washing

sheep are dirty, filthy creatures.

i wasn't really aware of it until i got some raw wool for spinnning.

and by "raw wool", i mean the shearer took it off the sheep and a guy i know put it in a bag.

so i washed some of it experimentally.

ewwwww.

foundations

some days ago i was part of a conversation that included talking about dressing for cold weather. the crowd was mostly men, so i thought it would be funny to suggest maybe not wearing a bra, which is actually a thing because air circulation around your core, and the possibility that a bra will trap moisture.

granted, sports bras are supposed to wick, but i haven't met a ONE of 'em that doesn't trap enough moisture to make me feel cold.

plus if i'm wearing winter layers or doing anything that requires a lifejacket, there's not so much need.

and this one guy in the conversation stopped to ask me if the thing about bras in cold weather is really a THING.

and i told him that if you are doing safety checks in a group that includes women, it is appropriate to ask if their bra still feels dry.

and he said he felt it was important for him to know, because he is raising a daughter who is going to be an adventure woman.

i may have gotten a tear in my eye.

getting stuff off my desk

goodness gracious, i need to close some tabs, so here's some stuff i saw that i liked enough to think i wanted to tell you about it.

are you a fan of besty deVos? i'm not.




and just as a reminder, boys and girls: if you have power over another person's career, don't be so sure that sex is fully consensual. i'm not saying it can't be, but you're better off if you don't presume.




there's nothing one can really say about this:





i imagine you probably want to rise your eyes out now.

star bright

yesterday a bunch of us from the blue team (#ingressresistance) went out into burlington to make a really big starburst.

oh my goodness, that was fun.

and it's pretty, yeah?

proverbs

march: comes in like a lion and goes out like a sack of enraged weasels trapped in your pants.

congratulations and congratulations

in the early hours this morning i got my black guardian badge (#ingress resistance!), which is kind of a big thing, because it means you've controlled a portal for 150 consecutive days.

it's hard to get, but it's not a badge i particularly love, because most of the badges are as a result of things you did, like capturing, or recharging or glyphing and this one is simply as a result of not having something taken away from you. it's not so much a badge you get as one that happens to you.

but as i got close to getting mine, i got kind of excited anyway.

now there are asshats in the game who will actually hunt down your guardian by means of illegal data scraping and they will kill it just for the sake of killing it. it isn't strategic. there's nothing you get from the badge besides a shiny thing. it confers no powers, but there are asshats who will hunt yours down and keep you from getting it because they're THAT kind of person.

"hi. there's no reason for me to do this to you other than it gives me pleasure to take something from you. i'm an asshat. have a nice day."

so i was sort of expecting a guardian hunter to come looking for mine, because they do that.

now unless you keep a database, it can be really difficult to identify your OWN guardian, let alone other people's.

which is why is was so weird (and yet not unexpected) that creepy stalker guy would send me a message on the last afternoon of my guardian's clock to "congratulate" me without saying what it was for.

i hadn't done anything. i hadn't gotten any badges or captured anything. the only possible thing was a reference to the guardian that wouldn't tick over for another twelve hours yet.

now, when most people say "congratulations", they mean "congratulations". when creepy stalker guy says "congratulations", he means "i am watching you, and i want you to know it."

so creepy stalker guy reached out to me from the other end of the country just to let me know he's watching me.

oh, gob. we all had a laugh over THAT.


ewwww. he what? hahahahahah!

well. that takes care of march.

i think i told you that my goal for the year is to go camping in every month.

november and december are pieces of cake because of thanksgiving camp, but january, february, and march are kind of more difficult.

there was a good weather forecast for this past weekend (meaning overnight temperatures over 20) so i went ahead and got a permit for camping at kettle pond.

in vermont, even though the state parks are closed in winter, you can camp in them legally if you have a permit. it's free, but you do have to pack in/pack out.

the packing out part becomes serious if you want to stay somewhere that uses plumbed toilets instead of composting toilets, because then you have to pack your shit out.

i can do that, but i'd totally prefer not to.

but then i was thinking about the remote sites in groton state forest, which i knew from accidentally coming across them while geocaching, and they have composting toilets!

so away we went.

barb came with me for her first real winter camp. she came out for a night at thanksgiving camp when it was colder, and we camped at somerset landing in the fall when it was 15 degrees and windy, but it's a little different when you have to pack all your stuff out in snow and prepare your shelter.

car camping at 15 degrees seems less cold. even packing in for one night at 19 degrees seems less cold, even with snow, if someone has gone ahead of you and set up camp and gotten a toasty fire going.

view from my hammock

our camp, with barb's compartment

us and our stuff

i look WAYYYY too happy.

hurty

sometimes i get a muscle spasm deep under my shoulderblade.

it's not clear why this happens, but it has happened to me occasionally since my teen years. getting one of these things has meant a week or three of pain and more pain, because although the muscle (nobody knows precisely which one) is small and hidden, when it gets grouchy, it gets inflamed and the inflammation spread to other muscles and impinges on nerves and then of course i don't sleep well so it's a nightmare death spiral.

some twenty years ago i discovered flexaril.

what a miracle.

take one and sleep a night. spasm gone. worst case, it takes three nights to be all better again.

i have since kept a bottle of the stuff around just in case.

last week sometime i got a spasm. not bad enough for the flexaril, but i have some, so no worry, right?

and then sunday it was TIME for the flexaril, only i couldn't find it. there was a lot of searching.

today was thursday.

i finally went to my doctor, who said roughly "whoa, this hasbeen going on a week? that's messed up. here's a script. also a referral to PT"

the PT said "if you can be here in twenty minutes, we can see you today"

then he said, "yeah, take that flexaril when you get home. take it easy and settle in with a heating pad"

i am feeling kinda stupid, but it is a fairly pleasant afternoon.

still uncomfortable, but i am looking at the end of it.

and snow.

i like snow.

pretty shiny

so i went to the saratoga mission day, which is an ingress thing.

basically it's just all the players crawling all over a city to do missions, which is a collection of portals that gives you a pretty shiny badge.

sometimes the badges can be arranged to make a nice picture. this is called a banner.

here are my pretty shiny digital badges from saratoga mission day:

the red ones are the 18 missions for the mission day. the layer above that is a set of batman villains that go together, and the top layer is the banner mission for the hall of springs.

completing six of the 18 missions earns you a shiny digital badge later, but it also earned us a fancy shiny PIN!

and get this- completing the batman set got us a fabulous challenge coin. it's based on the harvey dent coin (which means little to me since i've not seen any batman movies, but i get the concept and it's cool).

graham cracker houses

back in december at a scout meeting we made "gingerbread" houses out of candy, icing, and graham crackers.

it was fun to watch the girls' different approaches to construction.

some were about speed, some were about engineering, and some were about sticking as much candy as possible with as much icing as possible together with crackers because SUGAR.

there weren't any building requirements or prizes being given, so every approach was a valid one.

me, i was about engineering.

a day in saratoga

hey, hi. i've gone to saratoga for the day, so i've decided to link you back to an old post about a day in saratoga.

https://furthermoreflask.blogspot.com/2014/10/old-red-spring.html

because i'll be visiting the old red spring, but i won't be filling my water bottle this time.

oooh. i'l be visiting some of the other springs, so maybe i will bring a cup.

branching out

so. i have branched out from spoons to hiking sticks.

here's one i made for my brother in law.

spoons

do you not love to say the word "spoon"?

i do. i also like to say "soup".

i think i have mentioned to you that i like to make spoons. i haven't made a lot of them, because it's kind of an outdoor activity and it's a little time consuming, especially the way i do it.

because of course i can't just roll up to some hobby shop and buy carving blanks; i have to work with naturally fallen applewood which naturally contains weird twisty grain and often a lot of rot.

because apple trees.

and sometimes when you're working a piece you get pretty far in before you FIND the patch of rot, and there goes your work.

...which is what happened to me while i was working on a long handled cooking spoon for my mom.

and BOOM i had to start over and i was down to my last appropriate piece of apple and not too much time to go before christmas (or as we like to say, midwinter gift exchanging light festival of your choice) but i got it done, along with a little jam spoon and spreader for party tables or whatnot.

driving a standard

i drive a standard. i love me some shifting.

i don't really understand how it works, though.

i enjoyed this video about it.



i still don't understand it, really.

but i like how they got a woman driver to be in the video, complete with her gloves and all.

oh. and here's a thing i really enjoyed this week:

https://pudding.cool/2018/02/waveforms/

do you like waveforms?

i do.

busy day yesterday

i know, i blew you off again.

i had some early morning equipment drops (#ingressresistance) and an early appointment with my ophthalmologist, who monitors my eyes because while that antimalarial is super effective for lupus, it COULD destroy my eyes, but it's a slow destruction if if happens and monitoring by your ophthalmologist gets out ahead of that.

but then i had some ingress missions to do because i'm straightening up my banners before i go to my first mission day and i needed to pick up a jar of honey and oh by the way some raw wool and cards and a spinning wheel because of course.

mb has taken up crochet, so therefore i am taking up spinning.

it's not that far of a reach, since i have already been making cordage and milkweed is plentiful and it has occurred to me that i should learn to spin because milkweed would make a nice soft plant-based yarn if i knew how to process it, and a friend of mine just HAPPENS to know a guy who was shearing sheep recently, so yeah.

later on, i'm sure, there will be pictures.

luxury living

well, here's a thing i meant to tell you about back in november when it happened, but at least it still applies.

it gets cold at night when you winter camp.

i try to end my out of hammock day before my blubber layer gets too chilly, because while it does a great job keeping me warm, it takes a while to warm up in bed so there's that to consider.

but i like to retire after and early supper, hang out in my hammock and read. this is made much more lovely if i have a warm beverage.

and my morning is improved much if i wake up and have a warm beverage handy without having to get up and make it.

so i make two bottles of nice hot tea: one in a hydroflask that will keep my tea hot for a few hours,and a heavy duty thermos that will keep my tea hot overnight.

that gives me lovely hot tea into the evening, and lovely hot tea in the morning, which makes life pretty cushy.

ice lanterns

they're easy to make, if time consuming.

i think i stumbled across one of the many tutorials on the youtubes and thought that would be a perfect thing to bring a little magic to a girl scout troop's first winter camping.

because if you can create magic, you then have a group of girls who will love winter camping. that first time is important.

and because i am who i am, i took pictures of the process and now you have a nice little set of instructions on how to make ice lanterns.

you freeze the bucket so there's a shell of ice

see the edge between frozen and unfrozen?

either let it sit or run warm water on it until it loosens in the bucket.

flip it over and poke a hole in the thin end.

use a serrated blade to saw the hole to size and shape

drain the water and rinse out the ice bits.

keep making more. clean them up before storing them...

in your large freezer...

before you pack them to travel.

night trail

there's a perpetual dance of balance being done in girl scouting because there's a lot of emphasis on girl planning but at the same time children don't always know what cool things are out there because they simply didn't know they were a thing.

people can't plan for things they don't know exist.

f'rinstance, i was at least thirty years old before i even knew there was such a thing as reflective trail markers.

anyway.

there's a badge our girls have expressed and interest in that has a choice to complete a requirement by going for a night hike.

no ten year old who has not experienced a cool winter night hike would EVER decide to voluntarily leave a warm cabin in winter and march around outside, so i simply went ahead and made a night course.

the fact that there was going to be a night course was not a surprise to the other adults. everything else was surprises for even them.

when we announced the upcoming night hike there were some cries of resistance, but we told them that although it was optional, only people on the night hike would get to have the cool surprises. they girls asked what the surprises were going to be, but you already know the answer to THAT.

they wanted to know if there were going to be any jump scares.

no, i told them. there will be nothing scarier than just being outside in the dark. and i gave them the handout.

so they all decided to go.

it was a short course, but at night things look different and you maybe don't always know where you are. for the first part i took them out on a bushwhack out back of the cabin, away from the lights. i marked the way with stick signs.

about halfway through that portion they were all on board.

and then the stick trail came to an end and they were confused.

and i was all like "oh, look. there seem to be some instructions posted on that tree!"

the instructions said to turn off their headlamps and follow a lead line. i told them that being in the dark can be challenging, so i was going to keep my light on at the back and if anyone felt like they needed to turn theirs on, they could.

so off they went into the darkness.

after some turns and a couple hundred feet, at the end of the ropes they came upon another set of instructions and reflective blazes that indicated start of trail. it took them a minute or two to figure out how to look for the reflectors, but they did just fine.

the reflector trail came out at a trail end sign with a .30 caliber ammo can holding glow sticks and candy. and a picnic table with ice lanterns. the instructions said to turn off their lights and follow the lantern path home.

we stood silent for a couple of minutes to listen. we knew there was a barred owl nearby and one of the other leaders does a very good barred owl call.

i had chosen the widest and smoothest return path for the lantern way, marked all along with ice lanterns returning to the cabin, where there was already a leader with a campfire. the part about the campfire wasn't my idea, but it was magical.

the girls decided to bring the lit lanterns back with them, so we picked them up as we left the woods.

we could not have predicted this, and had we prompted it there might have been some eye rolling, but out front of the cabin with all the lanterns there was an impromptu recitation of the girl scout law.

i may have cried a little.

much fun was had

i am back from my trip with the scouts.

later there will be pictures.

right now there's just going to be a shower and sleep.

short on time.

i'm packing to take my scouts on their first WINTER CAMPING!!!

so i'm short on time.

here's a fun math toy you can play with.

and you should watch this. nina paley is brilliant.


Paroles Paroles from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

and if you have not seen this yet (or even if you have),  this: