'tis the season

i hate the "christmas season".

no, i'm not really a bah humbug type, not really..........i enjoy making and getting that right gift, i love my little baby 2 1/2' x-mas tree (that always goes up, only missed one year since i was 3!)...........i enjoy the big dinners with family, many of whom i don't see more than once a year maybe.............i enjoy decorating for a holiday....................and weirdest of all, i do enjoy the kids x-mas specials on tv (i love the animated grinch!) and christmas carols!!

but i hate the season. not the weather (even though we got snow already this past week) but the pushing, shoving, aisles cluttered, stupid bell ringing, forcedly cheerful, gimmegimmegimme, with stuff out before halloween in the stores!

this drives me nuts. i've watched the "season" creep forward as the years go by............i remember when the mall would put up the decorations the day before turkeys (thanksgiving), so that it would be festive for black friday...........the decorating started creeping, and creeping...........now, there was a x-mas shop in walmart in the middle of october (towards the beginning) and the inflatable decorations went out a week adn a half before said pumpkins were even thinking of rotting..................the internal store decorations went up sometime in the past week...............and they are already playing carols!

come on people. give it a break. get over the 'i want this, and i hafta have it!' syndrome.

what is this season all about?? well, let's start with when they start decorating......

halloween. for pagans, this is new years, a day of remembering those that are gone, the end of summer/beginning of winter.........for many kids, yeah, it's gimme candy, but it's also a chance to be someone they really are not. my little monster was a pirate. yeah, she's a pirate a lot, but she got the clothes for it this time (yes i'll post a pic, after i get the mud off them and can get them back on her!).........

thanksgiving. for americans, a chance to give thanks for everything we have.......a time to get together with family, enjoy the fruits of all our labors...........and remember the past, those who have gone before to get us where we are today.

christmas. now this depends a lot on whether you celebrate this as a religious holiday or a family one. if you are religious, it's a birthday technically............a day of miracles............a day to remember what's joyful (i was raised episcopalian)................if you are not, most still celebrate this as a day to give special things to those close to us, a day to be together with those you care about...............for pagans, solstice is pretty close (the longest day of the year), the day when the days start getting longer again, a rebirth of the sun, the first day of the end of winter.

now i wonder, where in all of this do large inflatable santas on motorcycles come into all this??
where does football play into the traditions?? where does it state that a list a mile long of things we can't live without and our family has to go broke buying is required?? where is it that if we don't like something we've been given, we look at whoever gave it to us and say we don't like it?? now i admit, i've done this a time or two..........usually when i'm allergic to whatever it is(smelly candles can kill me!) where does it require buying out a store for a single person?? (i worked toys r us for two x-mas seasons......i have watched parents come in and pile several carts to the point of overflowing, then make remarks at the register that they'll hafta come back for the cousins, this is all for one child!) this was really underscored by holidays with my ex, his family tradition was that you spend around $500 per person, he was rather upset with me that i wouldn't let him, we coulnd't afford it, and i found it tacky; he was rather embarrassed, but then again, there are many reasons he's my ex.............

i think my point in all this, is we need to remember why we have holidays, remember what is at the core of our upcoming days............
family.

i tend to remember this well, i'm juggling visits with three separate families for every holiday........his, my mom's side, my dad's side..............and for me, with grandparents visits thrown in..................we are 3 hours from any of our families.......so when we actually get north, especially with the little monster, visits are required.........it is a juggling act.............and it really underscores what i've been venting about above............
we have a choice around here. we can go broke buying gifts, or we can use the extra money to visit the family...............
i'd rather visit the family, and make/buy a few well-thought-out gifts that people will really enjoy adn remember, than lots of stuff that will all blend together within a day, and never get used.

happy holiday season...............i'll try and keep my rants a little shorter from here on out, my posts a little bit less preachy, i just had to get it off my chest before i burst and killed a bell ringer..........

research must-have

yeah, i've been posting lots lately.......i'm going through a internet-research phase, and it's better to share all this stuff than keep it locked in my head.........and anyway, that's mostly what this blog is about anyways............
so...........
my latest must-have website on anyone's research list.................

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

it's a translation site (as i'm sure the words babel fish should imply), and it's the best one i have come up with. literally, you type or cut and paste what you don't understand in a box, select the from and to languages (i've been with mostly from german to english, as i'll explain), hit the translate button, and your translated text pops up quickly. not too many ads, nothing that takes forever to load with dial-up, nothing distracting...........

i love this thing.

the reason i found it is the ever-present wiki. i've been using wikimedia commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) which is all media files.........i tend to browse through miniatures...........sometimes getting the right words in the search engine is interesting, but hey, it's a computer thing............
the amusement with all of this, is that items get posted from all over the world........which means (in my case) i've been looking up art of india, and i'm getting back things that have been posted by a german. which means all the labels (title, artist, etc) are in german.
i don't speak/read/anything german.
thus, to the babelfish.
thankfully, this is giving me the opportunity to label my files in something i can understand.
thank the gods.

hope this helps!!

world clothing

well, research...........it's what i do.

some may be interested to know how cross-cultural things really are........i found this picture online, in an interesting gallery primarily made up of bedouin photos........ the website is http://www.old-picture.com/bedouins-index-002.htm ...........at least that's page two of pics........where i found this.

now, this pic is credited as tunisia-tunis, and it says it was taken in 1890. i've seen other photos looking like this one, from about the same time period.

where i come from, that dress is a chiton, viking overdress, or more commonly known as a bog dress.........and it is held together at the shoulders by penannular brooches.........which we make in a myriad of forms.

said a little easier, this late 1800's woman is wearing an outfit that with very little change would have been acceptable is greece in ancient times, with a dress under in viking times, and just as it is almost anywhere the SCA plays.................held together by brooches that were worn everywhere(and have been found everywhere), from rome to the celts to the vikings, all over the ancient world..................and now to africa.

i really need to get around to making one of these for myself..............it's just choosing which time period i'm representing when i wear it!!

fibro chocolate

thank you jenna................i love you...............

but.............

alright, for those who have noticed, i was a little obsessed with this subject.........recently, my dear friend (check out her blog, http://naturallynerds.blogspot.com/ ) found me these articles........

http://chronicfatigue.about.com/b/a/256023.htm
and
https://secure.endfatigue.com/tools-support/Chocolate-For-Cfs-And-Fibromyalgia.html

these basically state that a study was recently done, showing that dark chocolate can help reduce the signs and syptoms of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.........
in the study, participants ate 45mg of dark chocolate (very dark, 85% or higher) for 8 weeks........and it reduced the fatigue.

personally, i'm not sure how they did this. my dear and i figured that we'd try it, he's desperate to at least try things that will make me feel better.........so we went out, bought two different kinds of really dark chocolate, high quality stuff (cote d'or and lindt, to be precise)........each bar was 100mg..............so i read the study results, and figured that half a bar would be about right.
gods, that stuff is nasty! i won't be trying this cure........i ate a section of chocolate bar, and it made my tummy upset............stupid IBS...............i'll prolly be baking with the leftover choc, he won't even eat it, it's so bitter............

if you like uber-dark choco, have fun............for me, i'll keep looking............
good luck!!

country elf

the great lord of the forge wanted me to write up a blurb for his ebay store..........on a term i started using recently to apply to his more residential smithwork.................

yes, i did say country elf.

to start off with, i have to explain what he's been doing recently. he's been getting bored with just jewelry, just stuff that's medeival........just stuff that's documentable.............just stuff that he's been doing forever (or variations thereof)..........
so he's started doing different things, like windchimes, dinner triangles, plant hooks, steak flippers; and he's working on things like candleholders, towel rings and bars, toilet paper and paper towel holders, probably eventually doing drawer pulls and pot racks, maybe even lamps and chandleirs (no i can't spell that correctly!).............

these are all things that many modern smiths do, and are generally labeled country craft items. modernly, the country craft movement makes them with twists, hearts, stars, things of this nature (i know you get the picture!)..........

he's doing them with dragons, leaves, snakes, vines...........they tend to look very organic, vaguely elvish even................

this led me to label them country elf.

said label (delivered deadpan, while in the truck) almost caused him to swerve off the road as it registered what i said and he snarfed...............

country elf is (obviously) a fusion between high/middle elvish and country craft........traditionally forged items in a country style infused with whimsical and fanciful elements........as if a backwoods country farmer-type elvish blacksmith started producing items for modern use..........

does this make any sense?? i'll link to the ebay store, once some of this stuff is posted.........see if there is any consensus on this..........
or if i just come up with a better description..........

stupid confuser.....

stupid confuserstupid consfuser stupid stupid stupid confuser.........
the main computer has crashed.
the main computer, where all my research gets saved, has crashed.
the main computer, where all my research gets saved, where i can type with some semblance of normalcy, has crashed.

the computer is dead, long live the computer.

yes, i'm being weird.......a friend is sending us some recovery disks, hopefully we can at least pull the data off the hard drive, and then we are investing in an external hard drive and some thumb drives, for data storage.........
some stuff is saved and backed up, but not much, we don't have rewritable cds..........

so expect me to be a little behind in the postings for a while, while i get back up to speed on using this laptop and it's keyboard.

wish me luck...........