Garden of Thought

This year is vanishing at a rapid rate - I've continued slooowly fixing my house but now that the weather is warming up I get to start sanding and staining boards to finish the deck again as well as being up to my ears in yard work. I used to love taking care of this place but now I'm kind of looking forward to having less land to tend. I may even (gasp) be one of those horrible people who cut down extra fruit trees if the place we end up with has too many, I am SO done with the annual deluge of fruit.

Still looking for that new house (well, sort of new - we actually prefer stuff built before the 80s) checking listings every day and I'll be meeting with a nice real estate lady this week, turns out she goes to the same church I've begun attending down in Salem - that was a fun discovery. And yes! I've finally found a new church, a Foursquare there conveniently right across the street from a Calvary Chapel which I also like so I can mix-and-match with studies and events.

AND I have belatedly discovered this little gem known as Ouran High School Host Club. Hee hee. I've now seen all of it in Japanese and then again in English. ^_^ Whee!

One of the dancers in our troupe showed up recently with a custom outfit - a blue ghawazee coat done up to be the TARDIS, matching earrings, harem pants made from cotton with the pattern of the "Vincent" swirl artwork featuring same - and a homemade Four scarf. Now she bounced over to me to lend me three Big Finish eps with Ten and Donna (with commentary on how she despises Rose Tyler). Hee! Another one has a Star Trek costume and dance routine including producing tribbles from a concealed pocket and using them like hand candles. The geekery apparently permeates every part of life it you wait long enough.

We have a new DWth community set up for our Ringers at Fellowship of Middle-earth, it's lotrfellowship - all are welcome to come join in. At this point it's brand new and therefore pretty empty, but I'm sure that will right itself in due time. It's a moderated community, so you will need to "join" and I'll get you approved as soon as I can. I've sent invites to the few old-school folks I know are here already on DWth, if you're out there and I just don't know your handle over here, please do let me know.

The appearance, color, etc. will still be tweaked a little but a little remodeling doesn't mean we can't go ahead and move in. ^_^ Many thanks to Tinidril for helping out with this!

My son landed one of those seasonal "drivers helper" jobs at UPS, so this week he's been decked out in brown and riding in the jump seat by an open (brrr!) door as a UPS truck rips along from house to house.  He enjoys it but he allowed himself to be a 'computer potato' this past year and it's catching up with him in spades. On top of it, he landed one of the most hilly neighborhoods in this area three times running.  As he said, "Hell is when you have a heavy package to deliver up an incredibly steep, long, dark driveway - and you are on a timer but your legs are broken."

He limped downstairs with me last night to watch "The Bachelor" - I found it at the library and knowing it to be a modern remake of Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances" wanted to see what they did with it.  Better than I expected, some hat-tips to Keaton's version and quite a good show really, totally worth it just for the shots of a tsunami of brides surging through the streets after one desperate man in a tuxedo.  Turned out to be a chick-flick that a guy with sore legs can apparently enjoy too. 

And here comes Christmas decorating time!  Have fun, everyone.

Garage sale went great - loads of stuff, a plentious bounty of customers and great weather!  Yay!  Bought one thing there, someone had a Zoombox projector for cheap so I got it to play around with. 

Plays a dvd ok, good sound but dim level of bulb so you really have to have the room dark for it to work - the dim and grainy effect was an inspiration so I fetched the old roll-up projector screen I had as a castoff of a school and set it on its tripod in the living room.  It's a late 40s-early 50s vintage and even silver instead of white! 

As soon as it was dark, we watched a great Buster Keaton silent film on the silver screen with popcorn.  Perfect. 

All it needs now is a recording of the ticky-ticky sound that the old 8mm projectors made.  Sense-surround!

Son: (opening box of crackers) Triskets!
Me: Like Speed Racer's girlfriend!
Son: Ah yes, Speed and Triskets. And don't forget...um, I can't remember that monkey's name!
Me: I just remember how annoying he was. And what was his little brother called?
Son: I don't know! Why don't I know this? What was it?
Daughter: Squirtle?
Son: Squirtle! And the monkey was something that repeats.
Daughter: Yeah, like Bop-bop or Chee-chee or Ten-Ten or something. *googles*
Son: Bip-Bip, Can-can, Boop-Boop...
Daughter: Chim-Chim!
Son: Chim-Chim and Squirtle. Wait. That's Pokemon.
Daughter: Someone needs to do a vid for that. Speed, Trisket, Squirtle and Ten-Ten.

 My kids have just discovered the Original Series for the first time as adults - they said they remember seeing bits and snatches when they were younger but now they're working their way through all of the series in order via Netflix.  Tonight was the Horta-sode and they were absolutely glued to the set - or should I say cemented?  This leads, naturally, to my daughter reading a Trek novel and everyone watching some of the many jolly fun fanvids out there.  I'd forgotten how campy and delightful some of those old eps are.

Back in the day, I was greatly entertained by two 70s tv shows that were unhappily doomed to one season runs by the Powers That Be - alas, where is the justice in the world:
* When Things Were Rotten (Mel Brooks made a tv show spoofing Robin Hood... cheesy, stupid and full of innuendo but I loved it. The one good thing from its cancellation is it made him go on to make it into a movie thus gifting the world with Robin Hood: Men in Tights)
and
* Quark (Buck Henry of 'Get Smart' fame made a space spoof at the same time as Star Wars coming out, in which a space garbage collector and his crew cheesily reference all sorts of sci-fi shows while inadvertently saving the universe)

I wouldn't bother purchasing When Things Were Rotten, but I had fond memories of Quark, which only had a sad 8-episode run. Went looking for it and found it on dvd but for a very high price, so I went to Fanfic.net to see what others had done with it.

INTERNETZ WRITERS you have let me down! What? Not even ONE fic for Quark? Not even ONE? 0_o
Even with characters like Ficus, who was essentially Spock if he were a plant? And the Bettys? And Andy the cowardly robot? (Bettys in unison: "We would follow you to the end of the universe." Andy: "I would follow you to the door.")



Dear me, a cheesy gem has been overlooked - not often I find such a thing.

I find there are several times now where I have deliberately not watched a movie or show purely because so many people were urging me to and they were obviously happily consumed in an active fandom for it.  I've realized my own nature is to become fannish, at least for a while, and to want to look up pictures, quote quotes, write drabbles (or more), mildly cosplay, make icons, etc. etc..... and I simply don't have the time to indulge it.

My muse is kept on a rather tight leash at this point, I must admit to not having seen Firefly or Sherlock yet - on purpose... their turns are coming, and due to the fan community I actually know quite a lot about both of them already, but I don't dare take a bite of the chocolate because I know I'll eat the whole box.  And then be frustrated because I don't even have time to chew.

Et tu? 

I seem to have fallen back into the belief that nothing in my life is interesting enough to bother posting it, which is stupid as I always enjoy reading other people talking about everything from making sandwiches to walking their dogs.  Life sure is busy for someone who is apparently doing nothing, heh.  Spent a good part of today in yardwork, trimming fruit trees and various other whacking that is needed as spring is already springing along.  My daffys are 6 inches up and the snowdrops and crocuses are fully blooming and here I am with still one more plum tree to do.

My folks finally found a home to buy down in the middle of the valley near my old alma mater, Western Oregon - it was a 'college' when I was there, since then upgraded to a 'university'.  There are renters in the place, though, so they have to wait until April to be able to actually get into it and have gone off in their camper to the coast in the meantime. so at least it's quiet here again.  I'll drive down tomorrow afternoon and check out the town, I'm sure it's different than it was in the late 80s when I was last there, it will be interesting to see what's changed.

So. Life. Made a big pot of meaty spaghetti sauce with plenty of olives and mushrooms for dinner, topped off with whole wheat oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  We didn't mean for them to be whole wheat, that was a flour-bin mixup, but they're pretty good that way.  Time to go watch another ep of 'Riders of Berk' - enjoying catching up on those.  There must be hundreds of black cats named "Toothless" out there by now.