inside camping

people keep asking me why, if my hammock is SO COMFORTABLE, i do not sleep in it at home.

well, i was having trouble finding a place to hang it.

was.

because now i am sleeping in it at home.

it is lovely.

blow

it's windy here.

last night three things blew out of the protected area on my porch and went off to try to start new lives on their own: a recycling bin, an expedition sled, and a freaking chest cooler.

i put on boots and went off in pursuit.

they'd had some hours of head start, and there were a couple of inches of ice pellets on the ground, so no tracks to follow.

i figured to go in roughly the direction of the wind until i came to the border of the woods, where surely they would have gotten snagged and come to a stop.

only the wind is strong and variable.

and by strong, let's say that i found myself on top of a glazed pavement on a slight uphill and the wind blew me UP it like some weird uncomfortable people moving sidewalk.

eventually i came across some recyclables that looked like they might have come from my house and i looked off in that direction to where i eventually found my recycling bin on the side of a steep icy hill and beyond that, my sled.

i am not kidding you when i say i had to go on all fours, not because of the terrain, but because the wind was so extreme.

and that was before i had a sled and a recycling bin in my hands.

i was in view of my house and legit feared i was in danger.

it was slow going. four or five steps into the wind, stop, sit, rest. i thought i'd pass out.

eventually i got back to the house.

the whole trip (not more than a few hundred feet) took an hour.

i am ready for my nap.

it's here! it's here!

it's the most wonderful time of the year!

nownownownow NOW.

the VENTURE VERMONT OUTDOOR CHALLENGE BEGINS TODAY.

i have already downloaded and begun fondling my score sheet.

there's so much awesome stuff on it!

and because "go skateboarding" is on it, i am going to see if i can get a friend's children to  take me, fifty-year-old newbie, and teach me to skateboard.

rain hike? i'm all over it.


i love this so much.

well. that was a time.

ok, so i got involved in a really fun project and i know, usually i tell you about all my really fun projects, but it was a really fun project with strategic implications (#ingressresistance!) so i couldn't tell you anything.

suffice it to say that i kicked some serious ass and when it was over i had a little rest.

and then i had a super busy thing about a girl scout thing, and there's not a lot i can tell you about that either.

and then i was sick.

i lost a whole week.

last monday i went to see my doctor finally and she thought i had poor long inflation and thought it would be best for me to go to the ER so there was that and it turns out i don't have either flu or pneumonia, so that's good.

they put a bag of saline in me and gave me some treatments. there were two nebulizer treatments that didn't do squat but made me feel ALL HOPPED UP AND JUMPY but then they did a third with some other drug in it and i have no idea what that other thing was (probably some kind of inhaled steroid?) and within an hour i was breathing again in ways more recognizable as breathing.

i spent a lot of time in my hammock watching youtube videos.

today is day three of getting dressed and sitting up.

so yay.

partyhat.

easter at my mom's house

because of course we have to have an egg hunt even though nobody is younger than fifty, and my mom has been a vegetarian for decades and an atheist since 1963 but we all have to show up to eat an easter ham.

there were these cute little cake pops for dessert.

i never saw the attraction of cake pops.

...until i ate one.

oh my goodness gracious.

citizen flask

are you an american citizen?

have you heard that the president wants to put a question on the next census that requires people to state whether or not they are citizens?

they make it out to be that it's purely informative, but what it's going to do is get immigrants and whole immigrant communities to opt out of being counted, which will skew representation and services to the overwhelmingly white and privileged.

and you know the only thing that's going to stop that shit?

if the white and privileged step up and stop it.

so when the census comes, i am not telling whether or not i am a citizen.

come to think of it, i may decline to give my race, or just call myself "other".

i invite you, too, to gum up the works any way you can. not every action need be large.

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.