Altivo Overo's Blog, page 11

The persistence of color preferences?

I have recently been seized with a new interest in jewelry. No, not the heavy loads of costume stuff some people wear, and definitely not "precious" diamonds and rubies. But I've always liked simple pieces in understated color, matched to the wearer's personality and mood. This applies to both men and women. A simple ring, a pendant, a bracelet, or even just one earring, properly chosen, can be a fantastic addition.

I have a small collection of such pieces that I wear occasionally. Last spring I bought two or three small items from Black Wolf Jewellery in the Netherlands, and have been very pleased with them. But this made me think once again about making some items for myself or for gifts. (No, I'm not planning to sell anything.)

( Details and photos under cut )

I wouldn't have thought that something as insignificant as color preferences would be so consistent over an entire lifetime, yet apparently they are. I may get around to looking for actual statistics on that.

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Cholent (history and recipe)

Since I was home all day yesterday and Gary went to a Christmas party in the afternoon and got back for dinner late, I made a satisfying dish that can wait until a convenient time to be served.

Cholent is a slow cooked stew that was created by Jewish cooks in order to be able to serve a hot meal on the sabbath without actually cooking or lighting a fire. The ingredients were put into a heavy ceramic pot, and the lid sealed on with dough. This could then be placed in a hot brick oven before sunset on Friday and left to cook overnight. The pot was retrieved and opened at midday on Saturday, with a complete meal ready to eat inside. In fact, a smaller tin with a tight-fitting lid could be placed inside the cholent pot in order to cook a kugel (pudding dish) to be served for dessert.

I took an interest in Jewish traditional food for a while, and this was one of the recipes that we really enjoyed. My version is evolved a bit, since some of the traditional ingredients are not only hard to get but unappealing to us (beef tongue, goose neck.) The main differences are my use of smoked turkey sausage in place of the traditional beef brisket or chicken, and the addition of some brown rice for additional texture.

( Recipe and photo under cut )

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What I did instead of MWFF

The good news: It appears that Midwest Furfest was bigger than ever (5600+ attendees, almost 1600 fursuits in the parade, $62,000 raised for this year's charity "Save-a-Vet".)

The bad news: Though I'd agreed to do a panel with Sparf and Tempe O'Kun, and did register for the con, when push came to shove it was simply not practical for me to get there. I had originally thought I could just drive down for Saturday, but it turns out that parking is non-existent or quite expensive in the area, and dubious at night. The panel was from 8 to 9 pm on Saturday, which would have meant returning alone in the dark to a remote parking lot to drive back home.

I don't much care for driving to begin with, and in a congested unfamiliar area, in the dark, this didn't sound at all appealing. So I thought maybe public transportation would be better. Well, it's theoretically possible to get to the convention hotel from my home if I take Metra commuter rail from Woodstock to Jefferson Park in Chicago, and then transfer to the CTA Blue line to get to Rosemont. It's about a quarter mile walk from the station to the hotel. This would have been workable except that the weekend train schedules are sparse (to put it politely) and with the panel ending at 9 pm, there was only a single train to get me back to Woodstock. Miss that connection for any reason (and there are many possible reasons, from time overruns to a CTA delay which is fairly common) and I'd have been stranded. Even if it worked, I would have gotten back to Woodstock after midnight, and likely have had to stand around in a nearly deserted station at Jefferson Park for 30-40 minutes which is never a pleasant prospect after dark. I've had unpleasant and near-disastrous experiences with that before.

So in the end, I gave up on the whole idea. I felt bad about backing out of the panel, of course, but I knew that Sparf and Tempe would manage it just fine. So I sent my apologies and missed the entire convention. The last time I actually attended MWFF was in 2008. The con has nearly quadrupled in size since then, which is good I guess, but makes it so big that I'm reluctant to go at all. This experience makes it even less likely that I'll try again. Friends who were actually there found the crowds so oppressive at times that they had to leave the hotel to find open and relatively quieter space. I'm very prone to claustrophobia, so avoiding such scenes is probably a better choice for me. I was looking forward to the art show, and a chance to hear Fox Amoore live as well as seeing some friends from out of state, but it didn't work out.

On the other hoof, I did get to attend two of my husband's three live performances that took place this weekend. I would have missed those had I gone to the convention. Saturday morning he was with the Kishwaukee Ramblers at the Woodstock Farmers' Market. That evening the Ramblers appeared again at the Boone County Conservation District's annual Christmas Walk in Belvidere. The setting for that event is a park that includes some historic cabins and a one room schoolhouse that has been reconstructed on the site. The Ramblers played in the schoolhouse by lamplight, where visitors to the park could stop for refreshments and warm drinks after touring the cabins and the blacksmith shop along trails illuminated by luminaria set along the ground. Here is a photo of the 19th century schoolhouse setting, with my husband Gary on the left playing concertina and hammered dulcimer.



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Good-bye, Red

It's all the name he had. He was part of our daily life for five years after we took him as a rescue when he was six. Red was a big guy, maybe not the brightest dog we ever had but certainly among the sweetest and quietest. He followed us faithfully from room to room as we did daily chores, learned commands readily though he sometimes had a mind of his own, and was always gentle and tolerant of our other dogs and even the cats (who sometimes slept snuggled with him or even on top of him.) He was a hundred pounds of appetite and affection, and we'll miss him for a long time. Eleven years is a long life for a big dog, and he accepted his growing infirmities placidly, struggling but never complaining. A growing failure of his spine gradually took away his mobility until at last he couldn't rise and walk without falling and hurting himself, yet he kept trying. Yesterday he gave up and we knew we had to carry him into the vet's office. There was nothing more we could do but hold him close, say a tearful good-bye as he left us, and hope to see him again, eventually, whole and young once more.



Thanks to all of you who have sent sympathetic comments. I'm overwhelmed now and can't answer every single one, but we really appreciate it. Eventually there will be another dog, but he or she won't be Red. Nor any of the other ghosts who haunt us: Sasha, Tee, Simon, Sarah, Sunny, Max, Amanda, Mikey. All of them loved, all of them sorely missed.

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I caved...

It was my intention to attend MWFF on just a one day admission for Saturday. However, that requires a full registration at the door process. Looking at the schedule of panels and events, I see things I might like to do on Friday or Sunday, though I doubt I'll show up all three days. Still for the $20 extra to get a full membership, I can drop in any time during the weekend and get to go through the (somewhat) shorter registration line. So I went ahead and pre-registered today. Depending on weather and driving conditions, I'll probably make it for part of Friday at least, and much of Saturday.

It's getting so that actually staying at the hotel for these things is ridiculously difficult. You have to commit almost a year in advance because the reservation blocks fill up so quickly. As I've been saying for several years, furry conventions are getting too large to be practical. Scary events like the chlorine attack last year at MWFF don't help either. It seems like we should be able to find some other ways to promote gathering and socialization in more moderate sized groups. I know that the UK has "meets" that take place on a monthly basis in some regions, for instance.

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Forthcoming publication and convention

I see that I failed to post this announcement here when I added it to my writer's guild forum.

More than a month ago, I was pleased to receive notification that my story "Harvest Home" has been accepted for publication in the anthology Fragments of Life's Heart (release anticipated early in 2016 from FurPlanet.) This story features my two favorite characters, Argos Weaver (a white wolf) and Fennec Redtail (a red fox,) about whom I have written reams but none of it has ever seen formal publication. Many excerpts appear in various spots on the web, however.

I will be sure to let everyone know when it is actually available. In the meantime, I remind you that my story "Coyote's Voice" appears in ROAR, volume 6 which was released in July of this year, also from Furplanet.

I have also been invited to appear on a panel at Midwest Fur Fest in Chicago, December 4-6. The panel is titled "Making Anthropomorphism Matter" and is set for Saturday, December 5, from 08:00 to 09:00 PM in the McCarran meeting room. Two other writers will be on the same panel: Tempe O'Kun and Sparf. I haven't attended MWFF since 2008, and look forward to the much enlarged event with a bit of trepidation.

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NaNoReadMo

Two posts in one day? Yes, I'm full of words, I guess. And no, that isn't a typo in the subject line.

I am not participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I have at least six mostly finished books already that need attention and final touches.

Earlier this year, like back in February, I signed onto the Goodreads.com "Reading Challenge." You set a quota number of books that you intend to read before the end of the year. I set my quota at 50, less than one book a week, figuring that I'd easily meet that goal. I can normally get through one title a week even when I'm working full time, and what with retirement at the midpoint of the year, I expected to have lots of time to read.

Well, it didn't work out that way. I was doing fine until June, but I accomplished very little reading during the summer, and by last month Goodreads was nagging me for being 8 or 9 books behind. I decided to devote November to catching up. There is no shortage of material, as I have a "to read" list that exceeds 200 titles. A hard push over the last two weeks just to finish books that were sitting around partly read has brought me up to even with the expected reading so far, and then past it so I am now three books ahead. I only need five more to make up the 50, and I expect to exceed that by some unknown number before the holiday madness hits.

One thing that helped was changing my own rules. I had been counting only fiction, when in fact I've been reading a fair amount of technical books and other non-fiction material. I went back and added some of those to my completed list, which raised my running total by a fair amount. I have three more partially completed books to wrap up now, which should pretty much guarantee a successful conclusion.

For the curious, my list of books read for the 2015 challenge is here. I am assuming that anyone can see the list, but if that isn't the case, let me know and I'll try to find another access point.

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Boondoggle day

Farrier scheduled for the horses, 8:30 AM. This part went well. Mark is punctual and efficient, and the horses seem to like him well enough. We were concerned to learn that he needs hip surgery though. (He is much younger than we are.) He was all prepared though and has enlisted help to cover for him during his recovery, which is reassuring from the horses' standpoint.

The farriery meant that we had barn chores done early and the rest of the day was "available." Gary wanted to go to the Driver Services office to have his license updated, as Illinois recently made it possible for military veterans to have a designation added to their license recognizing their service. Supposedly all that was needed was his official discharge papers and his current license. Since the office is in the same strip mall with the ALDI we generally use for most of our groceries, I planned to pick up stuff from the grocery list while he waded through the perpetual line at the vehicle/license bureau.

Our usual route to the ALDI was blocked by road repairs of some sort, with the road marked "CLOSED" but no detour marked. Fortunately this is home territory now so we know the next shortest route and made it to the grocery and Secretary of State branch office soon enough.

I was only half through the shopping list when he came into the ALDI and told me that they wouldn't accept his original discharge papers, nor the certified copy from the County Clerk that he had. He would have to go to the Office of Veteran Affairs to get a certified copy from them. That office is just 5 minutes away, in the National Guard Armory. So we finished the grocery shopping and headed over there.

He let the Garmin choose the route from one side of Woodstock to the other. Bad idea. It sent us down an unpaved gravel road, full of pot holes, and ominously marked "Private Road, No Access" to get us there. It was headed the right direction, so we went anyway. For a couple of miles it wandered between barns and several horse pastures, past many "Private" and "No Trespassing" signs. Fortunately no one came charging out with a shotgun to challenge us. The road did have a name, and was marked on maps. The very end of it arrived at the parking lot of the Armory all right, though I quickly realized that the slightly longer route I would have taken might actually have been faster because it consists of paved state and federal highways. I stayed in the car with a book while Gary went in to get his third "certified" copy of his discharge papers. About 5 minutes later he came back and said the office was closed with sign on the door saying "Back at 2 pm." It was already 1:42 so we decided to wait. Sure enough, they unlocked the door again at 2 and Gary disappeared for about 40 minutes. Two or three others who had been waiting in the parking lot went in at the same time.

It was almost 45 minutes before he returned with his new certificate. It seems they had computer issues and in fact the other people who had been waiting gave up and left. In a situation that has become all too common today, the small office was absolutely dependent on a computer, scanner, printer, and internet access in order to function. However, no one in the local staff knew anything about maintaining the software, or the equipment, or the network. They said they had been having issues for about a week. It took them six phone calls to reach someone who could help, but they did finally get it to run at least long enough to provide what Gary needed. Mind, this is a federal government agency, located on a military property where there are undoubtedly people with the necessary technical skills for support. But since veterans affairs is not a military function, the military personnel can do nothing for them. And of course, since both the US Congress and the Illinois government are locked in ridiculous budget battles between the two useless political parties that rule our lives, neither has any budget for support or maintenance anyway.

Surprisingly enough, when we got back to the Driver Services facility, it only took a few minutes for Gary to get his revised license. That and a $5 fee that was not mentioned in any of the announcements of the new service. That fee will not go to help keep anything running, since the idiot elected to the governor's office last year has impounded all state money and some over which his claim of control is dubious at best. In other words, money continues to flow into the state treasury, but none is being let out except where courts have already ordered this moron to allow payments to be made. Politicians are the most worthless people on earth, I think. Totally out of touch with reality, locked into ridiculous dogmatic positions, refusing to negotiate or compromise, and without the least concern for their real responsibilities to contituencies and the services they are sworn to support and provide.

Anyway, what was meant to be a 90 minute excursion, including time for lunch, ended up eating the entire afternoon. It was a good thing that the barn chores were already done.

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Editor's [gasp] bio

Since I "helped" with editing for Civilized Beasts (poetry anthology due out next year,) I was asked to provide a brief biographical note in the form of a poem. Tempted by the suggestion of a limerick, but I settled on the quatrain in the style of Omar Khayyam/Edward FitzGerald.

Alas! Poor Altivo's lived long in the past.
Some people will tell you he's only half-assed.
Dream-ridden, Shakespearean, equine is he:
Neither grey mule nor donkey but horse scholiast.

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How does the garden grow?

Like Jack's beanstalk in some cases (beans, cucumbers) and like a snail in others (peppers, tomatoes.) I think the potatoes are about done, but I need to dig down to make sure.

Here is yesterday's haul of cucumbers:



I do love cucumbers. However, since husband Gary dislikes them, I'm going to have a problem eating this many. I may have to make some pickles. Or feed them to the ducks if they keep producing at this rate.

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