lydamorehouse: (ticked off Ichigo)
 I spend so much damn time driving around that I'm actually starting to be annoyed by all of it.

Normally, I don't mind driving, but I do kind of hate dozens of small trips--like this morning, which is becoming typical, thanks to all of Shawn's various hospital/clinic visits. So, first I drive Mason and Shawn to Shawn's physical therapy office and drop her off; I drive Mason and I to get coffee (okay, this part is totally on me, did not HAVE to do it); take Mason to school; and then drive back to pick up Shawn and take her to work. After ALL OF THAT, I finally drive myself back home. 

This evening isn't going to be any better. In about an hour, I will pick up Mason from school, drive him to his PSEO class at Saint Paul College, pick up Shawn at MHS (right across the streeet, at least), bring her home for a very short time, then the two of us will get back in the car to pick up Mason after his class is over, drive back to Washington (his high school) for parent/teacher conferences, and then I will drop them back home and drive to Wyrdsmiths, where I will probably end up driving Eleanor home afterwards, because WHY THE HECK NOT. 

Obviously, some of the driving is self-imposed. We could make Mason figure out if he could get from high school to his college class by bus. I suspect he could, but I'm not sure he would make it on time, as his class starts at 4 pm and I suspect there's at least one transfer. I could also make him bus home after his 6 pm class. 

Honestly, though, I've gotten used to the PSEO extra driving. It's whenever we have to add anything to that that I start to get a little nutty.

In far more interesting news, who here wants to see what radium dials and uranium glass look like under black light???

I see a lot of raised hands! (That's why you guys are my friends.)

a bunch of green glass plates and such and clock under regular light
First, for comparison, here is what the uranium glass (green glass) looks like under normal lighting conditions. The radium clock is also there.

And, yes, because we are like this we ordered a BLACK LIGHT FLASHLIGHT off Amazon just to test this. (I know you are all also suddenly quite jealous of my cool black light flashlight which, yes, I do intend to take to any hotel room I go to henceforth.)


everything glows
Now everything glows with that warm, warm radiation!!

Seriously, the first time we did this, Shawn and I were like, "Oh, I wonder if we'll really be able to tell--OH HOLY BOMBARDED ATOMS, BATMAN!!!"

This discovery, however, ignited a rather tense discussion in the family about whether or not we would all die insta-death from being exposed to all of this radioactivity. Internet says we're fine so long as no one grinds up a plate, inhales the radioactive dust, and/or EATS the plates. (No, not just eat off the plates, but actually consume and digest the plates wholesale.) Internet also advises us NOT to disassemble the radium clock and lick its various luminescent parts.

...should be able to restrain myself...

However, paranoid is paranoid and Shawn has since moved everything on to the porch.

Green (uranium) glass is highly collectable, though. She is seriously considering whether or not to try to sell some of it on eBay. (Frankly, this confuses me. We bought it because WE like it. The only thing that's changed is that we've discovered that it has a half life. I mean... I am being bombarded by radiation every time I walk outside, so...?) We'll see, I did notice some of it already migrating back to its normal spots around the house. 


lydamorehouse: (Default)
 Today is the day I finish my novel (which is due at the end of this week.) I have finished all scenes, except for the very last denouement. However, I'm about two days behind where I wanted to be. Hopefully, my beta readers will be able to turn it around fast, after I send it out... tonight? Tomorrow morning?

Fingers crossed.

My barista asked me how my weekend was and I've been in such a tizzy of writing that I found myself at a loss for words. "Not as productive as I'd like, but I worked all weekend."

To be fair, I did take a few breaks. One of them was to go estate sale shopping again. After dropping Mason off at his job at the Science Museum on Saturday morning, I happened to drive past a sign that was RIGHT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD. Like, literally, three blocks from our house, on the other side of Fairview Avenue. When I came home, I was like, "You didn't tell me there was an estate sale in our neighborhood," to Shawn, who then explained that she had seen it listed on her estate sale listing but didn't think we wanted to hit it because it was listed as "a house of clocks."

I was like, "It's just there! We have to go snoop around in what is essentially a neighbor's house!"

This house was indeed full of clocks. Here is a picture of one wall:

a wall of clocks
Picture: a huge number of very cute (faux) cuckoo clocks on a wall. 

This was just one wall in the house There were clocks hung on every surface, every table had a mantle clock. So. Many. Clocks.

The house itself was really cute, however. It must have been built around the same time as ours, but they still had their back stairway intact and plate railing along the dining room wall. The floors were refinished hard wood. The rooms were small, but nicely laid out. Someone had had a very nice home... which they filled with clocks.

I, however, will never point fingers. After all, we took home four clocks. One of which Shawn discovered last night had a radium dial. Authentic, but, um.... radioactive? We are looking into it (seems so far that the internet agrees that yes, they are, but they're also not terribly harmful, so long as you don't open up the case and mess around with the dial.) I did pick up one of the little clocks in the picture because they were $20 and cute. Shawn also bought one for our kitchen that looks like a plate, internet tells us that it's circa 1930.

We went back on Sunday for an ottoman. 

I love estate sale-ing. It's very different, IMHO, from thrifting or rummage sale-ing. For one, you get to go into people's houses, look into their basements, and kind of almost see how their house was set-up when they lived in it (obviously, things are staged for selling. Last weekend, at the egg cup house--yes, a house with thousands of egg cups and I'm NOT exaggerating--I overheard the worker saying that a lot of the cups had been packed away and so they spent most of their prep time unwrapping them and finding places to put them out, to display them.)

Plus, sometimes you find a cool clock.

Or a hundred. 
lydamorehouse: (ichigo irritated)
Woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow.

I spent Friday driving around (and goofing off). Shawn had two appointments yesterday: first a continuation of her back pain PT and the second a dermatology "skin check." They were at the same building, so I dropped her off and went and did a bunch of errands that needed doing (cat food/litter, bread at the bakery, and grocery shopping.) I had just finished putting the last of the groceries away when Shawn called to tell me she was done. We were going to go out to lunch after that, but, by chance,[personal profile] naomikritzer texted to see if I was planning to stop by the coffee shop for our usual Friday gossip session.

Shawn and I shifted plans and headed to Claddaugh.

Unfortunately, after finally finding a place to park across the street, Shawn managed to take a HUGE tumble. It was strange, because I turned to see her catch her foot in a pothole and I kept thinking she was going to pull out of the dive, but then, swoop, she went into what looked like a perfect martial arts roll. She's okay, only really, really bruised. Falls are scary now, because Shawn is on a blood thinner, since the hospitalization for the clot, and so when I say REALLY bruised, I mean, seriously black and blue. We laughed that of course this happened AFTER the back physical therapy.

Shawn decided that this fall required retail therapy, so she checked out the nearby thrift store (St. Vincent's) and the antique mall, Sophie Joe's. Of course, she managed to find some things, including our SIXTH glass mixing bowl. She always carries her Christmas money around, so it didn't even cost us "real money." Plus, it was probably actually good for her to stay up and moving. Once we were at home, she took a hot bath, had dinner, and went to bed. She woke up stiff today, but seems to be otherwise okay.

Meanwhile, for Friday night dinner, I tried out a vegan gravy.

brown gravy in a bow
Picture: thin gravy in boat.

Once again, like I do, I followed the recipe as it was printed the first time through. I will say that the taste and color were actually very good. In the past, when I tried out vegan gravy, I made a mushroom based one, which, when I made it ahead and froze it, it turned a very unappetizing grey. This, I suspect, would actually keep its color. The only thing I didn't like about it was how thin it was. Not looking for advice right now. I got flooded with advice on Facebook, most of which I knew, as I make gravy a lot, but neglected to note that I always follow the recipe as printed the first time I try something like this and that my complaint wasn't a OMG HOW DO I DO?? but just a "huh, not as expected."

I also got less helpful recipes for _vegetarian_ gravy, which looked delicious, but which had butter as a first ingredient. I can make ANYTHING tasty if allowed to use milk and butter, friends. Ah, well.

Tonight, I'm going to try baking the vegan sugar cookies. I may also force my family to try the vegan eggnog.

Anyway, I was going to tell you about today, too. Shawn and I dropped Mason off at his work at 10 am. Shawn came with because she wanted to show me some bowls she'd seen at the thrift store to see if I wanted them for cat bowls. So, we stopped in, bought those, (because I did), and then we got fancy coffee at the coffee shop, and then headed home... only to run into an estate sale. Apparently, Shawn had seen the listing for the estate sale, but ignored it, because the ad said, "world travelers" but then only showed pictures of stereotypical souveniers. We stopped, anyway, and it was a maze of a house full of... literal egg cups. Like, there must have been thousands of these things. Some of them even had receipts showing where they were bought and how much they paid for them. It was kind of unreal. Shawn did find a cool copy of "A Christmas Carol" from 1919 and one of our cranberry king glasses. I found a small box of stamps (as in postage,) and we explored the nightmarish basement, but only came out with a wicker basket for some of Shawn's looming fabric.

While in the basement, I also saw this:

scary clearly cursed doll in chair
Image: clearly cursed doll in a high chair.

It's only too bad that the estate sale wasn't on Halloween. I mean, probably the doll would have gotten up and walked away.... YIKES.




lydamorehouse: (crazy eyed Renji)
On Saturday, after taking Mason to work, Shawn and I decided to check out the ReUse Center of the University of Minnesota. That place is kind of a trip. Check out all the--I assume, abandoned--bicycles

an ungodly number of bicycles hanging from an industrial ceiling

There were all sorts of other things, too, like all the weird old science equipment that a mad scientist might want:

microscopes

And, of course, books that had been culled from the University libraries:

books!

We didn't find anything to take home, alas, but it was really fun to see all the stuff. We had much better luck at our earlier thrifting spot, GoodWill. Shawn found a few baskets, including a big wicker basket for laundry (something she always covets.) Also, she found more of a set of dishes that we'd picked up earlier. We swear that GoodWill has the whole set, but it only putting out a few pieces at a time.

So, while the rest of you fools are decluttering, Shawn and I are digging through your castaways.

Why? Because it brings us joy.

Saturday was actually a very good day all around. Mason came back from work and we had a lovely dinner. Shawn and I watched "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" (2018) which we had on DVD from Netflix (because we still get DVDs from Netflix.) I... didn't hate it? Shawn seemed to enjoy it, but woke up this morning to inform me that she'd had epiphany: "They should stop making sequels of these." I mean, she's not wrong? But, as I pointed out, DINOSAURS. Like, how else are we going to get a dinosaur movie in the future? Pretty much anything you do is going to seem like a rip off the Jurassic franchise. So, let them keep making them? I honestly love any movie where I can root for the dinosaurs. But, I will say that "Fallen Kingdom" had some moments that made me VERY SAD. Spoiler )

But, at the end of the evening, Shawn turned to me and said, "This was actually a *good* day." I had to agree.

Today, Sunday, was pretty good, too. We didn't do a lot, played Smash and hung out. I've been writing a lot of fan fic, some of which I posted today.  Then, we were going to have pot stickers for dinner tonight, but Mason's GF had to cancel last minute, and so we randomly decided to have fried chicken fingers and onion strips a meal we make while literally sitting in front of the deep fat frier.  Such a terrible meal. SO GOOD.  

I still need to do my spell of the day tonight, but, otherwise, I'd say it was a lovely weekend. 

How've you been?
lydamorehouse: (ichigo freaked)
We always say we're going to clean the house on Sunday, but inevitably we end up cooking a ton of food. Shawn woke up this morning and wanted kuchen (edits because Shawn read this and said, no, change the link to reflect North Dakota German's from Russia kuchen.)  Mason wanted to make an apple pie for his girlfriend, so we all made that together.

An apple pie, freshly baked, with cut-outs of stars in the crust

Then, just as I finished the dishes from all of those, Mason announced he wanted Scotch Eggs for breakfast... so we went to the meat market and I made those as well.

Tonight, we're going to grill out.

I kept saying to my family, "Good thing I'm trying to cut down on my cholesterol! Hand me another Scotch Egg!"  Yep. Ah, well. My only comfort is that I spent a large part of the afternoon raking up a [bleep]-ton of leaves that somehow we always have in our yard in the spring (and literally no one else ever seems to. Maybe we're the yard that everyone's blown leaves end up in.)

Yesterday, when we ALSO had plans to clean the house, we ended up estate and rummage sale-ing.  That was a lot of fun.  Shawn and I used to spend a lot of weekend mornings estate sale-ing.  We spent all of $26.00 and came home with some plates, a few odds and ends, more fabric for her rugs, and an exercise bike.  :-)

The coolest venue we stopped at was St. Clement's Church.

St. Clements Church in St. Paul

The rummage sale was in the basement, but they had their sanctuary open to the public:

interior church sanctuary

The church building is on the national historic registry. It was really very lovely. An okay sale, though my latest goal at these things is to see if anyone is giving away decent stationary.  It's not really the sort of thing you find very often, so that makes it especially fun to try to hunt for.  I did find a few cards at the church that weren't too religious, so that's a bit of a find.

How was your weekend?
lydamorehouse: (more renji art)
Shawn, Mason and I had a nice weekend. We spent a good part of Saturday morning estate sale/rummage shopping, which was a blast. There were a couple of church basement rummage sales, including a really awesome book sale at St. Olivet's, which is this beautiful Congregational church close to the Merrim Park Library. In fact, Mason and I were done early and we just sat an admired their gorgeous 'gymnasium.' Shawn and I joked that we were tempted to join the church just for the building.

St. Olivet's was a stark contrast to the house we stopped at that was just down the road from Stepping Stone Theatre (behind the law school). It was... straight out of a Stephen King novel, not only had it suffered HARDCORE neglect (on a squalor level), but, you know how most of the time you can feel the good strong bones of a house underneath all the grime and disrepair? Yeah, no. This house had been born with a mutated, malformed skeleton. Because, even though people had 'remuddled' it over the years, there were pieces that were clearly original that were just... odd. Like the second story... prayer alcove? It looked like people had been using it last as a closet, but it had been built with a stained glass window and a little buildt-in kneeler. The rooms were also all off at odd angles, which were perhaps originally meant to be 'charming' or even 'eccentric' but came off as cramped and wrong after time had worn the beauty away.

Mason, who has a very low threshold for bad vibes, walked in and instantly said, "Oh, no. Let's just go." Shawn and I pushed through with sheer curiosity and, much to Mason's chagrin, we both brought something home from that house. (Shawn got a roll of rope and I found a leather wallet.)

That house was one of the ones that all the sale-rs had to stop and chat with strangers about (which, if you aren't from around here, you might not realize what a BIG DEAL that is in Minnesota.) I would say something to Mason like, "My god, look at this, the original builders didn't even finish off these floor boards..." and the person passing by on the way up the stairs would feel compelled to stop, look, and then comment about some other odd feature they'd seen in the garage or elsewhere. The estate sale workers kept trying to sort of reassure people by saying, "This house is old. It was built in 1913." To which, I replied, "Our house was built in 1911. It doesn't look like this. Something more than time happened to this house." To which, they had no other response than, "The workers are coming back on Monday."

The other thing that pissed off all the estate sale-rs that came through was that, possibly to fund the remodeling, the prices were jacked up. There were things there that should have been marked ten bucks (generous) that were set at SEVENTY.

Mason shadowed me through the whole house saying, "This place is like a HOG (Hidden Object Game)." Because on top of all the weird angles and decrepit-ness the estate sale workers had just piled all the goods in boxes and in tables in a way that just made it all seem that much more chaotic. Even the back yard garden was a mess.

It was kind of amazing, really. It was the sort of place that sticks in your head, and it may have to work its way into a novel, because it's too good to waste, you know?

Sunday we spent doing some housework, baking cookies (for real! I made chocolate chip!) and playing some board games. It was that kind of day because we woke up to a rain that beat down steadily all day long.

During some of my housework, I started a new anime series. I'm now watching Witch Craft Works. I'm not entirely sure I can recommend it. It's weirdly compelling, though. The story is about "an average high school boy" who, it turns out, has a witch guardian who considers him her "princess." A lot of the humor in the story has to do with a shounen reversal. She gets all the power-ups, is popular and aloof, and he's just kind of a pretty/handsome load she constantly has to rescue. Weirdly, that kind of works for me. All the villains and side-characters are female, too, so it's very much a conscious 'see, this is what you look like!' in terms of reversing all the gender stuff.

I'm watching it on Crunchyroll, so it's a new anime, only just having aired this year in January in Japan. There are 12 episodes, and I'm just about to start #4 with today's load of dishes. I suspect that if this anime follows the flow of most 'new-ish' anime, the real action will start now that they've set up the characters and the situation. I feel like it was right about episode 3 or 4 that Rei was introduced in Free! Iwatobi Swim Club and that's when things really started rolling.

At any rate, I'm enjoying that.

Today my plans are to get a good start on my new Tate installment. I have to say that given time, the serial thing on WattPad is starting to work better for me. I've decided that I'm not allowed to look at my statistics, which helps, and only concentrate on the comments. I have one really faithful reader (who is not actually someone I know outside of this context), so I'm kind of writing this for her. She leaves comments at the end of each chapter and is even starting to try to guess at the plot, WHICH I TOTALLY ADORE AND HAD BEEN HOPING FOR. So, that's working.

More importantly, having the publishing deadline of once a week on a Tuesday afternoon, means I'm writing forward every week. This is a very, very good thing.

Plus, even though I hate it, it seems like my social media blast about the updates are getting re-blogged (at least a friend saw it happen once), so that's kind of all I can hope for.

I really do think this is the sort of thing that might become a THING given enough time. For now, I'm along for the ride... and it's keeping me writing on a Tate project.

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