I now have a wee Cisco router on my desk amidst the raven-colored yarn, blueberry white tea, Thai baht, Moose Munch, dried cedar (with charcoal tablets for burninating it), deck of Amtrak playing cards, and other miscellaneous things that add up to It Must Be lwood's Desk. The stuffy array of a raven, a dragon, a (river) otter, and Cthulhu only add to this effect.

I'm starting to learn Network Stuff, which had heretofore been a big gap in my sysadmin skillset. To learn effectively, one must have gear that one may arbitrarily break in new exciting ways without disrupting expected service, hence the router.

[Ten-Cent Definition: A router has a job not unlike an Air Traffic Controller. A packet of data comes into a router, and there are rules that say what should be done with it. Just like an air traffic controller, a packet will pass through the tender care of many routers, and ideally one need not care about any of them except in the general way that one may wish all things to go well. This may well be the best of all possible worlds, but it is not the ideal one. So be it.]

Anyway, this router, if it can talk to no thing on any network whatever, can shoot plain text back and forth out its console port. Getting this to speak to a Mac, now that they don't have console ports, can be a challenge, but the hardware side, I have had pre-licked.

countgeiger and I are using this as an opportunity for Spousal Bondage Bonding. It is good to have a horizontal dictionary from time to time. ;)

(Random Heinlein Intrusion: "It is well to/have a sister/or even an old overcoat")

"And you'll want to download ZTerm to talk to (cable conglomeration)."

*clickity clickity frob* "Mmhm." This is Sikrit Spouse Code for "That may be so, but I think I will make up my own mind on that." It is vastly more respectful than the "mmhm" that explores what my husband and the horse he rode in on might mutually explore in a committed consentual relationship. Such, friends, are the subtleties of married life.

I continue to *clickity clickity frob*. "Uh. Six-year-old abandonware should never be the only answer." To the non-initiated, may I say this is worse than last year's shoes? It's declaring that a Victorian bonnet is the thing to wear to Safeway. I have such a chapeau, mind, and very fetching it is, too, but to Safeway it goes not--unless it then proceeds forthwith to Dickens, Gold Rush, or some similar affair. However, it will keep the sun off, in a pinch, even as ZTerm will make my computer talk to the router. Besides, on this rough timeline, what the router wants to wear is one of those gigantic Elizabethan , compared to which a Victorian-era sunbonnet is delightfully new-fangled.

"Says here that you can just hitch screen up to the right device and Bob's yer uncle." I have proposed a more elegant, modern, solution. Let's say I'm now wearing a ballcap to Safeway, or a lovely straw hat, assuming I can make it fit my head.

*clickity* "On Leopard server, yah...and you have to whack /etc/getty, and..." Translation: They do not make ballcaps that fit your head! We will have to sew on Velcro! That's, like...work!

"Uhm. Apparently not; /etc/getty now has defaults for both 9600 baud and 57600 bps, and.." *clickity* "...works out of the box. screen /dev/cu.KeySerial1 FTW." Translation: My head is not neither that big! Look! I am wearing my ginormous straw hat and off I go to Safeway, and it worked without any modification whatsoever! Yay!

And now...to bed with me!

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: geeky

Hey! Thanks, thewronghands, your postcard and tea arrived last week, and eventually I got down to the post office to claim it. 8-)

-- Lorrie

Yep, it's also cheesy commercial consumerism.

On the other hand, I find it relentlessly upbeat without being saccharine.



-- Lorrie

Current Mood: cheerful

...well, okay. It's not hot because I'm visiting the computers today, and where they live it's 65°F (18° C for you in civilized lands) with some very low humidity, as this is a place set up for silicon people, not carbon people.

BUT!

When I go forth once more to obtain of food, then, yes, holy crap, it will be hot.

-- Lorrie

I should probably post a picture of our full-color cover, wot?

With art by falcania of Vingolf Kindred!

Click to enlarge, but I really do mean enlarge (1700x2200, 4.4 MB PNG):

dr_beowulf

Current Mood: geeky

Hrafnar

The meeting of Hrafnar that was postponed for Trothmoot last week happened last night instead. While it's our typical practice to do the "Midsummer Blot" that we published in the Troth's Book of Blóts, for sundry logistical reasons I pruned it down to an informal three-round sumbel with a Sunna-dedicated first round. Fleshy dainties were seared over charcoal in her honor, accompanied by Heiðrun, a local, commercially produced, sparkling mead.

Now, I've mocked their label in the past for having Sleipnir on the front because Heiðrun is a goat--a very nice little black goat whose teats produce Valhö's mead, to which I can safely say, "Wow, that's some goat!" But still! Not a knotwork-legged stallion by any stretch.

However, I found out from a friend of the meadery owner that Sleipnir is on the bottle because the owner can't find a worthy goat picture.

Clearly, someone who can draw his or her way out of a paper bag can fix this.

Clearly, that person is not me.

I suspect--but cannot state--that such art might earn some mead in exchange. It jolly well should, Gebo being what it is, but I can't say for certain. If someone might be interested in a barterish commission, get in touch with David Carlson, who Knows That Guy, or me, who knows David Carlson who Knows That Guy. Things, I should think, could be worked out.

Next month's Hrafnar meeting will be the Land Spirits' Picnic. We'll gather at Greyhaven and carpool our way to our other favorite pic-a-nic spot, up in Tilden Park.

And now, "below the fold":

Current Mood: chipper

I chose to take a meme-spear cast by wodandis on this one--as I don't feel compelled to post when memes say so, neither do I enforce it from here.

SO! The rules guidelines, with a couple mutations:

1. Pick up the book nearest to you (no fishing).


2. Instead of all that "one page, some sentences" stuff, find a small clutch of sentences that, taken as a quote, are exemplary of why this book is cool to you.


3. Explain why you're reading this book.

1. The book: The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19^th-Century Britain, by Andrew Wawn.


2. A fat excerpt:

   What's in a Title?
   
   In many ways, the Victorians invented the Vikings. The word itself, in its modern incarnation, is not recorded in the OED until just thirty years before the young Princess Victoria's coronation¹; and by 1837 only a handful of her most scholarly subjects had begun to acquaint themselves with those Anglo-Saxon texts in which the term had previously been recorded. Yet, within fifty years, the word "Viking" was to be found on dozens of title-pages...written for all conditions of men, some conditions of women, and quite a few conditions of children.
   
   The ubiquity of the term "Viking" masks a wide variety of constructions of Vikingism: the old northern are variously buccaneering, triumphalist, defiant, confused, disillusioned, unbiddable, disciplined, elaborately pagan, austerely pious, relentlessly jolly, or self-destructivtly sybaritic. They are merchant adventurers, mercenary soldiers, pioneering colonists, pitiless raiders, self-sufficient farmers, cutting-edge naval technologists, primitive democrats, psychopathic berserks, ardent lovers and complicated poets.... In wrestling with this problem, and more generally in their reconstructions of the Viking-age world, Victorian enthusiasts gave birth to some strange old northern progeny. There was rarely a dull moment in this nineteenth-century marriage of Mercury and Philology.



3. I'm reading this because:
   On a little-known (we like it that way) Ásatrú mailing list, one of the more vocal (if occasionally caustic) members thinks this book should be on every heathen's shelf--and after a scant few dozen pages, I'm already inclined to agree. Expect a full review in an upcoming Idunna, complete with some of the usual comments that "Wawn's style is engaging enough to make this a pleasantly accessible read".

Current Mood: geeky

Back from Trothmoot (hail the folk, hail the troth, hail the new rede and officers), did not rise from my howe in order to terrorize the neighborhood yesterday, saw dpaxson and jon_decles off to Greece with Studebaker Cheesecake and Heiðrun sparkling mead (on the argument that it was their long-delayed honeymoon, y'see) last night, am now trundling through e-mail and LJ.

On the very real chance I might miss a thing or two, shoot me a comment--they're screened here, in case you want to call my attention to something without causing drama.

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: cheerful

All right, folks, off to Trothmoot, leavin' on a jet plane^* back l-a-t-e Sunday, may arise like a draugR on Monday but don't count on it.

If I do rise from the dead, I have planned ahead: please read my article on the subject for more information and advice.

Go wisely and well, and for everyone else going abroad this day, I wish safe, prompt, and uneventful travel.

-- Lorrie

^* -- Special to walkyrja: HEY! I didn't learn that song in Berkeley from hippies, I learned it in Cleveland, at my momma's knee, and she weren't never a hippie. So there! *thbpt*

Current Mood: energetic

So, there dpaxson and I were, zipping along CA 92 headed for Half Moon Bay, when I saw them, stacked in an amber pyramid that winked at me in the afternoon's golden light.

Honey jars. Pints, if I saw correctly.

"We're turning around!" says I.

Diana looked up from the notebook where she was madly scribbling the next scene for her forthcoming bestseller, Sword of Avalon. "Hmm?"

"Honey!" I declared, while executing a parking lot turning maneuver sure to annoy several other drivers. "It was winking at me, and anyway dr_beowulf is making an All-Trothmoot Mead. It didn't have big commercial labels on, so I'm pretty sure it's local."

"Oh! Good!"

I pull into the bumpy roadside lot, and sure enough, it's all honey. Well, they have fruit, too, including fat organic cherry that likely came from southern Santa Clara or northern San Benito County, down Gilroy way.

The honey, however, is all from La Honda, a little mountain town a few miles south of this stand, and in at least three varieties: wildflower (which is honeyspeak for "miscellaneous"), sage, and toyon.

We sampled the toyon on one of those luscious organic Bing cherries, and bought two jars of golden goodness, totalling three pounds between them: one sage, because the Troth could always use more wisdom, and one toyon, to honor the contributions California and her people--North and South alike--have made to the Troth over the years: I can't count how many members and officers (myself obviously among them), but I can count three Steerspeople without trying: Prudence Priest, Diana Paxson, and Stefn Thorsman.

Any varietal honey remembers a little bit of the plant that bore it, and these are no exception. Toyon adds its own complexity, leaving a slight bitterness behind. You might not want a mead that was wholly from toyon honey, but as one of several arrows in a quiver, it will add a certain complexity to the mix--and this, too, is appropriate.

Best,

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: content

e_falki turned me onto neitherday's all-corvid mood icon set. If you have a Paid, Permanent, or Plus account, you can have it too--just follow these directions, or ask me to help you with it.

Whee!

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: chipper

First published in Idunna 76, Summer, 2008^*

dpaxson asked me for some fiction for the "Kinder Corner" children's feature in this issue of Idunna. After last issue's Ostara feature, I thought I'd write something with a more YA (Young Adult) appeal.

The bones of this story can be found in the Rígsþula of the Elder Edda, stanzas 25-35, as is appropriate to the issue's theme of "Heimdall". It is not necessary to have read the poem to make sense of the story, save for one detail: once upon a time, a gentleman named Ríg came calling to the home of a married childless couple, landed nobles with some few holdings. He slept "between" them for three nights, and nine months later the wife, named Mother, had a son named Earl.

Current Mood: accomplished

In the ongoing, never-ending, battles Your Friendly Neighborhood System Administrator fights against The Spam Menace, she uses many tools, because the Spam Menace is nothing if not multi-talented.

Nor does YFNSA do so alone. There are people who maintain lists of Known Naughty Servers, and to make it easy to check whether a given sender has been Naughty or Nice, these lists of Known Naughty Servers (or, more technically, "blacklists") can be checked very quickly via Domain Name Service--DNS is how your browser turns www.google.com into the numerical address that's more relevant to all the computers involved, very like using 411.

ANYWAY, one of the services that I, and many others, were using was called Security Sage, formerly at securitysage.com.

The maintainer of this particular service seems to have stopped maintaining same some time ago, but that wasn't a big deal: his data was no longer being updated, but at least it wasn't returning actively bad data.

What was a big deal was when his domain name, securitysage.com, expired in the fullness of time like any domain name may (one buys the right to a name, e.g. snugharbor.com, for a year, or handful of years, in this racket).

When this happened, the service that wasn't working but at least wasn't not working in a spectacularly lossy way...failed in a large and lossy way.

This happened during the US Memorial Day weekend, when e-mail traffic tends to be low. Also, the worst part of all this seemed to last for about twelve hours, and was particularly pernicious to people trying to e-mail any of my domains from Google or AOL.

While this wreckage formerly known as a service is no longer returning provably bad data, I'm obviously not going to trust it anymore! It has been removed from my server, with my apologies to all of you for the inconvenience.

-- Lorrie

PS: Oh, right. References--which are very geeky, but the sufficiently paranoid and geeky will want them anyhow:

• Reference One


• Reference Two


• Reference Three


• Reference Four

Current Mood: geeky

Chinese surveillance may soon be coming to a US near you.

And it's our money helping them do it.

Scared yet?

Have a look.

Now would be an excellent time to, if you can, throw some money at the ACLU and EFF and similarly worthy agencies. The civil liberties, e.g. unreasonable search and seizure, that you save may be your own.

-- Lorrie

Due to a recently announced vulnerability in Debian and its derivatives, e.g. Ubuntu, the OpenSSH keys for lorien, my server, have changed. This will mean very little to most people. Basically, if you see a scary warning message about man in the middle attacks, it's because I changed something to help prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, and you should take on the new key.

The fingerprint for the new DSA key, for the vaguely paranoid:

1024 a8:99:19:f5:c3:06:c4:dc:42:95:1f:bf:70:4c:4e:69

2048 cb:ce:58:83:7e:52:59:18:0a:4a:b3:8a:58:6a:67:32

Poll #1185040
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

I am making a pair of socks for myself in a polite little German wool impregnated with jojoba oil and aloe (oooo!). Use the radio buttons below to pick a pattern! The yarn looks like this:(Austermann Step, color 04 "nachtblau")

Current Mood: curious

I went to the Nordic Knitting Conference last year with faeryl and really had a blast, especially because I got to stay with erynn999 and alfrecht.

Well, thanks to faeryl, I can tell you that a second conference has just been announced!

They've posted a PDF of the press release, but here's the nitty gritty dates to put into your calendar:

10 November 2008:

Class descriptions will be posted on the museum's website for your drooling pleasure.

01 December 2008

Registration opens!

13-15 March 2009

Dates of the Conference!

1. Last time, registration was by postal mail only, that may also be the case here.


2. There will be no pre-registration. BAH!


3. I have already marked all of these dates on my calendar. Mwahahahaha!!!


4. Parking at the Museum is good, but there's little lunchable food within walking distance. Unless you have a Friendly Native Guide willing to shuttle you around places, I suggest the catering option.


5. Classes are for all skill levels. None of this "oh, poor me! I am not a studly enough knitter!" business.


6. Purchase books before leaving home: last time, the Museum didn't have much on-hand, although they may well rectify that for obvious reasons.

Current Mood: ecstatic

On my kitchen table are a drop spindle, a small piece of nåbinding, a bottom-whorl drop spindle made by wolfs_daugher's husband, both worked on by Yrs Truly over the past weekend...

...and countgeiger's new gaming box, freshly assembled by us both according to these specs, but finished, thank you, by me.

*!grin!*

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: geeky

I finally finished a pair of handmade socks for me (sheesh).

I've tried to make socks for myself three times now--whether they fit me or no, someone always pops up for whom the socks are absolutely perfect and there's just no keeping them at that point. Besides, if I don't keep them, I can't lament about darning them (I hates darning, precious, hates it forever).

But this weekend, one for me--Knitty's Pomatomous, in Classic Elite's Alpaca Sox, color 1810 (Marine). If you go to the page, it's the kelly-green to peacock-blue colorway.

To keep things interesting, and to have the scale patterns mirror each other without having to redo the designer's charts, I did one sock toe-up and the other cuff-down. I don't have a good picture of the completed pair, but dpaxson did snap one of me holding them up, which you can see here (LJ's thumbnail here, click to enlarge:

dpaxson

lferion

dpaxson

lferion

lferion

Current Mood: exhausted

Hey! Randall Museum in SF is doing Bug Day this weekend. Events include:

1. Stroke silk worms


2. Sing along with live music


3. Create insect art


4. Marvel at the amazing Termite Maze


5. View giant arthropods


6. Cheer for your favorite in the exciting maggot races


7. See, meet, and touch walking sticks, millipedes, & other live arthropods!

Anyone interested in making Dandelion Wine? Given sufficient dandelion heads, we could have a Ray Bradbury short story by Solstice--although I do think it necessary to upgrade that yeast, sheesh.

-- Lorrie

As I walked up Van Ness to Max's for lunch, I heard a crow giving an alarm call from across the street. I looked--two crows flew in to help the first, who appeared to be fending off a few seagulls.

The rumble went on for a few minutes, until I realized what the fuss was really all about--the crows were mobbing one of San Francisco's own peregrine falcons. I only worked that out when I noticed that the other bird wasn't moving; pigeons will scatter before crows, seagulls and corvids duke things out, but true raptors? HahahaNO.

The falcon, perched atop one of the gables of City Hall, was distinctly indifferent to the goings-on. She half-raised one wing when the crows were close enough to ruffle it, but was otherwise unmoved. After a few moments of watching everything from my spot in front of the Opera House, I kept on toward lunch.

On the also-bright side, lunch was a roasted artichoke and a spinach salad. Yum!

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: content

The minor downtime earlier this week was to upgrade my server, lorien, from Ubuntu 6.04 (feisty fawn) to 7.10 (gutsy gibbon). Now, we're doing it all again, except we're going from 7.10 (gutsy gibbon) to 8.04 (hardy heron).

There will be a reboot, and some minor downtime associated with this upgrade. If problems, you know where to go. ;)

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: geeky

Happy Day of the Earth, of Gaia, of Nerthus and Jordh, of Terra Mater, of everyone and everything who live on, of, and in her!

Hail Holy Earth, Who Givest to All!

-- Lorrie

I'm about to run an OS upgrade on lorien, which is going to involve a reboot or two. There should be no significant downtime from this, but you never can tell.

Upgrade successful! Let me know if anything goes pear-shaped.

-- Lorrie

I finished the Churchmouse Beaded Beret I'd started last Wednesday for someone who may have quite forgotten she was due a hat from me, and so will be surprised to receive it. 8-)

The devotional silk stole is now too long to be really wieldy at a campout, or indeed anywhere outdoors, as it is now pushing five feet long (of its intended six). This is just about the only time I let myself have two projects on the needles at once: one portable, one less-so. Once the hat was off the needles, I could return my attention to (brace yourselves) a pair of socks for myself (whoa!).

I had started a toe-up pair of Cookie A's Pomatomous in Classic Elite's Alpaca Sox in the Marine colorway (#1810/Marine, fifth from left in Color Block 1--employing heel techniques from Danny Ouellette's Diamond Waffle Socks, as I am not now and will never be a fan of picking up stitches, and his heel avoids this entirely, instead doing clever things with a wrap-and-turn short-row heel that keep it from looking like a misplaced toe, as the simplest form of that heel often does. THis was all a fine idea, except that I had started the heel gusset too late, and the sock was, blast it, too long--there was nothing for it but to frog it, but now I'm back. Fish socks, fish socks, happy happy fish socks...

It was socks that have taught me just how goldurned modular knitting is. Socks is socks: it's going to be a tube one way or another, closed at one end with a jaunty right-angle bend partway along. If doing the rest of these things as just plain stocking stitch is, while faster, just to boring to be borne, snap something else in there: some lace, some cabling. Otherwise, continue on!

Last, special to medancer--on the lace shawl to come, you have said you would like a triangle. Would you like to go from the top down, where you cast on a few hundred stitches and decrease toward a point? Or top up, where you start with a scant handful of doughty stitches and increase to a few hundred, or Icelandic style, where you cast on along the two lower sides and work inexorably toward the top-center? The first two make strong horizontal motifs, the last makes diagonal lines, like a stack of chevrons. I personally find this last to be the most appealing to the eye and easiest to wear, but it's your shawl; what would you like?

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: creative

dpaxson, gnowun, and I went to the Ostara campout organized with but a fortnight's notice by Troth Redesman Steve Abell, with food cooked by the most excellent maiasaur and technosomething of Ulfgaldr. The weather, especially Friday night, was about the fourth-coldest I've ever slept through out-of-doors, but I'd known to plan for it, and moreover brought a stack of more warm things in case not everyone had seen the weather forecast and/or had warm stuff for the kids. They were needed, every one, save the cotton tapestry throw (it's more for show than warmth).

BUT! Despite the cold, there was good companionship, good mead, goodly fires, and a chance to reconnect with a site I dearly missed, and did not know I'd dearly missed until the prospect of being able to go back had asserted itself.

Oh, you heathens of Northern California, hear me:

Remember how we were told that the sites would all be improved right out of our price range? That there would be tacky tent cabins on both sides of the river? That various doomful portents and omens had been seen?

Let me tell you a thing, then:

They never put any tent cabins on "our" side of the river. There are cabin-cabins that look like either real log cabins, or manufactured homes with log facing, but they are not rentable due to lack of permits.

All the sites on "our" side have had their jury-rigged electrical outlets removed. While they've been replaced with RV-style tall pillars, because they don't have permits to use them, they're unable to be used.

However, all the crappy old concrete fire pits? Gone, replaced with cast iron, sand-filled ones. That was nice.

My read of the situation, based on things Stefn had said around the time of the Fernwood Farewell and continuing on things I'd heard from Fernwood staff while we were there, is that this permit failure is due to the environmental impact report they didn't file two years ago, so it's all still pending and may be for quite some time.

Anyway, returning to Fernwood was a balm to my soul and a comfort to my spirit. I know how many other engagements I broke off with little warning to do this...and I would do it all again, because I didn't know how much I missed that place, and camping with heathens, until I saw how strongly and emotionally I reacted to the chance to go back.

Thank you all...

-- Lorrie

PS: That list of Coldest Campouts:

1. Without a doubt, between temperature and lack of preparedness, CMA Beltane, 1999, in the Hill Country of West Texas. auntiematter and I, as members of Gaia's Voice, were invited to perform, and their hospitality was outstanding (what can you say when a 7' man named Tiny offers you deep-fried turkey the moment you pile out of the van, except "Yes, please!"?) The first night, we shivered on through in whatever we'd brought with us. The water bottles (the site didn't have potable water) were half-frozen by morning, and so were we. The second night, I did the mammalian thing and platonically shared a tent with one of the other sopranos.


2. Southwest Moot, Walpurgisnacht 2005, in the Sandia Mountains outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the intervening years, I'd bought a semi-mummy sleeping bag that was good and warm (rated to below 0°?), wool socks and silk sock liners, and had learned just enough knitting that I now had my very own Harry Potter scarf. An HP scarf is 7' long, which is good because I didn't have a warm hat...but with that much scarf you don't need one, just wrap the scarf (75% acrylic, yes, but 25% LIFE-SAVING WOOL) around head and neck and sleep like a baby. There were about eighteen people on-site the first night--on the second, less than one-third remained, the rest having repaired to a hotel. BAH! Another thing that helped was to have cots and sleeping mats, to keep your happy mammalian body away and insulated from the heat-sucking ground.


3. Feast of Ægir, September, 2005(?), Shaver Lake, CA. Add to the foregoing a Lands' End Down-Filled Commuter Coat. Cold? Nope.

Current Mood: content

As everyone here knows, I recently changed jobs, and with that, have had to change my retirement fund planning options.

Is that a bad topic? I feel strangely guilty admitting to being a pagan with some money (it seems better to admit to being a heathen with a some money), but one doesn't need much to get a bit off the top and into a retirement plan (although I admit it means living better than hand-to-mouth).

Look, I may make a little money, but if I don't have someone coming and stashing it for me pre-tax, I spend it. I know this. So: I do feel a little guilty admitting that I have it, but I'm here to make a point.

If any of you on my friends' list have a 401(k), 403(b), IRA, any of that jazz, take a look at your allocations and see if you can't direct some at a socially/environmentally responsive fund. Most of the outfits to allow for this--whoever's taking care of this money for you may have rolled their own, or may just be buying into someone else's, like Neuberger Berman's.

I daresay that putting that money there will, alas, do more long-term good than my donations to the Sierra Club and so on.

-- Lorrie

Seen on cuteotters:

This sequence of shots shows the interaction between an Otter and a Coyote that I was privileged enough to witness. It’s taking place in West Thumb, Yellowstone. The nearby geothermal activity keeps the surface of Yellowstone lake ice free in some places. The otter takes advantage of the holes in the ice to allow it easy access to dive for fish. The Coyote is hoping for an easy meal by harassing the Otter into dropping any fish that it has caught. This Otter was way too smart for this and teased and taunted the Coyote for about 10 minutes before the Coyote eventually gave up and left.

Current Mood: i-has-a-FEESH

Remembering maiasaur's toast to Thor and Sif from last Wednesday's Hrafnar, I was moved to repost this.

Remember, folks, Al Jazeera is not the Voice of Al Quaeda (who can speak for themelves)--they're more like "BBC for the Muslim world". I've no commentary to offer, here.

The Recipe for Food Rights
( Text here for the clickphobic, except you still have to click, MWAHAHAHA )

Dear Self:

Trader Joe's Dijon Mustard is a little too mustardy to work well in a honey-mustard salad dressing, unless by "salad dressing" you mean "sinus cleaner", because WHOA.

On the bright side, hey! Your nose is clear!

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: amused

Today's To-Do:

• Get Idunna 54 (Tyr) into PDF, another victim of the same crazy upconversions. Done!



• Start new batch of kombucha (from commercially produced bottle thereof). Monster Ranching!


• Complete another batch of 24 rows on aforementioned devotional shawl.


• Spend Quality Knittin' an' Kiwi Time with medancer.


• Quality Tea (and more Kiwi) time with dpaxson, grendel_todd, and whomever else attends (apel? medancer? Always a plesantly metaversal adventure is Greyhaven Tea...)


• Observe the baby sourdough starter and cheer him on, feeding if necessary. I'm starting him on rye instead of wheat, that's sure to slow things down.


• Make labneh. (failed--I'm sick! I hope to have the spoons to combine the two yogurts into one cheese tomorrow)


• Start half-red, half-white sauerkraut (mmm, sauerkrant), again with all wild beasties (not as scary as The Man™ would have you think). (failed--too sick to relish all the knifework involved in slicing all that cabbage without a mandoline)

• Picked up a cold from dpaxson. She is, however, most apologetic and brought me several cups of nettle tea while I worked on Idunna 54. If my run of this is like hers, it will be swiftly done with.

• Learn the Secrets of the Universe.


• Defeat the Enemies of the World.

Current Mood: sick

• Got Idunna 53 (Heathen Music) into PDF format (PageMaker 5.5->PageMaker 6.5->InDesign CS 1...WHEE!).


• Supported my local farmers' market (yay!).


• Attended AMUH Business Meeting & @Home


• Put one batch of yogurt up and started another. Tomorrow, these will combine and make labneh!


• Twenty-four rows (one more motif of 25 total) on my latest devotional shawl.


• One devotional necklace (white moonstone beads, round, 6mm, white jade pendant) beaded.


• Made reservations to attend the Return to Fernwood Campout proposed by Troth Redesman Steve Abell.
  
• Announced same, plus declared intent to seidh, goldurnit. If insufficient interest for the pog & dony show, may hold impromptu Black Hat Party in same grove.


• Checked on my baby sourdough starter, process as described in The Bread Bible, working from all wild yeast, because, uh, I have some of the best on earth right here.


• Wrote various bits and bobs to many of you good folks.

• Get Idunna 54 (Tyr) into PDF, another victim of the same crazy upconversions.


• Make labneh.


• Start half-red, half-white sauerkraut (mmm, sauerkrant), again with all wild beasties (not as scary as The Man™ would have you think).


• Start new batch of kombucha (from commercially produced bottle thereof). Monster Ranching for Fun and Profit Probiota!


• Complete another batch of 24 rows on aforementioned devotional shawl.


• Spend Quality Knittin' an' Kiwi Time with medancer.


• Quality Tea (and more Kiwi) time with dpaxson, grendel_todd, and whomever else attends (apel? medancer? Always a plesantly metaversal adventure is Greyhaven Tea...)


• Observe the baby sourdough starter and cheer him on, feeding if necessary. I'm starting him on rye instead of wheat, that's sure to slow things down.

• Learn the Secrets of the Universe.


• Defeat the Enemies of the World.

Current Mood: whimsical

I have just purchased Volume 14 of jms's script books for Babylon 5--because I'd picked up volumes 1-13, 14 will have with it the free Volume 15, full of fangirl completeness goodies.

I never bought a single toy--I did buy one accessory, a Ranger pin for lferion because it was the Right Thing for her Ranger costume. I have the Centauri, Psi Corps, and Technomage trilogies of novels, and To Dream in the City of Sorrows, because they are the most canon.

When I go to a new job, I name my stationary workstation zog, and my laptop anla-shok. My server is named lorien in a double-canon nod.

I first saw Babylon 5 while visiting talek in Colorado. I seem to recall we were in a third party's basement, with those carefully-hoarded tapes that were, then, the hallmark of that sort of fen: Denver was a market where the show's schedule was best divined with Whack-A-Mole. The Bay Area is kinder in that regard (and our fen more fanged), so the task was easier when I came home and started up what would become a most happy habit.

I still have complete VHS tapes of Seasons 4 and 5, taped from broadcast, plus the last few of Season 3. They fill a whole drawer, whereas the DVD's that replaced them are a fraction of the space.

It was never about the toys; it was about the words, and now I will have them.

'scuse me while I curl up on top of my hoard and make contented puffs of smoke.

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: geeky

Lorrie Wood is a Linux systems administrator and sometime webmistress who has plied her trade for mad scientists, amoral admen, the Borg of Mordor, and itinerant gods. Sometimes, she gets confused about which convention this is, and may need to be reminded that this is the May convention where String Theory refers to visualization and manipulation of multi-dimensional space, not the February one where String Theory refers to visualization and manipulation of the fates of men. She has been known to stand still--rarely--generally in the company of good songs, good stories, good food, or fascinating fiber arts. Thus, Baycon is a good place to find her.

;)

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: geeky

Courtesy of ardaniel

Ooooo--this one works:

Current Mood: geeky