Red-Handed Jill

If you're at the Ojai faire the first weekend, stop by the Tales of the Seven Seas camp Saturday night for a piece of my - now famous, apparently - rum cake. (Or is that notorious?...)

We did that on the TO7S forum. Everyone was spot-on with my baby picture (actually, it was of me as a toddler) because it looked like I was either going to deck someone or wondering where my sword was...

I just can't stop laughing. The vapid do seem to be blessed with an overabundant lack of self-awareness. And hang tough on that cat...

I'm still looking for a pair of desert boots or some reasonable facsimile in my size! Smallest I can find is around a men's seven - and I'm a woman's seven or seven and a half (men's size five), so this has me in a bit of a quandary.

They are STILL trying to sell that ship? They've been unsuccessful so far. Wonder what's wrong with it...

Wrapping up the day after building most of a table (a map table for our encampment.) Tomorrow I finish the table and work on a portable sink enclosure!

Slingshot? Sounds like a job for a LAW's rocket...

YAY - you finally got the pics out of your cell phone! Told ya you'd look like a dashing gent! And that's Iron Jack's birthday present he's perched on - Wee Babette did finally escape the clutches of UPS...

Yep!

I guess they have more control over what the airport vendors sell. However, if I come up to the security station with my bottle of water and I'm drinking it, the odds are pretty much against it being poisonous or an explosive liquid...

Had a bit of a hub-bub last night. Well, it was after midnight, so I guess it was technically this morning. It's been really hot lately, so we've taken to putting a large fan in our window at night. Suddenly, we were rudely awakened by the sound of a car peeling out and then some sirens. And it was LOUD - that car had to be just a few doors down from us. I got up to see what was going on, but they were gone. About a minute after that, our bedroom was suddenly filled with the smell of burnt rubber. NOT pleasant, I'll tell ya. It took about 30-45 minutes for the smell to finally leave. And I had to be up for a 6:00 am meeting...

Dum Aloo - potato dumplings in a spicy sauce.

Exhausted! I got maybe about four hours of sleep last night and when I got to work all hell broke loose and everyone needed to talk to me - at the same time. And I kept trying to get just one task finished - just a short task, even an e-mail - but I could only type maybe two words before another person called or showed up at my cubicle. Enough already! I unplugged my phone, caught up a bit and am taking a breather. And the messages keep piling up like mad... What IS it about this damn day?

Yep - you're up!

Feeling grateful I work in an air-conditioned building. Although it's supposed to be down to 100 degrees around here today.

Blazing Saddles is what comes to mind for me... Okay - new quote: "And then mommy kissed daddy, and the angel told the stork. The stork flew down from heaven and left a diamond under a leaf in the cabbage patch, and the diamond turned into a baby." "Our parents are having a baby, too. They had sex."

He'll be the one not dressed up as a Howard Pyle, Hollywood or "Renn Faire outfit with a tricorn" pirate.

Women also tend to not take as many risks as men do (due to lower testosterone levels), so female pirate captains live to plunder another day!

When I was quite young (around 20), I took my aunt's advice and tried dyeing my hair to even out the colour (it was getting light at the ends from sun bleaching. I wanted all of my hair to be its usual medium reddish brown.) BIG mistake. I discovered that my hair was VERY absorbant and that most brown and reddish-brown dyes contain purple pigment that is supposed to rinse out. In my case it did not and my hair turned a glorious aubergine colour. Needless to say, it was not the colour I wanted so I went to the local store and got a hair dye remover. At the time, I didn't know that ALL permanent dyes, regardless of the colour you are trying to achieve, bleach your natural colour out so that it won't "interfere" with their colour. So after removing the dye, I was left with hair the colour of flame. And it continued to lighten over the next couple of months to light strawberry blonde. And I look HORRIBLE as a blonde. Happily, my hair grows about three times faster than average, so after a couple of months, when the dark roots were three inches long, I had it cut and was back to being a brunette! I certainly did my happy dance that day...

You'd appreciate this Capt. Bo: My stepdad hand-carved a sign for my mother - who, like me, survived twelve years of Catholic school. It reads "screw guilt".

It's also interesting that the two female pirate captains/leaders had careers that spanned decades. Most of the male pirate captains had careers that spanned a few years before being killed, imprisoned, etc. Women pirates were very much in the minority, but they certainly were good at it.

And the Chinese government could do nothing because her fleet was larger than theirs! And, unlike most of the male pirates, she retired from piracy rather then get captured and killed. Ran a brothel, if memory serves.

It does seem like just yesterday at times, doesn't it? Sending good thoughts your way Iron Bess...

Navratan Korma and naan.

I live north of Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world. On a warm day it's wonderful to drive through there. I loooove garlic!