Contemplations of a Closet Curmudgeon

Granted, I know the kanji to generate my Japanese name, which are 西園寺花, but a lady of rank should probably have a seal.... http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/seal.html

Possible versions,

         

The question is, can I carve one without slicing off a thumb?

EDIT: Having slept on the matter - as much as one can when one's body still thinks it's in another time zone and is stressing over Stoopid Work Tricks - #2 is my favorite.

Seriously. I do not understand how flying me out of my way to LA is cheaper than flying me directly to Baltimore. Note to self, do not take a two-stop flight again. It just takes too damn long. That said, I had packed my laptop and spent some quality time with the Seven Samurai on the LA to Kansas City leg (don't need painful earbuds with subtitles and the sound off!). Also spent some of the trip reading Mark Twain's Following the Equator, acquired for $5 in Fort Bragg a couple weeks ago. 

When I finally got off Flight 190, my left knee was making ominous ouchy pronouncements. I hoped I could walk it off, so when I got to baggage claim I did a slow lap around the carousel. "Need help with your bags?" No thanks, what was I in town for? Did I need someone to show me around Baltimore. That's right, O My Readers, I got hit on by a baggage handler. It wasn't creepy or anything and he cheerfully said, "Well, I had to try!" when I declined and explained I was going to be with family down here. (Knee feels just fine this morning, BTW, probably just stiffened up from all that sitting crammed up against a bulkhead.)

Mom and Elaine turned up about then. Despite the Trader Joe's fruit bars I'd remembered to stow in my handbag, I was ready to gnaw off a limb, so we headed to Annapolis and blue crab sandwiches at the Boatyard. I had mine with a tall, cool, perfect gin and tonic and a side of fries. I could've eaten two quite happily, I was that hungry.

Managed to make myself go to bed at a reasonable hour for this time zone, so I shouldn't be a complete zombie today. Meeting Mom for lunch after she gets her hair done and am looking forward to checking out her new place and maybe tooling around the historic district for a bit.

West Kingdom Twelfth Night will be at the Concord Hilton.

What info I have so far can be found here. http://tousando.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=events&thread=3798

Gwenhwyfaer, Willing Western Minion At Large has already ascertained that the hotel has no suites*  - she was going to find out for me if they did and how much and all that as a suite might be easier to configure should I decide to have a vigil. I've given her the go-ahead to try to reserve two singles that adjoin as a viable alternative. (They have something called "Executive Rooms" instead. These share a lounge area on a key-controlled floor.)

Work continues to be crazy busy, however, after Tuesday, it ceases to be my problem for a week. Looking forward to heading east to see my family.

The downside of buying beautiful, beautiful fabric is the part where I have to haul five or more yards of uncut fabric across the ironing board to press it after it's been washed. Did the silk this morning. It looks even lighter and leafier under the kitchen fluorescents.

Went out with a bunch of lady friends (they know who they are!) for tea down in Fremont - scones, fancy sandwiches, pastry and so forth. Nice to see everyone and potter around some of the shops in the Niles district. In addition to an Imperial craptonne of antique shops, we found a silent film museum which runs vintage movies and had a fun little shop with silent-movie-oriented gifts. I picked up several fun flip books for the nephews and fell in love with a print of the French King Kong poster by Rene Peron. I guess he can hang in the kitchen.

EDIT: Silk is cut out. Luscious stuff. As I was pressing it this morning I was picturing leaf-green ball gowns: 1870's bustle, Regency, robe a la Francaise, that's how nice this stuff is. I don't like bustle gowns, if I'm seeing it in that style, it's that good. And it as $9.99/yard. I will definitely make the effort to hit that store again. I figure I can knock out the hitoe by hand in a few evenings in front of the TV.

I've been thinking I wanted to do the kasane known as "yuki no shita" for some time. I now have an excuse to do it for Twelfth Night, so I went off to check out a fabric store in San Francisco. I came home with enough silk to make a new hitoe. (I hate my old one, it's too drapy and the sleeves never hang right.)

For reference, we have the descriptions and color charts at http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/garb/garb.ch14.html
The hitoe color reads as a sprucy green on my monitor.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crimsongriffin/3014879215/ shows the kasane as displayed in the Kyoto Costume Museum, with a bold green for the hitoe layer. Dalby's Kimono: Fashioning Culture shows the hitoe for this kasane as "blue green", almost teal.

My conundrum? The silk I scored for $9.99 at Fabrix is a much lighter shade.
I pounced on it for the price as it's beautifully un-slubby and I figured I could overdye it if I like.  The problem, The bag was on the car seat with the color winking at the corner of my eye all the way home and it's beautiful.

Yuki no shita means "beneath the snow," and is supposed to evoke plum blossoms and the coming of spring.

To dye and conform or to leave it as is? I can't decide!
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Other than that, the weekend is off to a good start. Duchess Tamsin contacted me this week about getting together for a celebratory dinner and turned up on my doorstep last night with an elegant little shopping bag containing a tin of ceremony grade matcha and wagashi, and an offer to introduce me to another friend who does tea and gives lessons in San Francisco. If we can come to an arrangement that will not kill my budget, I would love to do this.

We had dinner at Dragon Rouge here in Alameda. Yummy, yummy Vietnamese food in a bustling bistro/bar setting. And lychee sangria! We ordered several things to share and it was all good.

With the kasane conundrum comes the need for silk, hence the field trip into SF, having surfed the web and found Fabrix listed. As their website hinted at cheap silk, I figured I'd check it out, then maybe go up to Dharma in San Rafael if it didn't pan out. The place is not as much a claustrophobe's nightmare as that place down in San Jose that makes me twitch. Found the silks right away at $9.99/yard for most of them. Would've bought more white in the weight of that green if they had it, but they were down to a yard. That's enough to get started with - my budget could stand to do this project in stages and I've got a couple months to spread it out over anyway. The proprietor said they expected more silks in this afternoon, and they get things in waves, so it's definitely worth checking back.

Detoured through Japantown, found some small airtight tea tins at Soko that'll be a nice addition to my camp kitchen. Still out of tayaki irons though. Bought myself two pieces of mochi at Benkyodo for dessert, having finally figured out where they were. Been walking past it for years and never noticed it. Found a book on Shinran at Kinokuniya that looked informative - I figure Saionji would've probably been of the Jodo Shin sect and it would be nice to know more about it in detail.

Lunch now....

There's no reality check quite like an insane work load at work. My being out sick a day and a half in the middle of payroll AND an out of control hiring binge didn't help, nor does the fact that Nancy's trying to train her replacement. Hopefully tomorrow will give me some catch up time as most of our union employees will be off.

Someone asked what mode of address my impending rank-jump will entitle me to. I referred her to Sengokudaimyo's website http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/miscellany/address.html

Now, contrary to popular belief, I don't have this stuff memorized, nor do I understand ALL the linguistic subtleties. So I was startled and pleased to discover the following note:

"“Nagon,” meaning “counselor,” is the umbrella title for three ranks of counselor to the court. Given that the functions of peers can correlate to this, I recommend using shônagon (“lesser counselor“) for single peers, chûnagon (“middle counselor“) for double peers, and dainagon (“great counselor”) for triple peers."

Sei Shonagon, author of The Pillow Book, is often a dangerous role model, being snarky, gossipy and vain of her cleverness. That said, her diary is a goldmine of information about life in the Court and exhibits glimmers of poetry along with the mean-girl attitude. I go back to it often and I recommend it as a fun read.

Anyway, according to the Sengokudaimyo chart (which surpasses the one endorsed by the SCA Heralds website), there are a number of options for my future rank, but I may be referred to as "Saionji Shônagon!" HOW COOL IS THAT?????

http://heraldry.sca.org/titles.html says I get to be called "Sensei." It's simpler and has its own cachet/baggage/what have you, I'll grant you. BTW, a few months ago, I wrote to the web master listed on the SCA Heralds website to ask what it would take to have them do something about the Japanese alternate title list, was told my message was forwarded to the Pelican Sovereign of Arms and never heard another peep.

(Whiskey tango foxtrot? LJ formatting is GONE.)

In the interim, there is a good deal of bouncing off walls occurring on various lists: the reaction is gratifying and humbling at the same time. Folks from out of kingdom are talking about trying to come, which would be beyond awesome. I figure I can catch up with some of the others at Great Western War and/or Estrella.

I met up with layla_lilah last night for a celebratory sashimi binge at Kirala in Berkeley, where we caught each other up on news and she handed me a bag with a Daiso tatami mat in it from crimsongriffin. The note inside cited the "Japanese-gift-giving-death-spiral" in which two parties keep exchanging gifts until someone goes bankrupt or dies. (I'd sent a book off to Pennsic for her.) Said mat is unrolled on the carpet in my living room and the whole apartment smells like fresh rice straw.

The food? Oh, it was lovely. We split some grilled robata items: sardine, miso marinated salmon, chicken with umeboshi and duck with scallions, plus some nigiri: ikura with quail egg, scallop sashimi, uni (which I'd never had before) and red crab. I'm glad I tried the uni, but I was underwhelmed by it. Everything else was great, and we had a celebratory carafe of Bishonen sake.

While I wish Gaius was still around for all this, there is ONE thing I don't have to worry about. He had a pewter laurel medallion he'd picked up somewhere along the line but never wore because he liked the gold toned one better and said he'd save the "silver" one for me. IIRC, I looked appalled and referred to it as the friggin' hubcap. Seriously, it was at least two inches in diameter.....

OK, not buying it, but DAWWWWWW! THAT'S a cheerful monkey!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Japanese-Netsuke-Okimono-Monkey-Drinking-Sake-Noh-Mask-/200646988088?pt=Asian_Antiques&hash=item2eb77e1138

I don't often dig out the camera at events. I don't claim to be all authenticity all the time, but there are times I don't want to view the world through a viewfinder or LED screen. However, Rolf and Aurora are Go Big Or Go Home kind of folks and their Coronation procession was suitably epic.( Read more... )

....drinking the last of my morning tea and thinking I shouldn't've had all that bacon even if Edward insisted on making enough for twice as many people and we didn't want to waste it. I didn't think too much of it when Their Majesties approached our camp dressed for the last court of the event as (a) Rolf and Aurora were among the first people I met out here, he being an old, OLD friend of Gaius', (b) Rolf is Takeshi-dono's knight, and (c) the 10.0 cheese-factor grin comes standard on a Rolf. You know that itch between my shoulder blades? It started up with a vengeance as His Majesty said, "Hana, I have a research project for you." Namely, whether or not there is a period Japanese equivalent of a Laurel vigil. I regret having disappointed those present who were hoping I'd faint or drop the tea bowl (Gwenhwyfaer insisted on trying to pry it out of my hands) or otherwise lose my shit. It'll be at Twelfth Night. As soon as I know where Twelfth Night IS, I'll let folks know. EDIT: For the non-Society For Creative Anachronism readers of this list who are wondering what this means, this is sort of like when the Queen of England gives a knighthood to an artist or actor. ""Membership in the Order of the Laurel is given for excellence in the arts and/or sciences. Only a member of the Order of the Laurel may wear a medallion with a laurel wreath, and in the Kingdom of the West may wear a cloak with the laurel wreath on the back, possibly enclosing an emblazon of their Arms, and a smaller one on the front. The laurel wreath is a Greek symbol of achievement, and was also a symbol of Apollo, the Greek god of the Arts." To the best of my knowledge, there has only been one previous recipient for "Japanese Studies" in the Kingdom of the West, the late Omatsu Yoshiaki-Sensei, AKA Senkyu, in 1990. Senkyu-sensei passed away some time ago and has much been invoked by old-timers upon meeting me.

I remember my father telling me how terrified he was when he was awakened by an earthquake out of a sound sleep at one of his conferences in Santa Cruz many years ago. When I first moved out here, I really didn't know what to expect. I remember having seen news coverage of the Loma Prieta quake way back in 1989. Of course, I spent my first six months in the Sacramento area, which is less seismically active.


My first one occurred while I was watching the evening news one night. There was a brief  groaning noise and the sofa sorta twitched slightly. Honestly, I'd felt worse from trains uncoupling on the other side of Votee Park when I'd lived in NJ, but there was enough roll to make the studio lights at Channel Whicheveritwas rock on their hangers, a fact which was duly caught on live TV.


One night I was standing in the kitchen of our apartment over in Oakland when I heard a crash and felt a short jolt. I'd thought someone in the unit above us had dropped something big - like an entire refrigerator. "Are you OK up there?" I shouted at the nearest heating vent. No answer. Rich came in the door a few minutes later and told me he'd heard we'd had a temblor on the radio, but he hadn't felt it in his truck on the way up the hill.


Now I live even further down the hill from the Hayward fault. Alameda has a lot of surviving pre-1906-earthquake architecture. Whether this has anything to do with our location or the fact Alameda wasn't swept with fires after the quake, I don't know. This house would've been a year old then. Anyway, my apartment takes up part of the second and all of the third floor. The few small quakes I've experienced at home are an interesting sensation because the shock wave travels upward from the foundation and one can feel a noticeable shimmy, particularly up here in the garret.


Is it scary? Oddly enough, the little ones don't bother me. I figure small releases of pressure are preferable to major slippages.

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I confess I like diagonals in compositions. Commentary welcome!