Maebius Musing

This year, we are returning to the Great Festival that started my love of drumming, and fully cemented, solidified, and otherwise convinced me that this Path of mine was ‘Me’.  Yep, Starwood.  That bastion of revelry and fun, which can be described, as the website so reads: A place where Scientists sit with Shamans and Druids dance with Deadheads. Where African drums jam with bluegrass fiddles, and political activism meets Earth spirituality - where theatre and life meld - where days are spent in exploration of inner and outer space, and nights blaze with laser lights and bonfire flames.

I found this image form the last time we went, in 2002, thus proving my existance there at the opening spiral dance ‘ceremony’.  That guy in the white shirt and black shorts?  Yep, me.  That cute chick in the green shirt and flowery purplish skirt?  Yep, the wife.   (this is pre-sprogling times of course) The guy in the robes and blue scarf?  no clue, but friendly! 

This year we are going with some friends of ours, who generally attend the S.C.A. event known as Pennsic.  While this wonderful festival is over ten times the size of Starwood, and has all sorts of cool costumes, workshops, and such, I am totally looking forward to the more laid back and spiritual festival event this year.   It may not be the most serious spiritual gathering, and have more of a party flair, but I’m really really looking forward to “coming Ohm”.
All night drumming bonfire circles, fireworks one night, and the freedom to go skyclad if one so chooses, is simply indescribable for those who have not attended.  (Heck, even this usually conservative person felt no real hesitation to joining the spontaneous “dance naked in the rain shower” that happened last time.)

There are 18 days left as of this posting, which means our next weeks will be full of meal planning,  double-triple-quadruple checking the packing lists, and otherwise getting things in gear to spend and entire week living out of our tent with a bunch of strange folks, many hours from our land.

Otherwise, there’s no real deeper meaning to this poist, other than to say…I can’t wait!

An interesting pictoral randomness, I discovered over at “Bringing Up Salamanders“.

Here’s my mosaic, organized as you would read text, top left -> -> bottom right.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Type your answer to each question below, into Flickr Search

2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.

3. Copy & paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

THE QUESTIONS:

1. What is your real christian/first name?

2. What is your favourite food - right now?

3. What school did you go to?

4. What is your favourite colour?

5. Who is your latest celebrity crush?

6. What is your favourite drink?

7. What is your dream vacation destination?

8. What is your favourite dessert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. What is one word that describes you now?

12. What is your Flickr/Blog name?

Here are the image credits:

1. Nathan Fillion @ the Flanvention, 2. frozen taco, 3. Non-Active, 4. Emerald Green Thigh Highs., 5. feliciaday, 6. innocent pure fruit smoothie 3, 7. Dolphin Bay Esperance, 8. Ice cream, 9. This is the forest primeval., 10. Tammy’s bowls of light., 11. a puckish whistle12. Not available

I tag, anyone who reads this… 

Yay! Summer is in full swingand the day was long and summery.   Blue skies interspersed with puffy little clouds, then the traditional afternoon grey rumblings and windy “Get indoors NOW” rain threats.

Not much to report, as we were rather busy with daily life,  but it was spent mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, and otherwise fiddling with the land outside. Our little one spent a decent portion of the day in the old corn-crib (his “Smash House” lately) pretending to be The Increduble Hulk, and stomping through various parts of the rotten floorboards.  It’s truly amazing how stomping a weak bit of plywood until it becomes a hole, then spending a good 2 hours enlarging that hole to the limits of rotten-ness and stomp-strength could occupy a child of almost-5 in such a focused manner.  Kids R Kool!

In the afternoon, we went to visit our friend Meg, and got to see her sweetie’s house for the first time.  It’s a nice little place, a bit far down a windy road, tucked off to some forgotten sectino of the suburbs.   You wouldn’t expect to find a secluded little patch of woody fields essentially just off to the middle of “town”, which made the trip there kinda magical.   The yard was about as big as our front lawn and nestled in a little dip of the hillside to make the neighbors all-but-vanish.  With trees behind it stretching to “infinity’ (or 1.4 mile) and a cozy garden, combost bin, and fire circle + hammock, it was perfect!

There were a few kids there for ours to play with, and us adult types mostly jsut stood around and chatted.  We didn’t know many folks, but there were some gransparents, nad a lovely older woman in a wheelchair who devoured the snack we provided.

There was planned a spiral-dance with the kids, and a bag full of rattles, sticks, and such, but as soon as they were getting distributed, the wind suddenly gusted, black couds materialized out of the blue sky, and it the temperature dropped 5 degrees.  You know those times, where you can feel/smell the rain, and the ait itself gets charged with electricity?   I joked that if we danced right then, the final moments where everyone crunches together would be accented by the largest *CRAACK* of lightning, and a torrent of raindrops.   Many agreed, but as much as us younger adults wanted to do that, older wisdom prevailed and we moved the party indoors quickly before the gransfolks got soaked.

(Note, there were only approximately 42 large drops of rain which fell, by the time the frontline moved through, so no real torrents, which made us all laugh at the ‘paranoia’ a few minutes beforehand.)
Concerning snacks,  Doug and I made salsa and guacamole from “scratch” to bring to the party.   I’ve never actually make salsa from a recipe before, and always add a dash of vinegar to tarten it up, but I followed the recipe for the most part this time.  Turned out AWESOME! (Recipe below, and thanks Nettle for helping with tomato-processing questions).

The guacamole was our little guy’s favorite.   Three avacados, a heaping spoonful of light sour cream, a glop of lemon juice, smallish scoop of minced garlic, and a quarter of a chopped onion.   Stir to smoothish consistancy and serve.   The guacamole didn’t last long, and some of the older folks were mock-fighting the lady in the wheelchair since she kept surruptitiously moving the bowl onto her lap and lookis around innocently if someone held a chip out.  

All in all, a fun festive time!

Maebius’s new favorite homemade Salsa:

• 2 large tomatos
• 1/2 large onion
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro
• 1 whole garlic clove (we used about 2.5)
• 1 jalapeno pepper
• Chop all ingredients and mix together in bowl.  Let sit for 2 hours to allow flavour-mingling.  Eat!

We substituted some sliced peppers in oil that were leftover from last season for the fresh jalapeno, and added just over double the garlic recommended.   The whole mess looked suspiciously like Tabbouleh, but tasted much more like the topping Wren used for Bruschetta once.  Tart, not too tomato-y, yet very yummy!

Related as a followup to this post right here.

I had planned to go a full 2 weeks with only checking online for work-related emails, and friend-related messages.  No other blogsurfing, no online gaming, nothing beyond quick scans and email replies to my close real-life contacts (who mostly also read this blog).

I broke my intarweb exile a two days early, mostly because I actually stopped looking at all my blogs and felt a pretty solid down-shift from the stress of “gotta check my email, gotta check my blogfeed, gotta check something else.  ZOMG I’m bored, lets surf the web for random shit“.

Honestly, I’ve read about “those people” and realized I’d started to become one.   Before leaving work, refresh feed reader after JUST refreshing it 2 minutes ago, froth at mouth, rinse, repeat….  Life is NOT that important to stay glued to my monitor, and I’m glad I did it.

I took a solid week and a half off from world of Warcraft and actually miss it, or, certain parts of it.   I found I missed the social aspect, chatting with some hilarious officers in my guild, being particularly punny with my Troll Nookni, and making bags free for the new alts we have in the guild.    That’s a huge reason I only recently hit max level on only one character after 3 years. I don’t play to kill things and quest. I play to network and RP after work.
What I did NOT miss was some other officers bailing because “Their Healer” was offline for over week and thus they wanted a better chance at seeing bosses die in instances.   Not a slam against them really, but I wish them well in their new home.  Dudes, just say you were looking around for progression, don’t just “Screw this I’m outa here!” in the middle of the week, M’Kay?  I won’t miss them much if they were truly relying on my character to make their gameplay fun.  That’s a good lesson from disconnecting….Perspective!

I also enjoyed a bit more time at home, just doing stuff with the family.   We went camping at Watkin’s Glen (beautiful!!), we gardened a bit, and I helped the sprog play LEGO Indiana Jones on PS2, or random imagination-games in his room.  I didn’t feel really rushed to bedtime, like I sometimes was.  I’ll admit, some nights if work was stressful, I jsut wanted to come home, put kid to bed and play online, not just WoW but random blogg-feeding.  It surprised me the selfishness that implied, and I’m glad for the escape from that escapism this week.

So, for now, I’m limiteing my online time to work for blog-reading, and two hours at night for home-computer.  If It’s Warcraft, that’s cool.  If I want to fiddle with other stuff like this cool online hand-drum lesson site?  Thats’ cool too.

The main lesson I took away from this experiement is I was overstretching my attention.  Started to feel crushed by “I didn’t read XYZ yet tonight?!?!”

and more importantly…..32 days until Starwood!

Recent emails discussing blogging, and such have supplied us with today’s tag-meme, and thus, my answers below.

What books do you read when you’re happy?

Hmm, hard to pin down a specific book, sine if I am happy it is most likely because I’m reading something new and fresh and exciting. Usually fantasy (such as Susan Cooper, Ursula LeGuin, Diane Duane, or Neil Gaiman… not “Dragonlance” or other high-fantasy stuff) or Sci-Fi type books. Fiction with a healthy dose of either philosophical underpinnings, or a pseudo-spirituality/mythology behind them. Currently reading the Chronicles of Narnia (Prince Caspian) to my son at night.

What books do you read when you’re sad?

Similar to the happy books, though when I am sad I generally do not read much.  If I do it is lighter fare, such as the ever-popular “So you want to be a wizard” books, or “Wizard of EarthSea”.  Also, huge fan of William Sleator for quick pick-me-ups.

What were your favorite childhood books?

Hmm, already mentioned, before I read this question.  William Sleator (”Interstellar Pig“, “House of Stairs” and “Singularity“) definitely, as well as Diane Duane’s “Young wizards” series.  These, plus “The Dark is Rising” series(no, NOT the stupid modern ‘Seeker‘ movie) formed a big part of my worldview.

What’s your i-die-tomorrow meal?

Hmm, really tough call.  Honestly, as I think about this, it really depends on the season.  In summery months, I would eat Herb Chicken Pasta or honey-mushroom chicken every other night.  (herby chicken breast, over alfredo sauce, peas, and penne)…(chicken breast coated with a gloppy mess of honey, mushrooms, mustard, worchestershire, whatever else is handy, and topped with melted swiss cheese)

In winter, I die for rooty stews with Burdock, carrot, and anything Thai-curry.

What’s your guilty food pleasure?

Hmm, either a fair trade organic dark chocolate with cran/blueberry bits, or of course…Pomegranate Powah.
What’s your guilty tv/movie pleasure?

For TV, probaby a toss up between “So You Think You Can Dance“,  or  “House“.   For movies, I’m still a sucker for “5th Element” and “Tank Girl”, though also could watch “Titanic” again (which I saw over 4 times in theatre) if I have to mention a guilty secret movie. 

Ok, tagging everyone who reads this.     Go!

-Me