Don’s Party

Da Urchin, my much beloved offspring, works in the field of animal control & rescue.  A restaurant in the northern VA area set up a benefit night through her employer wherein every 10% of the cost of every meal sold on Rescue Evening went to animal rescue funding.  WooHoo!  And it turned out that Rescue Night was the day after Don’s birthday, so an expedition was in order.  Don & Dolores, their good neighbors from across the street, Carly & Dean, Da Urchin, & yours truly all made went out to eat at this really really good south of the border restaurant.

(OK, I’m bad, I‘ve forgotten both the name of the restaurant & Don’s neighbor ).

Presents were given, laugher was shared, & a good time was had by all.

And here’s a thanks to all our furry friends: the dogs who joined us for the hunt, stayed with us to guard our homes & herd our flocks, & yes even came with us into battle; the cats who followed the mice to our grain stores, strayed into our homes after the same vermin & self domesticated themselves into our hearts; and all the other creatures great & small who share the Web of Life with us.  May we always treat them well for they remind us that we are not the Web of Life but only a stand in it.

Spring OVPR

Winter is Over and its time to RENDEZVOUS!  Mind you, I’m not quite sure where the winter went, it seems like only yesterday it was fall rendezvous time.  But spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder war da Vous iz?.  End of March = OVPR Rendezvous!

My Lodge at the OVPR.  The 9x9 tent opens at both ends, so ya don’t roast when it gets hot.  And it hit 80 at the Vous.  Well at least it didn’t rain hardly any.  It doesn’t show, but the snaps on the door sod cloth to hold it up when the door is used worked just fine.  So I don’t trip over my door anymore.

These fine Ladies started hosting a formal tea several vous back – a most excellent idea.  Observe the richly laden table . . .

Among other things, the tea is a good excuse to put on your finest duds (or not as you prefer) & converse with you friends & make new ones.

Of course, the tea isn’t the only time we socialize – these ladies are discussing a repair problem.

The Ladies also get together to work on crafts & help each other out on technique.  The Madam Du’Farge Society at work.

Of course socializing isn’t restricted to the ladies – the gents do just as much tale tellin’ too.

Everywhere around camp folks is having chats – friends are the best fun & most of us don’t get enough friend time in our lives.

Of course, a Vous isn’t a Vous without some shooting time too.  These aren’t for sale, it’s the gun stand for the lodge.  From the top; blunderbuss, Brown Bess carbine, double barrel shotgun, left hand rifle.  They’re all flintlocks.

Music time at yer lodge is a given too.

Most the crafts for sale in camp are hobby related, but this fellow had artwork for sale.

Of course primitive camping takes primitive skills.  Here’s the Preacher splittin’ logs into cook fire size.

And Stacy using said wood to cook.  Yes, smoke gets in your eyes.  No matter where you sit, it gets in your eyes.

There was also a Women’s Wine Tasting (complete with sparkling cider & juice for the non-alcohol drinkers) and a Tea Tasting Party as well as the traditional Ladies Social at the Spider Inn on Saturday.  We Ladies Know How to Party!  In fact, there’s a Ladies only Vous scheduled for this September.  I don’t have that weekend off but sure plan to try for it.

The only downside to this Vous was the ticks – its March and they shouldn’t be in evidence, but the mild winter & a warm March sure got them up & about!  I had over a dozen latch on the 1st day alone!  I even had raked the leave cover off my camp spot, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference, although I did get bite while asleep only on my 1st night there.  Everyone at camp had the same problem, so it wasn’t just the spot I was in.  Ah well, its all part of outdoor living.

Tina Visits

Tina, my Urchin’s Totally Awesome Roomie from college, came to visit Da Urchin for a week.  I was working for most of the time Tina was there but was off for a day the Urchin was not, so I got to spend a day & a half with Tina.  So I drove down to Clifton after work one morning, slept a couple of hours & then Tina & I wandered around Historic Clifton checking out the cool houses.  The weather was awesome, warm & sunny.

This is one of the smaller family homes in town.

This one is average for the village.

Almost all the homes are tin roofed & were enlarged early in their history.  They also frequently have more than 1 “front” door.  The homes were commonly also business establishments, so there’s a business entrance & a private entrance.  There’s also usually both a kitchen door & a tradesman/servant entrance. 

Porches are also the norm.  So is a checkered history.  Several homes were illegal ordinaries during prohibition.

This is my personal favorite.  Its one of 2 stone houses in town.  (My friends Carly & Dean live in the other.)  The stone was locally quarried.

This Baptist church was built in 1910 to replace a smaller one.  Its one of several in the village in active use. 

This Primitive Baptist Church was built in 1871 on land donated by a Freedman.  The village was founded by freedmen & a few buildings from that era still stand.  This church is still used on a monthly basis.

Of course no village is complete without its Cat supervising the great & small, making sure they do their jobs.

Tina & I went to Old Town Manassas the next day.  We shopped at a fabric store (I found what I needed, she did not), did a McKay’s Used Bookstore run, had a great lunch at the Cajun restaurant and then visited  various art galleries & studios.  The day was ended with a grand meal with Carly, Dean, Urchin, Tina & I after an evening of playing with Urchin’s cats. 

February Trials

February started out like January with me sorting through boxes, selling books at McKay’s, taking good useable things to Goodwill, recycling various things at the recyclers & taking trash to the dump.  Then on the 19th 6 inches of wet & heavy snow fell at the house.  When the snow melted 3 days later it was clear that the snow wasn’t all that had fallen on the house.

Here’s what the snow was hiding.

And here’s the white pine limb suspended between the tree & the roof.

One short stub of a branch punched this hole in my roof.

This is the water damage from the hole.  (It rained steadily during the week after the snow storm.)  It took several days for this to develop.  I’ve gotten the branch off the roof now & patched the roof. 

The scenario with the insurance company gave me more gray hair.  I was getting told various stories from various company employees, the estimator arrived over 2 hours early & before I was home, I even had one employee tell me I shouldn’t have called my insurer at all but have contacted the insurer of the property the tree is on to file a claim!  Eventually it all worked out but it made for a less than pleasant February. 

January Tasks

December’s work schedule pretty much did me in & January found me one tired puppy.  I hadn’t gotten much done on house or history gear projects either, so it was past time to get things going here on the home front.  Just before the New Year I’d started in on the boxes of stored stuff in my house.  The goal was to sort through 1 box on each day I wasn’t working or out of town visiting.  So far this has gone well & I’ve gotten over a dozen boxes of stuff sorted through, plus sold 5 boxes of books to McKay’s in Manassas. 

I’ve gotten various history projects done too.  This is Gypsy Jane’s caplock.  It had gotten wet in storage & rusted very badly.  Only the inside of the bore didn’t need significant work.  So here it is sans moldy wood, de-corroded, re-blued & polished, ready to go to the James River shoot. 

Here’s the new-to-me French belly box that I got from the bargain bin at Flying Canoe Traders several years ago. It was unfinished leather & had indifferent machine stitching holding it together.  I disassembled the piece, sun tanned it, gave it a serious coating of Neatsfoot Oil & then hand sewed it back together.  Since this photo was taken the leather has darkened some more & the color has evened out.  I do need to cut the hole in the lower front flap for the leather knot to go through that holds the flap down over the box when its not in shooting use. 

I also got both my Federal & Virginia income taxes done, which lead to the permanent retirement of 2 debts & the deposit of funds into my saving account for this year’s personal property taxes.  There was even some money left over.  So I got myself a Nook Color.

The slip case is designed for the first gen Nook Color but it works fine to protect the screen on mine too.  I put a screen protector on the touch screen also.  So far I’ve just got some fantasy from the Baen Free Library on it.  Plain text doesn’t really need a color display but atlases & bird guides will.  The Nook for PC works just fine on my laptop but my laptop gets heavy really fast if I’m reading in bed.

December’s Do’ins

December kinda ran by me without stopping, not that I could have stopped it anyway.  Two co-workers retired earlier this fall and more resigned for other employment, so “short staffed” took on a whole new meaning.  I had 2 days off early on & still ended up with over 37 hours of time & a half OT pay.  This was all well & good for the diminishing of debt but very poor indeed for seeing friends & getting enough sleep.  Did someone say Free Holiday Concerts?  Not this year dearie.

I was able to get together with the Urchin for a nice Birthday/Christmas celebration.  She got me the checkbook cover for my birthday & had me pick out a purse for Christmas.  I had thought to get one like hers but this small shoulder bag caught my eye.  Its got a zippered pocket with 6 credit card slots on one side, a flap closed pocket with an ID window on the other side & a center zippered compartment with places for my cell phone & merchant discount cards plus space for a multi-tool.  I love this purse!  Thank you, thank you, thank you to my Wonderful Thoughtful Urchin!

My friend Gypsy Jane & I also managed a trip together to Lynchburg  which included a birthday dinner.  We found an excellent Oriental Buffett with truly superb fried oysters & got various things done that GJ needed to do.  I also finally found a Melita coffee pot & drip cone set, the exact thing I’d spent all day searching for in C’ville, only to find it at the one coffee vendor I hadn’t visited -  Foods of All Nations. 

P.S. It has been decided to call my Chevy 2500 Express Van Dan’ll, as in Dan’ll the Van’ll do it. 

November Plots & December Plans

 

Back in the days when I was raising a school age child the months of November & December were – in a word – frantic.  Halloween to New Year’s Day was one event after another with multiple practices for all of the above, shopping for presents for St. Nicholas Day & Christmas (both calendars) squeezed in here & there, cooking both vegetarian & not in abundance plus the usual hurley burley of running a one adult household & dealing with the Urchin on a 2 month long sugar high.  January 2nd was the best day ever in my book.

I though the Urchin going to college & on into her own adult life would bring quiet to my life.   The fall OVPR Rendezvous, then a restive Advent , a bit of Nativity decorations around the house, a present or two to acquire & a small gathering of friends for a festive dinner.  WRONG!  So much for my illusions.  There may be less to do, but there is still too much to do & not enough time to enjoy doing it.  Plus my current employer is generally short staffed in November & December, so OT cuts into my personal time.  Extra money is good, but the time taken to get it is not so good.

I was able to visit the Urchin several times during November & we had a lovely weekend before Thanksgiving to go shopping, visit a used bookstore & just hang out.  It was during the T-bird visit that The Grand Plot was Hatched.  It seems Don had a Nook but Dolores didn’t  & sharing an e-reader works about as well as sharing a book.  So the Urchin & I asked Carly & Dean if they wanted to go in on getting Dolores a Nook reader.  They were game, we called Don to make sure Dolores hadn’t gotten one already & he joined the plot.  With 5 of us, we had enough to get Dolores the reader she wanted plus a gift certificate for a cover. 

For the next 2 weeks Don kept his wife out of Barnes & Noble as well as anywhere else that sold Nook readers.  Meanwhile we planned a nice St. Nicholas/Hannukha/Christmas dinner & present exchange at a local oriental buffet.  The buffet proved to be closed for renovations but a nearby Chinese restaurant worked out just as well.  A wonderful dinner was had by all (with various eating restrictions met nicely), & the Nook for Dolores was the surprise we all wanted it to be.   Sometimes the hurley burley of the season is really really worth it.