And today I made little raspberry moulded jellies with raspberries in
I went to Gulf Wars, and had a pretty good time. It was hot, and humid, and there were fire-ants which decided to come up under my tent, but that is pretty much all the bad points.
Gulf Wars is kind of like a more managable Pennsic - it's a wee bit cooler, has less people, less area and less crazy-weird, but still has lots of war fighting and shopping and A&S and all the good stuff. PLUS: awesome equestrian, with a mounted progression of royalty, and some jousting. AND falcons. AND dogs. So that was a pretty good time.
I caught the war plague on pack-up day (probably a norovirus), and had a rather horrid day or two. I recommend against trying to take an unfamiliar tent down in the heat while trying not be sick, for the record.
It was nice though. And maybe it's because the people who were there from the Midrealm were all travelling from home too, or maybe it's because someone referred to me as such and made me think about it, but I found myself feeling more like a Midrealmer. Which is not to say I don't still feel Lochacan, but also I feel less like an outsider here. Which is nice.
And then I came home to crazy unseasonably warm weather, which is fabulous. Basically spring has arrived here about a month and a half early. I'm really enjoying it. I just hope summer is not super death hot, but at least if it is, with the exception of Pennsic, I can cower in the air conditioning.
I also came home to a life that doesn't suck, which sort of surprised me a little. I've been working so hard at existing for so long, and working hard at being happy, and enjoying the little things and so forth, that I hadn't noticed that actually, I'm pretty happy even when I don't try hard. Which makes me extra happy. It's a bit of a feedback loop, but it's better than the one that goes in the opposite direction.
A wonderful friend helped us rearrange our kitchen for more livability, and now it functions much better, which encourages me to cook again, and enjoy it, and feel like I've got a bit of myself that I wasn't sure still existed back. I've gotten so used to throwing food together, or grabbing food out, or otherwise just existing, that I had forgotten that I totally have all those dormant meal-planning, shopping and cooking skills just lying around waiting for me to pick them up.
I'm working on extending the organisation into other areas - I love our apartment in many ways, and it was a godsend that it came fully furnished, when everything we owned fitted into four suitcases, but some of the choices of, say, appliances and such are not optimum. So we've replaced and added, and not really ever given anything places to live (because we never freaking learn!) and voila: chaos. I do so like it when things are organised, and it's much much much easier to keep things tidy.
New boss seems to be an improvement on previous examples, at least in so far as it looks as though we might finally get our stuff from NZ shipped over here. *cue choirs of angels*. Further reason to organise, because HEAVEN HELP ME if that stuff arrived and I hadn't. I do have a cunning plan, though, which is to rent a storage unit, or utilise our garage, and introduce things a bit at a time, rather than having a crazy Christmas-With-Toddlers style unwrapping (maybe we do learn, sometimes, because that Did Not Work at Picton Ave).
Dan's home this week, which is lovely, but away for the next two weeks, including Easter Friday and Easter Monday, which are theoretically vacation days for him, but er, are not this year. He gets days in lieu, but I don't know when we will get a chance to use them.
Still: happy. Life is good.
Gulf Wars is kind of like a more managable Pennsic - it's a wee bit cooler, has less people, less area and less crazy-weird, but still has lots of war fighting and shopping and A&S and all the good stuff. PLUS: awesome equestrian, with a mounted progression of royalty, and some jousting. AND falcons. AND dogs. So that was a pretty good time.
I caught the war plague on pack-up day (probably a norovirus), and had a rather horrid day or two. I recommend against trying to take an unfamiliar tent down in the heat while trying not be sick, for the record.
It was nice though. And maybe it's because the people who were there from the Midrealm were all travelling from home too, or maybe it's because someone referred to me as such and made me think about it, but I found myself feeling more like a Midrealmer. Which is not to say I don't still feel Lochacan, but also I feel less like an outsider here. Which is nice.
And then I came home to crazy unseasonably warm weather, which is fabulous. Basically spring has arrived here about a month and a half early. I'm really enjoying it. I just hope summer is not super death hot, but at least if it is, with the exception of Pennsic, I can cower in the air conditioning.
I also came home to a life that doesn't suck, which sort of surprised me a little. I've been working so hard at existing for so long, and working hard at being happy, and enjoying the little things and so forth, that I hadn't noticed that actually, I'm pretty happy even when I don't try hard. Which makes me extra happy. It's a bit of a feedback loop, but it's better than the one that goes in the opposite direction.
A wonderful friend helped us rearrange our kitchen for more livability, and now it functions much better, which encourages me to cook again, and enjoy it, and feel like I've got a bit of myself that I wasn't sure still existed back. I've gotten so used to throwing food together, or grabbing food out, or otherwise just existing, that I had forgotten that I totally have all those dormant meal-planning, shopping and cooking skills just lying around waiting for me to pick them up.
I'm working on extending the organisation into other areas - I love our apartment in many ways, and it was a godsend that it came fully furnished, when everything we owned fitted into four suitcases, but some of the choices of, say, appliances and such are not optimum. So we've replaced and added, and not really ever given anything places to live (because we never freaking learn!) and voila: chaos. I do so like it when things are organised, and it's much much much easier to keep things tidy.
New boss seems to be an improvement on previous examples, at least in so far as it looks as though we might finally get our stuff from NZ shipped over here. *cue choirs of angels*. Further reason to organise, because HEAVEN HELP ME if that stuff arrived and I hadn't. I do have a cunning plan, though, which is to rent a storage unit, or utilise our garage, and introduce things a bit at a time, rather than having a crazy Christmas-With-Toddlers style unwrapping (maybe we do learn, sometimes, because that Did Not Work at Picton Ave).
Dan's home this week, which is lovely, but away for the next two weeks, including Easter Friday and Easter Monday, which are theoretically vacation days for him, but er, are not this year. He gets days in lieu, but I don't know when we will get a chance to use them.
Still: happy. Life is good.