• Assemble wheelbarrow
• Use wheelbarrow to mix up big batch of potting dirt
• Pot baby beans
• Top up strawberries, palm
• Cut holes in bottom of new big planter
• Repot cherry into new big planter, if still have energy by then
• Run dishwasher at least once

Here's hoping for not pouring-down-rain-all-day. :->

Edited  on day-of to add
It eventually got gorgeous, just in time for me to run out of energy and start having to prep to leave ...

Other things done:

• Raked and mowed back lawn
• Weeded back (3 dandelions, 1 maple tree)
• Pruned elderberries
• Prepped pot for repotting palm into
• Refilled bird feeders
• Discovered that Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job is really, really good

My in-laws were in town, so as usual, I'm underslept and have had no time to myself for days, but I enjoyed it. :-> This weekend, we:

• Ate at Nueva Leone, which is yummy cheap Mexican food, and highly approved by John's mum.
  
• Went to the Field Museum, where I saw the Mythical Creatures exhibit and the George Washington Carver exhibit. In that latter, they have a piece of netted embroidery mislabeled as 'crochet'. Arghhh! And this from a major research museum with a textile department. Sigh. Whatever. The rest of the visit to the museum was great. :->
  
• Ate dinner at Barcelona Tapas/Tapas Barcelona in Evanston, with my aunt-in-law MJ added to the pre-existing party of five.
  
• Went back to MJ's to fix her computer, examine her sewing machine, and, as it turned out, watch most of an episode of 'ShakespeaRe-Told,' a nifty BBC series that I think I need to own.
  
• Planted my mailorder fruit trees yesterday morning before getting Out and About.
  
• Saw "Under the Same Moon" up at Old Orchard in our party-of-six. OMG good movie. Funnier than I expected, and less sad; I was thinking I'd come out dripping tears and wrist-slittingly depressed, but it was really uplifting, as well as emotionally intense. Highly recommended.
  
• Bought me a new cellphone ... because, aside from already considering replacing the one I had, it, um, took an unauthorised swim. So. The new one's black, sexy, and has nicer menu software than the old one. Win! :->
  
• Ate dinner at Addis Abeba -- first time I've had Ethiopian. It was yummy. The in-laws look at me funny when I said it was "Kind of like Middle-Eastern food, only the bread is different," but that's how my head files it. The bread WAS very different than anything else I've ever had, rather like edible thin sheets of foam rubber.
  
• Went back to MJ's for more computerfixing, and then home.
  

Brief footnote, in re the fruit trees: I mailordered apples (and an accidental cherry) from Trees of Antiquity. A highly recommended buying experience, if any of you are in the market for fruitbearing woody plants; they have a whole range of really neat, really old varieties, on modern dwarfing and semi-dwarfing rootstock.

And now I've blogged it so I don't forget to, whew.

Today's tasks: water all the trees, the strawberries, and the back lawn. Run the dishwasher at least once. Help John get all the sheets into the wash and back out and folded. Eat something. Practice my piano homework. Write up my concert report for class ...

As Bird Season gets back into full swing (the redwings just returned, so clearly THEY think it's spring, even if it's not time to plant veggies yet), I thought I'd take a moment to make a post about frequencies and visitors, so I can look back later and see what changes this year.

A lot has certainly changed since we first put up the feeders!

• Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) Commonly seen, in large numbers. They've been around since before we put the feeders up. Not terribly skittish, even when cats come into view. Ground foragers in the main, though they also will sit on the feeders. Prefer safflower and millet-mix to black oil sunflower seed.


• Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) Commonly seen, more than one pair. We saw our cardie pair before putting up feeders, too, but only around the tree we theorize them to nest in. I've seen two females at once, but never more than one male at once. Unknown total number of individuals in the neighborhood (but clearly at least 3). Prefer black oil sunflower to almost anything else; the females will rarely ground forage, but mostly they eat from the feeders. Not very bold -- anything except the sparrows or squirrels can spook them.


• House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) Commonly seen, in enormous numbers. I think I've seen upwards of 30 birds in our yard all at once, mixed genders. They scatter at any hint of predator or disturbance, but also come back pretty readily. Prefer millet mix. Readily ground forage.


• Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) Commonly seen, in large numbers. They eat anything, on the ground or on the feeders. They'll eat suet, and when the other feeders are empty they'll even (with great effort) squirm their beaks into the thistle-seed sock to try to eat nyger seed. Ground forage or feeder-perching, no difference. They chase off any birds smaller than them, and flee from the parrots and redwings.


• Monk Parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus) Commonly seen, in large numbers. Impossible to miss. Never ground-forage. Prefer black-oil and safflower to millet-mix; will sometimes take exploratory bites of fruit if I have some out there. Like raisins. At least 24 individuals in neighborhood. Last year they nested up on the cell tower at the end of my block; this year I saw a couple of crows up there, clearly making a territorial bid to wrench it back (since this year finally the crows are starting to bounce back from West Nile). It'll be interesting to see how the war comes out. :-> Fairly bold, but cautious -- the parrots won't descend upon the feeder in their tens until after a scout's sat on the telephone wire keeping an eye on things for at least an hour, and they don't come to the feeder at all the first day I fill it (if it's run dry). Willing to bully off any non-parrots present on the feeders.


• Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) Commonly seen, in large numbers. They seem to like most of the stuff I put out there; the females will eat from the whole-peanut feeder, but mostly not the males (no idea why). Never ground-forage. At least 15 males in neighborhood, and presumably a like number of females, though I never see that many in the yard at once. Not present in winter. According to the lady from the birdfood store, redwings only became feeder birds in the last five years or so, in Chicagoland; before that, they lived primarily in wet wildlands. I wonder what changed. Maybe West Nile opened up a niche they could exploit? That's about the right time-frame. Quite charismatic and fun to watch; the boys like to play King of the Castle dominance games all over my feeder setup.


• Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) Commonly seen, few. There are at least 3 individuals (two male, one female), because I've seen at least one female, and John once saw two males in the yard at once. Eats only the suet and whole peanuts. Never ground-forages. Last year, the woodies were *extremely* skittish, not coming to the feeder at all, and hiding behind branches if anyone came out on the porch. This year, though, they're bolder than anything but the parrots: they'll sit on the feeder and defend it until I get within about five feet of it! It's adorable how they hammer on the peanut shells as if they were insect-ridden bark. As the weather gets warmer and I spend more time on the porch, I expect to get some really lovely pictures of them.


• Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis) Commonly seen, few. I think I've seen five or six at once in the yard. Ground-forages almost exclusively. Stays away from the porch; fairly shy. Likes to hide in the midst of massive sparrow-flocks.


• Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) Regularly seen, few. The jays are the most skittish of our regular visitors; I'll see one about once a month. It will ZOOM in from somewhere, snatch up a single peanut or sunflower seed, and ZOOM off into the foliage down the block again, as if it thinks I'm lying in wait for it with a sniper rifle. Never lingers; strictly a hit-and-run situation. Never shows up at all unless the feeders have been continuously full for over a week.


• American Robin (Turdus migratorius) Regularly seen, few. They don't seem to have come back into town yet, but even in high summer they never sit on the feeders. Purely a ground-forager. They seem to like to have dominance battles with the squirrels over whose lawn it is. I've seen five or six in the yard at once.


• Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheuticus ludovicianus) Occasional visitor. I saw one individual at a time, a few times, last season. Hopefully they'll come back this year.


• Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus) Occasional visitor. There was one sighting of something that was probably a purple finch, on the feeder, last year, but it was gone by the time I got my camera from the front room.


• American Crow (Crovus brachyrhynchos) In neighborhood, occasionally seen. They never come down to the feeder, but they're around on the more 'commercial' streets and in the empty lots. Maybe they don't like having tree cover over them?


• Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) In neighborhood, commonly seen. They circle overhead, and hang out over by the used car lots, but never come into my yard.


• ()

Specifically, first day of Fall07 semester at HWC.

My class schedule is officially rather nuts, and I may regret it deeply in a few weeks -- but it seemed like a good idea at the TIME! :-> Plus, it leaves me Mondays and Fridays completely free. I think I can handle it, it'll just take readjustment; I haven't worked an 8-hour shift in over a year, much less anything more focussed than that. My hindbrain'll just have to get used to not getting naps during the day.

So here's some short takes on my new classes, for those amused by academics and my observations on same.

( But some of you don't care, and that's fine. )

I've been considering what I should register for this fall. I have an appointment with an adviser to go over it in detail (including such topics as What I Need To Graduate, and What Is Likely To Give Transfer Credit towards same), but being a geek with mild compulsive tendencies, I decided to at least work up some possibilities first.

Below you will find more credit hours than I am allowed to take in a given semester, so at least one of the classes is going away. However, if I pick these specific sections, I could, temporally and physically, take them all in one semester; there's even a dinner/homework break. :-> Also, pretty much all of them will apply towards my degree requirements, as I know them [1]; the two exceptions are working on the college newspaper [2] and taking a choir course. The former will actually apply to my job skills; the latter is more useful to my sanity and non-job skills.

Also included below are arcane alphanumeric sequences with which you needn't concern yourselves; those are for me. :-> I just put them in here so I won't lose them. Oh, and in case you were wondering, 'W' means Wednesday; 'TTh' means Tuesday and Thursday. Felicitously, my schedule can (this is one of many potential arrangements of these classes, of course) work out to leave Mondays and Fridays completely free of classes, or with a class only in the afternoon; this will come in handy working conventions with Steve Salaba. Of course, it also means I'll be at school till 7PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays; but I'll deal, I suppose. No more 8:30AM classes, woohoo! :->

( Big scary detailed table within. )

---

Footnotes
1. Degree Requirements that I know I'm not getting transfer credit for include but are probably not limited to: Social Science 101 and 102, a science course (possibly requiring a lab), English 102, several Lit courses of my choice, and at-least-one more math class, chosen from a slate of three [3] that will fulfill my requirements to graduate.
   
   
2. Newspaper Yes, it's a course at HWC. Weird; I'm used to it being a club. It is also only EVER offered at ONE time on ONE specific day in any given semester, and usually during lunch. I'm going to find out this fall if that's really truly the only time anyone can EVER come in and work on it, or if I can continue with the newspaper throughout my tenure without having to build my whole darn class schedule around it. I hear rumors that people who work on the newspaper for several semesters get contacts and recommendations out in the job market, which would be nice.
   
   
3. Three potential math classes would give me 'all the math I need for my degree'. Those three are Math 118, General Education Mathematics (Focuses on mathematical reasoning and solving real life problems, rather than on routine skills and appreciation. A maximum of four of the following topics is studied in depth: geometry, counting techniques and probability, graph theory, logic, game theory, linear programming and statistics); Math 125, see chart above; and Math 135, Finite Mathematics (Logic, sets, partitions, counting, probability rules and Bayes’ Theorem, vectors and matrices, and linear programming, includes applications to behavioral sciences and to business and administration problems.).
   
   118 is apparently mostly for people who never anticipate taking another math class in their lives. 135 is primarily intended for hard-science majors, or business majors. 125 is what my current prof recommended me, given my major and the field in which I intend to work.
   
   Hard-sciences majors have to move on to College Algebra (Math 140) and Plane Trigonometry (Math 141), which I also intend to take here -- not because it will help get me my degree, which it won't, but because they hold skills I wish to posess, and I think HWC will be the most cost-effective and learning-effective way of getting them. Plus they might count as transfer credit somewhere down the line.

I've had to explain my yard to a couple neighbors lately, so the thinking is fresh in my mind, and I thought I might as well make an LJ post. :->

I was raised to garden not so much as a formal style of architectural adornment, but as a variety of ecosystems management. Comes of having a geeky mom who's involved in a lot of natural-areas work, probably.

Gardening (as I do it -- your yard may vary) is really a four-dimensional undertaking, involving as it does both three-dimensional arrangement of appropriate plants [1] in space, and a temporal component: when things bloom, how big they'll get in a few years, how all the growth habits in that bed will interact.

Which isn't to say it's rocket science. :-> Especially in its initial phases, gardening involves a lot of incremental changes, followed by 'settling-in' periods where you live with it that way for a while and see how you like it. In my case, I didn't really start changing things until the second year we lived in the house. The first spring, I waited to see what would come up, and gradually instituted The Weeding Protocol.

The Weeding Protocol

• What is this plant? (Identify to scientific name, which sometimes takes months; also identify its growth habit and seeding/spreading tendencies. Plants that spread aggressively are more likely to be put on the 'eradicate' list than calmer, less evangelical flora)
  
• Do I like it? (For example, if it's prickly it GETS PULLED, regardless. I dislike my garden prickling at me)
  
• Do I like it growing there? (If it's a much-wanted plant in an inappropriate place, I might move it. Otherwise, just pull and compost)

The Weeding Protocol is implemented iteratively, for twenty minutes or so at a time, as I have urge and available material to pull. Certain plants are pull-on-sight; others I pull when I feel like doing a thorough job in a given bed.

Starting last year, and more thoroughly this spring, I've actually started putting in new plants that I want to grow there, with an eye towards final 'plans' for the various areas. I have two guiding principles of design, if you will, plus a third modifier:

1. Green is good. I would much rather have a verdant bed of something plain and nonaggressive than bare dirt or mulch.
2. Low-maintenance is the order of the day. When something's first being put in, I'll accord it a certain amount of mollycoddling and special treatment, but once it's firmly established it better not expect me to take care of it intensively. This means no special watering or feeding, but it also means I favor dense plantings that need little weeding. I'm not a big fan of "specimen showy plant in an expanse of nothing so you can appreciate it better," at least in my own yard, however pretty it can be when someone else has to pay the gardeners to maintain it.
3. Native beats non-native, all else being equal. I've been trying very hard not to purchase and put in the ground anything that isn't plausibly native to northeastern Illinois. For this purpose I'm not counting my food crops, since they're in containers anyhow and not part of the 'general ecosystem'.

I've put in three species of native bush, am encouraging my (came-with-the-house) native violets [2] to seed and spread, and have put in columbines to interplant with the violets for self-mulching no-maintenance 'pretty' beds. I did relax the natives rule slightly for the sake of my bulb bed, which is full of crocuses, hyacinths, a few tulips, and so on. The bulb bed (see previous comment about four-dimensionality) is also, in season, the morning-glory bed -- another showy non-native, but they came with the house. :-> Also, they cover my front fences with gorgeous flower 'hedges' by the end of the summer, so I'll forgive them a lot.

---

Footnotes

1. Appropriate plants are chosen for a combination of aesthetic (color, height, leaf shape, do I like them) and practical (what water/sun conditions does it like, does it make food for birds or butterflies, is it annoying) considerations.
   
2. My violets, Viola sororia (formerly Viola papilionacea, just to throw more Latin at you), are native to the local woodlands, and very hard to acquire more seeds or plants of, for some reason. The prairie form, Viola pedata, everybody and their brother seems to sell.
   

So I can print this and take it with me to the Meet'n'Sniff. It comes in categories. It's kind of long.

( I cut because I love. )

I was reading emygination's recent entry about being intimidated by lace knitting, and went looking for some patterns to point her at for practice.

Then I realized it might be of wider interest. Plus, there's one on here that I'd LOVE directions for ... it's in Russian. I seem to recall there are some Russian-speakers reading this lj. Hopefully Russian knitting-jargon isn't TOTALLY impenetrable to the layman; if not, oh well, but it'd still be cool.

Basic but neat-looking lace pattern links
• Ace of Spades scarf. Many of these are in the form of scarves, since that's a good way to get a sampler that you can USE later.
  
• Cat's Paw scarf has relatively few holes, if holes scare you. :->
  
• Touch of Whimsy scarf (also available as a hat)
  
• I think this one is called Крупная сетка, if that displays; it's the one in Russian. COOL PICTURE! No chart. Directions only in Russian.
  
• A stable diamond mesh overall pattern, suitable for curtains or other things you don't want to be stretchy.
  
• A somewhat crunchier edging pattern (meaning it's flat on one edge and zigzag on the other, so you can sew it to a central motif) that's from an out-of-copyright lace pattern compendium.
  
• Sue's Clove St Shawl is triangular, and intended for worsted-weight yarn.
  
• Wave and Shell Shawl is a variant on a classic arena of yarn, the 'feather-and-fan' family of patterns.
  
• Middling simple-to-knit but elegant victorian-looking lace shawl from elann, intended to be knit in aran-weight (meaning, I think, dk). Get a row-counter, but other than that this is complex-not-hard, if you know what I mean.
  
• Branching Out was expressly written as a lace tutorial.
  
• FLOWER PETAL SHAWL is a lace pattern for someone confident in stockinette knitting and terrified of going farther. There are relatively few holes in it, and a lot of plain stockinette with increases.

... being an anecdotal discussion of some months of social-interaction data between two peculiar and damaged beagles.

I love subtitles. :->

That said, our week of boarding Boston and Ajax with born_to_me (and the problems that arose between Boston and her beagle), and our long-weekend of boarding judygs's moose dog Belle at our place (and the problems that arose between her and Boston) got me thinking about things I hadn't questioned before.

We had Ajax first for over six months before Boston showed up, and the two dogs melded together into a very functional dyad almost immediately. I presumed, from my observations, that Boston assumed dominance over Ajax (and that Ajax freely ceded that place to him). However, to born_to_me it was plain and obvious that Ajax was the dominant dog.

So why the confusion? Well, their relationship is ambiguous, with some behaviors each way, and I think she and I were weighting the equation differently. However, I keep kicking it around in my mind, and I want to lay out the pros and cons and think about it. You can watch. :->

Ways Boston Dominates Ajax Any toy Boston wants, Boston gets, without even having to fight for it. Whenever extra-toothy noisy wrestling ensues, Boston pins Ajax and holds Ajax's muzzle clamped firmly-but-gently in his jaws until Ajax settles down; then Boston licks his throat and face until Ajax is stable and no longer violent. When they play-fight/wrestle, Boston's stance is always erect, and his attacks come swooping in from above; Ajax's stance is part-crouched, puppylike, and he does a lot of attacking-from-beneath, as well as flipping his head over to invite play. They both spend roughly similar amounts of time on their backs fending off attacks with their paws (statistically; in individual bouts there will be bias).

Ways Ajax Dominates Boston Ajax can steal Boston's food at any time without reprisal (from Boston; we mean humans enforce food-bowl discipline in his stead). Ajax can dry-hump Boston pretty much as much as he wants without getting growled at. Occasionally Boston will cunningly writhe out of it or lie down, foiling Ajax's ambitions, but for the most part there's impunity. Boston doesn't seem to care, or even to notice. About half the time that I discipline Boston firmly enough to be speaking loudly and deeply ("Bad, bad DOG!" and the like), Ajax will get upset and attempt to intervene between me and his brother, protectively. Boston doesn't intervene when humans are disciplining Ajax.

Like I said, kind of schozophrenic. Which may be why when a third dog is added (on a longer-than-playdate basis), its stability goes all to hell. Lately, it doesn't even seem to be Ajax's mental issues that cause violent outbursts, but instead some kind of deep-seated disagreement about social norms and expectations between Boston and [otherdog].

With Belle, Boston progresses well through the formal-greeting stages of sniffing and standing around and not-looking at each other, but the process never progresses further to the true settling of who's-in-charge. He seems deeply intimidated by her sheer size, and therefore takes much of her friendliness for aggression; conversely, he has some kind of basic unwillingness to formally submit to her the way Ajax does, and so we go around and around on it. Or, rather, they do.

If you know my dogs and would like to submit more data for either column, please do; I'm sure there are behaviors I'm forgetting to add.

Below you will find, in table format, the books I've read in the second half of this year, with some comments. Part One (January-June) is here. If you see R after a title, it means I've read it before (i.e. this time is a reread); L means I got it from the library that opened near my house in early June.

( 144 books for the year (as of 12/27). )

This was so successful last year that I wanna do it again this year. Last year I had to do it broken up quarterly because LJ didn't like the post being edited so much; they seem to have fixed that somewhat, but I'm still getting ghosties and weirdness, so I'm going to split it into two halves. Part Two (July through December) is here.

Last year's total: 151, including a bunch of multiweek hiatuses of no-books-read and one stellar 7-books-finished day. This year? Who knows, though I find that keeping a list ups my output.

So below you will find, in table format, the books I've read in the first half of this year, with some comments. If you see R after a title, it means I've read it before (i.e. this time is a reread); L means I got it from the library that opened near my house in early June.

( Big-ass table follows: 45 books. )

Here's what I know about what I'm going to be doing for a while:

• 
  
• Dec 29 in the evening -- dinner with maverick_weirdo and others.
  
• Dec 30 in the afternoon (and, who am I kidding, probably well into the night, given past experience) -- hanging out at my Dad's house with them-all, including my sisters. Must remember to bring the things to return to them, plus the couple of potential hand-me-down pieces of clothing.
  
• Dec 31 A New Year's Eve party, unless I can't face being social. Probably ashnistrike's, unless John's friendgroup has their stuff together and actually does one, since I don't want to go by myself and he'll go to that one if there is one.
  
• Jan 3 Drop doggies at born_to_me's house for Doggy Summer Winter Camp, aka 'being boarded'. Buy Big Bag Food (and a new lid for Boston's bucket of special food) well before then.
  
• Jan 4 Get on plane, fly to San Diego. Spend next week doing museums and socializing with the in-laws. Remember to bribe the neighbors to collect our mail for us if it starts overflowing the box. Remember to do the bribing BEFORE WE LEAVE.
  
• Jan 10 Return home. Flop over. Take in big box of mail.
  
• Jan 11 Reclaim doggies, who will be absolutely certain WE HAVE DIED.

If I've missed something you know about, or you'd like to get into the schedule, do let me know.

knitmeapony was reviewing YA lit she'd read recently, and she asked for recommendations from the floor. I went back through my books-read-this-year posts (1, 2), and pulled some out to babble about ... and it got long, and I realized I might as well put it here. I also need, clearly, to go back through those posts (and last year's) and put little reviews on the ones I haven't yet babbled about.

So if you're shopping for someone in the 8-12 range (or just someone who doesn't mind that a good book is labeled as being appropriate for kids), here's a list of potentials.

In no particular order (ok, in the order I read them this year), I highly recommend the following:
( Quite a few books. )

Finally, a 'how my life is going' update. All mixed together and delivered as bullet points, because I have no spare spoons for organization right now.

( Cut because I love, and it's longish. Depression within. )

Well, I did speak to a lot of good friends (most of who were amazingly good sports about how hyper or unfocussed I was), but for the most part, from my point of view, Windycon looked like this:

( Lots of rambling bullet points, most involving the word 'concert'. )</ul>

For those of you not clicking through the cut, yes, I'm told the concert went well. There are recordings. If/when you can hear it, I'll let you know how and where. Please God save me from concertgiving for at LEAST six months. Hopefully by then my life will be more togther.

Other than that, my overwhelming impression of Windycon is that that hotel (a) is run by monkeys, (b) they're unprofessional monkeys, (c) has about half the parking it needs, (d) is three times longer from one end of programming space to the other than anyone wants it to be, and (e) is slowly driving away, by being a-d, increasing numbers of people who would otherwise come to Windycon.

Speaking personally, I hope to God they haven't renewed their contract for next year, as if it's still in that hotel I'll have to have an overwhelming, WOW WANT TO GO reason, or I'll skip it myself. And I haven't missed a single Windycon since I started going in 94.

For other people's views of the con as I collect them, click here.

What did I do this past weekend? A nonexclusive bulleted list follows, and if I feel like expanding any of them in full entries later, I shall do so. First, though, some highlights in case I get too busy to do anything more thorough.

• Sang but not nearly as much as in some previous years, mostly because I:
  
• Talked for hours to a whole string of interesting people I've not had a chance to connect with before. Hi, joecoustic! Hi, maverick_weirdo! And others. Also bookwyrm_com (more on her later).
  
• Ate a nice hot breakfast of protein and fat every morning, thanks to the included-breakfast-buffet-with-room concept.
  
• Slept, but not nearly enough! :-> Maybe six hours Friday night, four on Saturday night, and fiveish last night.
  
• Drove a WHOLE lot! I-290 -> I-94 -> I-80 -> I-65 -> I-465 -> I-70 -> I-270 (briefly), to the hotel, from the hotel to BD's for the Dead Dog Dinner, and then the reverse course to come home. mannoftalent valiantly shared the long-distance driving chores, but I was glad to find my stamina for long trips and ability to stay able-to-drive over the long term are improving. Outbound trip began roughly 11:30AM CDT, and we got in to the con just before 8 EDT. On the way back, we were on the highway by 8AM EDT, and were walking up my front sidewalk by 1:30PM CDT. Outbound, though, we were unlucky enough to hit the height of rush hour on I-475 (going around Indianapolis), so THAT leg took nearly an hour and a half.
  
• Bought gas three times, each for less than $2.10/gal. Yay, full tank of cheapish gas ...
  
• Plotted with peteralway, bookwyrm_com, and ohiblather, among others. More on this in future.
  
• Exchanged filkbook files with gorgeousgary. Yayyyy! New-to-me repertoire! I haven't even had a chance to look through it. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. :->
  
• Didn't sing with vixyish all weekend, except during the closing jam. This should change at some future con, but I'm not sure when. Miss you, Pegasus-Award-Winning-lady!!
  
• Touched base with accompanists (sp?) for the Windycon concert. Hope to have the info for them fully accessible (FULLY functional, captain!) by midweek.
  
• Hosted a theme circle for songs about 'myths and fairy stories'. My my, there are lots of those. :->
  
• Was reassured slightly by autographedcat, kitanzi, andjoecoustic on the subject of a somewhat-megalomaniac idea of mine. I was worried about exactly where it lay on the "Stupid -----> Clever" continuum, but they agree it's closer to the latter, which is calming. More on this later, probably much later.
  
• Heard a lot of great music, most notably (at the moment, for the purpose of this post) from a gal in elf-ears and a Vulcanish hairdo who sang a great variety of Tolkien songs of her own composition with style and verve. She's a published author (small-press), but despite her skill and creativity, had never ever been to a filk before. I hope to goodness she comes to more! She has already registered for next year's OVFF, so there if not before. She lives somewhere near Terre Haute, IN.
  
• Didn't freak out much despite being in highly social contexts for most of the weekend. Yayyyy!
  
• Wrestled and played with bookwyrm_com's lovely, friendly, and FLUFFY Eurasier, Empath. There are photos. It's horridly cute. My beagley boys are great fun, but I've missed the serious roughhousing one can do with an energetic *large* dog. Or, as bookwyrm_com correctly reminds me, a 'medium' dog, technically. :-> Expect mightyajax to blog about his view of all this (and Thursday night's beagletorture) sometime soon. For the record, my attempt to describe Empath to people at-con as 'the black dog in the vest' turned out to be spectacularly nonspecific; he was one of THREE black service dogs in attendance. The other two were Renee Alper's (lab?) and a gorgeous 16-week-old Great Dane puppy. At 16 weeks (note: NOT months), this sweet little bitch was already as tall as Empath or taller, and her paws were the size of my fists. I got pictures. She was staggeringly cute, and did quite well in situations even some humans find baffling and crowded.
  
• Met pocketnaomi's daughter, Her Grace the Wogglebug Duchess of filkhaven. A most excellent small person, though I almost can't believe she's as BIG as she is! filker0-and-spiritdance's David, likewise.
  
• Played some Railroad Tycoon II TSC.
  
• Played a lot more guitar-songs than I had expected to. I didn't even bring my own axe, and found its lack inconvenient at various points throughout the con. Guess I can no longer claim I 'don't play guitar', or even that I don't play enough to justify lugging the thing around. Especially since I got even more songs-with-chords from Gary ...

Other People's Views

... as I come across them.

• peteralway before, highlights.
  
• [Unknown LJ tag] space intentionally left blank
  
• [Unknown LJ tag] space intentionally left blank
  
• [Unknown LJ tag] space intentionally left blank

I got it from scs_11, who got it from Agnesbcjennyo:

1. Copy & paste.
2. Bold the ones you’ve read.
3. Add four recent reads to the end.

( Lots of books.. )

If you're curious what else I've read this year, the list is here. Discussion welcome, either there or here, of anything I've read that you loved/hated/were curious about/other.

In other words, for a day in which I spent hours and hours sacked out half-asleep in various positions all over my house (thank you, female reproductive biology. Grr), there were actually a surprisingly large number of things I've been meaning to do for weeks that were done at the end of the day. Most thanks are due to John, for facilitating my productivity (as well as tearing through chores on his own recognizance!).

We bought a shrub (Spirea japonica) and put it in at the corner of the 'garage' [1] in the spot that's been BEGGING for a shrub, in my design-mind, since we first started clearing out the trash and looking at the 'shape' of the garden, in spring 2004. I may not want a spirea there, ultimately, but it was what was on sale at the garden center's "please take these plants off our hands before snow flies" sale, and there's (just barely) time for it to establish before frost, so if I later decide I want a different shrub there, I can move it to the front yard next summer.

We put up the bird feeder again. Finally. We'd had it with its pole in a bucket of gravel, and that worked for a while, but then it got tipped over repeatedly (I now blame the squirrels), and finally we quit putting it back up until we could do it more permanently. Weeks ago. Now we've pounded the end of a 12-foot piece of electrical conduit at least 3 feet into the ground, then trimmed to where we want it, and the bird feeder is sitting on an oak dowel jammed firmly into the top of the piece of conduit, just about my head-height when I stand in the garage, so I can fill it easily. Now to see if we can get something besides sparrows to visit it! [2]

John lopped a good number of twiggy limbs off the (enormous, ancient) cottonwood over our yard, getting our electrical and phone lines out of danger. Again. It says something that he has to put our 20-foot ladder in the garage to be able to reach even the low branches -- the tree's taller than our house by a good safety margin. And, unfortunately, has several dead limbs that the woodpeckers just love to snack from. Unfortunately, it is just barely entirely in our neighbors' yard, so we have no say over it, and no right to call an arborist on its behalf.

I put anchors in the wall for, but did not finish mounting, my new delicates hamper.

I changed my guitar's strings, which needed them so badly that when I went to slack my high E string, *it broke*. New record for 'needing changed,' for me. Probably over a year and a half since the last change, though I don't play it much. My dearling guitar should stay in tune better now, at least once they stretch in. :->

We went to the fabric store for bias tape to repair the edge of one of our comforters and some buttons for the seatcushion slipcovers I made a few weeks ago.

Saturday, we did groceries and hit the pet supply for a couple of clickers -- we're going to try to click-train the dogs, given Ajax's continuing anxiety. I'm just going to have to study like heck to stay at least two lessons ahead of the dogs. :-> While we were there we topped up on flea treatment, replaced Ajax's muzzle, bought a coupling attachment for our leash, and some other oddments. We discovered that while Ajax adores pig ears, Boston doesn't seem to see the point -- he'll nibble once or twice, and then drop it. Carrots, on the other hand, both dogs adore.

We played about ten minutes of the 'Come' Game with each dog on Saturday. They did fairly well for being tossed in the deep end of a new game and an entirely new training method, and much crunchy cereal fiber-treat was consumed, which is often a win on its own merits.

In other news, whatever it was I planted near the southeast corner of the garage is coming up like gangbusters -- it's either cardinalflower or a blue lobelia, but I forget which I put where. Regardless, it's sprouting all over, so I'll have some next year. :->

Today, we're going to go spend the afternoon at the Chicago Botanical Gardens with one of my sisters and maybe my dad. Of course, all their bestest special cool stuff happened YESTERDAY, but we'd scheduled this fun-day quite some time ago, so oh well. It'll be neat anyway. Turns out John's never been! We'll fix that. There will likely be pictures.

---

1. Our garage is in fact a bare concrete pad -- we joke, "instant garage, just add walls and roof."
   
2. Birds on our feeder Mostly we have sparrows on our feeder, no matter what we fill it with. There are cardinals, jays, mourning doves, hairy woodpeckers (!), and a possible gray catbird in our neighborhood, as well as the sparrows and grackles, but we've never seen them on our feeder. I'm trying a 'woodpecker mix' now, which includes peanuts and corn and dog only knows what-all, and supplementing it with raisins to hopefully lure the cardinals, and we'll see. I want to try suet, but not if the squirrels are just going to eat it all, so the mounting method requires thought. :->

Wow, over a week since my last entry. And no time to write a real one now ... Sorry. :->

Some topics that may get covered over the next week as I write catch-ups:

• Book recommendations/discussion from my recent reading
• Beagles R Cuuuuuuuute, with photographic evidence
• Ramblings on music and participation and born_to_me's last music-and-games night
• Discussion and photographs on the subjects 'Why the Milwaukee Public Museum is VERY COOL and I simply must go back when I have 7 solid hours to spend there' and 'Wow, I really like what they did with the Museum of Science and Industry in the remodel', since we went to both of them when John's folks were in town for his birthday
• An illustrated census/yearbook/rogue's-gallery of my garden's current inhabitants, both intentionally planted by me and otherwise. I must say, urbpan is doing a wonderful job with his 365 Urban Species project: I only managed to identify one of my weeds for certain before he featured it, though of late he's merely been confirming my moderately-vague but researched suspicions.
  
• How Suburban-Jewish Mah-Jongg is like Dragon Poker ... though at least it's not Calvinball, thank God.

Or it might be something completely different that occurs to me between now and then. :-> For now, it is enough (in a very 'dayenu' kind of way) that I have done almost all the extant laundry today, and folded and put away not only most of what I laundered today, but the backlog from previous laundry weekends. Also made two slipcover pillowcases for couch cushions. And beat several levels of Railroad Tycoon II.

I feel strangely competent today, though I know it's just a local high in a morass of overlooked tasks and general inadequacy. Nonetheless, conscious Pollyanna that I am, I'm enjoying it while I have it.

Also I splurged $15 on four packets of (organic, mostly-native) perennial seed to plant in late summer and let get bushy before first frost, so it'll flower next year. Theoretically. Step 1 of (many) in the 'trying to get the garden more organized and less whatever-came-up-this-year' plan.

Silly question, in this crowd. :->

To narrow the field somewhat, I can show you what I read last year and this year (there are also notes there about what I thought of them), and request that recommendations take into especial account that if it's come out since 2000, it's highly possible I haven't read it yet, since, well, no budget.

However, I have this shiny new library just a few blocks north of my house, and they can put anything on hold for me that the Chicago Public Library owns more than one copy of (with a few other caveats and complications), so go right ahead and suggest things that aren't out of hardcover yet.

Subjects I particularly adore, a nonexclusive list: gender issues, really *alien* aliens, realistic, rigorous worldbuilding, puzzles, sardonic humor.

But I've run through the things that I *knew* I desperately wanted to read and hadn't, and, well, I feel insecure with less than five books working their way through the hold system. I mean, I might return the last of a batch of books and find *nothing* enticing waiting for me when I get there! The horrors! Save me! :->

What books did you devour and adore? What books should I, for my own good, make sure to have read before I die? Inquiring minds want to know.

All standard card suits can be accurately keyed out using only two questions, in any order:

1. Is the suitglyph red or black?
   
2. Is the suitglyph blobby or pointy?

For some reason my brain finds questions like, "Ok, now where is the 6 of Blobby Red?" easier than, "Where is the six of hearts?" At least when I haven't, and can't, sleep.

Still too many things to do in the next five days to possibly shoehorn in, even if I weren't absolutely wiped. Still no idea how to prioritize them. Apparently playing solitaire all night instead is a grownup reaction to stress? :->

( Personalized-dungeon-crawl meme results. )