the girly who shall end all girls

the other thing that happened yesterday (after finding a vax appt for C) was that the new tent arrived.

we masked up and carried it downstairs to the common area where there was enough room to try pitching it and take notes and pictures. it was everything i hoped it would be and more.

the trend in tents has been to make 50% or more of the body out of no-see-um mesh. this makes sense for cutting weight for backpacking, but for being in a base camp as far as i'm concerned it sucks. there's no privacy without the fly (and don't get me started on the existence of rain flys that don't cover the entire tent). we live in a place where it's wet most of the year, i want a tent to protect me from rain. it's more likely to be cool than blistering hot, i want actual walls with the option to open windows and vents as needed. and we've been talking about doing more early/late season camping, so again, mesh walls don't cut it.

so: the new tent is a dome with six sides. the sides alternate between a large double-layer window/door and triangular double layer vent windows, plus more little double layer vent windows up near the peak. the fly has zipper openings for all the window/doors with one main vestibule that has its own pole support, and pop up openings for the vent windows (there are little props to tent them up so you can have air circulation but not rain). it's smaller than the previous tent but still just tall enough for us to stand up inside (we're both under 6'). all the stakes are stainless steel so we can hammer them into hard ground. it came with a waterproof footprint even though it wasn't listed in the specs. everything involved in the setup is color-coded. all the external lines and loops have reflective elements. the bag it comes in has compression straps. it's commensurately heavy but i didn't buy it to pack farther than a national park "walk in". i suppose i wish that there wasn't any gray in the color scheme, but i'll live :)

Finished my test skein and series 4 of GPTD (it was delightful, I cried), took some photos with the new camera between rain showers, caught up on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

I also made a larger batch of bath bombs yesterday. I’m pleased with these; I’ve dialed in the dry ingredient mix such that they fizz for about five minutes and they float. These use Lake colorants instead of dyes, I think I prefer them. I’ll keep playing until my supplies run out, but I suspect it’s the lakes I’ll buy when it’s time to replenish. Favorite scent so far is “raspberry ale” which is very much the smell of Framboise Lambic.

yesterday i had my first migraine in a while. it took me down at the end of the work day and i ended up missing Friday night game. (i fell asleep hard after having dinner, drugs, and two tiny cans of Coke Zero, and even after i woke computer screens were a no-go.)

i felt better this morning. we picked up breakfast from Hattie's and coffee while we walked the dog, then watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier while we ate. then we walked to the better grocery store, which had potted bulbs 3/$10 and got 3 clumps of narcissus and three clumps of tulips. we picked out ones that hadn't bloomed yet; originally i had intended to just sit them on the balcony, but they were all quite rootbound in their little plastic pots, so i ended up doing some impromptu gardening. dead cruft and moss cleaned out of the planters, geraniums trimmed back, dirt fluffed, bulbs planted in the open spaces.

i ran another errand (boots getting stretched, the left one needs a bit more, should be done next week) and picked up some beers and ciders. C had fallen fast asleep with the dog, i should have taken a picture. but that made it easy to go sit in a sunbeam on the balcony with my kindle and a cold beer.

this being a four-game week, we had a pretty frustrating dungeon crawl tonight - lots of traps and a fight that yielded nothing but decoy treasure. we did, however, find a magical vending machine with discount healing potions. it could move and seemed to have some intelligence and the poor thing was chained to the wall, so my character used her smith's tools to set it loose. (we ended there, we'll see how that plays out next time.)

this group is mostly educators and essential workers, so they're all qualified to get vaccinated...ranging from having both doses to fighting to schedule a first appointment. i'm really struggling to tamp down my feelings about being last to get my shots; we are healthy and mostly safe from exposure,* we should be last, still feels like shit.




*if you are going to get into the weeds on this, it would be nice to have living in an apartment building with interior hallways and elevators considered a risk factor since we definitely share air. but the state has come out specifically to say that it doesn't count as "congregate".

had a nice time playing Fate tonight; the socializing was good, and the history sharing was good, and we made progress on our quest.

i also finally got to observe users actively rolling dice in the run of play. i made a false assumption when i was adding Fate dice to Chewie (my Discord bot), that there were times when you might roll more or less than four dice. nah, that's not how Fate goes. it's four dice always.

therefore making my poor users type "4" over and over is a waste. i've fixed it and the update would have gone faster if i wasn't so in love with my overbuilt solution. (i went down a rabbit hole of trying to adapt my results grammar function instead of the correct choice which was a new, dumber function that does only what it needs to do.)

i went downtown and it was okay - people kept their distance on the bus, the only time i saw unmasked folks was (no surprise) near the sketchy McDonald's. the streets there are pretty empty, the foot traffic reminded me of a holiday morning, except that a lot of businesses are boarded up. the building i entered was set up like a maze, with all the open areas blocked off and walls made of tarps or plywood.

we watched the Snyder Cut of Justice League yesterday and it was okay. i even liked the aspect ratio. more importantly, it didn't offend me. the things i liked the least in the the theatrical cut were all gone ( spoilers?? ) if i had seen it in the theater i would have enjoyed the air conditioning and forgot most of what happened after an hour or so. as it was there was a lot of filler that could have been cut, but it was nice for a lazy afternoon with the option to pause.

new camera is here, and i have discovered how much i had customized the settings on the old camera. most of this was done during a photography class, i took notes, and like a good packrat i kept the notebook.

i know exactly which notebook it is.

i do not know *where* that notebook is. (i do now know where the ones with notes from several years of SIFF, Norwescon, ECCC, knitting classes, and spinning classes are.)

*sigh*

meanwhile, with this camera i have entered the century of the fruitbat and can wirelessly transfer pictures to my phone for sharing, which is quite delightful. also digging the lighter body + deeper grip. it feels better in my hand than the old one :D

there were high winds and rain today, so we ended up watching Secrets of the Castle and napping. no regrets.

it turns out the ubiquitous giant bunnies (there is even a nest under the shed by our cottage) are domestic meat rabbits gone feral. on the last walk tonight we also saw a deer and an owl.

there's a small orchard of heritage apples nearby. it turns out that this used to be apple country before irrigation arrived in Yakima; the apple trees are all grafts from old homesteads on the island. origins mostly in New York and New Jersey, plus Connecticut, England, and (of course) Denmark.

Am safe and sound at remote location. Leela is very impressed with the huge wild rabbits (hares?). we are in love with the skylights (and glad it's not summer).