desfontaines

( Well, that was a decent weekend! )

I decided to not start a big project in my science class for the two days we have this week, putting it off until we're back from the Thanksgiving holiday. Grabbed an appropriate video from the school library - "Amazing Earth" by the Discovery Channel. Long enough to last today and most of tomorrow. Perfect.

It's narrated by Patrick Stewart. *swoon* I get a whole hour of this velvet voice talking about plate tectonics, asteroids, formation of the oxygen atmosphere, and the like! *SWOON*

“I’m looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love."

That was Carrie, in the final episode of Sex in the City.

I'm not much of a Carrie fan. That kind of passionate emotion actually bugs me. It's too make-believe, fairy-tale, and nonsensical for me, I guess. Unrealistic in real life.

I'd prefer sultry, sexy Samantha or smart, pragmatic Miranda any day. But I do think I need to watch the whole series again. I'm saying it here so that I remember to do so, next time I'm dinking around on the computer at home.

I found this amusing... but in a sad way.

The middle school is doing this big "caught doing good" leadership thing. Teachers get coupons to give to the kids they think did something exceptional. The kids put their name on the coupon, select a prize number that they're interested in, and the coupon goes into a raffle for that prize. There's a display of the 9 prizes near the office.

So what are the prizes?

1. Cute little rag doll
2. Little book (photo album, maybe?) on "sisters"
3. Peacock feather mask
4. Photo frame
5. Ribbon board for sticking photos and memos on -- with lots of words on it like "Girls only" and "Glamour"
6. Recipe cards
7. Little spiral-bound memo book with a wooden holder - the holder would be what I call "country kitsch" in style.
8. Pastel colored memo pad

and....

9. SPIDER MAN T-SHIRT!

The first 8 aren't completely focused on girls. I mean, recipe cards could be good for either sex, and the photo frame is also gender neutral. The peacock mask is pretty sweet too. But there's a definite, strong leaning towards "girly stuff" in all but the t-shirt.

Today I was out of my classroom for training for Michigan Merit Exam, seeing as I'm still running it for the high school, even though I'm now teaching in the middle school, in a building right across a courtyard. I didn't HAVE to go, technically, but I did want to. My back-up test supervisor from last year couldn't do it this year, as she has a son at another school taking the test. So my new back-up was required to take the training, and I knew it was lousy enough that having someone along to make snarky comments with would help.

See, the training is run in a biiiiiig convention hall. We get a huge packet of color-coded papers, and spend about 3 hours watching _video_ of people from ACT (for the ACT and the WorkKeys tests), from Measurement Inc (the company that the state hired to do the state-specific tests on a third day of testing), and the state Department of Education. They pretty much just read through over 200 PowerPoint slides that outline what they expect us to do.

It's a GREAT "How Not to Teach" lesson!

And then it was followed by a Q&A session where about half the questions were from people who were obviously not paying attention, because they had simple answers directly in the instructions. However, this was better than last year, when it was pretty much ALL stupid questions. There were actually some very interesting ones this year!

I had planned on taking my laptop and entering the names of all our students who are taking the test this year into a spreadsheet, so I'd have a nice file of them that can be manipulated as needed, unlike the list on paper that the high school counselor's secretary gave me. Unfortunately, I got there just before they started, and the place was already packed. Couldn't get a seat at a power outlet, and my laptop's battery lasts, oh, about 5 minutes.

Oh well.

I did whip out a legal pad and got together a good list of what my 7th grade Social Studies class will be covering over the next three weeks, at least! I'll be spending some of this weekend trying to sort through the stuff I've got for these topics, adjust as need be, and create whatever handouts/instructions/activities need to get done.

And after I was done, the awesome known as my husband met me at Red Robin for lunch, and I stuffed myself on my free birthday burger. Mmmm!

I need to post something happy, dangit. And kitties make me _very_ happy! And I'm happy in this picture! :)



Thunder Cat helped me work on my loose gown the afternoon before Coronation by holding it in place for me while I sewed. What a helpful kitty!

Thank you to Midair and Alina for passing that photo of myself and their kitty to me!

I spent the past week or so busily finishing sleeves, beading, and binding! After much fussing, I had managed to drape a short sleeve that I was happy with, and I cut it out of scrap to use as a base. Then, with a pattern drawn out on newspaper, I layed out how my strips of fabric would go, and put down measurements that seemed to have enough extra to allow for poof. After that, I had about 10 hours of sewing and binding strips of black velveteen and gold silk with green silk. I watched a lot of Good Eats episodes during that, thanks to the recommendation of pstscrpt.

Then, some linen and fiddling with strips to lay out the sleeve bases:


At this point, there was hardly any black velveteen left, so I sacrificed the bodice to get the ends of the sleeves!


At that point, it was basically a lot of hand-sewing of binding and finishing off the pearls, which I worked on all Friday. Literally, all Friday. I had arranged for a personal business day to work on it. Worked on it at elaine_alina and charles_midair's home, while waiting for him to get home from work. Worked on it until there wasn't enough light anymore in the car. Worked on it at the fabulous apartment rental that turnberryknkn had found us all until 1 AM Chicago time. Worked on it for a few more minutes in the morning, until it was wearable. There's still some work to be done, but it's minimal. Pictures soon!

Well, actually garbage day is Friday here. But I haven't posted good stuff recently. Must remember to post costuming stuff!

There was once a dress.


This dress had a LOT of history. Two yards of a beautiful black and gold brocade was bought for me at the ValDay event by my first fiancee as a Valentine's Day gift. One year later, I had used black velveteen, trim, and beads to create the dress, and went to ValDay again with said guy.

Since then, the dress has made many appearances. I took it to Chicago once, forgetting the brocade skirt, and ended up stitching the front edges together in the woman's dressing room. I bought a black velvet hat to go with it. It made it to dancemaster_e's laurelling at Pennsic, so that I'd match temporally the outfit I had made him for the occassion. lyev requested that I wear it for HIS laurelling.

But I don't want to wear Elizabethan much anymore. And I did want this new loose gown idea that I had mentioned previously to happen. And here was this skirt full of nice black velveteen that wasn't being put to good use.

( So I played fast and loose with my seam ripper. )

The neat thing about MY Midas Touch is that a) it doesn't make things super heavy, b) it's cheap and easy, and c) it cleans up pretty well.



( Bling-bling! )

(plus, the insect population seems to be rapidly dwindling)

So there was this fabric that I decided I wanted to make my new loose gown out of. I thought it was at my parents' in a footlocker, but it wasn't. I kept searching, because I _knew_ I had it somewhere. The good news? I found it. The bad news? There was only 1/2 a yard, and I need 3-4 yards. Boo.

The more I think about it, the less I'm liking the fabric choices I put in my previous costuming post (by the way, I fixed the pictures on it, I think!). Maybe I'll just make the whole thing black velveteen, lined with gold silk dupioni, perhaps even piecing fabric together from a dress I made back in, oh, 1993-94? That way I can use the yummy green dupioni for something else, like an underskirt.

Anyhow, because I haven't decided yet what to do with the loose gown, I decided to make use of the stuff I did find at my parents' -- little coffee straws!

I've been collecting bits and pieces to make an uber-awesome girdle -- something beyond just a string of beads and pearls. I wanted kick-ass gold plaques and pearls. Kind of like this one, from Allesandro Alori's portrait of Maria de Medici.



( On to girdle-goodness and pictures! )

This is getting really frustrating. My home is cleaner than it normally is. Yet for the past week or two, we keep getting ants. More and more ants. Ants crawling on me where I sit on the couch. Lots and lots of ants on the kitchen counters and floor. And as of yesterday, we started getting lots of houseflies.... I almost never see a housefly in my house, and yesterday I killed about 5 of them, saw 6 of them on the kitchen light this evening. Wasps have started swarming the top corner of the front door, especially in the mornings -- I've nailed them with wasp killer twice. They die, and more come back. Chased a cricket out the front door a day or two ago, when it tried to get in as I was using the door (I think Jody did the same thing a bit earlier, too). And now a cockroach!?!?!?!??!!?!?!?

WTF!?!?!?!?!?!??! Are we going to need to barricade the house with borax at every wall, like we did three years ago when the Texan fleas tagged along with Jody and Grey?

I've been knocking around some sort of loose gown to go with the embroidered camicia I've been working on, because I am more than willing to be absolutely wrong and awful and wear what amounts to my underwear with a coat when it comes to the 16th century. Especially given that it still covers me shoulder to wrist and ankle anyways. (By the way... 1/2 done with one sleeve cuff, and I picked up white linen thread to handsew the camicia once the embroidery's done!)



( More natterings )

My husband, jodybrai, is a very wise man.

Pennsic 21 (1992!) - My first Pennsic! My second event! A whole week camping, sharing a 2-person dome tent with a long-time friend, and a lot of Elizabethan garb I had cranked out that summer. Yes, my first Pennsic was done entirely in corset.

Pennsic 22 -- I missed it because I was busy getting my wisdom teeth out.

Pennsics 23-36 -- Yep, I was at all of those. Met said husband at one of them. :)

Pennsic 37 -- Try for a very short Pennsic, but was frustrated when I realized that I didn't get much time to visit with friends -- Pennsic is great at pulling everyone into a single 1-2 square mile area, and pulling everyone apart to different activities in that area. Jody and I decide to try skipping the next Pennsic and instead going on a road trip to visit friends.

Pennsic 38 -- We saw friends a month before at Known World Dance. We saw some friends again, a couple weeks later, and others as well, on a road trip that took us through Hershey and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and Richmond, Virginia. Pennsic starts, and I was okay being home. By the end of the first week, seeing all sorts of posts from Pennsic and having a relatively crappy Saturday, Jody tells me something along the lines of, "Go to Pennsic! Go see your friends for a few days. Really, it's all right! You could be there early tomorrow afternoon if you pack a few things before bed tonight!"

( Details... )

OH MY GOD MY DISTRICT INTERNALLY POSTED A FULL TIME MIDDLE SCHOOL SOCIAL STUDIES POSITION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Will go to school tomorrow (office closed at this point) to find out just what this "indicate interest in writing" must include beyond "I'm qualified for it and I want it."

So last week, I learned what it actually looked like and that it was in my garden.

This week, I learned that:

•  a tiny brush of it can still cause the rash
• that it doesn't wash off with regular soap -- should use rubbing alcohol to break up the oils
• that even if a rash doesn't show up soon, it can still show up a day or two later, and that those cases are actually worse than others
• it spreads as the tiny bit of wrist, right above my gardening gloves, touches other skin
• the rash looks JUST LIKE the mystery itchy rashes I've had the past few years at the beginning of summer, when I start massive weeding (so that mystery is solved)
• and it's just all around nastiness

Bacon fresh out of the oven is so, so very good. :)

Today's tasks:

• trim the day lilies that got planted yesterday
• make Adam's venetians and get started on the hat
• put bacon away before I eat the entire pound of it
• 6 PM group cycling at athletic club (seeing as I just realized it's too late to go to a morning class)
• get directions for the Michigan Joint Education Council conference tomorrow in Lansing
• call AT&T about internet pricing (without cable tv)
• start tackling the weeding, carefully, now that Jody's mom ID'ed the poison ivy in my flower beds! (partly done, anyways... I lost my shade!)

We did a lot of groundhog-fighting, and hadn't seen any in a long time. After several weeks of recovering from groundhogs eating it, the garden was starting to fill back in. The lettuce looked so nice this weekend. And I was able to convince the pea plants to start up the lattice instead of spreading out.

I just went out there and it's all pretty much decimated to stubs.

Okay, he posted it on FaceBook, but goshdarnit, I'm passing it here too. Unless you've had personal experience with one of the other guys and think they're awesome, that is, it'd be awesome to get the brand new Mad Science that Jody's working for a good bit of publicity. And seriously, a Mad Scientist is a bazillion times cooler than a birthday clown. Or at least I always thought they were (I'm afraid I was one of those kids who just didn't understand the appeal of clowns) :)

And you can even vote repeatedly, but only once a day!

I had realized the issues of used kids' clothing, second-hand toys, old books at Goodwill or the library, and crafting of kids' items, but I hadn't thought about the impact on science education... CPSIA is such a fucked up law.

I found a note I had confiscated at some point this month.  I hadn't actually opened it and read it until today. 

"Hey an' don't forget to return yo tuxes by 12 o' clock or they'll charge you like 10 bucks or somin crazy like that. t's redankulus"

I got a good giggle out of "redankulus"! :)

13 more days, or, as the principal puts it, 12 more wake-ups because we're already up and here today!

All my seniors PASSED the semester!!!!!!!