So on-track it's frightening.

10:45 AM. I just (a) drove to San Francisco (hitting green lights all the way from 9th and Folsom to Larkin and Geary!!!), (b) put 1/2 hour's worth of change in the meter, (c) bought string, wood dowels for kites, a very nice little fruit knife with its own sheath and four sando-gasa at Soko Hardware,  (d) explained WHY I needed four sando-gasa, (e) went next door to Sakai's for green onions, kabocha, daikon satsuma oranges, mochi (strawberry, melon and mugwort), sugar (but no baking powder!), (f) chatted kabocha recipes with the cashier, (g) drove back to Alameda, (h) bought baking powder, two ice blocks and signed a petition at Nob Hill Foods and (i) came back here in under two hours.

I am going to have some brunch, take the book box down to the truck, cut and tape the banner pole bamboo, then start organizing and packing garb.

EDIT 12:57 PM.
Book box is packed and loaded into passenger footwell of truck cab.
Banner poles are finished. Using wooden dowels fitted into one end of a pole so another can be fitted on top works beautifully. We will have 10' high cantilevered banners.
Exceedingly painful and awkward splinter in left thumb has been removed. Contemplating a letter to Curad about the blatant stupidity of packaging bandages in such a way that you bleed over half the box while tearing one from a perforated set of multiple packages and then struggle to get THAT one out of its coccoon.
Tea. I need tea....

EDIT: 2:42 PM
Garb is clean, pressed (well, at least things like kosode collars), packed and about to get loaded into the truck.

EDIT: 4:55 PM
Wagon and cooler have been hosed off, dried in the sun and loaded after a little truck Tetris. I have determined that everything WILL fit in a reasonable fashion, hats included.
First load of laundry is in dryer, second is washing. My book shipment arrived from Amazon.com early.

EDIT: 6:18 PM Sunday
Kabocha manju is a write off.
Onigiri is made.
Kitchen box has been repacked, party box is packed and both are ready for load-out.

To do:
Japantown shopping run Saturday 2/9
Non-Japantown shopping Saturday 2/9
Finish banners.
Inventory camp kitchen stuff
Inventory and triage camping gear living in truck.
Check fit of new ridgepole sleeve and turn old one into recycling.
Call Bruce's and get the truck serviced.
Motel 6 reservation in Palm Springs.
Class notes!
Charge and update iPod. Fresh batteries in iPod speaker dock.
Re-glue rosette on hurdy gurdy.
Cut bamboo for banner pole cross-pieces. Cut doweling for bamboo "extensions." Reinforce ends of bamboo with strapping tape to prevent splitting.
Pack garb trunk.
Pack books.

Sunday:
Make chicken teryaki onigiri
Make kabocha manju and throw it away because the cake should not be freaking pie crust!

Re-pack kitchen box and put in truck.
Pack non-perishable groceries and put in truck.
Pack knapsack (modern clothes, toiletries, camera.)
Print and copy class notes.
Take out trash.

Tuesday AM:
Load hurdy gurdy, knapsack.
Put ice and food in cooler.

Optional sewing:
Make George a new coif.
Let out the pink kimono I won at the silent auction for $5
Finish tabi.
Finish tattsuke-bakama?
Finish brown gored tunic?

New books arrived!

Maybe it's because bovil and kproche mentioned it to me twice, but Amazon.com sent me TWO copies of Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds. I could've sworn I only ordered one. No big, I'm sure I can pass the extra on to someone who will appreciate it. Also acquired, this on jupiterorbit's recommendation, Peter Beagle's Tamsin.

And then there's the prizewinner.

Making of Japanese Kites: Tradition, Beauty and Creation by Masaaki Modegi and The Japan Kite Association (Japan Publications Trading, 2007) ISBN-10: 4889962220, $16.95 US.

Some of you may remember my earlier forays into researching and building The World's Crappiest Japanese Paper Kites. (In fact, the last one was a deliberate sacrifice to the wind kami at Estrella last year.) Trying to find anything more than the vaguest hints and references to kites in pre-Edo Japan was murderously frustrating. Paper and bamboo are fragile and there are no extant examples. Worse, I couldn't find any art depicting people flying the things until the high Edo period. All I had to go on were written mention of things described as kites, and the word of a traditional kite-maker in an interview from the 1970s saying that his family had been making Suruga dako since the 16th century. (See The Art of the Japanese Kite, by Tal Streeter, Weatherhill, 1974).

What a relief, it isn't just me. Modegi-san could not find any pre-Edo iconography or extant kites either and he's the Chairman of the Japan Kite Association and director of the Tokyo Kite Museum. While he does briefly discuss what is and isn't known about early kites, the focus of this lovely little book is how to build fifteen different traditional kites, in clear English with extensive, easy to read diagrams. (Measurements are metric, just so you know.)

Maybe now I can figure out how to build a Suruga dako that will spend more time in flight than nosediving into the ground.
Already I see a completely different bridle line arrangement than the one I found parrotted over and over on the internet.....

This is coming to Estrella. Where did I put the Elmer's?

Semper Fidelis

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/07/berkeley.protests/index.html#cnnSTCText

I don't have a problem with people protesting the war. I don't have a problem with them going through proper channels to get appropriate city permits for peaceful demonstration. What I do have a problem with is the egregious abuse of power and common sense by the City Council. I would dearly love to know just long that recruiting station had been in that location before Code Pink decided to stage a protest in front of it and the City Council decided to throw around words like "uninvited and unwelcome intruders"? In a university town? Years, you think? Anybody going to go do something about the Golden Bears Battallion while they're at it?

This has gotten so embarrassing, a group of Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill to yank funding from the city of Berkeley and give it to the Marine Corps.

In the spirit of free speech and protest, I'm not putting so much as a nickel down a Berkeley city parking meter. I will park on an unmetered street and walk however far it takes to my destination - or I will not go.