I'm in the field again on assignment, this time well south of the Mason-Dixon line. Far enough south, in fact, that people actually have accents, and truck stops are the primary means of acquiring what one needs to live, such as food, fuel, and automobile parts. It seems that my cow-orker and I didn't get the luck of the draw when it came to the hotel this time. We're staying in hotel that specializes in hosting conventions and conferences near the beach, but doesn't specialize in actually putting people up for the night. On the whole, it's not such a …
I'm back in Maryland on week two of (possibly two, possibly three) of my field assignment. I'm in another hotel in the same general vicinity as before and approaching dead tired after a long weekend of hot weather, running around, and pulling all nighters of one sort or another. I was running rather late today because I had a number of errands to run, which I took care of before starting the laundry, but now it's academic because it all worked out. Thankfully, the headache and aftermath of heatstroke last night went away while I slept, so I woke up …
I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'll give everyone the highlights:
Lyssa and I got back from Pennsylvania around 0000 EST5EDT this morning. Grandma Pat's funeral went smoothly, the wake was small (as wakes go) and reasonably uneventful. I wound up sleeping through most of it because I was still dead tired from driving all Friday night up to Pennsylvania after work, got up early to get ready and dressed, and attend the memorial service. We left around 1845 EST5EDT on Saturday night and, after driving through one of the nastiest rainstorms to hit the tri-state …
After the main rite on Saturday, everyone sort of split up and went off to do their own things for a while. Lyssa and I went down to the kitchen to grab dinner, which was a potluck assembled out of dishes supplied by everyone at Thresholds this year. Corvaxgirl was kind enough to take command of the kitchen while the rest of us up top were doing witchy-type stuff to make it all happen. A few weeks ago, Hasufin and Lyssa canned a couple of quarts of chicken soup, so our contribution was a box of one quart jars of …
Lyssa and I got home on Sunday afternoon safe and sound from Walking the Thresholds. We also got home from the Skinny Puppy concert tonight about an hour ago.
Last week some very good friends of Lyssa and I (Heron61 and Teaotter) stayed with us for a couple of days, and then we headed out to the Four Quarters Farm for the gather called Walking the Thresholds - camping for three days in the middle of the woods of Pennsylvania, completely off the grid, with good friends and extended family, eccentrics one and all, for company.
Sounds like fun... and it was, for the most part.
Teaotter went to stay with Laurelinde and family around the middle of last week, so there were only three of us who packed up …
Yesterday afternoon Lyssa and I struck out northward for New England to visit Jean, an old friend just over the Connecticut border. We loaded up the newly repaired TARDIS and headed for the Beltway around 1500 EST5EDT yesterday afternoon.
Now, seeing as how it was the day before Memorial Day weekend began, we should have realised how bad the traffic on the Beltway was going to be, but we'd figured that if we left early we'd beat the rush and not experience any undue delays.
This was not the case. The Beltway was a parking lot of people leaving work …
My new USB audio recorder rocks all known sheep. I'm currently recording the third tape of.. who knows.. and the damage done to the tapes from listening to them so much over the years aside, the recordings are very clear and clean.
Well, there are slightly more than twenty-four hours left in the year 2006 of the common era, and I am still figuring out what in the hell happened to my vacation. No, seriously. I'm not complaining about not getting a vacation or anything like that, I'm really wondering what happened to it. At …
Lyssa pointed me at an article that brought up something that never occurred to me - how libraries manage the limited amount of space they have for all of their materials. This is to say, they keep track of how often each book is checked out (much easier to do since card catalogues and patron records went digital in the mid 1990's) and if it isn't touched for longer than a certain time, they either throw the books out (dumpster diving at the local library is how I got most of my books when …
