hoss’s buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese
August 17, 2011
It’s exactly as good, or as bad, as it sounds.
Posted by jodi on August 17, 2011 at 7.01am
saturday
August 14, 2011
This is the day when vacation gets dismantled, packed away in trailers and driven home.
Posted by jodi on August 14, 2011 at 12.31pm
new from old
August 12, 2011
If you know me at all then you’ll know just how wacky this is right here: I went to Pennsic for fifteen days and did not bring along any knitting or sewing projects. I KNOW! Okay, that little orange sock with the two broken bamboo needles was in my satchel, but that was for in the car only (okay, also for waiting in line at Herald’s Point that one time and also for during a class Peter and I attended on making mustards, because those times are Idle Hands Times which are in no way the same as Projects Times, right?). Also I did not bring anything to read other than the WFTDA rule book (ugh. . . does there really need to be an entire section on Blocking With The Head detailing all the ways in which it is not okay to block with the head at all, when it could just say “Blocking With The Head: DON’T”?).
So, what did I bring to occupy my time, most of which is spent in camp since I’m too lazy to go anywhere and do anything at Pennsic? Drawings. Lots and lots of drawings, of which I worked on a good few, one in particular which may finally be about to turn the corner from AWFUL to FINISHED. I’m not going to show you those yet, because they’re still awful. But here’s the other thing I worked on: two of the drawings were stapled onto plywood boards so that they can be worked with multiple layers of wet drawing materials and still remain flat. One of those boards was the back side of a block from that ill-fated larger-than-life self portrait I started way back in my first semester of graduate school. Because drawing is a solitary activity for me and one cannot spend one’s entire vacation sitting inside the tent drawing while one’s friends are outside having social times, I also brought along a set of knives so that I could flip the drawing over and cut on the block while chilling around the camp dining room with my House Redhair homies.
This 24 x 36″ block has been cut into and printed quite a few times, and at the moment consists of a section of a figure completely covered with thin chatter lines, with rougher chatter marks in the background. I’m cutting away all but a grid of 1″ circles, so that what little will remain of the existing image can be printed as polka-dots on fabric.
The wood is the cheapest, most difficult to cut plywood you can get, either pine or fir, because that’s all I could afford in my first year of grad school. Now I dream of Shina and buy birch, which is still hard to cut but not nearly as split-tastic as the pine. But because I can’t waste old work, I’m dulling my blades on this old block one last time, taking the wood right down to the middle layer so it’ll print nice and clean (hah! like I ever print anything cleanly).
These are going to be some janky-assed polka dots.
Posted by jodi on August 12, 2011 at 7.26am
XXXX XL
August 10, 2011
Every year the Pennsic number is mowed into the slope of Mount Eislinn. This year, the 40th Pennsic, someone mowed “XXXX” into the hillside and then had to go back later and correct it to “XL”. Oops.
Posted by jodi on August 10, 2011 at 12.09pm
on the road
August 3, 2011
Near Toledo.
Posted by jodi on August 3, 2011 at 5.52am
summer holiday
July 30, 2011
Yesterday was the first test run of scheduling posts for future publication in wordpress; today is the second. If you’re seeing this and you saw the Chicken Lady yesterday, then all is good!
The picture above is a wholly inaccurate illustration of what goes on the first Saturday of Pennsic War. How the day actually goes is something like this:
-arrive at The Barn at 8am and grab a cup of watery coffee;
-stand around in the already hot sun scanning the growing crowd for the Land Agents of the other groups camping in our block (about six or seven groups this year);
-marvel at how the same people as always are there, some of them wearing the same wacky uniform they always wear (I should get a photo for y’all sometime of the lady who dresses head to toe in about seventeen different colours of camouflage);
-wait a Very Long Time for the last Land Agent to show up (I’m not saying who that is but it’s usually the same person every year who is late);
-draw campsite boundaries on seven copies of a map of the block of land we’re sharing with these groups, based on the square footage allotment given us according to how many have pre-registered to camp with our group
-sign every map (but not before arguing a bit about whether we’re supposed to use our Real Name or Fake Name) (no I’m serious);
-crowd around the barn opening at 9:00 in order to be lectured in a condescending manner by people who think we are stupid;
-run in a group to try and get to the front of a confusingly roped off queue that snakes through the barn in a different pattern each year just to keep us all guessing;
-make it to the front of the line, hand over our maps, receive cards and stickers and temporary parking passes which will allow us to bring our vehicles off of the Battlefield and down the hill to our campsites;
-leave the line and then realize that someone in our group doesn’t have enough parking passes for all of their cars, and bumble around in confusion asking for more passes, counting and re-counting everyone’s cars until it’s all sorted;
-make haste to the Battlefield, pile into cars (for some this means breaking camp as well, as many people sleep on the Battlefield next to their cars on Friday night) (we, having done this for too many bloody years already, have taken to spending Friday night in a hotel so as not to be kept awake all night by obnoxious revelers) (oh, just saying that makes me feel SO OLD and also like a fuddy-duddy);
-spend up to an hour waiting in a bottleneck of cars all trying to get off the Battlefield and into camp proper;
-drive down the hill to our block, where we now have to measure and mark off for real those boundaries we drew on our maps;
-talk for an hour about how to configure our camp;
-unload vehicles, set up pavilions, set up carport tents for the kitchen and dining room, perform the magic that transforms our campmate’s trailer into a shower platform, set up the shower, set up the kitchen, set up set up everything, all of course contingent on how quickly the neighbouring group unloads their storage trailer, which remains on site year round and in which we rent space for our kitchen and dining tents and our things always seem to be the most buried in their trailer because of course they are;
-get everything to the point where we can throw tarps over whatever isn’t finished, usually sometime after what would be our normal suppertime, then leave it all and drive into Grove City;
-traditional family supper at Hoss’s Steak and Sea, which for my family means struggling to get enough protein off the quality of salad bar you’d expect to find at a place called “Hoss’s”;
-get back to camp after dark, realize we don’t know where any of the candles are and didn’t set up the tiki torches, fumble for lights;
-rest, take off shoes, open a can of Guinness (if you are Thorvald), Mountain Dew (if you are Tarl), or bottle of water (if you are Peter, Claire and I).
Sunday:
-build a wall of 2x2s and rope and sheets;
-assemble our gate (another, slightly nicer carport tent), hang our sign and our heraldry;
-drive into Lyndora for food and supplies which also includes the first of many lunches at Rey Azteca, the only good Mexican restaurant anywhere near Pennsic;
-return to camp, put away groceries, finish setting up kitchen, finish setting up whatever else isn’t done yet, be too tired to make supper;
-while away the evening discussing all of the work that still needs to be done.
Monday:
-start having a holiday. But only if there’s no more work to do (realistically, we usually don’t actually build the wall or put up the gate until Monday; doing it on Sunday is just always my ambition).
Posted by jodi on July 30, 2011 at 3.03pm
yet another riveting video
May 31, 2011
In which we take our new car (whose name is Keisuke! because it’s a Honda! get it?) through a car wash for the first time. This was shot with the Harinezumi digital in Atlanta, Georgia, February 2011.
If you crank up the sound you can hear Peter chatting in the front seat with The ESC about the joys of going through a car wash with a dog in the car. Also, please note the stickers on the wall on the way out of the car wash: Keep Christ in Christmas, and Alabama Crimson Tide. Can I get a hell yeah?
Posted by jodi on May 31, 2011 at 2.35pm
kentucky radio
February 20, 2011
Driving through rural Kentucky on a Sunday morning means that most of the available radio stations are offering religious programming. Below is just a very small sampling.
1. Marble Mouth Thankful Guy. Highlights: says everything twice for no reason, for example: “we fail the lord, as I’ve said many times, ’cause we don’t give god the glory for the things he’s done for us and done for us”. Every word sounds as if it’s spoken around a wad of cotton wool.
2. Praise the Lord Lady. Highlights: the phrase “praise the lord” is inserted again and again in her speech like punctuation or some sort of ecstatic Tourette’s. Praise the Lord Lady presents a litany of examples of people being healed by god, both her and people she read about in the bible (like “the man that waited to poo”, or so it sounds like, but Peter informs me it’s probably “the man that waded the pool”). Just before the recording started she told of god healing her hernia in 1997 and she stopped taking all of her pills (this is what the demons were trying to trick her about at the start of the video). It was a moving story, I tell you what.
3. (on a different station from the first two): Corny Hoedown People. This show was actually pretty awesome, with lots of disorganized singing that devolved at the end of each song into a babble of “praise the lord”s.
4. more Corny Hoedown People. Highlights: an utter lack of any attempt at enunciation. Whole lines go by with nary a consonant. We’ve gained a new favourite all-purpose phrase: “that’s the key word, Roscoe”. What he said in full: “praise the lord are you ready to go, that’s the key word, Roscoe”. Also when the guy actually starts preaching for real, he flubs his lines like crazy. And meanwhile, we’re driving past a water park that has its own little chapel in it. What’s scary, to me, is how little time I need to spend listening to Southern radio before I start picking up the accent.
Bonus story! A couple of years ago Peter and I visited Rock City, and while we were up in one of those lookout spots up in the mountain there, looking out (as is the custom), a little kid next to us started pointing excitedly at a rocky outcropping a ways down the mountainside where someone had placed a gnome. He shouted over and over (in the cutest and most funny Southern accent I’ve ever heard, and I tell you what I’ve heard some doozies): What’s that down there, Snapper? (down thay-ere, Schnayuhper?) There’s a little man down thayre! Yeah, just like I said it in the video because four years later I still think it’s funny enough to say all the time even though Peter’s no doubt beyond sick of it. That’s the key word, Roscoe.
Bonus #2: here’s a flickr group of photos from our Rock City trip. Look down there, it’s a little man!
*I just want to add, in case it’s not clear, that this is not meant to make fun of either A) my friends or other sane people who are Christian, or B) my friends or other sane people who are Southern. But yes, I do think these evangelistic people are a bit off their rocker. Also, I’m interested in accents and dialects in general, so my discussion of (and clumsy attempts to imitate) various Southern accents is in no way meant to be mean or make fun. I am totally making fun of Praise The Lord Lady, though.
**also: that is a photo of the ACTUAL LITTLE MAN. The one of Snapper!
Posted by jodi on February 20, 2011 at 8.13pm
toronto visit, february 2-5
February 7, 2011
Michael Snow’s Flight Stop at the Eaton Centre, a piece I’ve loved since first seeing it on our grade 7 & 8 trip (probably also my first time in Eaton Centre), right after that moment when some boys outside on Yonge Street challenged us to a breakdance-off and one of the grade 7s, Thuy Nguyen, took them up on it and we all thought we were about to get the crap beat out of us West Side Story-style but instead Thuy turned out to be an awesome breakdancer and the boys turned out not to be a breakdancing knife gang and then we went into the mall and there were all of these geese and it was magical. Now every time I’m on Yonge Street I secretly hope to see breakdancers but it never happens.
On Spadina, waiting for the streetcar after a visit to Lettuce Knit (where I got to meet Laura Chau for the first time!). Would you believe this was the first time I’d ever found my own way around in Toronto by myself? It’s true! I walked from the Royal York Hotel to Lettuce Knit, about half an hour in the slow shuffle necessitated by slushy sidewalks, then took the streetcar back. Although we don’t visit Toronto often I’m familiar enough with the neighbourhoods I traveled through, but have always had someone to rely on to guide me in the past. The whole way back on the streetcar I was watching the stops go by and calculating and re-calculating, if the streetcar suddenly turns here I can get off and walk back THERE, okay if it turns up here I can walk back this far and then. . . And when I finally arrived at Union Station and found my way back to the hotel (the scariest part because I have a somewhat irrational fear of train stations and airports and getting lost in them and did I ever tell y’all about the first time I flew out of Atlanta and how I totally gave birth to a cow right there in Sandy’s car when she told me I had to take a train INSIDE THE AIRPORT holy crap!) I felt like a total grownup who can navigate a big city without losing her shit. Which I almost am, finally, at age 39. Whew!
Posted by jodi on February 7, 2011 at 12.18pm
wonders of modern technology
February 4, 2011
On Wednesday we took a trip to Toronto on the train at the same time as a Copa del Rey match we wanted to watch between FC Barcelona and UD Almeria. Here we are trying to watch a live stream of the match on the laptop using the free Via Rail wireless.
Although I was annoyed at the time that the connection was too weak to actually watch the match, it’s still amazing to me that we can have internet on a train at all. In my day, sonny, phones were attached to the wall and you had to stand there to talk on them! Anyway, the slow connection caused some lovely impressionistic effects.
Affelay’s first goal with Barca!
Posted by jodi on February 4, 2011 at 8.16pm
