Corner of Bourbon & Division

Spent a fabulous weekend at fearsclave's in the GFHW, along with toughlovemuse and chibipunkdemon. We were joined today by diggerlicious and stefuss, with a brief visit Saturday from ai731 and the_exclamation.

There was shooting and booze (not at the same time!) and great food, and knitting. I think this was the highlight of the weekend, though:




There is a placeholder post on Saturday, for when I will have had the time to re-size all the pictures I've uploaded, and write up a proper post. In the meantime, I have a baby blanket to finish.

I am exceedingly cranked up about any number of hobbies that I don't have time for.

The rest of the pictures I took can be found here.

My body and my brain were not in agreement about what time I was supposed to get up this morning. My brain was right, but my body overruled it. Was late to work. *Hate* that.

Guh. Not coherent this morning.

Am off to visit the Godforsaken Howling Wilderness this weekend with toughlovemuse and chibipunkdemon. Ought to be a good time, as usual. There will be knitting. Muahaha.

There will be backdated posts for Saturday and Sunday. For now, there will be summing up.

Weekend was great, but exhausting. I passed my PAL with decent grades (98% for the written, and 96% for the practical because I was REALLY stupid and let my ring finger brush the trigger guard when I was PROVEing a bolt-action rifle: let this be a lesson to everyone else).

The RPAL I passed with flying colours. 100% on both the written and the practical tests. See? I can be taught. I am royally peeved with myself for that massive fail wrt safety procedures. I'm kind of glad that it wasn't ground for automatic failure.

As Alastor Moody would put it: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Nonetheless, I passed, and all is well with the world. Now I just have to wait for the Canadian government to rubber stamp my tests and send them back to me. This will take a minimum of 30 business days. Then I put the rubber-stamped form along with my application form, and send it right back to them, which takes another minimum 30 days to process, and from most reports it will take closer to three to five months. *sigh* Good thing I'm not in a hurry. Oh, and my RPAL costs $20 more than a PAL. fearsclave calls it a "tax on evil." I think he may not be far wrong. ;)


Today was very busy. Breakfast with fearsclave and Carolyn, then a quick jaunt out to the Coalition Stronghold to deliver maple syrup to ai731 and t! who was working from home. I gave Carter a good number of pats before leaving, as well.

I stopped at Canadian Tire in Alexandria, where they knew what I was talking about when I asked after the indoor greenhouse/staging area that fearsclave has. Sadly, it appears that the thing has been discontinued. So I am SOL for that. I will have to find something similar elsewhere.

Then I drove back into town, stopped at IKEA for shelves, got some stuff from the dry cleaners, did the rounds of various places to get copies of receipts for my taxes (one more paper to track down and then I'm golden), and came home.

Unloaded the car (gym bag with clothes, five tomato seedlings that fearsclave generously gave to me, two bottles of booze from the LCBO, my shelves and other assorted bits from the weekend), fed the cats, patted the cats, called my mother, checked email, caught up on LJ, and am going to go to the Parental Units' place for dinner in about an hour or so.

The cats are Very Unhappy that I was gone so long, but appear to be getting over their snit. There will be more pats soon, and maybe then they will forgive me.

I have done more driving in this one weekend than in the past year combined, I think. I haven't calculated the distances yet, but I definitely cleared 500km. Bleah.

Earth Hour is soon, so I'm just sneaking online for a moment or so.

It has been a good weekend so far. In fact, good is probably an understatement. Last night fearsclave introduced me to Left4Dead, and after I squeaked and shrieked and swore my way through an entire campaign, I had a lot of fun. We're going to try the online version tonight, I think. We also took a nice walk through the fields to see if we could roust out the groundhog (we never saw him) and just to generally get outside.

Today was split between Lee Valley (so many shiny things!) and visiting with t! and ai731, whom I hadn't seen in months. We took a walk, watched the dogs romp together, had tea and chatted, and t! fed us salami and yummy bits of smoked sausage and such. Very nummy.

Tonight we're having meat pies from a local Scottish place (last night was homemade spaghetti sauce and spaghetti), and tomorrow there will be a gargantuan breakfast, as is traditional.

I really missed getting out here and just hanging out. Tomorrow there will be a field trip to the LCBO, and more hanging out, this time with Carolyn as well as fearsclave. I am all cranked up again about giving the garden another try, and getting my ducks in a row wrt storage and furniture and the like.

This was exactly what I needed. :)


I'm not reading my flist or email until tomorrow night, so if anything important happens, maybe you ought to comment here. Just in case.

I got home around 19:30, and have been uploading and re-sizing pictures ever since. Yes, it takes me that long. No, I have not found a software to re-size them all at once that will play nice on my Mac, and the LJ page only does them one at a time and there are ten thousand clicks to get to where you want to go.

Moving on.

The Shindig was a blur of fun and activity and booze. On Friday, after spending the morning baking (and a good part of the afternoon, too!) I headed out to get the car I had reserved for the weekend. Packed the car (which took longer than I anticipated because I had a ton of food), and was off to collect BorderCrossing at school. She was waiting for me with cookies from her cafeteria (they're really good, as it turns out), and we set out, only to hit a monster of an accident on the Mercier bridge which had traffic backed up from the Turcot yards all the way past Angrignon.

We navigated the traffic and subsequent precipitation without too much difficulty, and BorderCrossing napped for a while before we got to fearsclave's. bodhifox was already there, as well as raven_albion, her husband kilted_omalley, and thinkingoutlaw and her husband mieszko. They had all driven from Vermont up in kilted_omalley's really really big Dodge Ram, which dominated the driveway as we came in. Hugs all around, and shortly after the booze began to flow. It's always like that at these events. :)

BorderCrossing was a little intimidated, but rallied when it turned out that thinkingoutlaw is also a high school teacher, and so they swapped war stories for a while, until bodhifox and kilted_omalley began drumming in the other room. Like a moth to a flame, BorderCrossing was up and heading toward the drumming, and soon had joined in the fun.

( BorderCrossing doing her thing )

owldaughter and ashforestwalker arrived around 20:00, and there were more hugs all around, more booze, and the obligatory photo with bodhifox.

( By special request... )

There was food, then. fearsclave made rabbit stew, and I of course brought my vegetarian lasagna, which consisted mostly of cheese. There might have been a noodle or two in there, and possibly a hint of tomato sauce, and very likely a mushroom somewhere, but it was mostly cheese. I liked it, though, and others said they did, so I guess it worked out well.

There was more booze, and then there was TORTE. The evil, sex-on-a-plate gluten-free chocolate torte made by owldaughter. looking4wings and wultabat had dropped by earlier before heading out square dancing in order to bring a carrot cake, and now returned in order to consume said carrot cake with us. The torte and the cake were both sinfully delicious, and I was too busy partaking of said deliciousness to take any photos. Sorry. :) Others have documented this particular part of the event, have no fear.

Then there was a bonfire. A good, blazing bonfire (though due to the rain it took a while to catch properly, but once it did hoo boy was it beautiful!), and there was more drumming and storytelling and general good times.

( Bonfire pictures! )

We finally called it a night around 01:00, and BorderCrossing and I made our way over to wultabat and looking4wings's place, where we were provided with sleeping arrangements. I slept very soundly until 07:00, cracked open an eye, then turned over and slept another 30 minutes. I stayed under the covers until about 08:00, and then got up and got dressed right about when looking4wings came downstairs to start her morning.

looking4wings and I nattered quietly about knitting while waiting for BorderCrossing and wultabat to awaken, and she gave me a neat pattern for a hat to make. I am excited about this. :D

BorderCrossing was still pretty exhausted, and kind of peopled-out, so we left her to sleep in once wultabat was up, and we headed over to fearsclave's for the traditional Everyone Eats Way Too Much And For Way Too Long Breakfast. There was eggs and bacon and pancakes (made by kilted_omalley) and sausages (cooked in beer and then cooked in whiskey) and apple muffins (made by yours truly) and maple syrup and coffee and cranberry-orange juice, and the food just never stopped coming.

It was a pretty low-key breakfast, compared to some of the rowdier ones I've seen, but there was still plenty of bustling and food-making and picture-taking and general chatting. Breakfast is one of my favourite times of day when I'm visiting the Godforsaken Howling Northern Wilderness.

( Breakfast pictures! )

BorderCrossing joined us around 12:15, but unfortunately the single photo I took of her at breakfast went wonky on me. It's too bad, because the pose was pretty good. Ah well. :)

owldaughter and ashforestwalker had to return home to their wee lad around 13:00. They were missed subsequently, but duty called, and what can you do?

We all trooped out to the firing range for a demonstration of fearsclave's flintlock rifle. I will refer you to his LJ for the details on all of that, since I don't think I can do it justice. However, I will give you two action shots which I think are a lot of fun.

( Thinkingoutlaw, doing a historical re-enactment of battlefield casualties )

( An action shot of BorderCrossing! )


Both BorderCrossing and I omitted to bring waterproof footwear out with us (in my case I hadn't realized that my boots were no longer waterproof, and in her case her boots from last year wore out and she hasn't yet replaced them), and as we were both pretty cold by then, I took her back to visit with looking4wings. The visit turned into a well-earned nap for BorderCrossing, and I got in a couple of rows of knitting before we received a phone call informing us that folks were leaving.

I immediately hied myself back to the Fearsranch, where there were hugs and farewells all around for a good amount of time, as is always the case when people have to go but don't really want to. fearsclave and I hung out for a while afterward, just chatting and relaxing after the flurry of activity. BorderCrossing finally awoke and came to join us around 16:00, and by 17:00 I thought I ought to rescue our stuff from the other house before we had to carry it back in the dark.

It turned out I needn't have worried, as wultabat very kindly gave me a lift in his car with all our gear so we didn't have to carry it all that way. Bonus. :)

We departed at about 17:30 or 17:45, and I dropped off BorderCrossing at her place shortly before 19:00.

It was a great time, albeit way too short as always. I always want these things to last a good week or two, so that I can fit in all the heart-to-heart talks that I want with all my friends, but of course no one has that kind of time and money these days. People have lives waiting for them back home, and as fearsclave was saying, the trouble with LJ friends is that their homes are often very far away.

With any luck, we'll be able to do this again in the future in some way, shape or form.

All the pictures I took can be found here, incidentally. They're not all great, but they are representative of the good time that was had. :)

Had a fantastic day. Took BorderCrossing to meet ai731 and t! up in the Godforsaken Howling Northern Wilderness. The weather did not cooperate with our attempt to have a leisurely ramble through the fields (snow and rain and howling winds), but we had French toast and got a tour of the house, and played Trivial Pursuit (which I won, for the first time in living memory, and only by a hair: we were all practically tied, which was great), and were fed with veggie paté and delicious squash soup in the shell.

Holy run-on sentence of doom, Batman!

Anyway, 'twas much fun. Good times all around.

Gotta go to bed now. Very early morning, rather late coming back. Fall down go boom, as a friend of mine would say. More tomorrow.

I appear to have lost my hosts. I woke up this morning and they were AWOL. Heh.

It is a gorgeous day out here. The sun is shining, the birds are twittering, and something is making a buzzing noise out there (a bit like a cicada, but isn't it a bit early for those? Besides, the sound isn't quite right). I have been sitting outside holding Rudy, fearsclave's tiny orange kitten, and waiting for them to come home. There are worse ways to spend a morning. :)

The starving hordes should be arriving some time this afternoon for a barbecue. Good times will be had. I hope I get the opportunity to go into town in order to procure boozage and marshmallows. Marshmallows are an important part of a bonfire, after all, and there will be a bonfire after dinner.

Off to go sit in the sun again.