Entries tagged with pennsic

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pennsic

[SCA] Pennsic planning

Pennsic starts in about two weeks. If you're going and you don't mind sharing: Where are you camping, and where else will you be findable? When are you arriving? What fun things are you planning to do? (And, if there's any chance I haven't connected LJ names and SCA names, what's your SCA name?)

I plan to arrive Thursday of the first week and will be camping with Polyhymnia (part of Debatable Lands), in block N10 on Cariadoc's Path between Brewers and Chandlers. (Look for the house.) I'm generally in camp late morning/early afternoon and around dinner time, often later too (but might try to make it to more of the night-time dancing this year). I plan to be at the performances by I Sebastiani, I Genesii, Known World Choir, and (I hope -- cooking that night) Debatable Choir. I will also be at AEthelmearc Court and Johan's memorial. Shabbat plans for the middle weekend are unmade at this time. Other activities to be worked out (classes, shopping, visiting friends, etc). I'm leaving mid-day on the final Friday.

(Thanks,

kfitzwarin, for the idea.)

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Pennsic (part 1)

Pennsic went well this year. This entry is going to be long. It is also incomplete; there'll be more in future entries.

( Read more... )

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pennsic

quickie

I'm home from Pennsic. I'm surprised by how many people were packing up today; I expected to be a fluke, not part of a wave. Ansteorra was deserted at noon, which may make sense as they have to drive back to Texas, but other -- nearer -- groups were also significantly depleted, and for a while I thought I wouldn't be able to park on our street to load the car. (That traffic jam cleared out, though.) Weird.

More after Shabbat. (And, once again, you should assume I won't see most of the last 10 days' worth of LJ; let me know if there's something in particular I should see.)

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health,
pennsic

allergy attack

I'm allergic to Pennsic. (Well, to dust and grass and pollen and weeds and...) So I take Allegra for about three weeks each year to deal with that, but don't take it the rest of the year. (I don't want to develop a resistance to it like I did to all previous allergy drugs save one [1].)

This year I started taking it on Saturday, and then went to Cooper's Lake Sunday for setup. I was fine yesterday, but today I've been congested all day. Mid-day I added Sudafed to the mix; I hope that wasn't bad but I really needed to treat the symptoms. (I take the Allegra once a day and had taken it this morning.) It took about four hours for the Sudafed to produce results.

I think this must have happened in the past, because there's Sudafed in with my use-only-at-Pennsic stuff. Now that I think about it, I remember once calling my doctor from Pennsic to ask if taking Sudafed while taking Allegra would kill me and he said it wouldn't.

I don't know if starting the Allegra earlier would help; how long does it have to be coursing through your veins to lay down a basic barrier against the nasty little allergens? With luck, writing this entry will help me remember next year to start earlier. (I'm sort of assuming that I should be taking allergy drugs (Allegra) and not cold drugs (Sudafed) as a baeline. I don't have a cold; I just have some of the symptoms.)

I should remember to ask my doctor if he can improve on this for me.

[1] Seldane. It worked gloriously, better than Allegra I think, so naturally the FDA eventually decided I couldn't have it.

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pennsic

Pennsic set-up

We went up to Pennsic to help with camp set-up today. Johan was there yesterday too, when he got the house in place and set up the kitchen building. Johan is a huge help with managing the house, with both maintenance and set-up logistics. (It needs to be moved from storage after land allocation and before everyone else starts filling in the block, which usually means Saturday afternoon -- obviously a challenge for me. But since others in my camp depend on it being in place for their setup, someone can usually see that it gets moved out of self-interest, from which I just happen to benefit.)

Today we set up the pantry and some pavillions and unloaded all the stuff from the house. Oof, we have a lot of stuff in there. Time to thin the pile down again. This year we're going to try to find new homes for the two huge, heavy, well-insulated coolers; they're relics from the Sated Tyger, an inn that served Pennsic for many years about 15-20 years ago. For the right camp they'd be perfect, but we're not the right camp now.

The new pantry building is going to work really well. Having walls instead of canvas means more stability in a wind, but it also means more stability for the shelves inside -- we can anchor things to the walls, which of course never worked with the canvas. We've got more usable space in the same footprint (no center poles, can shove things right up against the walls), too. And it looks spiffy.

The new drainage ditch that the Coopers dug in/around our block isn't as bad as we'd feared but is still going to require something to straddle it at the entrance to our camp. Possibly just a piece of plywood; we're not sure yet. So long as we figure it out before the first rain we'll be fine. :-)

My medallion number is 1745. Dani's is something over 11,000. Yup, looks like they handed them out in alphabetical order this time. :-) (Last year looked like reverse-alphabetical. I'm waiting for the folks in the Ms and Ns to demand that they start in the middle and work outward, even though low numbers stopped being prestigious years ago. :-) ) I don't know how many low numbers are reserved off the top, but probably not many -- so over 11,000 people pre-registered for Pennsic this year. I wonder what the final headcount will be.

Several times today while we were obviously busy setting up an annoying person from next door wandered in with his kid, looking for a play group. Hello? The people you want to dump your kid on (yes, he wanted to dump and leave) are actually doing some work; no, we're not going to drop everything to babysit for you. Duh. He's done this before, and we usually have to be rude to him to get him to stop. I'd rather not have to be rude, but I suspect he'll leave us little choice. We'll see.

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pennsic

Pennsic

Are you going to Pennsic? If so, I'd like to know where you'll be camping and when you'll be there. Even if you've posted this information in your own journal, I'd be grateful if you'd also leave a brief comment here.

I'll be arriving (to stay) on Tuesday of the first week and leaving on Friday of the second week. (Experience has shown that the final Shabbat is better spent at home.) I'll be camped with Polyhymnia, part of Debatable Lands, in block N10. Our entrance will be halfway down Cariadoc's Path between Brewers and Chandlers, I believe. Look for the white Andalusian house and the tudor buildings.

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pennsic

Pennsic preparation

This weekend was largely occupied with pre-Pennsic construction. We'd started to build our new pantry structure over Memorial-day weekend, but the peoplw who hosted are currently out of the country. So people with trucks and vans moved everything into our garage and we planned to finish this weekend.

We didn't have a lot of people, so I was worried that we might not get done, but we managed. We had three workers plus me on Shabbat, three workers including me on Sunday, and four of us plus two kids today. This turned out to be enough to get two coats of paint on everything (and sand and prime some parts that hadn't been done the first weekend). Yay! So now all the bits are back in the garage, and on land-grab weekend someone in the group will get a U-Haul and cart it all up to Pennsic. (Moving the pieces from the other house to ours required two trips with one van and one pickup truck, so we're not going to do that to get it up to Cooper's Lake.)

The pantry is the same style as our camp kitchen, but the pantry is 10x15 instead of 10x10. This requires a different rafter structure. The whole thing looks kind of intimidating to me, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's over-engineered, but it'll sure be nice to have.

This was enough work, though, that it may be a couple years before the two couples who want to replace their 10x20 pavillions with similarly-sized structures like this do so. We'll see.

Tourists have been dropping off in the last year or two; this will be the sixth Pennsic for my house on a flatbed and the third year (I think) for the kitchen. There's nothing like new construction to attract attention. :-) (No, that's not why we do it.)

Even though I didn't work all three days, I'm still pretty tired. I was actually feeling crappy enough this morning that I didn't start helping with the painting until mid-afternoon. I think part of the problem was actually Shabbat; while I had planned to stay inside and do usual Shabbat things (since I wouldn't be able to help with sanding/painting anyway), there were few-enough people that I felt obligated to spend a lot of time out there just chatting. So I didn't get my Shabbat rest and I spent much of a day getting my energy sapped by the sun. Next time I'll know better.

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pennsic

long weekend

Today is Memorial Day. I live across the street from a cemetary, and it's surprising and a little humbling to see how many flags appear this time of year.

This weekend was mostly consumed by Pennsic construction projects. My camp, having already built a house (well, we contracted out the hard part there) and a kitchen, decided this year to replace our pantry tent with a structure matching the kitchen. We re-used the pavillion roof and are replacing the canvas walls with a wooden structure. It's going to be very nifty, and it looks huge inside even though it's the same dimensions as the pavillion it replaces. (Straight walls not subject to sagging or wind gusts will do that. I think its being painted white helps too.)

Construction happened all three days of the long weekend. I wasn't there Saturday, but that day they fabricated the roof support and some of the walls. (Also three new box benches, to solve together the problems of storage and seating.) Sunday was a fairly long day of, for me, sanding, priming, and painting. (I prefer not to be in the same room as power saws in operation.) Today was less productive because there weren't as many things in the pipeline (so more time was spent watching paint dry) and because of scattered rain, and probably because we were all tired. I sure feel tired out of proportion to the actual useful work I did today, and I got off lightly compared to some. Johan, the engineer and chief lugger of heavy stuff, must be exhausted.

Lesson learned: the vibration from a hand-held power sander and the process of painting stress some of the same parts of the hand and wrist. Different power sanders that look the same cause more or less vibration; I wonder if the difference is in power levels too subtle for me to detect, or in better insulation. I wonder if the right gloves would help. (It's not just sanders; I've had the same issue with drills in the past.)

The benches are finished but the structure is only primed (and the support beams aren't primed yet). We're going to need to spend some more weekends on this. But I'm really looking forward to using it at Pennsic!

There are four people or couples in camp who've expressed interest in building structures like these to camp in, but based on the amount of work, that could take a while. One per year is probably our max.

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interviewed by anastasiav

1) If you were a toy, what toy would you be?

There is much in this question that is not specified, but oh well. Is a computer a toy? Can I be a self-aware computer that can surf and use email? :-) Nah, didn't think so.

I suppose the most likely answer is some sort of game-playing device (mind games, like chess, not shoot-'em-up action games). Gotta keep the brain active, after all, which argues for a game with some complexity. (I don't actually like playing chess; that was just an example.)

2) Tell me about your favorite (typical or specific) day at Pennsic.

I like the visit-with-distant-friends days best. I always look forward to spending time with Steffan and Elspeth, and Dof and Thora, and Yaakov and Rivka. I try to get at least one visit of several hours with each of them, though they don't tend to be on the same day. There are other people I'd like to be able to visit but either they don't come any more or they do but they're hard to find or we just never connect.

3) Is there someone in your life whom you regret losing touch with? If so, how do you imagine that person living their life today.

I miss my friend Mike. We used to hang out a lot, and he did me many kindnesses when I was laid up with a broken leg. I did not do nearly enough to repay that when he later had a broken arm, and I feel bad about that. But I especially feel bad that we have drifted apart in the last few years, and that my attempts to contact him have failed. (I've tried email, phone, and paper.) I hope he's doing well, but I know that he sometimes just withdraws from the world for a while and I suspect that's what's happened.

4) If you could scientifically prove that God exists, how would that change your outlook on the world? What would you imagine the experiment that proves the hypothisis looks like? Would you do the experement if you knew there was a chance the hypothisis might be disproven? ( Read more... )

5) Its 2055 and you win a Nobel prize. Which category do you win for? ( Read more... )

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pennsic

more Pennsic stuff

Holy cow. This photo shows our street at Pennsic after Friday's storms. (I was already gone, so I didn't see this directly.) It's sure nice to have a building up off the ground! (You might need to register at that site; if so, I recommend Mailinator for an easy disposable email address.)

This year I (re-)met Eldred (husband of ealdthryth), who lived in my barony about 18 years ago (as a college student). He's now a peer in Atlantia and was attending his first Pennsic. It was fun to hang out with him one afternoon and talk about our respective groups. He also showed me Atlantia's new gate-house, which he helped build. It's very impressive, though I decided I was too much of a wimp to climb up on top. (The ladder was steep, the rungs had wide spacing, and at the top you had to make a 90-degree turn to get out. I was dubious about reversing that.) But the construction is solid, there are two ~8x8 rooms above the towers to either side of the gate, and there's a lot of oak involved so it's quite sturdy.

Our group has a Tudor kitchen house that we've used for three years now. It's not on a trailer; we assemble it on-site, and it's pretty easy to set up. It has a canvas roof. Next to this we place our pantry tent, a pavillion that we made many years ago. For next year, we are talking about building another house, using the existing pavillion roof, for the pantry. This will give us vertical walls, which is very useful for storing things, and our kitchen house isn't bothered by storms the way pavillions are. I think it'd be pretty neat if all of our frontage was buildings. :-)

There was a fun/goofy bit this year that I meant to mention in my earlier post. Two of the folks in our camp are getting married in two weeks, so there were some parties for them (together and singly). I wasn't part of the bachelorette party (it was the same night as Shabbat dinner), but apparently Hilda (the bride-to-be) was going around asking men for their underwear, on a dare I think. The queen of Lochac gave her a pair of the king's (period!) underwear; Hilda brought it back to camp and had someone embroider a comet, the baronial badge, on it. I commented that as a way of remembering where he, or at least his clothing, has been, this is much more fun than a passport stamp. :-)

When I got home Friday, two of the cats greeted me at the door but Embla was nowhere in sight. After about half an hour I went looking for her to no avail. I was a little worried; if she had slipped out sometime while I was gone, it's entirely possible that no one would have noticed because she's so shy. Fortunately, she appeared an hour or so later. I don't know where she was hiding; there are definitely Embla-sized hiding places in our house where I can't go, reach, or look.

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pennsic

Pennsic

It was a good Pennsic.

( this is long )

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last couple days (service stuff, Pennsic stuff)

Last week, when I helped lead services, I received many compliments. In that situation it's always hard to tell where something is on the scale from "just being polite" to "heartfelt compliment", so it's best to not get too excited (though of course compliments feel good and I assume there's at least some degree of positive feeling involved in any such). However, I'll give a little more weight to the several people who approached me this week to tell me how much they enjoyed my singing last week, and to the multiple people who apparently told my rabbi this. Woo!

Thursday morning I led part of shacharit, as I mentioned before, and then led mincha at my congregation. I seemed to be more at ease with some of the text Thursday evening than I usually am. Repetition helps. :-)

This morning's study and service were back up to their usual numbers. My rabbi is back in town (yay!), but came back with some sort of bug (oops). I hope he's well enough to keep the appointment I have with him on Monday.

Today was the first day of Pennsic set-up. I got a message from our land agent that my house is in place, but that they managed to break the jack on the trailer hitch. Sigh! This is the second time that has happened. So it's in our camp, but it's not moving out at the end until I can replace that jack. I'll find out more when I go up there tomorrow. Last time it took 3-4 weeks for a mail-ordered jack to come, though I took the first web-based supplier I could find so maybe I can improve on that. The first thing to do, though, is find out how it failed so I know whether I should be buying a different jack. (That is, did something stupid happen, like driving it without raising the jack, or did it fail in a situation where it shouldn't've?)

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weekend bits and pieces

I heard a new word this weekend, referring to certain breeds of terrier: "verminator". It made me giggle, but I knew exactly what she meant -- which, I suppose, is the purpose of language. :-)

What is it with cats and plastic, anyway? All of my cats like to lick plastic. (They don't ingest it -- just lick.) Embla likes to rub against it. Huh?

Saturday I had lunch with the Orthodox (Chabad) family we visited once before. It was a pleasant afternoon. ( Read more... )

Yesterday we got together with other members of our Pennsic camping group to make some camp furniture. We have two problems to address: we need more seating, and we need places to put the miscellaneous clutter that accumulates on the tables. So we made chests, specifically sized to work well for seating at tables. Some people actually built them Saturday; Sunday was sanding and painting. Note for future: sawdust is, or behaves like, an allergen. Oops. We had fun, and the chests are very spiffy -- comfortable to sit on and good for storage. We made two "one-seaters" and one double (it's three feet long). The double will require two people to carry, but the singles are light enough to be moved by one person.

After dinner and the departure of most of the people, Dani and I stuck around for a while to play games with Alaric. The first game we played was Vinci (I forget who publishes it). It's a neat game, though I think it plays rather differently with three players than with the max of six. You play on an abstract map of Europe, and you play a civilization with two arbitrary characteristics (such as "extra points from grasslands" or "extra points from resource spaces" or "get extra temporary soldiers at the start of each turn"). On your turn you expand/attack, then score based on your position, then pass to the next person. Units that you lose due to conquest are not replaced, so over time your ability to score decreases. When you think you've reached the point where it's no longer worthwhile, you declare that you are going into decline and get a new civilization to play on your next turn. Your tokens from the previous civilization stick around, and score, until blown away by the other players. When someone reaches a certain score threshold you complete the turn and then high score wins. I ended up with civilizations that were fairly straightforward to play, and won by a few points. I would enjoy playing this game again with more people; I think more players would force faster turnover.

After that we played Carcassonne; I'm not very good at it, but it was fun. Sometimes I think I will never get a handle on the strategy for claiming fields. We played with an expansion that included some new tiles, all of the "double or nothing" variety. For example, by default, at the end of the game, a partially-completed city still scores some points; if it contains a cathedral tile then it scores more points if complete but none at all if incomplete. I haven't played enough to know if this actually adds anything, or if it's just needless complexity. I suppose it can work well if played hostily -- that is, play a cathedral into someone else's city that you think he won't be able to complete.

This weekend we watched more of B5 season four, specifically the end of the shadow war. This seemed abrupt in the first run; it seems even more abrupt now. I assume, but don't know, that if JMS had known he had a fifth season, he would have carried this war through this season and into the fifth, and focused more on the Earth and Minbari civil wars. That would have made a much better story, I think. We were both struck by how well the end of "Into the Fire" could have worked as the end of the series -- not that that's where he would (or should) have ended it, but in terms of the storytelling, it had "major wrap-up" written all over it.

Another show where watching the DVDs reinforces a past impression is West Wing. Watching season three on DVD so soon after the broadcast of season five emphasizes just how much better the show was in the prior season. I think season four might have been weaker than season three, but five was much much weaker than anything that came before. Sad.

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Shabbat

Friday's musical service went well. It looked like we had at least 300 people there (maybe 350 or 400), which is a lot more than normal. The congregational choir sang, which was nice, and some other cantorial members of the cantor's family were there too. Fun night!

I had an interesting conversation with our cantor about the service (or services?) the worship commitee will need to lead this summer. She expects to be out on maternity leave then, so she said she's working on lining up substitutes. We talked about stage-management issues when none of the people on the bima are regulars, and while I don't remember how we got there, I ended up saying (in an appropriate context) that there are certainly members of the worship committee who could competently fill that role for one week, and she said she really wished we'd volunteer in that case, and I said "ok, then I'm volunteering". (I also said I'm not the only one who could, though I of course don't know who else would.) Dunno where it will go (if it does); she and the rabbi will need to have a talk. I had previously made such a comment to the rabbi (during the last cantor's maternity leave), and it went nowhere. But maybe that cantor wasn't on board with the idea. I have been trying very hard to avoid stepping on any toes; music at services is her domain and I don't want her (or the rabbi) to perceive me as pushy. On the other hand, I'd much rather have one of us than an outside singer who might or might not even be Jewish, and she agrees with me on non-Jews, so we'll see. (I think the previous cantor was more interested in having a good singer than in having a Jew. I personally don't think we should have non-Jews leading any part of services, and the congregation has gotten better about that, but we're not completely there yet.)

Saturday morning had one bit of frustration, and I have to have a conversation I'm not looking forward to. During the service we go around the circle so people can say the names of people they're saying kaddish for, and recently we've started to also go around saying names before saying the prayer for healing. One of the people there (who used to be a regular, then disappeared for most of a year, then started showing up again a few weeks ago) treated this as a bit of a political soapbox, saying he wanted to add the names of all the Iraqi prisoners to the list. Saying that much would have been fine; going from there into a rant about the despicable behavior of the people responsible, on the other hand, was inappropriate. I don't disagree that the assessment of the behavior, but the healing portion of a Shabbat service is not the time and place for political diatribes. He should have saved it for the informal conversation afterwards. (It doesn't help that this particular individual, err, really likes to hear himself talk, so he is never brief and on-point.) So I was annoyed (but not fast enough to stop it on the spot), and I could tell some others were annoyed, and I've received one email complaint already. (It's not really my minyan, but people see it as mine when the rabbi isn't there.) I'm tempted to send him email, which will allow me to choose my words carefully without having to interact with him in real time, but calling is probably the correct thing to do.

After services we headed to Johan and Arianna's for a meeting of the Pennsic camp. (This was mostly to decide if we need to make any infrastructure changes this year and to decide what projects to tackle. This year we're going to try for some box benches, to solve both seating and stuff-containment problems.) It seems we don't see each other as frequently as we used to, now that two are no longer coworkers and one has dropped out of the choir and so on, so it was nice to see everyone and just hang out. (Well, not everyone; the out-of-town contingent didn't make it in.)

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interviewed by tangerinpenguin

( 5 good questions )

The Rules:

Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.
You'll include this explanation.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

Entry tags:

Pennsic (long)

This is the long Pennsic entry. ( Read more... )

Entry tags:

pennsic

Pennsic quickies

I'm home from Pennsic. Quick bits now; real report later.

Blackout: didn't touch us. I'm told it started about 15 miles north of the Pennsic site; I don't know if that's true. (Haven't read the newspapers yet.) Pennsic had one power outage some years back; we did notice, especially because the water system uses electric pumps and this meant no showers etc. Also, some of the merchants, particularly the food vendors, rely on electricity. That outage only lasted three or four hours, so everything was ok; if this one had included Pennsic we'd probably have some seriously grumpy people by now. :-)

Head count: 12,300 as of 4pm yesterday (Thursday). About 800 people showed up between 4pm Wednesday and 4pm Thursday; I would have thought that for an event that effectively ends on Saturday, there wouldn't still be that many people showing up. (If I only had a couple vacation days, I'd go for the middle weekend++, not the final one.)

People: met rectangularcat and her fiance, chaiya, patsmor, and a bunch of folks briefly at an LJ gathering. Spent time (but never enough time) chatting with Dof and Thora, Steffan, Yaakov, dglenn, jducoeur, and others. Missed Dorigen entirely; bummer. Also missed attempts to have longer conversations with Yaakov (who left Wednesday; I thought he was staying through Shabbat) and Steffan.

Music: the choir performance went well despite some last-minute snafus. Wolgemut was fun to listen to, though I didn't catch the entire show. I think they were also doing some physical comedy or some such during parts of the show, but I couldn't see from where I was standing so that was completely lost on me. When the music seemed to have died down for a while in favor of other theatrics I wandered away. Later I saw them playing in the marketplace and that was good because I could both hear and see. One of them was playing a very nifty bowed, keyed instrument called a moraharpa. He says it's Swedish. It looked very nifty and seems to be something I could actually play (I've always had trouble with fretting but I love bowed strings). I'll have to see what I can find out about this. I suspect it's modern, but even if I can't play it in the SCA I'd still be interested.

Egoboo: Someone in the dance tent introduced me to a friend of hers (by SCA name) and I got a polite reception; then the person told her my real name and the friend gushed at me. It's been a while since I've gotten the "oh, you're Monica Cellio!" reaction. It was neat. :-) (Turns out she's a fan of my music arrangements.)

Egoboo II: Ran into a friend from Carolingia who I haven't seen in a while and she called me by my old SCA name. I corrected her and then she said something like "yes, you're right -- Ellisif is bigger". :-)

Weather: The forecasts spoke of rain and more rain, interrupted by rain, but the first week was actually fine. The highs were in the low 80s, the lows were in the 60s, it didn't rain (significantly) until Friday, and things were fine. This was then followed by several wet days, with roads so muddy that we watched mud-surfing from our camp and the tractors were being used to pull cars out of their parking spots. Things started to clear up around Monday night or Tuesday morning, and the last few days were hotter and more humid. But at least the mud dried. This might have been the locally-wettest Pennsic I've been to, but it was still ok.

Email: deleted 900 messages on the first pass; have almost 400 that survived the first cut. Some of the 900 were mailing lists I know I'm not going to catch up on, but most were spam.

More after Shabbat. I have to snuggle my cats. :-)

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pennsic

Pennsic

We went up to Cooper's Lake today to try to set up most of the encampment. It's quite soggy up there (and we're on the high flat lands, not down in the bog). We pushed some tent stakes in with our shoes. That's not a good sign.

But we got all the big stuff set up (except for the dining flies and the shower), and we're slowly unpacking all the kitchen stuff, and when it dries out some we'll pound the stakes in more solidly, and things should be ok. At least the tents that are most susceptible to wind are reasonably protected. The house is particularly good for this. :-)

The house is reasonably level just sitting on the tires, but we're going to jack it up some anyway for extra stability. Besides, the trailer doesn't have innovations like brakes. I understand why the DMV had issues with it.

I'm going up to stay tomorrow, so I won't be around LJ for a couple weeks. If you want me to see something, your best bet is to email me about it.

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(no subject)

Last night Johan and I went up to Cooper's Lake (Pennsic site) to do a little work on the trailer. Someone asked on a mailing list recently whether this is a "use the jackhammer to drive tent stakes" year or a "swarms of giant mosquitos" year; I can report that the mosquitos not only are giant but are wearing scuba gear. It's been a wet summer, at least recently.

I think I waited too long to start taking my allergy drugs. I should have started on Tuesday in preparation for Wednesday night, but I didn't start until Wednesday morning. Last night and this morning were pretty bad. Got to remember next year that I need more ramp-up time.

Tonight I revised the sermon I'm giving tomorrow night. To those who saw the first draft, thanks very much for all the feedback. I think it's much stronger now. (Also longer, but within acceptable bounds.) I'll post it publicly after Shabbat.

I talked with the cantorial intern yesterday about tomorrow night's service. She is really easy to work with. And she has a nice voice and is enthusiastic about music beyond just services. I think we did well in hiring her. Tomorrow night I and one other person (and said cantor, of course) will be leading the service. I'm looking forward to it.

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better living through appliances

My company bought me a white-noise generator to mitigate against the noisy conference room. (That room is an amplifier.) It's not a perfect solution (I'd like to bar certain people from that room), but it's much, much better than before.

For the last several days the dehumidifier has been filling up twice a day. I haven't measured the bucket, but it holds somewhere between three-quarters of a gallon and a gallon. So we're pulling something over a gallon and a half of moisture out of the air per day. One might wonder whether the house is really that humid or if we're attempting (and of course failing) to dehumidify Pittsburgh. (It's been cool enough that we mostly haven't been running the window air conditioners, which of course also dehumidify.)

I must remember to charge the cordless drill before Pennsic. I remember when going to Pennsic (I almost wrote "camping") did not involve power tools. For what I need to do to the house this year I probably don't really need a drill, but what the heck. (I need to mount some brackets for my new oil lamps.)