Bloop. Glug.

So one puts in some tiles around the firepit (now I have to sink the rest of the second ring around, which seems to have a 6:4 ratio to the first; if the first ring was 24, the second will be 36, and the next 54; it's getting expensive) and there are dandelions everywhere. Time to make dandelion wine! So I picked them and spent a day trimming off the green part (it is said to make the wine bitter) and the VERY NEXT DAY there were just as many dandelions. I picked them again. This time I trimmed about half of them (we had a spell of 80+ degree heat and everything was too hard) and found that I could just pull the yellow off the blossom after the flowers had spent another day sitting in the measuring cup. Much faster and less fiddly than using a knife. And the next day... there were even more dandelions. I made a third batch and that is enough, even though I have now drunk the last of the 2008 batch, and 2009 is waiting for me to bottle it. I have now actually removed (in bottles) about half of the gallons of wine-on-the-way occluding that corner of the counter, and the three freshly added gallons of dandelion '10 are gurgling away. I am supposed to bottle them after 6 months, not 18.

My father decided he did not want to drink commercial root beer, as he is unhappy about drinking corn syrup. I got a book. We had all this black or sweet birch that Sarah was kind enough to cut down and then cut up (out of the driveway, and the twigs into 2" lengths). I boiled about a gallon of twigs in about one and a half times the same amount of water almost swooned form the smell. It smells much nicer than wintergreen, to me, and adding sugar to it made it delicious. I wanted to drink it all. But I added more sugar (my dad has a sweeter palate than I do, and carbonated needs more strength of flavor than still) and then a tiny amount of yeast, stirred it all up and capped the bottles. 48 hours at room temperature is MORE than long enough to carbonate the bottles. I put them into the refrigerator -- since one is not using the yeast to make alcohol, just fizz, you want the fermentation to stop before the yeast eats all the sugar--and waited a day. It's not bad. I used bread yeast, but I may try ale yeast and see if it leaves less of yeasty niff. In any case, I shall try to make an extract so my dad can mix it with soda water, since explosive bottles are scary things to drive to Boston.

Sarah is trying to get me sassfras bark. In immoderation it's not terribly good for you either, but it's supposed to be closer to the taste of root beer than the birch. I have never been able to make much difference between root beer and birch beer anyway. But it was very cool to boil twigs and make something that smelled that good.

If anyone needs a kombucha mother, let me know. I was reading this and had a failure of making my own vinegar (I think the problem was the same reason the wine was so bad; I had not fermented it enough to make a decent amount of alcohol, so there wasn't much for the vinegar process to work on. Then on a whim I bought kombucha drink at the co-op and found it a) delicious and b) exactly like drinking really nice vinegar. So I got a kombucha mother and have been fermenting sweet tea. If you like tasty sour, try it. I've been mixing it half and half with fruit juice. It's fizzy and delicious and very easy. I don't know if it will save my life or cure cancer or anything (I hope I don't need that anytime soon) but live fermentations are pretty much a good thing for the body, it has practically speaking no alcohol, and it tastes great. And wow can it build up ahead of steam in its bottle.

So the floor here is sticky and Doug keeps mopping it.

I have been working on a decent vegetable bed, one to contain actual soil, in the sense of organic matter rather than variations on rocks left behind by the glaciers. I have not finished the second one yet. Filling the first one (half about 12" deep and half maybe 16"), with a mixture of imported loam, the sifted and de-rocked native crap, and the contents of five years' worth of haphazard compost-heaping (black gold, it was amazing) was a lot of work. I hope I get some results. I think it would make me happy, if I were a plant. In the pretty cool raised bed thing I got from Gardener's Supply, I planted soybean 'Envy' for edamame, some cilantro seedlings, some basil seedlings, some cilantro seeds, and some garlic and onion sets today. When I find the right tomato plants, I will get them, but the NH frost-free date is not for another week and it has actually been quite cold. So no hurry. The raised bed thing is dark green polypropylene and has nothing the can be put together backwards or upside down, which meant even I found it pretty delightful. I can see one spear of the asparagus I planted coming up. It never rains any more. I use leaky hose.

The salamander tadpoles seem to be developing, slowly, in their eggs; the leopard frog tadpoles look like they will be sprouting legs any minute. There are blackflies, though not all the time; the same with mosquitoes. But I can also hear the wood thrush and yesterday the hummingbirds arrived.

That went fast...

April, I mean. It snowed most of the day Wednesday, but did not stick much here. Today was in the 70's. It's hard to feel secure or put away one's Polarfleece nightwear.
I got paid for digging more days than not in the past three weeks. I found some flakes in one place and really a lot of nice agricultural dirt in another (behind a Big Ugly Damn brewery, which made me insane with scents of hops and malt... smelled better than the beer ever tastes). I hope there will be more digging. It's fun, painful, enjoyable, great exercise (I think working in archaeology to get in shape for field school is supposed to be backwards, but we all know where my heart is) and they send me checks in the mail, with which I buy mulch and few, a very few perennials, honest.
Briefly in better shape, I dug a garden bed last Sunday and started another one yesterday, and Doug and his girlfriend Barb finished sifting the one I was trying to rehab, and I moved some plants around. Pictures when it's mulched.
While putting off working on the second flowerbed I weeded the other neglected bed on the far side of the front steps. It now looks like someone went over it with a particularly nasty herbicide, but it was just me. Pictures when it's mulched and has some live plants in it.
And in the courtyard, I have been setting patio tiles a few at a time, buying them a few at a time (along with mulch, which I need more of both). When I bought the house there was a decrepit aboveground pool. I removed it, and there was a lovely 17' circle of deep sand. It's had a firepit thing in the center for a few years now. Pictures sometime, perhaps.

Have I mentioned that the archaeology field school is going to be based here in June and July? Twenty people camping in my front yard? Heather will be here or there is no possible way I would have agreed. But where she decrees order, there WILL be order, and I am trying to prepare the way for her.

This means there is some point in having a garden, as I will be here to water it. And to making the whole place look less like an abandoned building. Doug persists in having a social life, which cuts into my exploiting him, but he assures me he will cut the grass and hep me generally clear areas inside and out. As Paul the contractor left a lot of his stuff here, most importantly where I hope people will be able to eat (the glassed-in porch area) I have agita and am trying to get people to take it away. It's wrong to throw other people's stuff away. And yet it's also wrong to dump at someone else's house and disappear. I think I would rather have a problem from expecting people to be responsible human beings than a problem from expecting them to be schnorrers. But mostly I want people to be tidy and rational and bring me nice things to eat. It's good to dream.

Amphibians do it vernally

It has, as I may have mentioned, been raining a lot. Finally, it got sunny on Holy Thursday and hotter than hell on Easter Saturday, when my parents came up to help tidy a garden or so. One way and another, we ended up trying to repair 18 months of neglect (I didn't garden last year, at all) in the heat of the day. My father, who is a bit like me only not as fat or menopausal, and I just about had heatstroke and crawled off to die. My mother, who is a lizard, kept trying to rally the troops until she got tired. They left and as the sun set gently to one side I started shovel-and-sifting the former mint-and-oregano bed, which last year went to more grass than usual and the delphinium died no reason after 4 years of apparent happiness.

Anyway, more digging needs to be done. I also received a big pile of loam, probably ripped off from somewhere full of endangered species (although it had no apparent human body parts, as sometimes happens. Honest). I have tried to use the soil around my house, but the fact is, my house-lot was bulldozed into an esker and I don't have much soil. And Enthusiasm is thinner on the ground than it used to be, so I will do doubtful things in pursuit of my own tomatoes. If Gardeners Supply would send my damned raised bed kit and Doug would ever stay home and be exploited I could get more done. I have been working, mostly driving around from one elementary school to another, which cuts into my spare time.

So today, after I drove for about five hours, I was pulled over to be told nicely that I had forgotten to get this year's license tags when I got it inspected. I know one year I got the tags and forgot to get it inspected. At least I was not speeding. Nor was the policeman upset when I explained that I hadn't seen my license since I was carded in Massachusetts at Conbust. It could have been worse. But I was not terribly happy. It is an expensive ticket.
But I was happier whenSarah called after an intense board meeting to say she would be coming over with wine. I made macaroni and cheese, and Sarah ad Doug and I watched last night's Castle. Afterward, Sarah wondered if either of us would go for a walk and look for salamanders even though it wasn't wet enough. It had rained all day in southeastern Vermont, and it was drizzling here on and off. It was largely off when we left.
Halfway down the driveway, we came across a spotted salamander and Sarah proclaimed her night made, possibly her year. We ended up seeing four spotted salamanders, 13 red-backed salamanders, four Eastern red-spotted newts, 16 peepers, and a wood frog.
Then I said, before we went inside, we might as well look at my little pond in the back yard. Where there were at least seven spotted salamanders Doing It, several wood frogs in compromising positions, and a newt looking for action (I assume). It was very fine. We were all pleased. Doug was proud that he had dug the littler pond by hand (about 3 square feet, as opposed to the maybe 9 square feet of the one we tried to make with a tractor) and I was still delighted, as I am every time I see anything swimming around (except for the mosquito wigglers. Who are already out there, too). There was already a ball of someone's spawn there from a couple of days ago; I hope that some of these unions bear fruit. And eat mosquitoes and perhaps blackflies.

I hope you can reach the pictures, which are in Sarah's Facebook album.

I tend to think Big Night was a couple of days ago, when it was raining hard and Doug swore it was over 50 degrees. But there was evidently some action left. Last year I noted it as being April 3. It was a fine time and the only casualties we noticed were two unlucky peepers. I am lucky to have frogs and people who make me go out and enjoy them.

Today's fiber is by Manic Panic

My hair is blue again. It was in honor of Conbust, where I also forgot to wear my Coraline shoes. It was MUCH bluer than last time, probably because I left it on too long, and has only now calmed down to a sedate, lifelike blue that doesn't make me look too pale. About the time I dyed it I read a remembrance of Andy Hallett, who was green on _Angel_, that recalled him standing in a parking lot in full makeup asking people if they had 'a problem with visible minorities.'

This stuck in my mind. I am still definitely an older chunky white woman, but the blue hair sends a signal. It made the body language of people in the Conbust parking lot just visibly relax ('she's not someone's mother causing trouble, she's going to the con,' I assume). Teenagers hanging out in front of the Twilight display at Borders, a Gothy proprietor at the local sex toy emporium, some perfectly normal-looking women my age, and a bunch of elementary school students all wanted to say they loved my hair. I was really touched by the elementary school students (one of whom asked if it was my real color). They were so short, and so polite.

Maybe blue hair is liking having a puppy; anyone can talk to you about it. I like it. It's good to show some of the weird on the outside and this only threatens a few people. Who were already right to be frightened of me. I'm still not nicer.

springiness

It doesn't seem to be raining. And indeed, it did not rain yesterday.

I got home from Texas. The following Monday I began working at a non-profit where Linda works, helping get out the spring mailing. They do woodcrafts and adventure camping and wilderness expeditions for kids and their hearts are in the right place. I cannot say the same about their mailing list. So I have been working there several days a week. It is 30 miles (Concord is about 20) from here, driving through not very much, some of which has rivers and creeks. They have been very excited lately, and every time they start to recede, it rains again. I have been spared any flooding, though Dick's wife tweeted about the difficulty of explaining to a house-guest why he could not flush the toilet: the septic field was flooded.

As always, I loved spending two weeks digging, with people I love dearly or at least like and don't have to feel too weird around. The weird only came up when I asked if anyone else there read XKCD and no one, not the high school-students, not the techier grownups, had any idea what I was talking about. Making an archaeological version of the BoomDeYada song was out. I felt the Digital Divide almost as keenly as I did a couple weeks later when I tried to explain to the NHAS webmaster why it might be worth having an RSS feed and the rest of the board listened with indulgent uninterest. My head exploded (if you're reading this on a blogreader, you know what RSS feeds are. If not, why not read the nice explanation here? RSS Feeds? A Feedreader?! (about a third down, middle column)).

Conbust: Last week I drove to work (45 min), and from there to Brattleboro (45 min), picked up the order from the printer's, and back to work (45 min). Then I drove to Saxton's River, Vt. (theoretically 45 min, but more like an hour and 15 when you take the wrong turn toward Cambridgeport (and why is there a Cambridgeport in western VT? I thought I left it in MA)).
In Saxton's River I met with Tom Diak, formerly half of Grafton Fibers but now the woodmaster of DyakCraft. I collected a flock of a dozen Cheap Sheep spindles and a FiberShip spindle (spaceship variation; Tom thought I needed it as I was going to a science fiction convention. The evil thing forced me to buy alpaca. It's very happy now).
Then I drove (a bit over an hour and a half) to WEBS, umm, Northampton, but since Linda Diak Does not deal out of Tom's wood-turning shop, I needed fiber. Never mind that I would never have wasted a gram of Linda Diak's delicious colors on beginners and I really needed generic Romney. I behaved fairly well and only bought Cat Bordi's latest and an ounce of alpaca and some markers (and a lot of Romney). Around now I realized that for the second year in a row I had forgotten to bring the sponge thing into which one needlefelts. Since I was teaching a needlefelting workshop, this was not good. I could not face driving to Hadley (30+ minutes) and decided to stop at the con on my way to Grace and Debbie's, which was PERFECT and very heartening (EVERYONE there reads XKCD). My workshop was either on Sunday or Saturday at 4 pm, which meant I could go to Grace and Debbie's (7 mins) and crash.

My spinning workshop had five students, which was perfect. Then I drove to Hadley, got foam after I located the well-hidden Joanne's, picked up some food, and bought seeds at the lovely garden center (2.5 hours, including asking for directions twice). Back at the con, I took a friend's naalbinding class. She was trying to teach the York stitch to about ten people, including at least one with a learning disability. Without diagrams or teaching assistants. I'll learn it sometime.

I persuaded the nice woman knitting in a corner of the corridor floor that she could sit in the room we were using for the crafts track and it would have chairs and a light. It was her first con and she had not learned how to live at cons (An it harm none, do what ye will, where 'harm none' implies 'not vandalizing the elevators') . The needlefelting workshop went very well; it is possible to have idle conversation while needlefelting, which is not true of Beginning Spindle. The knitting woman, Kate, watched us needlefelt and ended up paying the materials fee and going off with a set of needles, sponge, and colored roving, and I think we all enjoyed it. Objects varied from an elephant plaque to a Sith Lord sigil and a Hebrew sign indicating the direction of the Temple Wall. Everyone can needle-felt. My former neighbor Cindy appeared, too. It was a fine time, and in Northampton, sunny.

I spent Sunday (raining) hanging around with Grace and Debbie, made them some artisan-bread-in-5-minutes-a-day (it gets very flat if the second rising (40 minutes) lasts for four or five hours. But still tasty). While we were in town, I ran into Robin, the SheepThriller I last saw at Birka Market. She had Kate from yesterday with her, because there are only four or five people in Northampton and of course they know one another. I left for home around 7 pm. I was listening to a Patrick O'Brian book-on-iPod and overshot the Vermont exit, so went home the way I had come via Bellows Falls. When it is dark it is not very well signposted, so a 98-mile trip took 130, and about two and half hours instead of one and half.

And then next day I drove to work (raining), and back, also on Tuesday (raining), when I had to race home to get Katie and take her to work as her car had collapsed, and on Wednesday I went to Concord (raining), and yesterday I went to seven of 17 public schools in Manchester (dropping off leaflets) and home in time to take Katie to get her repaired car, and to Concord to have my taxes done (five hours, almost all in the car). Now I am putting off either going back to work or back to the other ten schools in Manchester, and that's why, I contend, I haven't done much with the Gault pictures so far.....But as I said, it didn't rain yesterday. I may live.

Back to winter

I had a fine time at Gault. Really. I got a new trowel, trowel in the sense that an AK-47 is a handgun. The Lesche Digging Tool , variously referred to as 'Clark's murder weapon,' 'the Trowel of Mass Destruction,' 'the Silver Dagger,' is very good at clay. Liz and I both
went home Tuesday night and ordered one (through the very-slow-but-way-better-than- nothing MiFi of Rich; since it was slower the more people on it, I mostly stayed off). This did not mean my arms didn't feel like they might fall off, and since I returned home, there has been doubt about my knee.

But now that my car starts I am in much better spirits.

Some things I learned:
1. Do not quit your aspirin/ibuprofen regimen just because you quit digging.
2. Do not drink more than 2 bottles of Midas Touch even if it tastes harmless (and, BTW, much better chilled. I think they have cut down on the saffron, a mistake).
3. Tea is probably more important than beer, but sometimes scotch would be better than either.
4. It is not summer in Texas, not even a New England summer, in February. Or really March, either.
5. So ALWAYS heed your housemate when says to take your thermals. I was very glad I did.
6. Also probably to the little voice that warns you not to try t bend the earpiece on your glasses. Fortunately, Dick had duct tape available while we waited for our ride from the airport.

Things to do this week: Blog or otherwise write up my trip.
Pay my taxes.
Get new glasses.

Once more, with Texas (and without fire ants?)

I appear to have been a little tired last year. All of it? Anyway, here's the link to the rather cursory blog regarding SCRAP's field trip to Gault last year. It was slightly better than the one from March 10, 2008.

Because I am ashamed, and so I will not feel obliged to go through all of the background again, I have posted an essay and a bunch of the pictures from the 2009 trip (which took place in early May. Early May is when it becomes beautiful in New Hampshire, and though it is also wildflower time in Gault, and Painted-Buntings-fighting-like-kung-fu-NBC-Peacocks time, it is also fire ant time. February will probably not be fire ant time, or even snakes-coming-out-of-hibernation).

If you go to YouTube there's more, not by me, though my nose and voice show up in this one. Notice the heavy clothing? That was in March. We're going this year on Sunday, February 21.

Right now I am putting off packing or tidying my room, very successfully.

Tumblr allows one to send posts by one's phone, in audio. I am hoping to call a post in or so; These will show up in Facebook, or you can put the Tumblr link in your RSS. Tumblr will also show you when I update this blog.

In other news: Nigel's head is all healed up. He pretended to be mostly okay about the antibiotics, but he sure made himself scarce for a few days.

Lonely no more (God Bless You, Mr. Boskone)

I felt bleak last week. Moaned and whined. Then for whatever reason (tired of feeling like the weirdest person in the room) I checked to see if there were a science fiction anything happening anywhere nearby, and there was Boskone in Boston, where I have a LOVELY older couple who look after a pied-a-terre for (my parents think it's their apartment). Warned by the story of the guy in a flood who says God will save him, then refuses to be rescued by a boat or a helicopter, and drowns, saying "GOD will save me" (God says "But I sent the boat and helicopter...")I figured I should go.

I won a pair of sneakers from the Coraline movie last winter and I have been saving them for a special occasion. I found a blue long-sleeved T at the feed and grain store and stamped very subtle stars on it, and dyed my hair blue. This was fun. I have some partially blue towels and a bluish bath/shower thing now.

My parents were charming. My father picked me up at the bus station and observed mildly that my hair was blue. I remarked that it had been a Photoshop accident. My mother said it suited me. We watched the Olympic opening ceremonies and wanted more Francophone content and fewer women with pianos. The effects the lighting person produced were amazing. It was still too long.

I went to Boskone for the first time in many years (like five?). It was once a rowdy con with lots of TV and movie ties-in, although its association with MIT has always given it a turn toward harder science than, say, Darkovercon. They ran aground and were exiled from the Boston hotels for a long time, but they are now considered to have rehabilitated themselves. They got a Boston hotel into the distant port-convention center area, and the con is now mostly book-oriented. There were relatively few costumes, but several people liked my hair.

I went to a panel called "The 'Suck Fairy,' and Other Horrors of Rereading." It was a good discussion of what happens when you reread a book you loved the first time and then the racism, the ideology, the sexism, the heavy-handed message, etc., appear). A woman from Randolph, NH (it was on her name tag) sat next to me. Randolph has a population of about 330 on a good day and is mainly notable for a motel with a shop selling wool yarn (sic) and a quietly spectacular PaleoIndian site where I have had the great joy to dig. Because there are only a few people in the world, she lives across the road from it. It's weird enough to meet another science-fiction fan from NH, let alone one older than I am.

Then I tried out a panel on retro-actively inserting story changes into serials, but I was not far enough into the comics they were discussing, and then what turned out to be a not interesting enough one-person panel about researching if you want to write fantasy. Might have been better if she had been less relentlessly specific about pattern-welding, though since she was writing a sword-smith it made sense. I ended up at a very funny panel about 'what series should have zombies added to it next.'

Then I went and ate at the very, very well-stocked (if you like bread and things to go on it, but they were also aiming to feed the gluten free and the vegetarian) ConSuite buffet,and looked at books, and watched a woman with a spinning wheel explain the mechanism to two engineers, who were fascinated. And I talked to an iPod Touch fanatic, which was informative.

Then I would have gone to a panel about revamping Asimov's Laws of Robotics, (nearly all attending were men) but I got bored, and went to Fantasy: Getting Away from the Traditional, which was okay (nearly all women), and then I misplaced my knitting and fretted for awhile. Then I went a panel on 'the Heroine's Journey:' something new, now that women are living in larger numbers past the age of child-rearing, and also having careers and money and stuff; and a reading by
Lois McMasters Bujold, whose new book about Miles will be coming out in November.

I tried to meet the person I was supposed to meet for dinner, but she got stuck in Rhode Island, so I went and checked Quincy Market (Chowda Company= not very good chowda, sadly). There was a free shuttle from the hotel, so I went to wait at the bus stop with the other people. One of them was a friend of a friend with whom I had gone in 1985 to get my ears pierced. She barely remembered this (she was getting a second piercing in one ear, to be edgier -- this was A LONG TIME AGO, when double pierced was still a little weird), but she recalled the Japanese lunch beforehand and that my infant had been refusing the nice Japanese miso-and-tofu baby food and preferred to plunder my tuna rolls. "Yeah," I said. "Now he's 25 and works at the ----- St. Apple store."
"I know someone there," she said. "He's named Sam." She is friends with his fiancee.
"Blond? Hair down to there?"
"Yep," she said.
"That's him, the baby who was eating my tuna."
Her jaw dropped impressively.

Cyclical

Last ('09) January 12 I recorded that Marten had a small infection on his back. It got all well. Yesterday I dragged Nigel to the vet with a fever in his ears and a lump the size of a quail's egg over his eye where Marten, almost certainly, had whacked him. I think they get bored in the winter.

The wound was three days old and not getting better, and I figured being a one-eyed black cat would be a bit much (he already looks Eldritch). Sarah was here. She left her glasses at home for the first time in her life and came in contact lenses, which did not respond well to being stored in boiled water overnight, and ripped across. Sarah can't see very well. But she managed to help confine Nigel (who wasn't sick enough to go gentle into that good vet's, not at all, kthx). By 11:30 I had, instead of a pirate cat, a Zombie cat with a shaved area over one eye dripping blood and pus. He looked awful and he was like to go into shock, poor baby. Sarah and I were not much better (except nothing had been lanced. No dripping).

Then I drove Sarah to Canterbury, where she was reunited with her optics.
Then we drove back to my house and her car, and she went to visit her mother. I baked bread--the second set in 18 hours, as the first loaf got kind of black when I forgot about it. This did allow me to take a couple small loaves (of great beauty, I must say) along with the Mostly White Stew (see Dec. 12, 2008, note at end, and don't crockpot it; the artichokes fall apart) to the SCRAP Party.

The room is always too small and the crew associated with the OTHER dig (a Contact-era thing on what they call here the Seacoast) tended to clump outside in the hall, but we eventually mixed and talked to one another.

There were at least eight crockpots going, so next year I will perhaps bring a salad. But most of the crockpots were mostly emptied; my friend Abbie won Rookie of the Year, which I really support since I think I want to be Abbie when I grown up (she's short, blonde, intelligent,funny, and 21). The Avocational Archaeologist of the Year award was split among the four people who helped Dick put up and then break down Octoberfest, which is actually kind of fun.

Right then, it's Fore-Spring

We went to New York. It was good. Not only did we fail to need to kill one another, we often enjoyed one another's company.


Our hotel and my father, looking like a Hopper painting LBJ photo

My mom had found a hotel that gave us two rooms (I could go to sleep!) for $149/night. My parents had the one on the street side and were not happy with the noise or the mattress, and though the hotel had a $10/day internet scheme the room was in a nearly dead zone. My room was quiet, my bed was fine, and we had a microwave and a tiny fridge so I had proper early morning tea. I loved it.

And my parents liked the Danubian exhibition, which, as well as being small but choice, was free admission.

Funerary figurines. At least they were from a grave. LBJ
We regretted not taking more pictures, since we didn't know they were allowed as long as they were not with a flash. Although the NYT article has an excellent slideshow, they left out my favorite bowl. It had a little naked clay couple in the bottom of it.

We ate simply. My father is allergic to gluten and my mother doesn't do dairy, and the smell of the pizzerias we passed wafted unanswered. The price of NY restaurants was breathtaking (a very nice unspecial lox and onion omelet was $12.95, but two eggs any style was $7.95) and the portions were too big. But it was tasty, and I like the Bialy very much. Something like a cross between a bagel and an English muffin.

We went to the opera, as my mother loves the opera; my daughter imported herself from New Jersey and joined us at Lincoln Center. I am not much for concrete structures and I missed the gorgeous pseudo-classicism of older concert halls, but it was not bad inside despite having no murals of half-naked people.


Swarovski crystals are always welcome. LBJ

The opera itself was Stiffelio, a strange tale of jealousy and maybe forgiveness among the 19th c. Protestants. This had an unfortunate effect on the costumes (black) and all of us wondered why Verdi thought it had been a good idea to write. I thought a couple of zombies would have helped a lot, or some poisoning or an elephant. Apparently you are allowed to have opera without any of these. I am told they sang very well. I don't think I am made for Culture, at least not High Culture.

The Silk Road Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History (why here?) was okay, but for me it exemplified many of the stupidest tendencies of modern museum-ship. It had a couple of interactive things (mostly broken machines to 'stamp' your 'passport;' some much better perfume amphora to smell) and a lot of 'gee! look!' kind of commentary. But they were trying to describe a long stretch of caravan route over several hundred years, and as a result I had no feeling of any place at any time, and it was bit like generic Orientalism, which was almost certainly not what they wanted to do. On the plus side, my father had never heard of the place and said it was a decent introduction. I'm a history snob, I guess.

But the book store was great, containing several of my favorite books in a very select sample, and I bought The Mind in the Cave.

One way and another we ended up at MOMA without time to look at the museum properly, so we did the tacky but satisfying thing and went to the gift shop(s). They were overpriced but delightful, and now I know where ThinkGeek gets some of its stuff.

We were very lucky with the weather; I have been so very cold in New York, and although it was sometimes a little breezy, it was mostly above freezing and sunny, very walkable. I love New York. I was sad not to see Beckett (LOTS of police presence, though, and nasty murder on the TV)or Mia but it was pretty cool anyhow. It started to drizzle as we made our way to Penn Station.

I like travel by train. I took the bus from Concord to Boston and back, and that went very seamlessly as well.

Then I came down with my father's cold and had to sleep all last week. It was a fluent headcold. My brain was on hiatus; I have found great comfort in punctuating the Castle transcripts at the Dustjackets wiki. And the transcribers say they are delighted since they are just trying to get the damned things written out and to hell with the hyphens and commas!(shocking.) They are otherwise really fine internet friends. Since I have been trying to finish a regular plain-vanilla (except for the soapboxes, which taste about as good as you would suppose in a vanilla confection) police procedural fanfic, the wiki has been useful. I am not going to defend fanfic right now, but of course I wouldn't feel like it if it weren't several rungs down from pulp fiction. But it feels good and leaves no marks so I am doing it (and at least I'm not a furry). (You should look at the link in the previous sentence, it might weird you out or it might make you give the Smile of Recognition).

And last week I went to the SCA market in Manchester, but my cleavage would not behave and I felt like this. I behaved well and only bought a cup and a bowl and a book.

And now I must be human, as there is the SCRAP party tomorrow. Every year lately we have it in the NHDHR office building, which has no possible sightline for a decent photograph, although it does have heating (which is why we no longer have it in the much more picturesque State Library, which does not have heat on weekends). There will be food, and I must make some.

And finally, on a seasonal note: I survive every winter hanging onto Groundhog Day, or Candlemas, or Imbolc, when I KNOW the light will have improved, and by Copernicus, it has! Still light at 5pm, the analemma is making it hard to sit by an SE window between 8:30 and 10 am, and this morning a chickadee made the first 'Hey, Baby?' call of the year.

cold with a lack of focus

I miss Christmas. I still have a little fruitcake left (and half a pair of socks and a late-arriving mittlets) but the fine-pointed guided missile of purpose that I was in December is no more.

Tonight we are expecting the first snow in a couple of weeks.



Marten watching us in the driveway.

Doug and I decided Paul was never going to get the stuff out of the kitchenette. Doug wanted the space. I wanted him to have it. In a burst of energy yesterday, He and Deb and I rearranged Paul's stuff into a disused portion of freezing porch (safe from rain and snow, however) and Doug rented a steam cleaner and did the rug. Today he is moving furniture in. Katie continues to live upstairs. I hope she gets a better job soon.



Marten from inside the house. With orchid cactus.


Right, the sun is coming out. Between four to eight inches tonight, for sure. Yesterday it was about 45 degrees F and delightful.

My parents, who are either saints or have decided my company will provide an alibi of some sort, are taking me to New York City for three nights. My mother wants to see an Egon Schiele exhibit. I want to go to the Old Europe exhibit at NYU. Any other suggestions?

Looking ahead

With an actual rent-paying tenant, things are much better here. I still need to want a job.
And following that, to get one. And not get depressed over my lack of qualifications. I can do lots of things adequately. I hate the whole 'selling' myself thing really a lot, and feel people would do well to get a more recent model. With a better operating system and a slimmer footprint.

The main effect of my holidays has been an actual desire to see more of my family and friends more often. Amazing.

I still need to do serious, I-am-not-a-hoarder tidying.

I want to work off some of my fiber stash, and spin, and some of my yarn stash, and knit.

I want to write more. This would involve losing the url for MahJongg.

Really, I want to dig more holes.

Christmas

It was excellent. We had, at dinner: Sam and Kimberly, Kimberly's father Joel;



Lisa and John;




Ellie and Matt;


my mom and dad;

Doug;

Jenny my ex



and me.



My mother points out that no one took pictures of her. (She took all these pictures.) She's right. And no one got a picture of Lisa and John together, either.




I am in charge of plum pudding at Christmas. I make a gluten-free one and take it with me to the ex's house. Where, and previously at Melrose, I have made minor grease fires in the oven (though not for the previous couple of years, to everyone's disappointment) with the Yorkshire pudding (no relation). This year, there was a HELL of a lot of smoke because the fire was in a part of the oven you could only see from across the kitchen... .


"Dinner will be ready when the smoke alarm goes off"

Anyway the plum pudding: we set it afire with booze. I was out of brandy, so I stopped on the way down and noticed there was 150 proof rum for only 2$ more than the 75 proof, so I got that. The oven fire had made the ex a little more nervous and control-issued than usual, so she was not listening and preheated a CUP of rum, poured it over the pudding and set alight before I could get her attention. Pudding flames did not quite reach ceiling. Nor _quite_ melt table cloth, which was still an excellent wick and provided flames around the plate of pudding as well as on it. But it was very impressive.

Looking Back

I was starting Arwen? I don't even remember... oh right, I gave the yarn to Alice. Good call. The Radiance Cable Jacket is unfinished. I think it made me look fat.

New Year's Truth 1: I look like a manatee. They say that the fibroid I have is not causing any trouble, even though it is now larger than a grapefruit. It cannot be blamed for my umm, bottom. On the other hand, I don't obsess about my diet. I hope to eat more vegetables in the New Year.

I made Christmas socks for my father and Katie and almost finished the ones for my mother. And they were on size 3's (well, not Katie's, which are half acrylic because she is a severely-affected teenager. She still lives here, in theory, but not since it snowed very much. Depends on what happens to her license, too) and done in honest Sock-weight. Ellie's are somewhere in limbo; I have not seen her sock since Thanksgiving. (Oooh! It turned up!)

I made about five of the Noro scarves (finished one this evening that I found carefully tucked away). I gave about four of them away, two at Octoberfest, as well as the one I made Knitting One Below, and if only I could find that book in this dreadful, interesting house I would make another. It is very satisfying to give people warm things when they are cold.

I made some most unpalatable wine and am scared to try again, although I am going to be more severe with my specific gravity. The vinegar wasn't much good, again, perhaps because the original must had not fermented enough. Was it too cold? was the yeast no good? Was the must dreadful? I did label everything I could find in the basement. Some of what I could not identify was delicious. Trying Kombucha this year.

The FLUXX deck I bought Grace and Debbie in March, I gave them in December. Someday we shall play it. I also bought myself the FLUXX Stoner deck, though I continue to be stuffy about people my age who smoke much dope (nasty realization of the year. I thought I was cooler than that) and don't know anyone in the state who would think it was funny.

I Do have a kitchen! I love it. It has lights and counters and more cupboard space than I know what to do with. Sadly, I have not yet fully unpacked the boxes o'Stuff that appeared in my living room when I moved out of the kitchenette. But I am cooking again fairly often, particularly in an effort to make regular meals with Doug. Because Paul, having moved himself and Katie in in June (he had no work they needed a place to live smaller than the house he was renting), moved out in November, shortly after Doug moved out of now-ex GF SarahC's house. Doug is my tenant again! And I will be kinder to him He is a wonderful housemate and a good friend, and I hope he has fun with his friend in Connecticut but doesn't move there. Paul is living with a girlfriend somewhere else. 'Paying tenant' was never a good description, but he did build a couple of closets. Katie sort of lives here, in that she has stuff in the spare bedroom, but the condition of the driveway and the condition of her car have not been a fortunate combination.

Nigel is definitely tired of the aggro here, but since Willow is happier when she can dominate Doug, he gets some better times. Marten chases both of them. None of them will go outside for more than seconds when it's below 40 degrees F. Wimps.

four teacups

This one, my daughter turned up. It is very practical, as she and I differ in our estimation of the proper amount of milk for a satisfying cuppa. Sadly, the price is breathtaking.

This one is very pretty, though it enshrines a low standard of tea prep (loose tea would look less attractive and also less iconic).

There is also this one, which is 16 oz but is melamine and not microwave-safe, a deal-breaker.

And this one: which seems to be almost the same as this one, except the latter is cheaper and comes with a latex sleeve, albeit one with a coffee bean on it. I could cope with that, and possibly turn the sleeve inside out. It is available at its higher cost at the MFA gift shop in Boston. I wish they made a larger size.

not bad

So Doug decided he needed to move out of Concord. Since Paul was never here, I asked him to consider moving his stuff out. He is, bit by bit. So far it as been AMAZINGLY angst-free. I still have a pet 18-yr old, Katie, but she isn't any trouble and will watch "Castle" with me.

Mind you, all of Paul's stuff is not gone, and there is one strip on the outside of the house I wish he would finish, and Lord only knows who will plow this winter. We'll see.

I am, at least for the moment, employed. All this time I have not done any contract archaeology, which is when you work for an outfit who helps whoever is building something comply with state or federal regulations. The main reason is that I was certain I was in completely inadequate shape for it. This may still be true, but there is a sort of local firm who was desperate for people to help dig test pits before the ground freezes. So for two out of three days last week I was the youngest on a crew of three, which was funny. I may be the youngest on a crew of five or six next week, as Vicky Bunker is persuading as many members of SCRAP as are at loose ends or retired whom she can to come dig for money. I said I hadn't been paid for Archaeology since the Reagan administration, but I think I left Canterbury before he was inaugurated, so it may have been Carter.

We are making sure there is nothing important in places along an existing line of huge power poles where they intend to sink more power poles. Two of the three days last week were idyllic, with some sun and t-shirt weather -- sifting and shovelling into the screen warm one up quite nicely. Yesterday it was more sullen and cloudy, but it was still not too cold and not raining at all. Heaven. There are pictures here.

I am in a position to say there is nothing there important culturally, but the wintergreen and sweet fern smell very nice. As well as the usual birds I have seen a brown creeper, an ominous-looking hawk making an ominous squawk, and a surprised and very lucky red-backed salamander.

You may have heard of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day? Since my daughter mentioned it sometime last year, I have become very spoiled and live on this stuff (a couple of years before that Ellie and I stopped showing signs of gluten intolerance. It's been a very great joy to eat and make bread again). They have a new book out, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, with recipes for partial whole wheat (about half the flour is whole wheat, okay? not a paradox) and also for gluten-free bread. I wanted to what the GF bread was like, and it was quite tasty and a little strange looking, though I imagine if I practice I'll get more confident messing aoround wiht the recipe. It contains 4 eggs. Even I, with my notorious lightheartedness about refrigerating eggs, feel dubious about having raw egg batter sitting up to two weeks in my refrigerator. But Herzberg and Francois are not careless people and no one seems yet to have been poisoned.

So if you take some of the dough and roll it out (ideally between two sheets of parchment paper or two of those silicon cookie sheets), and spread it with sauteed garlic and lots of chpped parsely, you can roll it up and let it rise and it's delicious. If you have something not unlike a bunch of chickpeas cooked with garlic and onion and whathaveyou, you can dump a spoon of it onto a sheet of the dough and re-invent samosas or calzones or Cornish pasties. Just let it rise half an hour or so first.

It makes great lunch for digging with.

October, really? (food and archaeology)

The wine making continues to go bad ly the latest batch is not too grapey, much, but it has a nice bitter metallic taste that ... well, perhaps the wine to have when you've already had more than one. Or maybe four.


I bought a $40 dehydrator (we will rush past the one I got on Ebay for $15, which worked when I got it and for about 5 minutes afterwards). I bought it because I envied Sarah's dried tomatoes. They taste like a jolt of a really good summer day. I made some, and they were good. The dried apple slices, I am telling you, are very very dangerous. They taste so good.Then you realize you have ate a) half a dehydrator's worth in one sitting (36 hrs depending on how thick you slice them -- I like them about 3/8" raw and dried to bone texture); b) all the fiber you will ever need; c) you need a bathroom. But they taste so good.

Then I made beef jerky. I used Alton Brown's recipe. I did not use the liquid smoke, and I halved the red pepper flakes. It was SUPERB. The next batch I used round steak (I think, something cheaper that looked unfatty) and off-brand Worcestershire sauce, and a large glug of vinegar, and it was pretty darned good. The worst problem s the smell of Worcestershire sauce (TM) makes me drool almost uncontrollably. Jerky tastes really good with dehydrated tomatoes, which is why I have none left. It is not a way to cut down on your sodium. It probably isn't very cheap, unless you were eating a good deal of the packaged stuff (and the homemade has fewer nitrates and you have some idea where the meat has been).

It's delicious. People at Octoberfest ate it up. really.

(What a clever segue to archaeology!)

Octoberfest is a five-day weekend at the beginning of October when, for the past seven years, we have gone to the Potter site and dug up stuff. Last year we mostly dug dry holes (50 x 50 cm shovel test pits), trying to find limits of the site. It was still better than real life, but kind of boring. This year we dug more on the blocks (meter or more rectangles, trowelled in 5 cm. levels over a 50 cm quad) we started this summer. I found hardly anything. This was okay for a couple of reasons. Most saliently, I actually dug for perhaps 20 minutes, all told. I did a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing getting people's names on their timesheets and taking pictures of stuff. It was a good year for stuff. Since I found a fluted almost-finished point last July I am feeling less like I have to find EVERYTHING, and watching the Quebeccoise girl find a point base was pretty soul-satisfying. Pictures are up on Facebook of some of the people.

It was cold. Not really really cold, like the year some of us set fire to our gloves trying to warm our hands over a Coleman lantern, but at times brisk. It was not often sunny. I would have been warmer had I had the brain cells to dig deeper into my duffle bag, but I was fine. The Octoberfest hoodies were one of Dick's best inspirations ever. We were warm (as long as we didn't get too wet) and we looked really scary.

So it's October? (Personal junk)

Okay, I'll try to do better. It is possible unemployment is doing a job on my morale. In fact, it is. The Army sends me spam every morning. I don't think a 53-year old chick not in the best of shape is really their favorite, but perhaps I should take them up on it. They are in portsmouth, an hour and a half away. Monster alternates between sending me jobs for people with three years of banking experience (I have none) or a high school diploma and no police record (actually, I have neither of these either) in towns seventy miles away that will last for a month.

People I respect with actual fresh useful job experience in real fields are also having trouble and I feel bad about a) feeling bad and b)not having solid experience and qualifications (like the Army, perhaps?). And being fat, divorced, 53, and pointlessly verbal. And kinda bitter sometimes.

My health is pretty good, as is that of my family, my cats, and my friends. Except for cats, I wish I had more of all of these (one of the things that worries me about my mental health is that I DON'T want another kitten. This is like, mature. I don't trust it.).

Paul and his daughter are still my tenants. Paul still does not have any construction jobs and is holding things together with his referee gigs. His daughter is counting the days till she can move out, which will unfortunately include getting better jobs. Living with a teenager is somewhat softened by not being related to her. Human beings have a rough time navigating toward adulthood (just look at me). It can be tiring for those around them.

I should be more worried

Okay. Paul can't get a job, so he can't get Katie a car. Or pay rent.

Katie has two jobs, which pay together slightly more than enough to fill the utterly inefficient gas tank of Paul's truck.

On the plus side, it's early autumn. Sarah is in the midst of Putting-By the Harvest.
Here is a vignette from last week:
I was talking to myself when Sarah called and said she was leaving work early and would appreciate company while she made peach butter. I went to Canterbury. Sarah's entire apt REEKED of basil, which was kind of nice. There was raspberry vinegar soaking in a bowl on the table, a bowl of measured pickling spices, several jars of cranberry mustard, a bowl of sliced green tomatoes to become chutney and a counterfull of canning jars (no eye of newt. She likes newts). Oh , and a sinkful of blanched peaches waiting to be peeled.

It was great fun to watch. I finished a sock and made the instep of another sock and spun for a couple of hours. She put a slew of little jars of pesto into the freezer, peeled the peaches, sliced the peaches, figured out the she needed to have weighed the peaches since her recipe was by weight rather than volume (she had 2 and a half recipes of Amaretto Peach Butter), put the peels into a huge pile of to-be-composted (including the bodies of several huge basil plants. She got them from someone who grew it to look nice in big pots but who hated pesto). Measured sugar and water and started the peach butter, got the bread dough out to rise, whipped up some simple pea soup, and asked sadly if I knew how to get the labels off jars. Beer people use bleach and water and she found soaking them in that for awhile and then using steel wool produced a desirable result. I warned her her nails and cuticles would be toast. But she was delighted because she been buying pesto in cute little jars for a year and they were canning weight jars and she had despaired that she would ever get the labels off. She had about 20, which meant she had enough jars to put up the green tomato chutney and the peach butter without begging jars from her mom.

Then we went across the road and scrumped apples. "Scrumped' is the British term for doing to fruits and veg. what you would be doing when you 'poach' a rabbit, and she loves the word. She estimates she and her friends have scrumped about 200 pounds of fruit from one row of peach trees.

We went to one apple tree and she and I had 3 shopping bags full of large cooking apples in about ten minutes. These were only the low-hanging fruit, from a tree that is not pruned or fertilized or sprayed or anything. They are lumpy , some of them, but not all that bad-looking. Another person from the village was there and got about another bag of the same apples because he and his wife have been coming to the same tree for ten yeas and it makes the world's best pies. He believed it was called Wolf River. We met two very old lesbians who were scrumping herbs. The moon rose, huge and very picturesque. Another person with some authority in the village showed up and suggested we would need to weigh the cars to assess how much we owed for the apples, but he was only joking and had been telling people to pick the damn peaches already for weeks. Sarah had been feeling guilty so she felt better, and I explained to everyone that she had bootlegger's springs in her car. Since they were all Very Old, everyone but Sarah agreed this was a great idea for smuggling fruit. Sarah had not heard about bootlegging springs.No appreciation for our nation's heritage.

We went back to her apt and she put most of a jar of aging applesauce on her fruit leather sheet on the dehydrator, and I finished the jar. Then I got to scrape the bottom of the peach butter pot when she transferred it to a smaller pot with a thicker bottom, and told her my secrets for removing burned-on from pans (soak for 12 hours, then scour with lots of table salt and a scrunched up piece of tinfoil. Knowing this means I am very popular at field school, where the pots are cheap and the cooks are doubtful).

She baked the bread and eventually we had pea soup with homebaked bread and home-shaken chive butter and I ate too much and staggered home.

The next day Miranda (I have a new boarder from the same organization as gave me Rob and Bryn last December) and I made a vast amount of pizza, while she made the first from-scratch pie of her life (a thing of perfect beauty) and I put more than 5 pounds of strange-looking apples through the food processor to make apple wine. Today I am hoping to make an apple tart for the official opening of the 2009-10 Archaeology Lab Season, and also to dehydrate some apple slices. I have a gallon bag of dehydrated peach and gave my parents a bag of frozen peaches (I still have one and half bags in the freezer and two gallons of peach wine).

I shall write more about the socks mentioned in passing but I need to go make an apple tart.

Domestic disorder. And hummingbirds.

I still haz it. It's complicated. At the moment it is not only too hot to cook, but also too hot to try to do the kind of 'find a place for everything and put it there' cleaning that is necessary from a) tearing up the kitchen (and the downstairs bathroom, and the dining area) and b) moving out of the kitchenette (and there is plenty of 'normal life wear and tear' in the loom room and the study area and and and...

The previous downstairs bathroom was a small, ill-designed room with a non-functioning showerstall and a toilet placed so that no one ovver a size 8 could feel comfortable there. Because of the way the house is built, the placement of the toilet and the basin was foreordained, so the new version has the toilet and the basin clinging to the left wall. It's now all very white, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste" (guess what image I can't find on Google?) white, and I think I will put an ancient wall-painting on the wall. Started out thinking dolphins, pondering Ancient Egyptian garden, trying not to make tacky pun and do Minoan Throne Room.

We shall not speak about the garden. But black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne's Lace look great, and as an archaeologist-type I like having th house surrounded by luxuriant jungle vegetation.

ONe of the few things I have been faithful about is bird-feeding. I have at least two resident Indigo Buntings, and at least four (probably more) hummingbirds. The hummingbirds are mostly this year's chicks, the size of medium shrimp, and they talk a lot. They chirp when they fight and they mutter themselves afterward. Here was an odd interaction from last week:

The males do a kind of territorial/mating thing wherein they make big (like 12+ feet) arcs back and forth, with aeolian effects from the feathers. It reminds me of watching the big swinging Flying Boats from carnivals. The other day, a male (I am pretty sure he had a red throat) was trash-talking either a young female or a young male at the feeder. But instead of the usual diving and open dogfighting, these two were flying no more than a yard from one another and the feeder. It looked like they were flirting, and even more when the aggressor did a few passes of modified Flying Boat, with an arc only a yard across. Then the one on the feeder, instead of another mildly evasive manuever, lifted up from the feeder perch and sat on the aggressor's beak. Looking smug. She and the sat-upon bird stayed in the air for a moment, falling slowly onto the porch, and after the one on the bottom had flapped a little the one on its beak let go. But they went on sparring for several more minutes.

I love them. I'll miss them when they go south.