Filler :D
Been sick since Monday, not in the mood to blog much, hence some filler. Shot this last week.
Been sick since Monday, not in the mood to blog much, hence some filler. Shot this last week.
As I type this it’s 22 minutes to midnight, 22 minutes until my birthday. And if you really wanna fuck ants* to use a Dutchism, it’ll be another bunch of hours and minutes until the actual moment I age, as I wasn’t born until 17:54 or 17:56, I keep forgetting. I think it’s 17:54.
I celebrated this upcoming occasion past weekend, on Saturday with friends, and on Sunday with family. I tend to split them up as I live in a tiny house that can hold my friends, but not my family. I have a lot of them. π
Ingrid was the first to arrive on Saturday, and after chatting and having a drink (and Caek!) we went to play board games. Starting out with some trivial pursuit she brought. It was a topical edition about popular music, so I expected to loose. Ingrid’s a walking pop encyclopedia… However, luck and factoids were with me, and by the time Nienke barged in, I was well ahead. Yay!
With addition of Nienke, we were with enough to play Koehandel (Cow Trading), a game I bought quite a while ago, but never played yet as it needs a minimum of 3 people, and I normally can’t get Nienke to play along. This time I forced her, proclaiming that, since it was my birthday, she had no choice π
(If you’re not interested in games you might wanna speed through the next bit as I review the games we played.)
The game was fun, but not one of my favourites. The point is to get as many sets of animals. It starts with an auction each round, with one player being the auctioneer and the other two bidding. The winner then pays the auctioneer and gets the animal. The auctioneer can choose to excercise his right of sale by paying the highest bidder the amount they bid.
After a while, there will be people who have the same animal, and at that point they can barter for it. The one who wants to barter makes a blind offer, and the other chooses to accept or counter-offer. The addition of bluff cards (with a zero value) makes this a strategic part as you never really know what the offer is. If the other counter-offers, he too makes a blind offer and both players give their offer to the other. The one who then paid most gets the animal of the other. Nienke won this game.
Then we went on with Therapy. We don’t play this often as it’s best with five or six and it gets out of hand, time-wise, very quickly. The game part of it is a bit long winded, but the conversations this leads to are awesome.
For the game you move around a board with psychiatric sofas trying to be the first one to get the six coloured pins in it. This would make the bed a bed of nails, so I don’t know if it would be very comfortable for a therapy session though…
To move you roll two dice, and then go forward, the square you land on tells you what to do next. This can be a question, and a right answer gets you a pin. Or it can be a question/wait square where you pick whether you want a question or stop your turn. Careful with picking the question here though, if you answer wrong you end up with a psychosis.
Other options are fantasy, where you have to answer a question about a RΓΆrschach test kinda picture, or therapy. Depending on the number of players, this is group therapy or single therapy. If you land on a square in the same colour as one of the player sofas, you go into therapy with that player. If it is an unused colour, you go into therapy with all the other players. The therapist then asks a question (all questions are about the player) from the therapy cards, and the player writes down their answer. The therapist then says what he thinks the player answered, with reasoning. In Group therapy, all the therapists declare what they think the player answered and then come to a mutual answer. If the therapist was right, he wins a pin.
The therapy is the part I love most about the game, it leads to very interesting conversations about how you see each other, how others see themselves and what everyone would and wouldn’t do.
(Reviewy bit is over π)
This is what we did for the rest of the evening really, interspersed with more general chatting and eating and drinking and some picture taking.I got awesome presents as well. Ingrid gave me the Boyzone CD Brother. I was a major fan of them in my teens, and even though it has mellowed, I still like their music. They’re special to me because they were quite important to me then, so I do always want the physical CDs they release instead of just downloading it.
Mellien gave me a children’s book I wanted, a favourite I read many times as a kid. Eva gave me something from her and Juut together, a set of iron cutlery, made by Juut himself! It’s totally awesome! It’ll come in handy when we go re-enacting again π Pictures of this, and other birthday stuff to come along later, btw.
Ingrid stayed over and after Nienke had gone home too we got to talking about (among other things) Warcraft, so I showed her some things about the game, and explained stuff. She ended up with a better idea of what I do when I play and what I like about it. It was nice to share something that I like a lot, with one of my friends who’s not normally into that kind of thing.
Sunday morning I got up ridiculously early at 8:30 (not smart when you go to bed around 02:00…) cause I told my dad to pick me up around 9:00. This so there’d be more than enough time, once we got to the parents’ place, to prep for the family coming that afternoon and evening. I was gonna make a cake (hmmmm cheesecake), but decided against it as mom had an extra cake and we would’ve had too much. This meant I had extra time, and I could’ve (really should’ve) gone to bed for an hour or two longer. But I didn’t. I left Ingrid at Nienke’s for a cuppa while me and all my crap headed over to Parentville.
Had some time in the morning and early afternoon to play some WoW and mess with the Blog (I played with the layout and contents of the 101 list at the top) before the first people showed up. After that it was mostly very busy, very gezellig and very fun.I got two book gift cards, some money, very pretty and lovely scented shower gel and a drawing and a written piece by my two young second cousins π
From my parents I got a book, in two parts, about the excavations in Midlaren, where I was working the second half of 2004. During the summer with the actual excavation, and from August to December with the washing, drawing and cataloging of the finds.
After the last ones left, I basically rolled into bed exhausted. All my energy was gone (that’s what lots of people for a prolonged period does to me, I’m a major introvert). It’s not back yet either. It didn’t help very much I had to work today, which, by necessity, has more people too π
Bought some candy to treat my teammates at work with, and made it through the day without too much trouble. Although I did start to notice, half way through the day, that the cold I’ve been seeing at the horizon for a few days has hit home. My nose is stuffed and my energy regeneration is down to half strength π
Scheduled for a full work day tomorrow, but gonna see if I can get off early. Need to sleep some more, and a half day off tomorrow along with Wednesdays usual freedom it should see me through the worst of it.
It’s 00:42 now, it’s my birthday π Got the first congratulatory text message, from Gert, at 00:04, nice timing π
And with that I will say goodbye, and good night.
*Mierenneuken as we say means fucking ants, literally. It can also be said as mierenneuker which is to a person, as it means antfucker. It’s English counterpart would be nitpicking.
I’m babysitting Tessa tonight, and when I let her inside after my parents dropped her off, the cat had no time to run and hide. So I let him be, and let Tessa in the living room. And from then on they both have been on their best behavior.
Tessa has been neglecting Monkey to such a degree I really have wondered whether she even saw him.
Monkey on the other hand definitely saw Tessa. He growled the first time Tessa walked past, but kept quiet after that. He’s now starting to relax and sleep,while Tessa sleeps beside or behind the sofa.
Eva, especially for you!
Overview of the burns, they’re not that big, the top one is the biggest and its about a cm at the longest.
The smaller pics below, the top one shows the biggest burn, on my arm (ignore the stripe, it’s an impression my sweater made). It’s a bit bubbly, and feels funny π
The middle one has the dual burns on my arm, just two small spots.
The bottom one shows the burn on my hand, second biggest in size, about 7mm or so π
Today I finally tried on the full outfit I’ve assembled for Castlefest. I bought most of the actual clothes at the Celtic Midsummer Fair earlier this month and had tried the clothes then, but not fully together.
The reason I decided tonight was a good time to try it on (besides the fact that Castlefest is next weekend and it would be kinda nice to know if the outfit is complete or if it needs more oomph) was that the binder I ordered came today.
Backtracking slightly, I’m going to Castlefest as a male character. This, combined with my own genderqueerness, and a conversation I had with Eva recently, made me look to get one
The binder was delivered this morning, and I tried it out then immediately. It’s a pain to put on, but it looks awesome! (Although when I loose some more weight it will be even better :D) I wore it again tonight with the costume photoshoot and am still wearing it. It’s much more comfortable then I thought and works great. However, as I was looking at my self in the mirror tonight and enjoying the masculine looking chest, I realised I’ve been doing this, diminishing my chest, for a long time now. Much more so than I previously realised.
I’m female bodied, obviously, but identify as something beyond the male/female dichotomy, I feel IΒ am, at the very least, both, if not more.
The way I dress varies between more feminine things one day and more masculine things the other, depending on my mood and inner feeling basically.Β Up till now I usually turned to my hoodies and wider t-shirts on ‘male’ days, and combined that not only with my most minimising bra (and thanking my lucky stars my cup size is moderate enough :D) but always adding a tight tanktop over it to flatten it as much as I could. It was a fun thing to realise that I’ve been doing that basically since before I even started figuring out who and what I was in regards to gender. It kinda feels like validation, in a way of “see, I had these feelings and stuff before I realised it, it’s real”. And this makes me happy.
So, to close, here’s some pics. First two of the outfit (binder makes it so much better! I’m definitely wearing it at Castlefest too), then me wearing the binder. If you’re my friend on Facebook, I’m uploading more outfit pics there.
Went swimming yesterday morning with Mom. She has this group lesson every week where they do excercises and stuff in the water. That’s not really my thing, but since the rest of the pool is virtually empty then, it’s ideal for doing laps. Got my 40 laps done and spent the last 15 minutes or so just floating about. I LOVE that, I could do that all day.
After we went shopping. Grocery shopping was planned, but we took a trip into town as well ’cause I was looking for flipflops. Unfortunately I didn’t find any of them, but I did find a shoe rack on sale at the drug store, only 3 euros! I put it together last night and will place it today after I clean/clear out the back entrance area.
After we lunched at a bakery. Since I can’t really eat bread products (carbs, carbs, carbs!) I hopped to the next door butcher and bought metworst. We browsed the nearby clothing stores for a bit but nothing came of it (yay, says my wallet). Did buy a few discount dvd’s (seriously, 5 for 5 euros… how can you pass on that π )
We then finally decided it was about time to hit the supermarkets. I didn’t need a lot myself, just refill the meat supply and get some more cheese. I also bought this huge plastic tub/bucket thing. It will store a shitload of crap, and has other useful uses π
Ma Pool! π
It took about 5 buckets or so to fill π
And of course, after a while, Monkey had to come and see too π
So, I went to re-enact the Iron age over the weekend at a festival. I’ve still got everything jumbling around in my head so not really a proper telling in story order, more this was awesome and this was awesome kinda bulletpoints.
The group of people was awesome. I’m not always very good with larger groups, let alone when there’s people in it I don’t know or don’t know very well, but I liked the (for me) new people and got along very well with those I did know but not very well.
I slept outside the first night. It was very cool to see the stars, plus, it’s something that was on my 101 list π
It was insanely warm the two days and my hair was really getting in the way. Too long in the neck and hanging in my eyes near the sides. So I asked Eva if she would cut it, Iron age style π
On Saturday we cut the back side. First I got soapy water poured over my head (remnants from the wool felting) Then Eva massaged some of the camomile blossoms (actually there with other herbs and such to demonstrate plants that can be used to dye wool…) in my head, all the while bullshitting the spectatorsΒ on how they first needed to calm the skin on my head π
Then the awesomely made (by our very own blacksmith Juut) Iron age knifes were grabbed and Eva and Wilma started cutting my hair. It was a hit with visitors, people stopped at the camp in droves, intrigued at what we were doing. Some must have declared me crazy for letting them do that to me π
Sunday we finished the job with the front end.
Eva and Signe brought their horses. This made the whole encampment come alive, and look much more real life than without it. It was too warm to do anything with them during the day, but we did some pulling with Yngvar on Sunday evening. It was hilarious dragging the event volunteers from one point to another.
All the various works that were done/demonstrated over the weekend were all very well thought out (the group’s been doing this for about a year now, this was my first time going with them) and it felt completely natural to be doing them or to see them done around. Wool felting, card weaving, scraping horns to prep them for being turned into drinking horns, chopping wood, carving wood, cooking over fire, blacksmithing (normally done, but this weekend it was too warm), the aforementioned hair cutting, sewing etc… The whole experience felt very natural, just like a regular kinda lifestyle (as opposed to really feeling like you’re playing or something) π
Another of the snowpocalypse.
We had snowpocalypse last winter π It was awesome! Although getting very tiresome after weeks of snow.