Wow. It's Sunday already . . .
For anyone who wonders what happened to me yesterday (as in, I didn't manage to get a new chapter of fic up, reply to comments, etc.), it was a weird day, really. First, as planned, I went and helped out at the Appaloosa Horse Museum's annual Appaloosa Fest; they were in dire need of volunteers, so our Medieval/Renaissance group, learning of their plight through a member who also works at the Museum, cancelled a scheduled activity and a bunch of us went over to help out.
I spent most of my time "supervising" little kids making horse puppets out of construction paper, brads and tongue depressors; once the kids had the idea, they were pretty self-directing (it helped that a lot of parents were actively participating, too, which was great to see). I mostly just made sure the supplies stayed fairly organized and pointed people in the direction of scissors, hole punches, and the like. The organizers kept checking to see if I was "okay," since it was just me minding the table for several hours . . . but considering that, for me, a typical demo with little kids involves dressing them up in armor for several hours, and, occasionally, letting them hold the hilt of a real sword (nerve-wracking but gratifying, and it's the adults, not the kids, who decide to do something stupid when handed something like that), construction paper and brads felt almost *too* easy. :D Toward the end, I helped put safety helmets on children as they went for "rides" on a couple of Appaloosas (Snicker and Shadow), who were led in sedate circles around a pen.
Snicker and Shadow were very well-behaved, but also clearly bored out of their gourds; I kept trying not to laugh at their expressions. As I told the people I was working with (all SF fans), the horses were looking remarkably like Kif from Futurama, just before he cuts lose with one of his long-suffering sighs. When a couple of the adults were given a chance to ride at the very end, Shadow's reaction to her first grown-up rider was priceless. Her head came up and she blinked a couple of times; you could just see her thinking, Whoa, this one actually weighs something!!
Then I came home, and was planning on getting to work on various things, but I was so suddenly and completely tired, I went to bed and sacked out for five solid hours in the middle of the day! I've suspected recently that I've been fighting off some under-the-surface infection, and I think that was probably final confirmation. I was up long enough to get some dinner and dink around with a bit of TV and surfing, but then I was back asleep, until now.
Later today, some folks are coming over to help hoist Aleska's air conditioner into the window, and to help me shift the 55-gallon fish tank and stand (which I'm getting rid of in prep for the move) out of the living room; I'm making spaghetti as a thank-you nosh, and have lots of stuff to shift before and after that, so my contact may be limited today, as well. For fun, thought I'd leave you all with an adorable (IMO) coloring sheet my friend drew up for the Appaloosa Museum event (she knocks these things out in minutes as kids' coloring sheets); note that the horse on the right is holding one of the little cutout-puppets I mentioned above, a great example of tailoring an image to an event.
Anyway, that's my life, talk to y'all more later . . . :)
I spent most of my time "supervising" little kids making horse puppets out of construction paper, brads and tongue depressors; once the kids had the idea, they were pretty self-directing (it helped that a lot of parents were actively participating, too, which was great to see). I mostly just made sure the supplies stayed fairly organized and pointed people in the direction of scissors, hole punches, and the like. The organizers kept checking to see if I was "okay," since it was just me minding the table for several hours . . . but considering that, for me, a typical demo with little kids involves dressing them up in armor for several hours, and, occasionally, letting them hold the hilt of a real sword (nerve-wracking but gratifying, and it's the adults, not the kids, who decide to do something stupid when handed something like that), construction paper and brads felt almost *too* easy. :D Toward the end, I helped put safety helmets on children as they went for "rides" on a couple of Appaloosas (Snicker and Shadow), who were led in sedate circles around a pen.
Snicker and Shadow were very well-behaved, but also clearly bored out of their gourds; I kept trying not to laugh at their expressions. As I told the people I was working with (all SF fans), the horses were looking remarkably like Kif from Futurama, just before he cuts lose with one of his long-suffering sighs. When a couple of the adults were given a chance to ride at the very end, Shadow's reaction to her first grown-up rider was priceless. Her head came up and she blinked a couple of times; you could just see her thinking, Whoa, this one actually weighs something!!
Then I came home, and was planning on getting to work on various things, but I was so suddenly and completely tired, I went to bed and sacked out for five solid hours in the middle of the day! I've suspected recently that I've been fighting off some under-the-surface infection, and I think that was probably final confirmation. I was up long enough to get some dinner and dink around with a bit of TV and surfing, but then I was back asleep, until now.
Later today, some folks are coming over to help hoist Aleska's air conditioner into the window, and to help me shift the 55-gallon fish tank and stand (which I'm getting rid of in prep for the move) out of the living room; I'm making spaghetti as a thank-you nosh, and have lots of stuff to shift before and after that, so my contact may be limited today, as well. For fun, thought I'd leave you all with an adorable (IMO) coloring sheet my friend drew up for the Appaloosa Museum event (she knocks these things out in minutes as kids' coloring sheets); note that the horse on the right is holding one of the little cutout-puppets I mentioned above, a great example of tailoring an image to an event.
Anyway, that's my life, talk to y'all more later . . . :)