pottery bar

ok, so i have to run an errand for my mom at the other end of the res and i paddled down there and there was a nice square chunk of clay that had fallen in the water from one of the clay banks.


so i picked it up and put it on my bow and then i went up to a sand bank and got the finest sand i could find to wedge it with.

and then i spent a week making some little primitive pots. they are not fancy, but once again, i am learning skills.

and i spent some time stone burnishing them, and i let them dry out on the rock, bringing them in under tarps at night.

and while i waited, i cut and piled firewood. you need a lot of firewood to fire pots in a pit kiln.

i rebuilt the fireplace on site 13. i laid in a base of wood on the bottom. i covered it with a bucket load of an invasive water plant i had pulled up. i packed my little pots with it and with pine needles and such. i buried and packed them and laid my fire on top of them.

and then i lit that fire and kept it hot all day.

the hard part was letting the pit cool down the next day, and the day after.

because you can't take those pots out of there until they're cool.

the pottery bar

first day fire

second day coals

pots!

stay tuned for the exciting denoument

here is a video i started recording, but then ran out of battery.

it's not well focused, but you get an idea of what morning light was that day.

also, it's a teaser.

don't  you want to know why i had lit a bigass fire first thing in the morning?

the world is not your ashtray.

about half the time when i see people smoking in public, i see those same people toss their butt onto the ground.

sometimes they do this without even bothering to put it out first.

i have known a few smokers who field strip their butts and pocket the filters. mostly, you get this:



no points for arranging them neatly. none.

the breakfast room

sometimes when i live on a campsite, parts of it begin to feel like different rooms of a house.

on sire 13, i had the breakfast room.

the spit of rock down at the boat landing was reasonably flat and level and it got the morning sun well ahead of the rest of camp, so in the mornings it was very pleasant to go down there and have breakfast in my chair with a book.




here is the view from the breakfast room that same morning.




and here is the food prep / work  / tool storage area.

baggery

ever since i got it into my head to make a hammock out of paracord last year,  i have also been making some other paracord projects because why not?


chain sinnet is my knot of the year, apparently,  and i have bade a few bags with it. they're not lightweight bags, because a standard water bottle will take somewhere around 70 feet of paracord. i like it for smaller pouches the kind you might use to carry something that needs a little padding, like a charge box or such. and in an emercency, you have 70 feet of paracord.

i used this guy's method.

adventures in grocery shopping

i have an addiction to bolthouse farms mocha cappucino beverage.

i am not proud of this for a lot of reasons, but also my day sucks if i don't drink half a 32 -ounce bottle to start it every morning.

so every week i but 3 to 6 bottles, depending on sale price and how many i actually have on hand. lately the supply has been wonky so yesterday i decided to call ahead before i made a special trip into town just to buy this ONE THING.

hello, my name is (name) and i'm calling to see if you have bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino in the 32 oz. bottle.
what were you looking for?
bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino in the 32 ounce size.
hang on a moment.

i am put on hold, and another person answers the phone.

hello.
hi, i'm calling to see if you have the 32 oz. size of bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino.
what?
the 32 oz size of bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino.
oh, mocha coffeemate? i'm sure we have that.
no, bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino. in the 32 ounce bottle.
yeah, we have mocha.
bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino? in the 32 ounce bottle? in the produce section?
oh. this is grocery.

i am put on hold again.

this is (name), in produce.
hi, my name is (name) and i'm calling to ask if you have bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino in the 32 ounce size.
hold on and i'll go check.

...waiting...

i have three bottles. when you get here just knock on the door. (this is the door at the back of the produce department. it is understood that i have done this before.)


so i get in my car and drive twenty-some-odd minutes to the grocery store and i go knock on the door and the nice lady says brightly oh, you're here for the protein plus.

no, i'm here for mocha cappuccino.
oh, well last week somebody called for the protein plus.
i called about the mocha cappuccino.
let's go look.

we get there and there are no 32 ounce bottles of bolthouse farms mocha cappuccino, but there are a lot of 15 oz bottles.

this is a problem to me because the 15 ounce bottles are very much more expensive per ounce than the 32 ounce bottle. i say that this right here is why i called the store from home before driving twenty minutes over here for this one thing and she says she'll ask her manager if she can sell me two 15 ounce bottles for the same price as the 32 ounce bottle.

i tell her that i need that price to be the same as if i'm buying fifteen ounces at that price, or else i am buying 30 ounces for the price of 32, and the woman just looks confused.

she comes back some minutes later with the very good news that her manager has approved for me to buy two fifteen ounce bottles for the same price as the 32 ounce bottle and she has no idea why i don't want to pay the same price for 30 ounces as i would pay for 32. she does not understand why i think this is not a good deal, and she keeps repeating that i'm getting TWO.

and i keep saying yes, but the two together are still SMALLER than the one big one and this is why i called from home. because i wanted the 32 ounce bottle.

and she said you could order a case.

and i said i wanted them TODAY. that's why i called from home ahead of time and got in my car and drove twenty minutes to get them.

and she said you could order some and they would be here by sunday.


...

more malvina

you don't hear enough of her these days.

the wolf at the door

yesterday was a rough day for me, i think.

yesterday i learned that i have lupus.

that's a mixed bag and i feel ambivalent and kind of smacked around.

the mixed part is i'm over fifty years old and have always HAD lupus, so it's not like all of a sudden i have a disease i didn't have before.

i have lived for a long time with a lot of pain and weird allergies and unexplained flareups of medical problems that are here and gone but it's just pretty much been my baseline condition.

fatigue and pain that come and go and for which there's never been any explanation.

the doctor said "rheumatoid arthritis and lupus" and i just continued nodding while he talked of treatment options.

and then "hey wait. are you saying i have either of those things?"

and he said "probably both. but with the DNA marker and the antibodies and the symptoms, yes. you have lupus."

so i felt sad about that, but all of a sudden there's a REASON for a lot of these things and beyond there being a reason (and boy, i tell ya, that  takes a weight off of you), there are also TREATMENTS.

there are no guarantees any of them will work and it may take time to find something that does and even with good treatment, there's always the risk of flare-ups.

but HOLY SHIT it puts some hope in me, because "i am in pain and the pain has no known reason and it is only going to get worse as i age" was not giving me a lot of hope.

also, here's more good news. i wear glasses. sometimes (skiing and biking) i wear contacts. those things are expensive enough, but my insurance does not cover those doctor visits. now as a bona fide lupus patient, i'm going to have to go to an OPTHALMOLOGIST for a yearly checkup and while i'm there they can also update my glasses prescription and THAT'S covered by my insurance.

i am mary sunshining the hell outta this.

because i feel kind of beat up.

drinking the milk

i'm lactose intolerant to a degree. this is not unusual.

but i like cold cereal sometimes.

this has largely been a process for me of letting the cereal get moist and then draining the milk out of the spoon. drinking the milk was out of the question.

and then MB turned me on to almond milk.

it is a whole different world out there.

little baskets

i am experimenting with primitive weavings, and while i was out on site 13 i used cattails to make some little baskets.

they are not terrible sophisticated, and i have not really learned the skills, but it's a start.





it's not that same as little boxes, but malvina reynolds was awesome.

sweet potato

here's a thing you can cook on your campfire.

it is delicious.

cut your sweet potato crosswise and stuff it with a little butter and two marshmallows. then bake it in foil as you would any other potato.

amenities of modern life

thursday afternoon we had a thing that was not really a storm, but it carried sporadic strong wind gusts.

starting about 6:30 i as without electricity. which also means no heat and no water.

ok, so no shower, even though i had skipped a day and really needed one.

and then yesterday afternoon i was suddenly without water.

apparently the electrical line to our pumphouse was fried and both our well guy and our electrician need to tend to it, and our electrician is not available so MAYBE if we can get someone else to do it today we MIGHT have water by tonight.

last night i bathed respectably well in my tub with jug water i heated up in the kitchen.

occasionally i get confused and cannot remember whether is is the water or the electricity that is out.

fo instance i go into a room and don't turn on a light because i forget it's the water and not the power.

in other news, i got my first solid nights sleep last night and had completely unremarkable dreams about normal things.

last night i dreamed

i was attending freshman "formal dinner" for the school where i used to work. it was more or less just gathering the freshman class in decent clothes to eat together using actual table manners. since i no longer work there and didn't have to stay i slipped out the back to go to sleep in my car.

i was hoping to make out with MB, but she was working on some documents so i went back into the mcdonalds to use the bathroom but there was someone in one of the stalls so i decided to practice a soft shoe dance and while i was doing that someone else came in and went straight into the empty stall and i felt a little embarrassed because i probably could have just done that, but my brown loafers(1) looked sharp, so i kept dancing.

when i was done, the manager came to tell me that the restrooms were only for the use of PAYING customers and i said "oh, i'm paying" and then i decided to walk to MB's apartment.

when i got to new york, it took me a long time wandering up and down hallway after hallway of farmer's market stalls before i finally came out in times square, which as you know features some sculptures by george rickey(2) and is carpeted in bright orange and hot pink with wavy lines(3)(3.5).

a cop ran by me very fast, as if on his way to an emergency and when i got there a woman with a VERY LARGE revolver had just shot a man for opening a can of soup. since i happened to have a can of soup with me, i threatened to open it and she threatened to kill me for it, but i made some sarcastic remarks about soup cans in general and turned my back on her and walked away.

it was tense for a few moments, but apparently sarcasm about soup cans is an effective defense to gun violence and i was unharmed. the officer was angry, though.

it was sunrise on the deserted streets on new york (4) and as i descended a very long concrete staircase into a totally empty parking lot i was thinking that i wanted to get home to MB and "why am i wasting time walking when i could take the subway?"

so i made my way to the vietto subway stop(5) and tried to buy a metrocard and there was no machine to do that, but there WAS a machine for subway TOKENS(6) so i put my last fifty cents into that and it gave me $3.32 canadian (a loonie, a twonie, a quarter, a nickel and two pennies)(7) plus a large ball of aluminum foil and a few grosgrain ribbons that had for some reason been silver-plated.

i had to doublecheck that i was at the right subway stop. yes, VIETTO.

and i couldn't get in. couldn't find a single living person.

so then i was in a hotel room with my friend barb and i was trying to find a clean pair of bike shorts and for some reason barb was building a wheelchair ramp for somebody as a pretext for some kind of investigation and we were talking and we didn't want people watching to be suspicious so i picked up a brush and started staining it brown.

bard said she didn't know how wide to make the ramp, and i said "i think you're going to have to ask the client" and now we were for real building a ramp in a hotel room instead of fake building a ramp in a hotel room and i do not know exactly when this happened, but i had picked up some sort of combo meal and it had way more food in the bag than seemed physically possible, but it included a breaded chicken breast sandwiched between two hash brown patties.

then barb decided to wash a tarp covered in cement mix in my washing machine and that did not go well.

there was a five foot high wave of grey water that swept across my basement and i was trying to get ahead of it, picking up my red wool socks and the grey cabin socks before they got wet and for some reason this made barb mad.

and then i was sweeping dirt and leaves off of my front steps while my mother and sister watched out the window and it was kind of an all day job and i was only two steps into it (8) and i realized that the party guests were going to be arriving in a few minutes and i had no food in the house.

that's about when i woke up.

it is no surprise that i do not feel well-rested.




(1) i do not own any brown shoes that are not hiking boots.
(2) it does not.
(3) it is not.
(3.5) part of place bonaventure in montreal used to have a carpet like that back in the late '70s. i still have nightmares about it.
(4) this just does not happen in new york.
(5) correct me if i'm wrong, but i do not believe such a thing exists in new york.
(6) they don't have subway tokens anymore in new york.
(7) they don't have pennies in canada anymore.
(8 i don't have front steps.

brave new world

yesterday, we lived in a world where no living person had ever seen the cubs win a world series.

awesome. go cubs.

headlamp lantern redux

i did it the first time because it was in the venture challenge.

while i was living on site 13, i kept one in the evenings on my boat landing and it was pretty.

sorry about the picture quality; i took the picture with low light from my boat, but you get the idea.

it was cold

on the 25th of september, it was cold at my campsite. cold and windy.

there was nothing for me to do but to crawl into a sunny spot out of the wind and bask.

down below the main site, in the shadow of the big rock, the ferns were warm and aromatic.

here is what it looked like from where i lay:



and here is what i looked like.

somewhere in the back

on the back of a tree on the back of a remote site on waterbury reservoir, you will find this:

weird shit

up on site 7 (which was back in august) i kept finding an animal scat i could not identify.

and by "kept finding", i mean that whatever animal it was would keep returning to deposit one of these very near the center of the site.





so i don't know what animal made it. i have recently become an expert on the scats of the squirrels of the res, and i have more than a passing familiarity with the scats of mice, rabbits, and rats. i'm also pretty good with moose, deer, porcupine, and bear. foxes and bobcats are a little harder, but usually contain hair. and i don't know my weasels very well.

this one, well, it's shaped like batshit, but way too big for it. and it breaks apart to these crumble bits that look like seed hulls but could be insect exoskeletons.

do either of you know?

interpreter gig

ok, so y'all know that i like to do projects.

and after that xylophone project, the park manager from the nearby state park came to visit and she said "OMG! you have to come to the park and do program!"

and i said i wasn't sure i was qualified, but she said i could just come do the stuff that i usually do in my campsite and we'll let people come look.

so when the regular interpreter went away for a couple of weeks to get married, i stepped in.



i came prepared to do some experimental weaving, and to teach people to make cordage, which is pretty much what we did, along with some little whistles and such out of willow and knotweed.

here's my first basket, made of blackberry bramble.

team slow loris

i saw this in the shaw's parking lot in waterbury in august.



team slow loris
slow, deliberate, and slightly toxic

no. it is not time.

on monday i heard my first christmas carols of the season for a teevee ad.

seriously? a week before halloween?

look you asshats. if you're not selling your chiristmas crap as much as usual as christmas because the economy is bad, why not pay your workers enough to buy things instead of pushing them into poverty and then cranking up the christmas shopping so they can buy the socks and underwear and things they need and probably run themselves into debt doing it?

maybe if you paid your workers living wage the could afford to have halloween and thanksgiving AND you'd sell stuff at christmas.

try it and see.

tour of campsite 13

i lived here for two weeks.

it is one of the most popular sites on the res, and for good reason.

here's some random stuff.

while i was not organizing my thoughts to tell you, i managed to look at some things and i am sharing them now with you in the interest of closing some tabs.

first, i am thinking of buying a bottle of this.


bottled coyote urine


because squirrels are horrible.

here is an informative resource:

http://www.stilltasty.com/

...and here are two videos.

while i'm failing to get my stuff together

...maybe you would like to watch this.

Planet Unknown from Shawn Wang on Vimeo.

failure to get organized

i've been home from my camping trip for two whole days (going on three) and i have pretty much failed to get organized enough to post things.

the problem is i got caught up trying to put things into some kind of sequence and then i end up not posting anything.

maybe i'll just start here and then post in whatever order i have things ready in and maybe you won't care if my story is linear.

ok? ok.

favorite camp tool

my new favorite camp tool:



yep, cheap hemostats.

surgical grade ones are kinda pricey, but cheap ones will do just fine for camping, and they come in ten-packs.

excellent for your craft project, but i like them best for striking camp when i have to untie all the knots i've tied. or for picking out a splinter. or for hanging things on a line.

leaving the door open

you can close the outhouse door when you use it, or you can leave it open.

depends what kind of a view you want.

seal of approval

back in september i went camping with my mom and her friends at salisbury beach state reservation in MA.

they like to go down to the river at low sunrise or its nearest low tide to have a look at the harbor seals.

one morning i decided to go for a paddle in the rivermouth just before low tide so i could mess about in the water and paddle against current and then be assured of paddling WITH the current which is kinda important because i am not an experienced ocean paddler and the tides were expected to be strong, courtesy hurricane hermine.

it's not like i was going to paddle in a hurricane. it was a clear blue morning and storm not expected to arrive for another eighteen hours yet, but strong winds and strong tides, yanno?

anyway. i put in at the boat launch and i paddled out around the channel markers. there are all kinds of warnings about not getting too close to the seals because people coming up taxes them, but i figured out in the channel ought to be sufficiently far away to pass.

then i messed around in the harbor and played with the waves and stuff and it was all very exciting for li'l ole me and then i saw my mom 'n' everybody come down to the beach so i paddled in to see them and then paddled out again out by the channel marker, and then i was taking a picture of the daymark, minding my own business and i went to put my camera way when i noticed over my shoulder two harbor seals poking their heads up out of the water.

they were close. like, scarily close. close enough for me to see in their nostrils while they sniffed me.

that was, for me, a weirdly vulnerable feeling: me in my little boat in unfamiliar water, with several hundred pounds of marine mammal sniffing at me from WAY TOO close.

i am not sure, but one may have bumped the bottom of my boat.

i felt a bump. i was surrounded by seals. it's not as much fun as it sounds.

a rambling story with some birds

ok, so first thing i want you to know is i do not own a camera with a telephoto lens. my best camera is a pocket camera and for a pocket camera it is a vey fine camera and that's great because i'm always shoving it into my pocket or into a drybag and yet i still want to take decent pictures and be able to shoot on manual.

it still doesn't shoot closeup pics unless i get really CLOSE UP to a thing.

ok, so on my way out toward the moscow boat access, the channel is marked by two dead trees, one of which always looks like there's a bird sitting on it. plus often there's a bird sitting on it.

so i was heading north toward the boat access and i saw some otters and then i was looking at a bunch of cormorants sitting on a log, and trying to figure if those ducks over there were mergansers so i was looking off to my left when i came up level with the dead tree on the right side and even though i was pretty close it was kind of foggy because early morning and as i was drifting closer and closer i kept thinking "wow. it is really amazing how the end of that log always looks like there's a bird perched on it."

and then suddenly i realized that now i was eyeball-to-talon with a very large eagle which had been up until that point sitting very still.

it gave me a bad look and then flew off.

an eagle is a very large thing to be looking at you that closely.

and not in an affectionate way.

but the eagle preferred me when i was looking the other way, and so as soon as i was looking at it, it flew off so of course no pictures.

ok, so then i got the things i needed out of my car and started going back down and when i got tot he snag that marks the opening into the main camping area, there was a cormorant sitting there. i don't care if they're common and they get shit on everything; i like cormorants.

and this one let me get close enough to take a really nice picture.

very, very close.

worth noting

a dream come true

some months ago i got a new tv. it had been my grandmother's, but it was smaller (but bigger screen) and HD and more "modren" and all that.

problem was, i had to turn it on and off by way of the remote, which meant no more convenient hitting the button on my way in or out of the room.

and then one night i dreamed there was a BUTTON ON THE TEEVEE ITSELF.

it seemed like such a realistic dream.

a button.

so a couple days later when i looked, there it was.

a button.

to turn the teevee on and off. right where you'd expect it to be.

it is a dream come true.

packed up

last time i left my campsite i was only pausing at home before joining a girl scout troop for a campout, so i had to pack my car with mind to unpacking it again at a new campsite, all fresh and tidy.

so.

let's redefine paradise.

this here is the bow of my boat, in a lovely sunset on quiet water.

the thing in front of me is a potato. it is a hot, freshly-baked, perfectly done potato. soft inside, crunchy, salty skin, eaten to the last light of day, rocked gently in the water.

paradise.

fishparts

so i was up on the res one morning and i saw this thing floating in the water.

i am in the habit of picking up floating trash in the res. i try not to get all uppity about that because even though on the aggregate i pick up way more than i leave, the occasional piece gets away from me.

and i was like, ewww. who would throw a plastic tampon applicator in the res?

but then i picked it up.

so it's a little balloon-like thing, and smells rather strongly of fish. and i was wondering what part of a fish i might be holding. maybe the swim bladder?

yep.

swim bladder

funeral at sea

i came home to find this in my downstairs toilet:

so i had a brief funeral.

it went like this: "sorry 'bout that, dude."

you otter be in pictures

earlier this summer i was paddling up the little cove that has the semi-legal duck blind on it (it is legal in every way except the gentleman does not remove it after duck season) and a bunch of heads popped out of the water.

like a LOT of heads. slinky animals, not like beaver. i thought they were mink. i have since been informed and research suggests that they were river otters.

but still weasels. swimming weasels. more than six, less than a dozen.

but we were all going the same direction and nobody looked too upset. then we all got close to the back end of the cove where the weasels decided apparently that it was tie for me to go and they all started swimming toward me, rearing up out of the water and hissing.

now, if one weasel swims up to you, that's a kind of manageable number because you could probably fend it off with your paddle.

but eight or nine angry weasels in your boat would be a nightmare, so i turned around and got out of there, which is probably what they had in mind anyway.

then more recently i was paddling up to the moscow canoe access and a bunch of them came up and sniffed me, bobbing around in the water. the hissed a little sniffed me a little, checked me out, and went on their way.

river otters.

cool.

there are idiots among us.

up at the moscow boat launch, when people come out of campsites for an afternoon but are coming back, they sometimes lock their boat to a tree.

there's a rental company that operates on the res also, and they will instruct people to leave the boat locked to a tree for later pickup.

the day i packed to go home, some idiots didn't lock the rental boat to a tree, but TO MY LOCKS.



do not ask me why they thought that was a good idea. i took my locks and went home.

junior ranger

it is indeed late in the year for me to just be finishing up my venture challenge scoresheet, but i wanted to become a vermont state parks junior ranger.

it's on the challenge every year and i have been curious, so this year after i did a hitch as the substitute interpreter at little river (did i even TELL you about that yet?) i thought this would be a good year to do it, so i got myself the booklet (printed on handsome stock) and set to work.

it's INTENDED for children, but the regular interpreter tells me that adults do it sometimes. children under nine do the slamander pages, children over nine do the beaver pages, and adults do the whole honkin' book.

it took me three weeks.

you can download your copy here.

so anyway, i did all the activities and then i went over to the park o a sunday morning for the wrapup and brain administered the OATH and now i am officially an vermont state parks junior ranger.

brian gave me one of the old style badges along with my current one because he had leftovers, i guess. the new one is very handsome and i am proud of it.

it's little NOW...

i found this little dude hiding out under my boat.

it makes me wonder how many really BIG snapping turtles are in the res.

...where i swim.

out.

oh, yeah. i went camping.

i'll tell you about it later, probably.

butter me up

here's a flask life hack: are you ever hesitant to melt better in the microwave because of the godawful way it splatters and you're too lazy to put a paper towel over it or something?

two videos about driving

that third verse

in the wake of the kaepernick firestorm (look it up yourself if you need to) a lot of people are talking about that third verse of the star-spangled banner.

imma save you some trouble.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, 
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion 
A home and a Country should leave us no more? 
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution. 
No refuge could save the hireling and slave 
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

ok, so let's talk about this. teh twittrz was all upset about this "they glorify slavery RIGHT IN THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!"

no.

they do not.

it IS racist, but not for the reasons you're seeing on the internet.

this is a lyric that was famously penned during the war of 1812, when it was common for  white men of the ruling class to complain bitterly about their treatment first under british colonial rule and then in the early days of the nation to complain about treatment by the former colonizers in language that compared them to slaves, and compared the loyalists and soldiers to the king to "hirelings and slaves".

this is WHITE MEN outraged at their treatment BY OTHER WHITE MEN. they are complaining in terms that compare themselves to actual slaves. they are outraged to be treated AS SLAVES (which they are, by the way, not.) and they also make the comparison that white men still loyal to the king ARE SLAVES. it is meant as an insult. it is a taunt built on the concept that the worst thing you could say about a WHITE MAN OF PRIVILEGE is to liken him to the everyday status of slaves, who are at this time in this place, black people.

if you look at the lists of grievances that led to the war of 1812, many of the documents include the problem of respect, in which our founding fathers likened their treatment by england to that of slaves.

that they could apply this comparison to themselves and not give a second thought to their systematic ownership of black people is deeply, offensively racist, but no. the national anthem does not have a hidden verse that glorifies slavery.

it has a little-known third verse that shows the founding fathers to be whinypants complainy everyday racists elevating themselves in their perceived Natural Order Of Things.

a very polite wrapper

i'm not sure why this is worth a post; i thought it was funny.



"please", it says. your coffee cup is all about WARNINGS but this says "please".

i officially hate this day.

i decided to make some chickpea blondies.

they are delicious and have a can of chickpeas in the, so added protein, so you can call them halfway healthy.

typically when i use the food processor, i take the opportunity to clean behind it and make a good scrubbing of the counter. so i had just cleaned all that when i reached up in the overhead cabinet for something and you know how the can of hershey's cocoa powder has gotten flimsier over the past few years, so that it doesn't really hold its shape once the seal is broken and you're just using the lid which now doesn't really stay on?

yeah. i officially hate this day.

when i work

the sanders campaign made good use of a lot of free apps and services out there to organize its YUGE volunteer army. one of the services used by the dialer monitor team was When I Work, which was a pretty handy little doohickey.

not long ago they asked me if i would participate in a survey.

i didn't have much going on that day, so i said sure.

here, paraphrased, is the whole conversation:

WIW: how likely are you to recommend wheniwork to a future employer?

ME: not at all.

WIW: why not?

ME: meh. retired.

WIW: thank you for your feedback. we would like to send you a free t-shirt.

ok, so i like free stuff. free clothing is free clothing.

burkini

i am against religious clothing because i'm against religion.

however, bans on religious clothing like france's appalling ban are less about secularity than they are about discriminating against SOME religions. because really, when you decide that it's not ok for women to cover their faces, you're not just making a declaration about women's faces. you already know WHICH women wish to keep their faces covered.

and fuck you, france.

and anyone else who wants to police women's dress. because let's make no mistake about it: this is much less about religion than it is about policing what women wear.

it's none of your damn business, ok?

personally, i tend to the modest side. i prefer to go about in all seasons in long sleeves and sometimes a hat. it has nothing to do with god (whom i believe simply doesn't exist) and nothing to do with body shame. i'm just more comfortable covered up.

also, i sunburn through clothing sometimes, so there's that.

i had a look at this little bathing costume that's causing such an international fuss.

really? that is totally something i would wear, especially the 3/4 length sun protecting model.

because when i go to the beach, i already go wearing tights and a long sleeve shirt. and often a HAT.

philosophically, i don't approve of religion. any religion, so i take a dim view of clothing that people feel they need to wear to fulfill their obligations under religion.

but i think it's more important for people to be able to go out into their world and interact with it dressed as they choose. i mean really? practically? you're not making the world more secular by forcing religious people to either abandon their clothing preferences or stay home. if you want a more secular society, you should really let people pass freely and dress however the hell they want and maybe it just won't be such a big deal.

laundry basket.

this happened last night.

at some point during the day i dumped the laundry basket out onto the bed with the intention of putting the clean laundry away. i did not finish this task, and went to put the laundry back in the basket, only i had apparently taken it downstairs to get the rest of the clean laundry so i was attempting to stuff the clean laundry in a duffel but then just decided to go ALL THE WAY DOWNSTAIRS to get the basket but then before i got out of the bedroom i tripped.

...over the empty laundry basket.

small scavenger hunt

no, not THE SCAVENGER HUNT, but a small scavenger hunt as part of the vermont state parks junior ranger program. i have seen this thing on the venture challenge every year and since i did a short volunteer hitch at little river this season -did i even tell you that? i'm going to havet to tell you about that.

anyway, i thought it would be a good time to earn my junior ranger badge. i will talk to you more about that later (really), but right now i just want to toss up the pics i used for the scavenger hunt.

two different types of leaves

this picture has in it two kinds of ferns, both with pinnate leaves (as ferns are wont to have), but the fern on the left has bipinnate leaves, which means the leaf is twice-cut, or divided pinnately a second time.










three brown things

 here we have a symphony of browns: brown leaf, brown board, brown rock, brown mud.













something crunchy

these two sounds underfoot: gravel, and dry leaves.


















two pieces of litter

i looked really hard inside the park (little river) for this, but did not find any trash. i found some right outside the gate near the boat launch, though.

i'm assuming we're supposed to pick this up and dispose of it? i did, but it's not clear in the directions.







something old

 if you're at little river state park and you do not choose the dam roller or maybe the dam, you are maybe missing the best part. by the way? the ranger house and the park signage are also brown things.

the color is specifically "bradley brown".








two green things

seriously? this one is like the free square in bingo. we're in a honkin' forest.

anyway. here is some moss and some beech leaves. (this is also another kind of leaf, see item #1.)









something fuzzy

the mold on this mushroom is fuzzy. also moist, which is kind of impressive.













the inside of this bird nest is fuzzy, too. i found it  on the road near the contact station, so i carried it to the nature center.











two rough things

this birch bark is rough.


















so is this lichen-covered rock.

three knots

a staple on the venture challenge is Learn to tie three new knots (10 pts). well, there's never and shortage of knots to learn, especially if you have a copy of the ashley book of knots. i have one, because mb is awesome.

this year my big thing was making a whole honkin' hammock, but that only counts as learning one knot, the chain sinnet (ABOK 2869



i know. seems like that ought to count for three knots, but like i said, there's no shortage of knots to learn.

i made a lovely chain sinnet pouch (still only that one knot, but you link the chains, so slightly different) and i decided to tie off the ends with a nice looking two strand diamond knot (ABOK 782), which is different than the diamond knot on a carrick bend that i learned to tie earlier in the year.

for a time while i was figuring out how to tie the hammock, i experimented with the idea of using a single strand  (twist) braid. i didn't even know you could make a braid from a single strand. (ABOK 2950)

so that's my three, but this season i also went and learned the trucker's hitch, which i had only sorta learned a while back. ABOK covers the fixed loop and sheepshank versions (2124, 2126) but you can do it with a slipknot, too. here's a good explainer:

millbrook WMA

if you have been here more than ten minutes, you probably know that i like process. and that i like pictures taken from the same spot at different times. heck, i even have a whole gallery of photos taken from my desk.

so when i saw Take a photo of the same natural area, from the same spot, in each of these months: April, May, June, July & August (15 pts) on the challenge, i was all over that.

one of the interesting things about this photo series is that these pictures were all taken with the same focus from the exact same spot with relation to the sign that marks the WMA access, so i am assuming a litle ground movement around the sign, which is only about a year old.

these are views of this spot from april to september of 2016.

breakins

the other day i went down to my car and found the glovebox open. that was weird, because i never open it. i'd had the car open for packing or unpacking or something. it smells better in there if i don't leave my gear in a closed car.

anyway, there's been a lot of packing an unpacking.

some of it from the front seat, so i just figured i had accidentally pulled the latch when i was moving stuff.

yanno, because none of my gear was missing. or my wallet and checkbook.

my HOA sent out a notice that we should all be careful to lock our cars overnight because the local urchins have been breaking into cars and taking what's in gloveboxes.

mine contains my owner's manual, registration and insurance card.

so they left the glovebox open, but didn't take anything else.

ok, fine.

watching the sky

i often check for the position of the ISS or when there will be iridium flares, or other cool things, because it's just cool.

i was delighted to see this on the venture challenge: Find out when the International Space Station will be overhead and watch it (10 pts)

you can use this site for just the ISS, and this site for a buncha things.

it's hard to get pictures of, though. i have a lot of early am risings and a lot of pretty pictures of the sky near my house, but none that show the space station, which would have been cool.

morning

evening