(no subject)

Not a lot of writing today, again...

Got up (and was really sore!) showered, made risotto and soup for the gaming group, stretched, cleaned, and went off to game. Then took craigp by dianthus's new digs, installed a light fixture, drug her back to our place to grab a dsl modem and kitchen stuff... and then Craig and I headed out to get groceries and food.

And saw a really stupid car accident. A teenager in a (thankfully old and a bit battered -- it just irks me to see teenagers driving really expensive cars their parents bought for them) red pick up truck tried to make what looked like an illegal U-turn from the *right* lane of Bel-Red right more or less right over the car to his left. Ripping of pieces of her car. Despite the damage, the speeds involved weren't that great, so the people were okay. We stopped, checked in with folks and called the cops, and when it was clear that it was just going to be waiting around for the police to arrive, Craig (who was the hungry one) headed up to the restaurant, and I hung out, reassured the woman that she hadn't done anything wrong that I could see, reminded them to find their insurance cards, and so on.

And eventually the officer arrived, listened to the teenager do an extraordinarily bad job of lying to cover his ass (frankly, while I can kind of see why he wanted to pretend he wasn't trying to make a U-turn, his story was incredible to say the least, and I can't see what he gained by his insistance that he saw the other car before turning into it...) took my contact info, and sent me on my way. Yay.

Okay, now this has nothing on the low speed car chase last spring but I seem to find myself doing this sort of thing kind of a lot. Am I just in the wrong places at the right times? Or am I compulsively civic or something?

And then a nice evening making dinner, eating dinner and fighting for hours with firewire / DV issues under Win2000. I really, really hate the XP licence agreement... but I'm starting to wonder if I should use one of those free copies I have lying around. This was just too flakey to be believed.

(no subject)

Wushu was fun. Wushu indeed was so much fun that the end of the class found me trying to convince Michael that we should run through junior longfist one more time, just for kicks. Not even a hint of asthma. Though Zach's warmups were particularly twisted -- after our standard laps and tricks, it was... tumbling class! I can do forward rolls and shoulder rolls really fast, one after the other, but most of the more involved stunts were too scary for me. (Get into bridge -- and then race! Fall like a board and catch yourself on your elbows! Show off your kip ups! Walk on your hands! Uh, yeah...!)

I really need to spend some time with a mat practicing cartwheels and things. I think my shoulder is up for cartwheels, but it's going to take some practice. Preferably very far away from observers.

The kids were great. I told them how I wanted them to split up turns leading combinations, and then when Shifu came over to drill them they did it without any discussion or prompting. (Of course, that was the younger girls' turn, who tend to be well organized. Half of the boys are competing to lead combination six. I wonder how long before they clue in to the fact that the ones who play tricks trying to get it never do...) Next class I'm grabbing Michael to lead the first combination of every set, and we're going to do some shouting practice -- the one problem we're having is that it's a noisy gym, and some of the kids just don't get the volume to be heard, and you really need that for the group to be synchronized.

I've apparently acchieved general flunky status, and got to organize orders for people who wanted long sleeved shirts and sweetshirts. That's another thing -- even with the heaters that I'm allergic to, the gym tends to be a bit cold. The parents all wear coats, the older students mostly start off with sweatshirts and end up stripped down and dripping. And people say things like "you must be freezing!" The kids all want sweatshirts, I think, but more for reasons of fashion than practicality.

And now I'm home for a quiet evening. I'm thinking of putting all my fabric into sturdy plastic chests and storing it in the garage. It seems pretty symbolic of changes in my life, somehow -- I'm certainly not giving up on doing anything with it, but it just doesn't make sense to have it taking up that much space in my study anymore. Writing, and stretching, and clearing out my work space. Mm.

(no subject)

Okay, I've cleared out the big rack of fabric, and have most of it in bins. No writing to speak of tonight, this job is turning out to be bigger than I'd let myself think about.

Heavens but I have a lot of nice fabric. Here's eight and a half yards of this beautiful silver linen. (And another15 yards of other nice linen of various other sorts.) Some really nice brocades. A lot of very good silk. (And some very weird silk. Not sure what I ever had in kind for the three yards of leopard spotted silk, for instance.) Some really nice woolens. Oh, I could just go on and on. I set up all the shelves of fabric not long after we moved here, but now it seems like that was almost a matter of habit. I've only made a few things since.

I might actually be more likely to do something with it now that it's sorted, and I've gone through it recently... but I wouldn't bet on it. Hopefully at some point in my life I'll have time to put them to good use (though if it really looks like I won't, I'll find good homes for them) but at the moment it seems like one more part of my life that was... which doesn't have much to do with my current life. And I really want to clear things out and at least be surrounded by less clutter. This will leave my study more visually open, and give me room to store things other than books.

To think that I spent a while as a dressmaker... And that for much longer I was very serious about costuming. Heck, that I used to be very serious about the SCA. And I used to attend cons. (It's not so much that I retreated from these things as that they fell off the priority list some time ago. I kind of thought I'd find time for them once I left Microsoft... but they're pretty far down.) I haven't always travelled light. But it would in many ways be harder to walk away from the house and the gardens than the things in the house. (The things. Kitties, for instance, are not things. Nor is Craig a thing -- especially when practicing forms in the living room. Very animate.)

I wonder what other things will fall away from my life, and what new things I'll pick up. (Though some of them seem more to cycle.)

A few days ago, on my way out the door, I kissed my fingertips and laid them across Craig's lips (he was on the couch behind his laptop, and kissing him properly was difficult.) And then I looked down at my fingers and thought "sword hand".