couple of places. (It was twilight, and I didn't want to use the flash so as not to frighten them, so it was hard to get clear pics.) The sequoias really are magnificently tall, though they don't have the bulk of the El Tule tree I saw in Oaxaca. It was lovely to get in some mountain time. Admittedly, it's probably rather foolish to go walking around the woods, in a place where there are bears, alone, at twilight, when no one on the planet knows where you are -- but it was good for my spirit anyway.
  
• Speaking of bears, I saw one at the ToV site on Sunday afternoon when I was getting my car.
  
• If you like a good burger, I recommend the Dog House Grill in Fresno. (Technically in Clovis, the next town over, I think.)
  
• Now that I'm out of the knee brace, I desperately need a pedicure. I may wait till the mosquito bites from last weekend fade somewhat, though.
  
• Also now that I'm out of the knee brace, I'll finally be able to wear the new sandals I bought! (I have the bronzey-colored ones.)
  
• Also also now that I'm out of the knee brace, it's time to get back to the gym.
  
• Man, decent-looking LARP armor is expensive. The new character I'm toying with could probably use some, but yikes. I also doubt much of what's out there would fit me (that's what comes from being a plus-size woman with some serious curvature). I particularly like the look of brigandine, but I don't have the money to throw at the good stuff. I may just go with my leather bodice thingy, which would work for leather armor.
  
• I should really clean my house.
  
• I suppose, even out of the brace, I should probably wait a while before I try tap dancing again. :)
  
• I feel very spacy at the moment. Some combination of heat, post-LARPishness, post-travelness, and general lethargy, I suppose.
  
• It's nice to be surprised by someone you wouldn't have expected doing something nice for you. Makes you reevaluate your expectations.
  
• Memo to self: stay out of ditches and watch your footing. You don't want to do this again.
  

Also, I realized that not everyone on my friends list reads all my puzzle-geek friends' blogs, and so I should probably actually remind you all about Wordplay. It's a documentary about crossword puzzles and the people who do them -- but don't let that stop you. It's really a very good movie, and portrays a world I'm part of in what to me is a pretty accurate and sympathetic way. Plus, it has high drama (no, really!), fun characters (including Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton!), humor, and cleverness; besides, it's your chance to see me, however briefly, in a feature film! :) It opened in New York last weekend, and opens around the country this coming weekend. Please, go see it -- you'll be glad you did. (In the Boston area, it's playing at the Kendall theater.)

Well, I'm here, holed up in my hotel room. Flights were uneventful; they did manage to get me bulkhead seats, so I didn't have to have my knee crammed in behind another seat.

I'm definitely feeling the jet lag, on top of the sleep deprivation of a LARP weekend, but I've been making myself stay up till a reasonable hour so that I don't wake up at 4 a.m. or some such. I need to be alert tomorrow so I can be all professional-like. Eep.

I'm feeling the usual post-LARP soreness, but that's about it. I do wonder exactly how I wound up with a big bruise on my stomach, though. Upper arm? Sure, that's from boffers. Shin? Sure, that's from dropping to a knee in combat. But stomach? I can only figure it's from a fall I took Sunday during the final fight, but it's pretty weird.

Clearly I don't have much to talk about if I'm using my LJ to wonder how I got a bruise. I should go to bed.

Yesterday, it felt like Friday.

Today, it still feels like Friday.

But it isn't.

An unusually social weekend for me. Went to Dr. residualentropy's post-thesis-defense party on Friday, lemurtanis, yandros et al's house-cooling party on Saturday, and mona_lisabeth's wedding on Sunday, as well as going shopping with colorwheel Saturday afternoon. All were good fun; it was particularly good to see bookishfellow at the wedding. (Though it turns out that the driving back and forth to Connecticut for the wedding was less than ideal -- my knee was complaining loudly by the time I got home. It's the left knee, and I was driving an automatic, but I guess just keeping it in that position was hard on it.)

It's wet. Very very very wet. Driving at night on wet roads = not my favorite occupation. I haven't seen this much rain since the day the Kenmore station flooded years ago. I could hear some sort of pump running in the basement at home, and was glad, for once, to be a tenant rather than an owner. At least I'm not on crutches anymore.

Now it's back to work, and getting ready for my first attempt at LARPing in the knee brace (at Legends this coming weekend). I hope it works out ok.

At this point, I'm used to people in my life turning out to be connected in unexpected ways. (Usually it's tahnan's fault.) But this one was really weird.

I'm playing piano once a week for rehearsals of Pirates of Penzance with the MIT Gilbert & Sullivan Players. (Going to be a good show, too, from the looks of it!) So at tonight's rehearsal, the fellow playing the Pirate King came up to me and said he had a story to tell me. It seems he went over the weekend to visit some family, and his cousin was visiting too, with wife and child.

Said cousin and wife turn out to be two of my best friends from college. I was maid of honor for their wedding.

This one is enough to make even me boggle.

Oh yes. In the process of hunting down links, I've found one site in which my language of flowers page is listed along with four others: Stickdeath, Babelfish, Brunching Shuttlecocks, and The Onion.

I'm not sure quite what that says about my site.

So, update on the website issue: The person in question responded very promptly and courteously to my e-mail, but seemingly completely fails to understand why I'm annoyed. She suggested I consider her site a mirror of mine, on the theory that if I ever had to take mine down, the information would still be there. Excuse me? She's been very polite in our exchanges, so I'm trying not to get too pissy, but she just doesn't seem to get it. I'm not sure it's worth pursuing in any legal sense -- not like I have the money for a legal pursuit, and it's not worth so much to me that I'll pursue it anyway -- but jeez, it's annoying.

However, this has gotten me thinking... would people buy a book version of my site? I could include the additional lists that I have but haven't put on the site yet, and maybe illustrate it with Victorian-era flower pictures, add a historical introduction... what do y'all think? (Yes, I know I'm not a southerner and thus shouldn't be allowed to use "y'all." At least I know where the apostrophe goes!)

Went to King Richard's Faire (Massachusetts's Renaissance fair) yesterday, for the first time. Now I understand why people I know refer to it as King Richard's Mall. Even more than most Ren fairs I've been to, it seemed heavily tilted toward the commercial. Of course, I was with a bunch of LARP types who actually wanted to buy stuff, so maybe my perspective was skewed. I did come home with a really nifty green suede hat -- kind of Spanish-style, to my taste, or gaucho maybe; pretty flat, with a brim. There were other things I'd've happily bought for Legends & such, except that I have no money to buy them with.

Legends starts up again next weekend. Should be fun. I need to finish making my new peasant shirt to wear.

Now I should go proofread...

You know, I love Camilla's cats dearly, but I do wish Emily wouldn't decide that, no matter how late I was up, 6:30 is the right time to start waking me up. Admittedly, there are worse alarm clocks in the world than a purring, chirrupy cat, but I do wish she'd wait. I usually manage to roll over and go back to sleep for a while, but she's persistent, and it's fitful at best. I may want to close the bedroom door tonight, since goodness only knows when I'll get back after strike & strike party.

Only one more Gondoliers to go. It always feels sad just about now. After the show is over, no doubt I'll be glad to have my life back, but right now I don't want it to end. My first venture into directing has gone very well, I think. I'm afraid we may have burned some people out by the intensity of the rehearsal schedule, but boy the result is gorgeous.

Yowza, but it's cold out there. I walked to work this morning (good me, better than being lazy and taking a 5-minute bus ride), and that wind is something freezing. And this is spring, right? At least it's sunny. I'd rather have sunny and cold any day over the snow/rain/glop we had earlier in the week.

Memo to self: Do not do puzzles in pen while in bed if there is any danger that you will fall asleep before remembering to put the cap on the pen. Now I need to wash my sheets, and I had to wash inkspots off myself this morning! Ooops.

And now I suppose I should do some actual work, though I confess I'm quite uninspired by it. I'd rather write Compass mail and look for a new desk and stuff like that. (Anyone have recommendations for desks? I currently have something that's basically just big enough for the computer and associated stuff, and doesn't leave me any writing/work space.)