An epic post of stuff
I have a thoroughly vile headache that I suspect is in large part due to my current bout of insomnia. Ugh. Migraine pills have been deployed so there's no nausea and the pain is down to "ugh" rather than "OMG!". I'm determined not to take a sick day this week. Too much to do!
So, the last time I had my hair dyed it went a bit wrong. Not wrong as in bright green or anything, just not what the hairdresser and I were aiming for. A couple of the usual components in my mix were out of stock - including the main red tone - so we decided to try out a deep violet instead.
Unfortunately, what we ended up with was dark, dark brown. Maybe with violet hints if I stood in the right light but basically dark brown. Neither of us were impressed.
On Saturday it was time to dye again. I wanted to get it done just before my trip so that the colour would be at its best while my family and friends were viewing me and the silver strands were starting to bug me. Oh, the joy of going grey young.
It was an epic appointment. We needed to lighten a lot of it up to have any hope of the colour showing up over the horrid dark brown. Then we used every trick my stylist knows to get me the reddest hair we could manage. The sections that weren't being reddened were re-coloured with brown so that all the silver got covered. The end result is awesome. I love it. In fact, it may be my favourite end result ever. It's so red!
Then I went shopping and bought a new spring coat (red!!) because I have no non-winter coats that don't look ragged and ancient. It's such a cheerful coat :-) I also bought some nice dress shoes because my shoe collection consists of two pairs of warm winter boots (dressy), one pair of trail shoes, one pair of (old) Converse and a pair of sandals. None of those were going to be any use for some of the stuff I've got planned for the trip, like afternoon tea in Brown's. So I bought some fairly conservative shoes with a two inch heel because I won't be able to wear my orthotics in them and no heel with no orthotics usually ends up with very sore knees.
I need the bit of lift (there is a bit of lift in my orthotics) to stop my knees bending backwards at all opportunities.
That definitely makes it a much more successful trip than my last attempt to purchase these items, when I came home with croissants and shortbread but no new clothes or shoes.
And then I finished the day off with a second trip to see The Avengers. So much love :-D
How much do I want a Black Widow and Hawkeye movie now?
How awesome is Black Widow? She totally saves the day on several occasions. Love her so much :-D
I'm going to end up making a third trip before it leaves the theatres, aren't I? At least? And then I'll end up pre-ordering the DVD as soon as the pre-order appears on Amazon. It's that kind of thing.
It's rapidly becoming a very large fandom as well. I can tell this because AO3 keeps going down and the AO3 status Twitter reports that this is largely due to Avengers fanfic. Heh. Poor AO3, It survived Yuletide fairly well this year and is being clobbered by Avengers fans.
I may possibly be one of those people. I've managed to download a rather insane quantity of Avengers fic for my Kindle, even though I only Kindle stuff that's over 10,000 words. Heh.
I need some Avengers icons. Really.
Sort of unrelated to The Avengers but not completely, I may be able to get back into archery!
When I first moved to Canada, the only archery club within a reasonable driving distance was attached to the military base and their website strongly indicated that civilians were unlikely to be welcome. All places were given to military members and dependent and civilians were only able to join and shoot in the unlikely event that there was a slot open and no military people applied for it. So my equipment has sat in its case for four years and I've been eyeing it regularly with sadness and a hint of guilt.
I was chatting with someone at work last week, mourning my lack of shooting opportunities, and he told me that this is no longer the case. He's shot at that club a few times and someone else I work with is a regular member. Obviously I immediately checked the club website and he's right: there is no longer any hint that membership is restricted in that way anymore.
The club has shut down for the summer and will resume in September. So I got my bow out and checked it over this weekend. It's amazing how good muscle memory is - as soon as I got the limbs and rod onto the riser and lifted it, my draw arm was itching to grab a string.
It's also impressive how much strength I've lost. What a lot of people don't tend to realise is that a bow is not a lightweight piece of kit and raising it to shoulder-height with your arm extended is not easy. It's definitely not easy if you're doing that raise and lower eighty or more times, which is what you'd do even for shorter, six dozen arrow rounds. I've shot up to 150 arrows in one day on long shoots. You need a lot of strength and muscle in the shoulder of your bow arm to do that.
My bow arm has lost all its strength :-(
In addition, my bow has 26lb limbs. In other words, you need 26lb of force to draw it. I didn't even try to string my bow because I know that I don't have the power to do that and I'm not about to risk twisting and damaging the limbs by trying to string it without the power to bend my bow sufficiently.
So, I have a plan. I've got until September. My dad left a piece of kit here last year that essentially allows me to mimick the act of raising and drawing a bow with the resistance I'll need it each arm. For the next three months I will be trying to use the practise kit every day and build up the amount I'm lifting and drawing.
The club apparently has equipment that I can borrow. By September, I want to at least have the strength in my arms, shoulders and upper back to be able to raise a bow a reasonable number of times and draw a 20lb or 22lb bow. I can hopefully borrow that from the club. Then I'll spend a couple of months working my way up to drawing 26lb again so that I can use my own bow.
The other option is to buy some lighter limbs for my bow, but I sort of object to spending money on limbs that are essentially going to be training limbs for a couple of months.
Hopefully, if all goes to plan, I'll be shooting my own bow again by Christmas. I'm so excited to finally have the prospect of archery in my life again :-D
And wow, this turned into the post of epicness. Thank goodness for cut tags.
I definitely need to hit this headache with some more caffeine. Ugh.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenay.dreamwidth.org/436672.html. There are currently
babbles on the entry on Dreamwidth
So, the last time I had my hair dyed it went a bit wrong. Not wrong as in bright green or anything, just not what the hairdresser and I were aiming for. A couple of the usual components in my mix were out of stock - including the main red tone - so we decided to try out a deep violet instead.
Unfortunately, what we ended up with was dark, dark brown. Maybe with violet hints if I stood in the right light but basically dark brown. Neither of us were impressed.
On Saturday it was time to dye again. I wanted to get it done just before my trip so that the colour would be at its best while my family and friends were viewing me and the silver strands were starting to bug me. Oh, the joy of going grey young.
It was an epic appointment. We needed to lighten a lot of it up to have any hope of the colour showing up over the horrid dark brown. Then we used every trick my stylist knows to get me the reddest hair we could manage. The sections that weren't being reddened were re-coloured with brown so that all the silver got covered. The end result is awesome. I love it. In fact, it may be my favourite end result ever. It's so red!
Then I went shopping and bought a new spring coat (red!!) because I have no non-winter coats that don't look ragged and ancient. It's such a cheerful coat :-) I also bought some nice dress shoes because my shoe collection consists of two pairs of warm winter boots (dressy), one pair of trail shoes, one pair of (old) Converse and a pair of sandals. None of those were going to be any use for some of the stuff I've got planned for the trip, like afternoon tea in Brown's. So I bought some fairly conservative shoes with a two inch heel because I won't be able to wear my orthotics in them and no heel with no orthotics usually ends up with very sore knees.
I need the bit of lift (there is a bit of lift in my orthotics) to stop my knees bending backwards at all opportunities.
That definitely makes it a much more successful trip than my last attempt to purchase these items, when I came home with croissants and shortbread but no new clothes or shoes.
And then I finished the day off with a second trip to see The Avengers. So much love :-D
How much do I want a Black Widow and Hawkeye movie now?
How awesome is Black Widow? She totally saves the day on several occasions. Love her so much :-D
I'm going to end up making a third trip before it leaves the theatres, aren't I? At least? And then I'll end up pre-ordering the DVD as soon as the pre-order appears on Amazon. It's that kind of thing.
It's rapidly becoming a very large fandom as well. I can tell this because AO3 keeps going down and the AO3 status Twitter reports that this is largely due to Avengers fanfic. Heh. Poor AO3, It survived Yuletide fairly well this year and is being clobbered by Avengers fans.
I may possibly be one of those people. I've managed to download a rather insane quantity of Avengers fic for my Kindle, even though I only Kindle stuff that's over 10,000 words. Heh.
I need some Avengers icons. Really.
Sort of unrelated to The Avengers but not completely, I may be able to get back into archery!
When I first moved to Canada, the only archery club within a reasonable driving distance was attached to the military base and their website strongly indicated that civilians were unlikely to be welcome. All places were given to military members and dependent and civilians were only able to join and shoot in the unlikely event that there was a slot open and no military people applied for it. So my equipment has sat in its case for four years and I've been eyeing it regularly with sadness and a hint of guilt.
I was chatting with someone at work last week, mourning my lack of shooting opportunities, and he told me that this is no longer the case. He's shot at that club a few times and someone else I work with is a regular member. Obviously I immediately checked the club website and he's right: there is no longer any hint that membership is restricted in that way anymore.
The club has shut down for the summer and will resume in September. So I got my bow out and checked it over this weekend. It's amazing how good muscle memory is - as soon as I got the limbs and rod onto the riser and lifted it, my draw arm was itching to grab a string.
It's also impressive how much strength I've lost. What a lot of people don't tend to realise is that a bow is not a lightweight piece of kit and raising it to shoulder-height with your arm extended is not easy. It's definitely not easy if you're doing that raise and lower eighty or more times, which is what you'd do even for shorter, six dozen arrow rounds. I've shot up to 150 arrows in one day on long shoots. You need a lot of strength and muscle in the shoulder of your bow arm to do that.
My bow arm has lost all its strength :-(
In addition, my bow has 26lb limbs. In other words, you need 26lb of force to draw it. I didn't even try to string my bow because I know that I don't have the power to do that and I'm not about to risk twisting and damaging the limbs by trying to string it without the power to bend my bow sufficiently.
So, I have a plan. I've got until September. My dad left a piece of kit here last year that essentially allows me to mimick the act of raising and drawing a bow with the resistance I'll need it each arm. For the next three months I will be trying to use the practise kit every day and build up the amount I'm lifting and drawing.
The club apparently has equipment that I can borrow. By September, I want to at least have the strength in my arms, shoulders and upper back to be able to raise a bow a reasonable number of times and draw a 20lb or 22lb bow. I can hopefully borrow that from the club. Then I'll spend a couple of months working my way up to drawing 26lb again so that I can use my own bow.
The other option is to buy some lighter limbs for my bow, but I sort of object to spending money on limbs that are essentially going to be training limbs for a couple of months.
Hopefully, if all goes to plan, I'll be shooting my own bow again by Christmas. I'm so excited to finally have the prospect of archery in my life again :-D
And wow, this turned into the post of epicness. Thank goodness for cut tags.
I definitely need to hit this headache with some more caffeine. Ugh.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenay.dreamwidth.org/436672.html. There are currently
babbles on the entry on Dreamwidth