gurdymonkey | Whirlwind weekend update

Spent most of Investiture hemming and cartridge pleating my linen ECW petticote and chatting with friends in the feast hall. Handed off the Sooper Sekrit Gift to its intended recipient. Now that she has it, I can tell you: I took a silk habotai square, stitched a design into it, drew the threads tight and tied them off, put a small amount of powdered silk dye in a jewelry sized zip-lock, wrote up how much hot water and vinegar to add the dye to and packaged it all up for the recipient, a person who has been so kind and supportive a patron of my weird-niche arts that I thought it only fit she get a chance to participate in one of them.

Finally met another Westerner who not only does Japanese, he is Japanese American. Miyake-dono seems like good people and I hope our paths continue to cross.

Party at

bovil and

kproche 's place was hot but fun. Good eats and drinks, excellent company and the silliness that is Eurovision music videos.

Livermore sucked. SUCKED, I tell you. It wasn't even the oppressive heat so much as there was nothing to do. Evidently Saturday's firing demo never happened because they couldn't get the heavy athletics people off the field. Yesterday our guys ended up doing cannon and musket firing in an empty parking lot, which meant a lot of people didn't see it. No place to busk because things were packed so close together that every stage was in every other stage's sound shadow. Complete waste of time except for getting to see friends and cower under a sunshade drinking lots of water. Oh, and watching the Gordon Highlanders' field drill with rifles, cannon and Gatling gun. The precision was brilliant and beautiful to watch.

Dinner with James, Sylvia, Jeff, Lyman and Dave at the Pasta Pomodoro in Rockridge was a nice antidote, at least.