Simple Ikea hack

Take one of these. Which is designed to hang on the wall and hold these and these; put it on your laundry room wall and presto!

You're going to get tired of this before I do.

Next SCA list: Feastbox

The feastbox is a wooden box about the size of a smallish cooler. My husband made it.  It's virtually indestructible and a pain in butt to carry.

Standard:

• 4 plates


• 4 maple bowls spare wooden bowls


• drinking vessels


• period utensils - spoons, knives (forks not period, optional)


• cutting knives


• matches, butane lighter


• salt & pepper


• paper towels


• napkins


• table cover


• carrier bags, trash bags


• foil & glad-tainers

For court events:

• Table runner


• Chargers


• Candles & holders

 

Only two pages wasted

After all that angsting about which notebook to use for my lists...I've decided to keep the original. I mean, everything's already written out, why go to all the hassle? There's still plenty of room in the spiral, too. I can save the other one for a different project.

So. To keep up with putting the lists here, I give you the staples list:

• Salt, pepper, spices and herbs*:
  
  
  
  • Marjoram
  
  
  • Basil
  
  
  • Oregano
  
  
  • Parsley
  
  
  • Garlic powder
  
  
  • Onion powder
  
  
  • Cinnamon
  
  
  • Nutmeg
  
  
  • Ginger
  
  
  • Curry powder
  
  
  • Coriander
  
  
  
  


• Sugar, creamer


• Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate mix


• Oatmeal, cream of rice


• Bisquick, flour


• Syrup, honey


• Emergency can-goods:
  
  
  
  • Tuna
  
  
  • Beans
  
  
  • Chunky soups
  
  
  • Ravioli
  
  
  • ETA beef stew
  
  
  • kippers
  
  
  • mac'n'cheese
  
  
  
  

*Need small spice containers

Cor Blimey, how you do go on.

Okay, my husband sent this cool site to me, http://www.effingpot.com/ which is a glossary of Brit-speak for Americans. He apparently lived in Texas for awhile and used his experiences to write the list. It’s fairly exhaustive, but has some definite errors as well as assumptions that some of these words aren’t used by Americans, and have been for a very long time…since before the invasion of Britcoms, to be honest.

Here’s one that’s incorrect:

“Nark - If someone is in a nark, it means they are in a bad mood, or being grumpy. It's also the word for a spy or informant.
For example a coppers nark is someone who is a police informant - which you might call a stoolie or stool-pigeon. The origin
is from the Romany word, nak, meaning "nose".”

Now, I don’t know about the Romany (Gypsy) word nak. But the American slang word Nark or Narc comes from Undercover Narcotics Officer, usually someone who is masquerading as either a high school or college student. They would get friendly with dopers and their suppliers and then “narc” on them, or turn them in. So now to be a narc is to be yes, a stoolie or stool-pigeon: informant.

Here’s another:

"Shammy - I think you call these wash leathers. They are the completely useless cloths, originally made from the skin of the
chamois - a wild antelope, the size of a goat. They dry rigid and leave horrible streaks across the windows they are supposed to clean!"

I’ve never heard a chamois called “wash leathers” in my life. Maybe in North Carolina or some such place, but it’s a chamois (pronounced shammy). I wonder if he knows you’re supposed to rinse the thing out and then wring it very well before you use it?  I’ve never had a problem with them streaking.

"Plaster board - Sheet rock in Texas. In the UK, plasterboard is used to make ceilings and is also used to make internal walls, it is
then covered in a thin layer of real plaster, except in cheap modern houses. In Texas, entire houses are made from sheet rock, which
is a bit worrying if it is windy or rainy! If the three little pigs had lived in Texas, they would have been eaten! In some states call it's
called "plaster board" like it is here in the UK and others it's called drywall."

Okay, we do not make our entire house out of sheet rock or dry wall…heavens! The house is framed with wood, insulated and then various outside coverings are used, including adobe, hardi-plank, siding, brick, Austin stone.... Only the interior walls have sheet rock on them, and they're still framed inside with 2x4s at the very least. Oy gevalt!

And he seems to think “sofa” is the only word we use for what they call a couch. Well, we use the word couch, a lot, along with sofa and divan. Although divan is not used quite so much anymore. It’s what my grandmother called her sofa. :)

And he seems to have a problem figuring out why we call a restroom a restroom. That one might be a bit tougher, if you aren’t very old. They’re called that because back in the day, restrooms in nicer restaurants, hotels, theaters, and department stores had an outer room with a sofa and very often little sundries like mouthwash or lotion available, and they had an attendant. The attendant was there to watch your purse or briefcase while you went to the loo, and keep the place neat and clean all day long. You often left a tip in a little basket. So they really were places to rest as well as relieve yourself.

There are some under slang that we—at least I and my family—have used forever in the US:

To go on a bender means to basically go on a non-stop drinking spree; blast or blast it all; blinding; Bob’s your uncle; botch; cheeky; cram, for studying hard; dim to mean thick or stupid; and every cowboy called food “grub” in the westerns; haggle; hunky-dory, and in shambles are all examples.

"Piece of cake - I remember saying it's a piece of cake in front of one of my American friends,
who then started looking around for the cake! It means it's a cinch!"

Dunno what kind of dimwit friend he had, but we’ve used this forever. Means the same as “easy as pie,” or a “walk in the park.”

"Piss poor - If something is described as being "piss poor" it means it is an extremely poor attempt at something."

Again, totally US term.  Same here:

"Plastered - Another word for loaded. In other words you have had rather too much to drink down your local.
It has nothing to do with being covered with plaster though anything is possible when you are plastered."

"Shitfaced - If you hear someone saying that they got totally shitfaced it means they were out on the town and
got steaming drunk. Normally attributed to stag nights or other silly events."

 

Now here’s one we use but to us it means 6 of one, half a dozen of the other:

"Sixes and sevens - If something is all at sixes and sevens then it is in a mess, topsy turvy or somewhat haywire!"

Here’s a few that are definitely ones we’ve used for ages in the US:

"Sloshed - Yet another way to describe being drunk. Clearly we need a lot of ways to describe it since
getting plastered is a national pastime."

"Twat - Another word used to insult someone who has upset you. Also means the same as fanny but is less
acceptable in front of your grandmother, as this refers to parts of the female anatomy. Another use for the
same word is to twat something, which would be to hit it hard. Get it right or I'll twat you over the head!"

"Yakking - This means talking incessantly - not that I know anyone who does that now!"

"Zonked - If someone is zonked or "zonked out" it means they are totally knackered or you might say exhausted.
When a baby has drunk so much milk, his eyes roll into the back of his head, it would be fair to say he was zonked!"

I’m beginning to think that perhaps there are some of these that went to England some time ago, since I believe our TV went there before theirs came here, and 30 or 40 years ago entered the lexicon in the UK and he just ran into a great number of idjit Texans.

 

As for correcting our grammar…Not everyone in England is paragon of grammatical correctness, so stuff it. :)

 

The List Mania goes on....and on...and.......

I've decided on the Stuart Hall Executive Project Planner.

Okay, so, this shows how long I’ve had this notebook…a) there’s no web address on the back and b) apparently after having been purchased by Pen-Tab in 1998, Stuart Hall Co., Inc., was closed down in 2001.

O.O

And…I think Pen Tab Industries might have gone defunct, too. So, I guess this is a collector’s item now. ROFL. Best make good use of it.

This is the closest I can find on Amazon.

Or this

This is very close

Oooh..this one’s nice

Anyway…harrumph. On to organizing the lists. I need sections.

• SCA


• House


• Non-SCA sewing


• Non-SCA projects

These might end up being transferred to a loose-leaf binder, but for now, I’ll keep them in the spiral…or maybe an individual notebook for each. It’s not like I don’t have any spare notebooks. *kitty giggles*

Gah! You see, this is why I never get my act together, so many decisions!

Okay, so first list, subject to change, of course:

• 1. Kitchen Box (Rubbermaid ® Roughneck™) - Permanent items:
  
  
  
  • Make cover
  
  
  • ETA: Frying pan
  
  
  • 2 pans/pots-get kind without the long handles, like this set right here
  
  
  • Basin
  
  
  • Drainer
  
  
  • Bowls
  
  
  • Spatula, spoons, knives, cutting board (wood), fork
  
  
  • Colander
  
  
  • Measuring cup
  
  
  • Stove
  
  
  • Grill for fire
  
  
  • Dishcloth & brush
  
  
  • Can opener
  
  
  • Hotpads
  
  
  • Hand towels, dish towels
  
  
  • Lantern and/or flashlight
  
  
  • Fly control (bonus: everything you never wanted to know about flies )
  
  
  • Scent traps
  
  
  • Tents for food
  
  
  
  


• 2. Kitchen Box – consumables
  
  
  
  • Make cover
  
  
  • Dish soap
  
  
  • Bleach
  
  
  • Matches/butane lighter
  
  
  • Foil
  
  
  • Trash bags
  
  
  • Wipes
  
  
  • Scrubbies
  
  
  • Zip bags
  
  
  • Glad-tainers
  
  
  • Propane
  
  
  • Paper towels/rags
  
  
  • Sharpie
  
  
  • Cadles
  
  
  • Carrier bags
  
  
  • Small laundry soap, baggie of dryer sheets, roll of quarters
  
  
  • Lysol
  
  
  • Fly strips
  
  
  • Bug repellant
  
  
  • Vinegar
  
  
  
  

 

 

Zen and the Art of List-Making

Pursuant to the post about getting back in the SCA, I want to start a project book. I have one, a cheapie spiral that I made all sorts of lists in good gods...9 years ago??  *sighs* Has is really been that long ago? Where in Hades’ Funhouse does it go?  I don't really think it's been that long ago for some of it...I hope.

Okay, so, let’s see, here are the list titles, I’ll get to the individual lists later:

• Kitchen box (make cover) [the kitchen box is a Rubbermaid® Roughneck™, as are a lot of our camping boxes, so they need covers to hide the “mundanity”]
  
  
  
  • Permanent Items
  
  
  • Consumable Items
  
  
  
  


• Food box – staples


• Feastbox – regular event items


• Feastbox – court event items


• General Equipment


• Banners


• Coolers


• Tent


• Tool Kit


• Light Box


• Stake Box


• Pavilion


• Bedding


• X3 Minimum Costumes – summer


• X3 Minimum Costumes – not summer [it IS Texas, after all]


• X2? Armor


• X3 Costume Projects to Finish [well, they WERE to finish, but now to start]


• X3 Mundane Clothing/Equipment/Sundries


• Other Projects to Finish


• War List! [for Gulf War during Spring Break]

And that’s just what I have in the spiral.

Now..before I go any farther, I want to replace the spiral with a different kind of notebook. Still a spiral but different. I could supply a small office supply store with the stash of paper, pens, spirals, binders, clips, hi-liters, etc that I have. No. Really.  So, here’s the list of new SCA project notebook candidates:

• Pen-tab Project Planner – 7.25 w x 9.5 h, Lined, numbered, with a blank notes section on the right hand side.


• Cambridge, top-bound, ¼” graph paper


• 2, count them! 2 Bienfang Note Sketch Book – standard size, a little less than half of the page is lined, on the left, and the right is all blank. I already have a couple projects in one of these.


• Cambridge Executive planner pages – standard size, top spiral, roughly the top two-thirds is ¼” graph paper, the bottom is yellow and lined “Quick Notes”


• Off-brand Notes/Sketch Book – 11x9” drawing weight paper, one-sided, top less than half blank for sketching, bottom lined.


• Stuart Hall Executive Project Planner – standard size, narrow blank notes section on the left, lined on the right. So far, this one is my front-runner.

 

I shall sleep on it. Night.

 

Return of the modern middle ages

OT for a sec..I could have sworn I made another post after the one about automatic updates.  Weird.  Anyway.

 

Some of my vast readership (bwahahahah) might know that I belong to a group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. It’s been an on-again, off-again relationship for a long time (1988 to be exact). I’ve made tons of friends, a few enemies, and a lot of memories. I met my husband in the SCA.

There were times I was totally involved and on a fast-track for big things (awards, etc.), then we had our son and played a bit, then not..then some more, then was out, then came back, blah-de-boop as my daughter says.

Recently, I introduced a pair of friends of mine, Ms Pushing Furniture and her hot boyfriend, to the SCA and damned if they didn’t take to it like ducks to water. Really active; she’s being her OCD self and turning out costumes and doing all sorts of things, including helping another relative newbie learn to sew.

And I’ve managed to get myself appointed as Chronicler (I do the baronial newsletter), which is the first ever office I held in the SCA nearly 23 years ago. *arched eyebrow of confusion*  But back then we did it the hard way, cut and paste on blue-line boards, now I just use Adobe InDesign the same as I do for the newsletter I do at work. Easy peasy, as they say. That is if I could get people to submit articles and things.  I think people just don’t care anymore. It kind of went to pot over the last couple of years because the woman doing it didn’t have time..or something, not sure what, so I think people just kind of gave up. The newsletter is a requirement of being a barony, so we have to turn one out, but I think unless we start getting submissions, it’s really a redundancy: everything you need to know is on the website.

So, anyway...we’re “active” again...sort of. I’ve gained so much weight that none of my costumes fit anymore. And I had made some pretty nice ones, too. And my husband’s stuff doesn’t really fit, and my son has none...and the whole barony seems to be on this EVERYTHING MUST BE LINEN kick. Yes, linen was period, cotton wasn’t, at least not how we use it. But not everything was linen, either, and I see a lot of clothing being made out of linen that should really be wool or even silk. BUT. It’s Texas, so I’m totally willing to give them that one.

Linen is much more available than it was 20 years ago, but most of what you can get locally in Austin is all in trendy colors or is a linen/cotton blend. The blend is sorta-kinda okay for certain things. It is cooler and doesn’t wrinkle as much...but then that signature wrinkling is part of the linen “mystique,” if you will. The other nice thing is that if you order online, you can get a number of different weights of linen in white and then dye it if needed.

The point of this post originally was to lay out all that I need to do to even go to an event. List making ftw! We shall move apace in the next post.

 

Automatic means I don't have to do anything

You know, I understand that software needs upgrading, I understand the reasons, I even agree--for the most part--that software should be upgraded regularly. But, you know...(insert put-upon, slightly whiny voice)..when it says "Click here for an automatic upgrade to Wordpress 3.1.4," I expect an AUTOMATIC upgrade. One click. Poof! Done. No, click here for this task, back up this...oh, oh, oh...you gotta back up this, too...and wait, now you have to CLEAN UP. WTF?

No. Auto means...auto. Too many clicks ruin the soup.