Dwarf Planet in Purple

In late March, I wrote but never posted:

Now that my latest feature article is done, what do I do next?

As I had been promising myself, I started practicing the ukulele. Since I've taken up several musical instruments over my ever-lengthening life, I know that the beginning is the steepest part of the learning curve. My left-hand fingertips felt tender, but I can say I know three chords now: C, F, and A minor. All three involve only one or two fingers. I really want to learn G major, but that involves three fingers, which is a bit more cumbersome for my non-dominant hand and brain. Still, I want to learn, even if I learn at a slower pace than a youngster.

I am still singing with Laydes Fayre, Mistress Arianna's group, but I had to skip the March 22 practice session because I had to attend a church trustees' meeting about candidates for our next developmental minister. That's about all I can say because of confidentiality rules.

Then this weekend came about, and I am

I was probably going to write, "I am so tired I can barely write..." *grin* Fast forward to late April.

The weekend of March 22-23 was a double-event weekend in my SCA world. On Saturday I went to Defending the Gate, at which one of my friends got her Laurel (highest award for arts and sciences) and also stepped up as Baroness of Stierbach (with her husband as the new Baron). On Sunday my own barony, Storvik, had an informal "spring thing" at the Cheverly community center, an indoor space that we have only recently started using (but that works well for activities).

On March 26 the Key Bridge collapsed, which was huge news in Maryland, as you can imagine. I think I'd driven over it only a couple of times in the decades I've lived in Maryland. Usually I take the tunnels or I travel up the west side of the Baltimore Beltway.

On April 6 I was driving nowhere near Baltimore -- I was heading up to Erie, PA, for a rendezvous with the path of the total solar eclipse. I stayed at my friend Amanda's house -- how lucky for me that she had a guest room! Of course, the big question hanging over the weekend was: would the sky be cloudy? After all, in July 1991, I received a great demonstration of what totality looks like when the sky is overcast. Fortunately, while the morning of April 8 was disappointingly gray, patches of blue sky began to appear on the western horizon, and the crowd (at Mercyhurst University) and I were treated to an awesome sight.

This past weekend (April 13-14) I spent Saturday at Storvik Novice Tournament and Sunday at the Japanese street festival in DC. Storvik had to hold Novice Tourney really early this year because that was the only weekend we could rent the usual site. (This close to DC, sites that allow us to set up all our SCA stuff and have fighting and horses are few indeed.)

At the SCA event, I was excited to be called into court twice: first by Their Majesties, because I won the drawing for a "quest prize," which I will have to explain at another time, and second by Their Excellencies Storvik, who presented me with the Baron's Award of Excellence, which left me truly gobsmacked.

At the festival, the boy toy and I had various types of snacky Asian foods and I bought myself a couple of parasols for use at future SCA events.

I finally got through the last of the election-judge days (primary day itself). My regular precinct was severely understaffed. We had two chief judges, one from each major party, but the Democratic chief judge was dealing with long COVID complications and probably some other health issues -- he huffed and puffed after walking 20 feet. Plus, it was his first time in the role, so he was uncertain about some things. Half the election judges assigned to the precinct failed to show up -- didn't even bother returning the phone calls from the chief judges a week before the primary. What's with that? $200 per day won't make you rich, but it's pretty easy money -- it's hardly picking crops in the field or other hard physical labor. Later in the day we got three fresh trainees -- "fresh" in that they had been trained just that morning, starting at 6 a.m. Somehow we all managed to get through the day.

I tend not to get too attached to candidates before primaries. This year the Democrats had a lot of good gubernatorial hopefuls, and I would have been OK with any of them. Wes Moore ended up winning after enough mail-in ballots were counted. The GOP nominated this fire-breathing Trumpican dude, and I hope his campaign goes down in flames.

I can't believe I have a feature article due on Friday. I feel as if I have so much to do still, and I'm panicking.

Today in history: It's Amelia Earhart's 125th birthday. It's the 53rd anniversary of the splashdown of Apollo 11, completing JFK's goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." (My emphasis.) And today David Ortiz was enshrined in Cooperstown. If only the Red Sox could find another good slugger....

I had a short-article deadline of noon today. I got that puppy done with plenty of time to spare. No way was I going to miss the festivities!

Over breakfast I saw He Who Must Not Be Named Here Again give his "farewell speech." One last chance to spew the Big Lie. With a soundtrack ranging from "Gloria" to "YMCA" to "My Way." Could he have gotten any tackier?

I managed to keep my eyes dry until Vice President Harris was halfway through her oath. Then the floodgates opened. I kept wiping my eyes with tissues until the band finished playing "Hail to the Chief" for President Biden. As one of my fellow science-writer friends noted, today was a banner day for Kleenex.

The inaugural address was like balm for a weary nation's soul. The young poet laureate who spoke her words was a powerful boost. Our Toastmaster for the evening (at our online Toastmasters club meeting) cited her as an excellent example for us.

Today the boy toy cooked Pennsylvania and Delaware foods: scrapple for breakfast, goulash (a cheesy version of American chop suey) for lunch, and the roast chicken dinner special from the local co-op, because Delaware produces lots of chickens.

I wasn't expecting Katy Perry to provide the firepower for the evening television program, but the surprise fireworks were dazzling. The sound carried all the way out to my little Beltway suburb. Sound carries farther in the cold, dry winter air. Within minutes, people all over town who weren't watching TV were posting on Facebook about the possible gunshots or explosions.

Good night, all.

First of all: Happy Birthday, wookiemonster!!!

The year 2020 is rapidly going away, or at least the parts of the year that spice up life. The SCA's governing board made it official today: no in-person events in North America until next February. That relieves some of the stress associated with uncertainty. Also, it heads off any possible problems with people flocking from state to state in search of that one event that didn't get canceled. And virtual events are perfectly permissible, so we in Atlantia will have an online "Pennsic in Your Backyard" weekend in August and another virtual University of Atlantia in September.

But still. This is a long, long time for an organization that relies so heavily on interpersonal social events to pause those events. How will this affect membership numbers? Obviously people like me are hardcore diehards, but what about the people who usually attend events once or twice a year and don't have time for a lot of the activities that happen between events?

So, no SCA events for the rest of 2020, and Chessiecon (which didn't happen in 2019 because the hotel's management imploded) is apparently going online only, though this hasn't been widely publicized yet. And no Christmas pageant by the Washington Revels because the group would have had to start rehearsing a couple of months ago. The huge Toastmasters international convention will be virtual, not that I could have afforded to go to Paris, even though I have a valid passport.

Right now the only thing still "on, as normal" is Philcon, and I wonder how long that's going to stay that way. I know that it's a pretty small and cozy convention these days, and the urge to memorialize the late Hugh Casey (a pillar of the Philcon community) will be great. But, despite the name, Philadelphia's SF con happens in Cherry Hill, NJ, and both Maryland (where I live) and Virginia (where R. lives) are both on New Jersey's list of travel restrictions. So we would have to self-quarantine for two weeks to attend a two-day convention. Uh, I don't see THAT happening....

1. Today was the boy toy's birthday, so we went out for a drive through the Maryland countryside. We stopped at a combination farm stand and restaurant up in Carroll County (I think). We ate at an indoor restaurant for the first time in months. The booths were socially distanced, the waitress wore a mask made of Baltimore Ravens cloth, and the food was tasty.

2. A whole bunch of people I know also had birthdays today: Mistress Martelle, the founder of my local Toastmasters club, and a woman I worked with in the late 1980s. Also, the current Storvik baroness celebrates her birthday today because she was *really* born on Christmas Day.

3. Last night I finally finished the set of 12 marketeering pieces for the European company. I hope they PAY me now.

4. One of those things that wasn't really a problem before the world changed: Someone accidentally screen-shared erotic fan fiction during a Zoom meeting at work. Oops.

5. All that time in the sunlight today ... I'm getting tired....

A rare day, indeed! I can't resist posting when it's February 29th.

I remember when Leap Day happened in 1980 … the big controversy on my college newspaper's staff was whether Sadie Hawkins Day fell on February 29 or sometime in November. I don't think I'll go there today, though.

Back in the 1990s, my "SINKs & DINKs" social circle at church included a guy who was born on February 29, 1952. So at one point his girlfriend/partner (one of the previous owners of my condo) threw him a party for his 12th birthday, so we were all supposed to bring presents appropriate for a 12-year-old boy (even though he was 48 years old). IIRC, I wasn't feeling that great, so I didn't go. He's now deceased, so he won't be celebrating his 17th birthday today.

Today's the South Carolina primary. So sensible, voting on a day that's not part of the Monday-through-Friday workweek! Maryland still doesn't vote for weeks and weeks. At this point I am still leaning toward Elizabeth Warren, but I'm not sure what kind of choice will be left for Maryland. Perhaps for scheduling the 2024 primaries, state names should be drawn randomly for a barrel or something.

For the first time today, I saw a deer on the trail around Greenbelt Lake! Probably because the sun was getting low in the sky and dusk was approaching.

If you wish to read about my recent SCA activities, here's the link: http://ladypatriciaoftrakai.blogspot.com/2019/06/two-events-one-site-year-so-far-part-2.html.

In other news, today was moderately productive. I cleaned the bathroom, took care of some freelancing paperwork, and got my passport renewal application in the mail. It's just in the nick of time, as you're supposed to be able to renew a U.S. passport by mail only if it was issued within the past 15 years and mine was issued in June 2004. *sigh* It has occurred to me that every time I get a new passport, we have had a Republican president, each one worse than the last ... though the incumbent toddler-in-chief is his own special kind of awful. Yesterday I tried to distract myself from his grotesqueness by thinking of my late ex-landlord Jack, who was a U.S. Army medic in World War II. He was sent to England, but at the time of D-Day he was still recuperating from a bad bout of pneumonia, so he didn't get selected for the first wave of the invasion. He was sent to France about three weeks after D-Day, when Allied troops were still ridding France of German soldiers, so I'm sure he saw his share of action then.

And for anyone who's wondering, no, I don't have any plans to travel outside the U.S. anytime soon. I just want to have a separate photo ID that's stashed away in case my wallet gets stolen. That's especially important for someone like me who has no immediate family left alive.

And speaking of the calendar ... today my cousin Tim's grandson turned 13 years old. A tall teenager!

Tomorrow the boy toy and I plan to go to a "colonial market fair" at the Benjamin Banneker site just across the river from Ellicott City. The 18th century isn't exactly the 16th century, but somebody might be selling some relevant historically adjacent supplies, like ribbon or linen thread. The boy toy and I also like supporting the Ellicott City area because of the recent years' floods.

First off ... welcome, studio2009! She's a friend in real life.

Early this morning I brought the boy toy to the airport for a week with his parents in San Antonio. He was flying Southwest, and I detected a bit of nervous energy in him -- a bit more nervous than usual, given that he grew up as a "military brat" and has probably flown more miles than I ever will (and I've been to Hawaii). For the past few weeks, we've been subjected to many news stories about the problems with the now-grounded Boeing 737 MAX 8, and Southwest said his flight was originally supposed to be on a MAX 8. So he was worried that he would be bumped to another flight or his whole trip would be canceled. Fortunately, his flight took off without a hitch and even arrived in Texas 15 minutes early to boot.

So the condo feels extra empty, and I have to feed myself for a week! Normally he does the cooking around here, except for a couple of specialty dishes of mine (and I can't spend the next seven days eating potato pancakes). Still, I'm sure I can put together something if I just think about it for a bit. Before I knew him, I'd often cook a pot of lentils and eat them with rice and different seasonings or sauces.

Speaking of eating lower on the food chain ... I'm sorry to hear that the Maryland Food Collective is struggling financially. When I was in grad school -- and when the campus had fewer lunch options -- one or two of the collective-made bean or bean and cheese burritos, nuked in the astronomy department's microwave oven and drizzle with a dab of leftover taco sauce, made a cheap and reasonably healthful lunch.

And speaking of struggling progressive organizations ... read this and this about Hampshire College's travails. Together, the two articles make me wonder whether someone was deliberately trying to sabotage the small college to make money off the real estate, and pass these shenanigans off as "the problem with small private colleges these days." Sinister plot or destructive incompetence, indeed?!??b

It's July 3, a big anniversary in my book, and not *just* because I started my LiveJournal 15 years ago today.

Seventy years ago today, this happened:



I think my parents looked nice on their wedding day, don't you?

Also, it makes two years today since I danced in the big Šokių Šventė in Baltimore. Here's a photo of our "seniors/veterans" group, taken the morning of the festival:



Right now a subset of my Malunas friends are in Lithuania for the Centenary Song Celebration (which also includes dancing and instrumental music and displays of tangible folk arts). I really wish I could be there, but I lack both money (duh!) and a steady male partner (I kept getting shifted around during rehearsals for the 2016 festival, and mostly I got put with a bowlegged guy who kept dropping hints that he'd like me to become his fourth wife). I hope I can get back into Lithuanian folk dancing in time for the 2020 Šokių Šventė in Philadelphia.

On Monday, September 5, I marched in my town's Labor Day parade with my local Toastmasters club. While we were lining up to get ready for the parade, I took some photos that I thought might be of interest to CZ.

First, a couple of images of a plug-in BMW:



THEN ... I saw a car that looked an awful lot like the orange Porsche that CZ used to own back in the 2000s:



Note the solar panels -- I sincerely doubt that these were factory-installed in 1974 or whenever the car was built!




I even photographed the dashboard for clues to the retrofit:



Lots of other cool things. I really need to update my Flickr site.