The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
This weekend was our annual getaway to Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, which we then supplemented yesterday with a trip to Letchworth State Park. Photographic goodness abounds!
(New thrifted shirt–flannel with banded collar! Hooray!)
(We couldn’t really get to the lower overlook at Taughannock Falls, but I can’t begrudge the wedding party their almost-certainly beautiful photos.)
It was Faire Time this weekend! Specifically, our more-annual-than-not trip to the Sterling Renaissance Festival. A good time was had by all, but for the “Pics or it didn’t happen” lot, here are pics.
It starts with turkey legs.
There’s always a parade, featuring Her Majesty the Queen.
People-watching is always a prime pleasure:
I bought a couple new mugs (no idea where to put them in our kitchen, but that’s a problem for another time), an oil lamp (for use in my library), a hand-carved jewelry box for The Wife, an ocarina for The Daughter, and another knick-knack or two. I managed to not buy a quill pen with inkwell, but I don’t think I’ll dodge that bullet next year. And I passed up this amazing lamp-post with dragon:
This is a vendor whose wares are sadly still well beyond my price range, but…someday. Oh yes.
Special mention should be made of this fine vendor, who went to special efforts to get a signal on his wireless doodad of mercantile magic.
And then there’s the jousting!
Order is maintained during the Tourney by the Impressive Scotsman…
…who must sometimes resort to forceful measures to maintain honor and peace on the Tourney Field.
But lurking behind it all is the watchful eye of Milady In Blue, whom I have decided is secretly scheming to revolt against Her Majesty the Queen and take the throne for herself. Maybe she has one of the knights bent to her will? Who knows!
What schemes might lie within Milady’s heart? Who knows! But I can tell you this: as fun as the Faire is, it’s even moreso when you’re a writer and you can fill a bit of downtime in the day’s activities by making stories about those around you…such as this fellow, who dared utter the most bitter calumny against the great Bard himself, Mr. Shakespeare.
But maybe I’ll form more of a tale about him next year.
Exeunt!
I’ve always found it hard to get really nice pictures of Cane as he’s running. From certain angles a greyhound running is a magical thing, but from others they look like a randomized collection of overlong limbs flailing in every direction.
I finally got lucky a couple of weeks ago.
So every year we celebrate my birthday in late September with a weekend trip to the Apple Harvest Festival in Ithaca, NY. (It’s always a few days after my actual birthday, but that’s fine.) The Wife has despaired of finding a little weekender trip that we could take around her birthday, which is February 25…until last year when she discovered an outfit called Grapehounds, which is a meet-up for greyhound owners and/or aficionados that uses wine and touring the wine country of New York’s Finger Lakes region as its centering point and activity. Well, a couple of years ago they started a winter version of the Grapehounds event, called Winterhounds, and it takes place right around The Wife’s birthday! So this year was our second go-round. We drove with Cane to Geneva, NY, where we stayed at the Ramada Inn that is located right on the northern shore of Seneca Lake (largest of the Finger Lakes), and we spent two nights socializing with other greyhound owners and most of Saturday driving to wineries for tastings.
Wine tastings are, it turns out, a really enjoyable activity. Last year we only stayed one night and the weather on Saturday was godawful (cold and windy and constantly rainy, making the winery grounds muddy messes), so we only checked out two wineries. This year things were better, so we made it to three wineries and a cider house. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but consider that we chose our wineries based on what we wanted to taste, and consider that we made a full circumnavigation of Seneca Lake, which is about 38 miles long, and going to the cider house involved a jaunt to the Cayuga Lakeshore, which is one lake over, and when we realized late in the day that Cane needed a good, honest walk after being in and out of the car all day, we made a quick jaunt to Taughannock Falls.
In short, three wineries and a cider house made for a packed day. A tasting should not be an in-and-out experience. You go inside the tasting room, and you pay for the privilege (tastings were discounted for Winterhounds tourees, and the dogs were allowed inside!), and then you look over a sheet of that winery’s offerings, usually selecting five to taste. Then a nice server pours tasting portions into your little glass, and you taste. You can do the whole slurping-through-your-teeth thing, and you can be all pompous and talk about the oakiness and the mouthfeel of the tannins and all that crap, or you can do what we did: “Wow, dear, this one’s great! We should buy two bottles of this!” And then you buy whatever you want.
Which is how we ended up with eighteen bottles: fifteen of wine and three of cider. Ayup.
When we arrived, it was very windy and the lake wasn’t just choppy, it was straight-up surf-pounding.
Next was Serenity Vineyards.
One notable thing here is that Cane met the barn cat named Stanley, who did not like Cane. Stanley actually scratched Cane’s nose and drew blood! It’s OK, though. Cane barely noticed and he’s fine. It happens. You don’t mess with big old barn cats!
Wine in the Finger Lakes is a big deal. Some of the wineries are gigantic places, and many parties attending tastings do so via chartered shuttle bus or even limousine. The ones we visited were smaller than the biggies, but there was still a lot of coming-and-going at each. (It’s not just wine, either: there are craft breweries and distilleries getting into the mix, too. I didn’t investigate the distilleries much, but I will before next year, just in case any are in the rum game.)
We stopped for lunch at Watkins Glen, home of an astonishing state park and the Watkins Glen International Speedway, hence this wall mural:
After the Glen, we started up the eastern side of Seneca Lake, branching off to drive to the Cayuga Lake valley, which has more wineries, of course. Our goal here was the Finger Lakes Cider House, because we’ve taken a real liking to sparkling cider of late. (This started because The Wife needed a gluten-free alternative to beer, and she hasn’t warmed to any GF beers yet.) This place is a serving-house for a number of local cider blends, a couple of which we actually sampled last year in Ithaca. The Cider House is in the middle of farm country, and the road it’s on is somewhere between dirt and pavement…and yet the place was hopping when we stopped. Full bar plus tasting room/restaurant with lots of tables. We bought a “flight” of ciders to taste, which is five four-ounce pours of cider. We bought three bottles of cider here, to go along with our wine. We’ll remember this place, too.
1a. That said, there’s a good chance that she prefers the dog to me.
2. The first time she saw Star Wars was with me. And ET.
2a. The first time I saw Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were with her.
3. She used to keep an aquarium before a bunch of moves made us give up the fish. Maybe we’ll do that again someday. But when we started dating, she had two fish, named Ken and Wanda, named after two memorable characters from A Fish Called Wanda. When Ken went belly-up, she called a friend and solemnly informed her, “K-k-k-ken d-d-d-died.” (One of the movie’s running gags is Ken’s stuttering.)
4. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I’ve converted her from someone who hated coffee into a regular coffee drinker.
5. For reasons passing understanding, she has always found Erik Estrada attractive. She and I used to have arguments over who could best the other in a fight: Agent Mulder from The X-Files or Ponch from Chips. (I think Mulder would have blinded Ponch with the beam from those giant blue-beamed flashlights he and Scully were always toting, and then beaten him into submission with his eternally-able-to-get-a-signal cell phone.)
6. One of the first things we cooked together was Spanish rice, which is to this day a comfort dish of ours. The first time we made it together was also the first time she’d ever cooked with actual bulb garlic, as opposed to garlic powder. The recipe called for a clove, but she thought the entire head was a clove, so into the rice the entire head of garlic went. That was the best Spanish rice ever.
7. A few years ago she baked a Bundt cake for The Daughter’s birthday, but the damned thing stuck in the pan, resulting not in a ring but a mound. So she just mounded it up, glopped the frosting right over the top, and called it a “Volcano Cake”. Now, every year at her birthday, The Daughter says, “Remember the Volcano Cake?”
8. Our first date was to see Edward Scissorhands. So, Johnny Depp’s been there since the beginning, from Edward all the way to Captain Jack Sparrow and beyond.
9. We used to go out for chicken wings and beer every Thursday night. We didn’t even miss our Thursday night wing night when The Daughter was born: her birth was on a Saturday, and we left the hospital on Tuesday, so at the tender age of five days, The Daughter entered a bar for the first time. This may have made us bad parents, but I don’t think so. A girl’s got to know how to handle herself in a bar, right?
9a. She’s not a huge fan of when I post photos of her sleeping.
11. I’ll probably never completely understand how much of herself she sacrificed in fourteen months to keep Little Quinn alive and progressing. It seems, in retrospect, that every free day she had was given to him.
12. That same instinct in her kicked in again when Fiona was in danger. She didn’t question the necessity or possibility of spending months flat on her back with her feet inclined, if that was what it took. If commitment was all that was needed, Fiona would be here today. (Of course, if commitment was all that was needed, Little Quinn would be here and Fiona wouldn’t have happened.)
13. We used to associate certain teevee shows with the snack foods we’d eat while watching them. NYPDBlue was always chips-and-salsa. ER, when we still watched it, was often good ice cream. Now, good ice cream has been transposed to Grey’s Anatomy.
14. “Our” first teevee show was LA Law.
15. Subsequent teevee shows of “ours” included ER, Mad About You, The Pretender, Profiler, CSI, Firefly, and more.
16. On our first Internet account, we set up our combined e-mail identity after the two main characers on The Pretender. We were “Jarod and Miss Parker”. People familiar with the show wondered what that said about our relationship, since Jarod and Miss Parker aren’t allies. In fact, Miss Parker was initially a villain but as the show went on her character became much more complex.
17. She started roller blading, got me hooked, and then promptly stopped roller blading. Now she prefers biking.
18. It was almost without warning that I met her parents for the first time. We started dating late February 1991; a couple of weeks later was spring break, for a week, so I came home to Buffalo. At the end of that week I tried calling her, only to learn from the old lady she was renting a room from that she wasn’t home because of a death in her family. I remembered her saying something about a sick grandfather, and that’s what turned out to have happened; her grandfather had passed away from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. When I got back out to school, her entire family was there. So I met the future in-laws on the spot. Luckily, I seem to have made some kind of decent impression.
19. Our first long trip together was from Iowa to Idaho, to visit her family, a couple of weeks before school began in August of 1992. She had already graduated college, but I was in my senior year. While we were out there, the infamous Ruby Ridge Incident was taking place twenty miles down the road, so all week there were National Guard vehicles on the roads and helicopters overhead.
20. I am forever amazed at her ability to take some fabric and create a garment. This skill of hers looks like magic to me.
21. Her first pair of overalls were a gift from me. She thought the whole thing was goofy – maybe she still does! – but she wore them for years until at one point they became too small for her, and then a short while later they became too big for her. We didn’t start wearing overalls together until we’d been dating for about a year.
22. Back in the 90s, on two different occasions, we picked out Persian kittens. Both were wonderful cats, both are gone now, and we miss them both dearly. The first was a beautiful tortoiseshell Persian named Jasmine; the second was a red Persian named Simba. Both died in the year preceding this blog’s launch.
23. Adopting Lester and Julio was The Wife’s idea. I’m still unsold on these two giant lummox goofballs.
24. The Wife also took The Daughter to adopt Comet, when The Daughter was only two.
25. Shortly after The Wife moved to Western New York to be near me, she adopted a cat from the shelter she named Lilac. That cat never really liked me all that much. Lilac died a few months after Little Quinn passed.
25a. She is directly responsible for all the animals with whom we currently live.
27. Things with which she has a deft touch include: a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, a kitchen knife, the mixer, bread dough, a screwdriver, a lug wrench, and a shot glass.
28. It irritates her that The Daughter has inherited my tolerance for sunlight — I tan, whereas The Wife burns.
29. The Wife likes to read, albeit not quite as much as I do. She always has a book going, and she reads every day.
30. She never used to use a bookmark, until I finally decided I was tired of watching her flip through a book looking for a passage that was familiar to her so she could find her place. I bought her a bookmark.
31. She loves nuts – except for walnuts and pecans, which I love. This makes it occasionally difficult find good brownies and similar items in bakeries, since many people default to putting pecans or walnuts in their brownies or other chocolate cookies.
32. When I first met her, she was a huge Anne Rice fan and read most of what Rice wrote until she decided that Rice’s output wasn’t interesting her much anymore. Since then she’s read a lot of other authors, including a lot of unfamiliar names whose books I’ve plucked from the stacks of offerings at library book sales over the years. Interesting how obscure even the bestsellers of yesteryear eventually become, huh? Currently she really loves Gregory Maguire, the Wicked guy.
33. When we first met, she was a Washington Redskins fan. So of course, the first Super Bowl we were together was the one where the Redskins knocked the Bills on their collective arse. Oh well, at least she hated the Cowboys.
34. She prefers her KFC “extra crispy”, where I’m an “Original Recipe” guy.
35. Movies that are particularly meaningful or nostalgic to us, in addition to Edward Scissorhands and Star Wars are Dances With Wolves, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Singin’ in the Rain, and the James Bond movies.
36. For some reason we didn’t take any pictures when we were on our honeymoon or when we were on our vacation to Disney a year later. I think we were between working cameras at those points…but lately I really wish we’d have addressed that at the time.
37. Things we did on our honeymoon to Cape Cod, Boston, and New Hampshire: road a boat out to sea to watch the whales; visited the New England Aquarium; ate dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown; bought lots of kitchenware at an outlet strip (don’t laugh, we still have some of that stuff); visited the Boston Science Museum. While doing two days in Boston we stayed at a hotel about forty miles out and road the train into town; on the second day, on the way back, we fell asleep on each other’s shoulders.
38. Our first argument as a couple resulted from a common misunderstanding between people when one is from Iowa and one is just living in Iowa for a while. I told her we’d meet for dinner, so she showed up at noon and got annoyed because I wasn’t there. Well, duh! I said “dinner”, not “lunch”. Except, remember, she’s a native Iowan, which means instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like most (ahem) normal folks, she ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Thankfully, I’ve converted her since then. Whew!
39. Our first wedding anniversary saw us spending a week at Walt Disney World. What a wonderful time that was! Even if she managed to rip her toenail out two days into the trip, thus requiring me to push her around in a wheelchair the whole time after that.
40. She had long hair when we started dating, and I had short hair. Now we’ve reversed that.
41. Before we started dating, I had a beard. When I became interested in her, I shaved it so I’d look better. Then, I learned that she likes facial hair. So I grew the beard back a while later.
42. Foods I’ve tried because of her: asparagus, squash, rhubarb, grapefruit, and more that I don’t recall.
43. She loves George Carlin.
44. She bought me my first cell phone, and my second cell phone.
45. When we were at the Erie County Fair in 2001, she wandered off to look at the Bernina sewing machines. When I came by ten minutes or so later, she was in the process of buying a Bernina sewing machine. I didn’t complain; I just stood there, kind of looking shell-shocked.
46. Leading up to our wedding, she rigidly adhered to the notion that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress until she comes round the corner to walk down the aisle. So I didn’t see her until she came round the corner to walk down the aisle.
47. Starting a family was her idea. Not that I was against it; I figured we’d get there eventually. She just picked the “eventually”.
48. She picked The Daughter’s first name, so I got to pick her middle name.
48a. And now, this:
50. Iowa delicacies that The Wife and I share are pork tenderloin sandwiches and broasted chicken.
51. Some of our early dates were sufficiently cheap that we had to look for ATM machines that would dispense cash in five dollar denominations.
52. She bought Simba, the above-mentioned red Persian kitten, while we were on a shopping trip to Erie, PA. She fell in love with the kitten as soon as she saw him in the pet store; we then spent the rest of the day walking around the mall with me listening to her as she tried to talk herself out of buying him. (Persian kittens are pricey little buggers.) Finally, while we were at dinner at Red Lobster, she decided to pull the trigger.
53. Before Little Quinn, the most heartbroken I ever saw The Wife was the day we finally had to end Simba’s life. His kidneys were in failure.
54. Great gifts she’s bought me through the years: my current winter coat, a cupboard-full of drinking vessels of all types, candles, incense burners, the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD, my anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, my star sapphire ring, my current wristwatch, and many more.
55. The first thing she ever gave me: a stuffed bear, around whose neck she tied a lavender ribbon. I think she doused it with perfume. I named that bear “Bertrand”, after philosopher Bertrand Russell.
56. The first thing I bought her: a little two-inch high figurine of a laughing Buddha. I think this confused her a bit.
57. Despite my best efforts for a while, she’s never much warmed to baseball. That used to bother me, but these days that doesn’t bug me much at all. I’m pretty cool to baseball myself now.
58. For a few years we went to Cedar Point each fall. We haven’t been there in a long time, but I always found being there with her in the fall, in the cool air, pretty romantic. I loved riding the Giant Wheel after dark, sitting up there with her hand in mine, looking out over Lake Erie.
59. At Cedar Point, she decided that she liked this one coaster that does loops, so I stayed on the ground while she rode it. I’m terrified of those things.
60. Why don’t we play mini golf more often? We both love mini golf. The Daughter loves mini golf. What gives?
61. One day in 1996, we were eating lunch in Buffalo when we had “The Discussion”. Any guy who’s ever been dating the same girl for a period of time measurable in years will know what “The Discussion” is. So I agreed, it was time for us to take the “next step”. Later on, while she was having her eyes examined at LensCrafters, I bopped over to Penney’s to buy her a ring. I chose a nice emerald one that looked really pretty. Sadly, they didn’t have it in her size, so they had to order it, which would take three weeks. So I figured, OK, I’ll get the ring in three weeks and make this thing official. Yay, Me!
62. The next day, she proposed to me.
63. Three weeks later I showed up to get the ring. They had it, but they couldn’t find the paperwork, so some poor guy at the pickup counter at Penney’s spent his entire lunch hour trying to find the paperwork so I could give my already-fiancee her engagement ring.
64. I don’t remember exactly when we picked out her wedding rings, but we each have an Irish wedding band, and each ring is set with the other person’s birthstone. So my ring is set with four amethysts, which is her birthstone; hers is set with four sapphires, which is mine.
65. For years I wore my ring incorrectly. Apparently there’s one way to wear an Irish wedding band that signifies being married, and another that signifies being single. I was wearing mine the “single” way. I was alerted to this by a guy I worked with at The Store; he said, “Yeah, you’re telling all the women that you’re available.” I replied, “Yeah, and I’m beating them off with a stick.”
66. On our honeymoon, it was important to her that she at least get to dip her toes in the Atlantic Ocean. So she did. The water was very cold, though.
66a. She replicated this moment years later when we took a trip to the Jersey Shore.
68. During the summer of 1991, when I was at home and she was still in Iowa, she came to spend a week with me. I took her to Buffalo and to Toronto, on the way to which we stopped to see Niagara Falls for her first time.
69. She was really confused the first time a Japanese tourist asked her to take his picture in front of the Falls.
70. At the time our beer of choice was Labatt’s. It’s pronounced “la-BATS”, but we had a family friend at the time who liked to say it “LAB-uhts”, which is how I said it at college just for fun and habit. So when she visited me that summer, we went to the bar where this friend hung out, and he was so impressed when she ordered a “LAB-uhts”.
71. Our favorite mixed drink in college was the sloe gin fizz. A few years ago I tried making these again, discovering that her tastes had changed and she now found them sickeningly sweet. I like them still, but yeah, they’re sugary. (And pink. When I told a friend at work who knows everything about liquor that I’d bought some sloe gin, he laughed and said, “Oh good! Now you can make pink drinks!”)
72. She taught me the right way to do laundry.
73. I taught her the right way to crack open crab legs so as to not mangle the meat.
74. Our first major mistake of parenting was taking The Daughter to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 1999. The Daughter was all of fifteen days old. This was the big display in Lakewood, NY, which is right on the banks of Lake Chautauqua. The Daughter did not respond well to the fireworks detonating right over our heads; the sounds were bad and for years afterwards The Daughter was very scared of loud sounds.
75. We always say that we should go camping. We never actually do go camping. We need to do more camping.
76. Once for dinner I made some frozen cheese ravioli with sauce, a favorite meal of ours that we hadn’t had in a long time. She said that she was looking forward to “eating some cheesy goodness”. Unfortunately, the raviolis were a bit on the old and tough side, and the cheese never got nice and melty, so after the meal, she commented, “That wasn’t really cheesy goodness.”
77. She likes eggs over-easy. I’m not a big fan of those, but I try to make them for her when she’s getting over being sick.
78. She makes fun of my over-reliance on boxed mixes in the kitchen.
78a. I’m much better about this now. Her main kitchen complaint about me is that I make way too big a mess when I cook.
79. In 1993, when Cheers aired its final episode, she bought pizza for my roommate and I.
80. She only swears when she’s really annoyed.
81. She is not happy that her nine-year-old, fourth-grade daughter is now the same shoe size as she is.
82. A while back she had her hair colored a brighter shade of blond than is her natural color. It was awesome.
83. Before that she experimented with red. I’ve tried talking her into doing that again, but no dice.
84. When my aunt met her the night before our wedding, she made a comment to the effect that I was to be commended for adding blond hair and blue eyes to our gene pool.
85. The Daughter has blond hair and blue eyes. So did Little Quinn.
86. I’m not sure there’s a variety of seafood she dislikes.
87. I love the way she looks when she’s just come home from work and changed into her PJ’s.
88. Adopting Lester and Julio was her idea, but she claims the upper hand on that anyway because she was helping out my mother.
89. For some reason, The Daughter and I like to bring up at the dinner table the fact that The Wife, as a kid, had to help the family out on Chicken Butchering Day. I don’t know why.
90. She thinks Orlando Bloom is really attractive. I don’t see it, myself, but you can’t argue these things.
91. For my birthday in 1992 she drove me to Dyersville, IA so I could see the Field of Dreams.
92. If I want to spoil her, all I have to do is buy her blush wine, cashews, olives and chocolate. Cake helps, too.
93. She spoils me by looking the other way when I go to Borders; by making me waffles or French toast or Spanish rice; by cleaning the kitchen after I’ve messed it up; by indulging my love of pie; and a thousand other ways.
94. I’m always game for a pie in the face, but I’m pretty sure nobody pies me like she does. Or better.
96. We both love laughing at David Caruso on CSI Miami.
96a. Sadly, CSI Miami is long gone, but now we thrill to the adventures of Team Machine on Person of Interest, of Castle and Beckett on Castle, and we enjoy Alton Brown’s delicious brand of pure evil on Cutthroat Kitchen.
97. One time last year we were at the Y, and she got so engrossed in what she was doing that when I approached her, she didn’t recognize me at first.
97a. She loves lilacs.
99. I wish we were living lives that didn’t include so many tears.
100. I love her more than I did last week at this time.
101. Number 100 on this list will be equally true next week at this time. And the week after. And so on.
102. She makes me happier than I thought possible.
103. She…oh, I guess that’s where I need to stop. I love you, honey!
This past weekend was…an adventure.
The groundwork started the previous weekend, when a large puddle formed at the corner of our street and the street that leads to it. It had rained a bit that weekend, so I didn’t think anything of the puddle, except it persisted all week, through dry days. Never shrinking. Just…there.
Turns out it was a water main break.
I got home from work Friday afternoon to no running water as the crews were starting the repair right then. I don’t know what made them choose Friday night, but I’m guessing that something happened which forced their hand. So no water that night, which wasn’t a huge imposition (we keep water bottles filled and have jugs of water on hand at all times), except that I couldn’t shower. I shower after work, not before, because the nature of my job doesn’t always leave me particularly clean. Plus, showering after the job helps me make the mental switch from Day Job Me to Writer and Homebody Me.
But Friday? No water until 10:00pm, so no shower. No big deal, really; I figured I’d just shower Saturday morning, after The Wife showered and went to work and I got the dee-oh-gee’s walked. Fine.
Except The Wife leaves and calls me from the road, two minutes later. The water main is now broken again, and impressively so: it’s making a little geyser and flooding the street in ankle-deep water.
A cop is already there. Within minutes a Water Authority guy is also there, and within the hour the water is back off and the crews are working. This time there are even more big machines and big trucks involved, and the water doesn’t get turned back on until between 5:30 and 6:00. Again, not a gigantic deal, except that I was now two days removed from my most recent shower, which led me to conclude that I should not attend the work party that had been scheduled for that afternoon.
That sucked. But, the water was back.
Onward to Sunday. Hiking at Hunter’s Creek Park with Dee-oh-gee 1.0. Pretty autumn day, nice colors, warm weather if a bit windy.
For seven hours.
Yuck.
The worst part of this was that our power company’s website is supposed to post updates as to status of outages, with estimated restoration times, but they never posted any such information. Every street was listed as “assessing”, which they say means that they haven’t even figured out what work needs done.
This went on and on and on. At least I got some writing done by candlelight…
Luckily that’s when the power came back on and the main sump pump engaged and cleared the rest of the water pretty quickly.
Everybody lived and nothing was lost, but the entire weekend was, for the most part, one headache after another.
At least it’s over.
Harumph.
Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself, tweeted my name.
Here’s how it happened.
It began with, surprisingly enough, William Shatner:
I think @starwars has officially jumped the shark. 😳🙄 Wasn’t @HamillHimself supposed to be in this movie? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/HFiA56hlS3
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) October 10, 2017
Mark Hamill, cited by Mr. Shatner, replied:
I think @WilliamShatner has officially jumped the snark.😜😇 You've got your BORGS, Bill- I've got my PORGS, OK? 😎 #TheFarceIsStrongInShatner https://t.co/W28T3sixr3
— @HamillHimself (@HamillHimself) October 10, 2017
Funny reply! Until, that is, a Star Trek geek from the Buffalo, NY area felt the need to point out that Mr. Shatner never faced the Borg on Star Trek. They came along for Patrick Stewart’s tenure as Enterprise captain.
Sayeth the Trek geek from Buffalo:
The Borg? That was Patrick Stewart, NOT Mr. Shatner! Come ON, Mr. Hamill!!!
— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) October 10, 2017
And then, replyeth Mr. Hamill:
That tweet was from someone who once flunked a #StarWars trivia quiz. Why would I do any better w/ #StarTrek minutia? Come ON, Mr. Sedinger!
— @HamillHimself (@HamillHimself) October 10, 2017
Squeee! Proof for eternity that for a period of time–who cares if it was mere seconds long–Mark Hamill was aware of my existence!
I, of course, couldn’t allow Mr. Hamill the last word, so:
Well, might as well bring a third franchise into the mix…. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/Q8Yfcy0jc3
— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) October 10, 2017
And as of this writing, there we stand.
Sometimes the future is kind of cool, in amidst the moments of existential dread and the ongoing awareness that everything is terrible.
Obviously denim is one of my favorite things on Earth. Few things are more comfortable than well-worn denim that has been broken in over years.
I have, of course, discovered this by several lucky purchases of raw denim overalls.
You can find raw denim overalls pretty easily. Any Tractor Supply store or other workwear establishment will have them. (A good local place is McKay’s Work Clothing in South Buffalo.) Vintage raw denim overalls are another matter. They often go for princely sums that are way higher than I’m willing to pay for such things, but it’s always the case with places like eBay that you never know. You might go months without seeing a good deal on the thing that you want, and then one day, there it is, and for a decent price, too. This happened for me twice in the last year, when I was able to buy two different pairs of raw denim Lee overalls for a song (both for less than what a new pair of Carhartts would set me back these days).
The Lee overalls of the “vintage” era, roughly the 50s through the 80s, have always been my “platonic ideal” of what overalls should be. I love the shape of the bib pocket, the shape of the back part, even the shape of the back pockets and the brass hardware. When I think of overalls, this is what I tend to picture.
(Photos chosen via a Google image search.)
I’ve owned several pairs of Lee overalls for years now, two in blue denim and one in hickory stripe.
Raw denim is a true nerd’s category of clothing, the rare subset of fashion that is the domain mostly of men, and thus overrun by complicated terminology and geeks eager to tell you you’re doing it wrong. Basically, though, what “raw” amounts to is denim that wasn’t washed to soften it up (and remove excess indigo dye) before it was sent out into the world — though mine had been Sanforized, or soaked, to pre-shrink them. Raw denim is also usually made of nearly pure cotton — so minimal-to-no Lycra or spandex or what have you, the stuff that gives stretchy jeans their elasticity. What you lose in immediate flexibility, you gain in durability: They’re harder to stretch, but also harder to stretch out. My pair arrived on my doorstep deep blue, stiff, and difficult. Then it became my job to find the patience and persistence to wear them into shape.
There’s a process with raw denim, it turns out: you’re actually not supposed to just toss them into the washer and dryer right off the bat, nor are you supposed to wash them frequently. An initial soaking-and-drying, without soap, followed by wearing a lot with intermittent re-soakings and gentle washings (hand-washing in a tub with a bit of soap is recommended) followed by line-dryings only, is what’s called for. In this way the denim will slowly break in and wear in exact ways that correspond to your body and the way you wear it.
Here’s how the ran denim overalls compare, side-by-side with one of my long-broken-in pairs:
Last, they hang on the line to dry. This takes forever. When you thoroughly soak denim, it holds water for a long time. This is not a process for the impatient.
