Afternoon out

Today I had the good grace to be invited along as a dear friend took her sweetheart daughter out trick or treating downtown. Daughter's costume was fantabulous, and she came home a nice haul.

Funniest part of the day though was the town emergency services folks. The cops and firefighters were encamped on opposite corners. The firefighters took a great delight in getting a little boy to walk up to the police officers and say -

"when I grow up, I want to be a fireman." 

:)

Good Neighbors

This exchange via OldNFO just made my morning. Most of y'all have likely already seen it, but for those outside that particular corner of the Venn Diagram of Crazy that makes up the folks I love - enjoy - :)

I am having an issue with noise that is generated by aircraft based at NAS Lemoore (and elsewhere), specifically, with their use of a low level military training route that your command is the controlling authority for. Rather than deal with mere underlings, I thought it best to go directly to the source of "where the buck stops". That would be you...

Love those guys. :)

I had been making other plans...

You know, I'd intended to write something all serious about these crazy times, but just can't settle down to focus on it lately.

So I'll stick to the funnies. Last night was a grand time visiting with my sewing/history friend. I got lots of lessons on the right way to make stays - it's still a pretty intimidating project, but I think I can prolly pull it off eventually. Can't look like a backwoods Scots-Irish tramp all the time. :)

I also heard the most wonderful story - apparently among the 16th c. Italian Humanists there was a little group not unlike our modern day SCA - excepting that they got all gussied up as Romans.

The SCA folks sewing friend knew just loved the idea, and promptly seized on it for their personas.

But the meta is just too good to stop there.
Imagine if you will, if some variant of the Simulation Argument was true.,,

 Far-future posthuman playing at being a twentieth century American portraying a 16th century Italian pretending to be a first century Roman.

.. Roman actor that is.
Who's playing a fourth century BC Greek.

Some hobbies are just too weird for words. :p



On a less good note, and in somewhat related news to the "can't really concentrate" -  "Gloves" is back. He's been by a couple times in the last few months, and keeps coming back after being run off. Formal police report  filed, and other precautions taken. AK crew, Dear Friend -  thank you for your support.

Backcountry pests

While on the phone last night with TJIC, I mentioned I was working on completing a second knapsack - it was a  half done early attempt, but I thought since it was mostly there I'd go ahead and finish it - maybe sell it off or trade for som'n.

"But I had this great big pile of materials left," I say, "so before moving I'm kinda going all Whisky Rebellion on it." Being the nut he is, he got the reference immediately.

All of that is why it was so cool seeing this post this morning from Mark in Ulster on a tale of the Western Insurrection - the Whiskey Rebellion as I've always heard it called.

Skimming through it some on Google Books, it looks right fun. Sorta reads like Cooper. Neat stuff - thank you Mark!

Contentment

Oh my. This has been one of those "why can't every day be like today?" days. :)

The day started by crawling out of bed at a somewhat decent hour to join the Rev. Paul clan at the rifle range. As he noted, the gals did awesome, and Mel (and Dad!) are quite pleased with their new toys. :)

I didn't have a sling today, so played the knapsack game instead... Fred's "how you're screwing up" chart says I'm alternating between a couple variations of muscling the shot, but I'm still inside the 4MOA standard even with irons. Not awesome, but not ashamed of myself today at least. :)

More importantly, MEL BROUGHT HARVEY. (Or at least his Deerish Cousin SO COOL!!!)

After that,

., then off to OMG COFFEE. Wonderful chatting with the good Reverend's family. Thank y'all!

Afterwards I picked up my harp he'd been kind enough to hold for me while I was in Boston, then stopped by home to drop everything off. I played a little bit to get reaquainted, then off to the woods!

Most of my woodsy stuff is together now. I'm still minus some kind of moccassins and a few other bits and bobs, but once off the trails and deep in the woods I changed to deerskin leggins, a linen hunting shirt, and packed up for a few hours in the wild.

I was walking over some of the odd little hills when I ran across a very inquistive squirrel.

He just sat their chirping at me, and I was chirping back, when I start feeling this odd vibration from my knapsack... ahh!

It's Darling Travis calling!

There is something odd yet so incredibly cool about being able to sit in the woods surrounded by a whole lotta nothing, all done up like the old frontier days (mostly) ..... while talking with a guy on the other side of the continent.

Eventually we say our goodnights, and I get back to the woods for a while. The woods were chilly, but not bad. I'm liking the knapsack I just finished, though it throws everything off with my bedroll, which I'd taken to mostly wearing tump-style over my shoulders. The bulk of the pack makes the roll too tight, and if I loosen the cords it starts flopping about and getting in the way. Ah well.. I'll figure something out.

Eventually I get tired and pack it in. Call Mom and chat about gardens, wander the used book store a bit, then do the grocery run I've not done since I got back. *So* spoiled myself this time out. I don't claim to be anything like the fdbfine cook TJIC or Miss D are, but I flatter myself to think I can do simple homestyle all right.

Blue cheese stuffed hamburger, green beans, mashed taters, and baked tomato with more blue cheese.
SO GOOD.

A little cleaning, a diary entry... and now prolly to finish Agricola and have a hot bath.

AWESOME day. This First World Living thing is pretty sweet. :)



Love y'all! I hope your Saturday was so good. :)

Green Shoots

I mentioned how whooped I was after Appleseed last weekend. But I had it easy. I was just walking in the rain. There's another gal I know I want to brag on a bit.

Mel, Paul's daughter came out last weekend to her first Appleseed.

Let me tell you something about Mel.

She's a young gal just starting out. She wants to work in IT, but hasn't had the chance to get much paying experience down yet, so she's working one of those barely-make-it, minimum wage jobs while saving for school to better herself.

She does not have the money or the time to waste frivolously.

Nonetheless, Mel took vacation and spent money that's hard for her to come by in order to stand out in a cold Alaskan rain all weekend. I saw that girl fighting a rifle that constantly jammed up on her - for a while it was so bad she was keeping tools beside her to clear failures to extract in the middle of timed strings. She laid down in cold and wet and tracked-in gravel on that mat time after time.

She soldiered on 'till her fingers were shaking so bad she couldn't keep that sight on the target, and kept coming back for more.

And after all that cold and pain and frustration, what did she do?
She ponied up her own money for an ROC card to come back and do it again.

..in April.
...in Alaska.


I am very, very proud of Mel.

This generation coming up now stands to hold I think America's best - and worst - people it's seen in at least half a century. It's an honor to say I think Mel is solidly going to be in the first half.

Well done girl - PERSISTENCE!

Now get on back and practice for next trip out. I'm wanna see that patch on you. :)

Washed only by the rain

.. just got done of day two of my second Appleseed - this time helping out full time.
Got rained on. Lots. Saw some familiar faces, made some new friends.

so tired.

sleepytime soon, finally . :)

"I am the Vine..."

Wandering a farmers market just a few miles from Concord Mass.... found someone selling buckets of Concord grapes.

... just like my folks used to grow.

SOOO good.


Hope some of the seeds sprout come spring. :)

MHI Alaska :: A Dish Served Cold Pt III

The world exploded in thunder and fire, then went dark.


Something stabbed at Buck's neck. A cold icy pain, creeping down his spine.

It felt like...snow.

Buck was buried in snow.

Gingerly, he pulled himself up.

Laid out before him was a holy terror of blackened, shredded tundra, tossed snow, and cooked rancid dog.

Oh GOD what a smell...

Something flashed at the edge of his vision.

Buck looked up to see the double wings of Lucas' Stearman pulling up into the sky. The airplane did a quick low circle around him, and Buck could see a passenger wave down to him. The aircraft waggled it's wings, and started back for camp.

Buck bent to pick up his rifle, then started the long trudge back to join them.



****



“Dynamite?! You dropped DYNAMITE on me?!”

The pale dusk of an Alaskan midnight filtered through the tiny window of the small hunting cabin, barely large enough for the three men. Lucas McKinney grinned wide as he filled the small dirty glass and set on the table in front of the young hunter.

Buck was still pacing the narrow confines of the cabin - the ten mile walk back hadn't done much to ease his nerves. He glared down at the older man seated at the table.


“Of course I didn't drop dynamite on you," purred the man a thick Boer accent. "... I dropped dynamite in front of you.“


".. Where did you get DYNAMITE?!" Buck's nerves were starting to coalesce into anger.






Lucas broke in quickly, picking the glass back off the table and forcing it into Buck's hand.  "Road crew had some cached up by the Copper. We didn't think they'd miss it."  He nodded as Buck tossed back the whiskey. "Lucky we caught up to you. You find that lost trapper Mae was talkin' about?"



Buck sighed, and held out his empty glass for a second shot.
“Found him alright. His dogs went Zulu. Team tore him to pieces up by Baker’s Creek.”



“Damn. Anything else?”



Buck’s face darkened.

“Yeah...do we have any more of that dynamite? I think we’re gonna need it.”




… to be continued.

Next installment

is written, but needs copyediting. Sorry for the holdup y'all - it'll be up this time tomorrow night.