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More of Saturday -- Minn-Stf
Jun. 11th, 2003 02:19 pmEdited to add some stuff, since my brain is working better now than it was when I wrote the original.
So Eric and I went out and tackled the yard. Well, part of it. Eric went about removing saplings, and I took out a few weeds that had been annoying me unreasonably for weeks. Then we tackled the raised bed where I wanted to put the tomatoes. This is a smallish space, but it was well supplied with growth. Eric had already got out the honeysuckle bush and the buckthorn and some minor saplings. We got half of it cleared entirely and partway into the second half. Then I went to take a shower and Eric hacked away at the Japanese knotweed that was obscuring the cats' view of the bird feeder and incidentally blocking the sidewalk.
After I'd spoken to Raphael a bit and got myself ready, and Eric had cleaned up a little, we walked over to the Minn-Stf meeting. It was being hosted by two people who don't live there (one of them works there) and I didn't meet the owner for some time. The house is a day-care home. We were calling it a day-care center, but the owner kindly corrected us. A day-care center can't mix age groups. A day-care home can, but is restricted to fourteen kids, no matter how much staff there is.
In any case, it was an utterly delightful place for a meeting of science-fiction fans.
In the first place, the refreshments included a lot of fresh vegetables as finger food -- sugar snap peas, baby carrots, and there were also beautifully ripe slices of cantaloupe and watermelon. Not to mention the mango salsa. There was a schedule in the kitchen that said when various goodies were due to come out; the one that caught my eye and Eric's too was the wasabi-tuna salad.
In the second place, there was the astronomy room, featuring a star globe that lit up, and two huge maps of the moon, one for each side, and a kind of exploding diagram of the universe, and a star map showing which constellations are up during which months for this latitude. And solar-system curtains, too. Lydy told Eric and me how she could never see the man in the moon, despite the scorn of her interlocutors, but she could see the young woman in the moon. Eric showed us how to see the rabbit in the moon.
The wasabi-tuna salad duly came out, and was judged basically good, but with insufficient wasabi. Erica, who had made it, agreed that it needed more. Some people couldn't taste it at all, but to my tongue it had the ghost of wasabi, most of which went right up the nose, not with the large pleasant shock you get with a piece of sushi, but very, very quietly. Possibly hunting the rabbit in the moon.
Then there was what one of the hosts called the Dungeons and Dragons room, I think, though what struck us, besides the computers, was the dollhouse with a set of Star Trek action figures, and the smaller dollhouse with some kind of comic-book action figures; also the blackboard with fine chalk eggs, rather than sticks. Eric and I agreed we'd have loved to have those when we were kids; you could tell just by grasping them that you could get a lot of elbow motion into your writing and make really big designs.
The yard was fascinating too, all full of ferns and Virginia waterleaf and stepping stones with depictions of insects on them, not to mention the full-sized basketball hoop mounted at toddler height, and the pile of muffin tins and other bakeware in the big patch of mud.
I was acutely aware of how out of practice I was at socializing. I got to talk to Daedala, who was wearing a stunning purple skirt; and to discuss with Larry Sanderson whether one should try to plant peas at this late date-- he recommended snow peas, if I must do it. We also had a very nice geeky moment when I explained that tomatoes stop setting fruit if the nighttime temperature doesn't drop far enough, and Pier said that was because tomatoes had originated in the Andes. I had more brief conversations with a lot of people I don't see much of, and that was all very satisfying, but I kept having to retreat to look at the cool toys or the stuff on the walls. Finally I went and spoiled myself rotten by sitting on the floor next to Eric and leaning against the sofa David was sitting on.
Not too long after that Eric and I walked back to my house. Lydy caught us up on the way, and David came home not long after. I did a couple of needful chores, and then after some consultation Eric and I decided to walk to his place rather than taking the bus.
Pamela
So Eric and I went out and tackled the yard. Well, part of it. Eric went about removing saplings, and I took out a few weeds that had been annoying me unreasonably for weeks. Then we tackled the raised bed where I wanted to put the tomatoes. This is a smallish space, but it was well supplied with growth. Eric had already got out the honeysuckle bush and the buckthorn and some minor saplings. We got half of it cleared entirely and partway into the second half. Then I went to take a shower and Eric hacked away at the Japanese knotweed that was obscuring the cats' view of the bird feeder and incidentally blocking the sidewalk.
After I'd spoken to Raphael a bit and got myself ready, and Eric had cleaned up a little, we walked over to the Minn-Stf meeting. It was being hosted by two people who don't live there (one of them works there) and I didn't meet the owner for some time. The house is a day-care home. We were calling it a day-care center, but the owner kindly corrected us. A day-care center can't mix age groups. A day-care home can, but is restricted to fourteen kids, no matter how much staff there is.
In any case, it was an utterly delightful place for a meeting of science-fiction fans.
In the first place, the refreshments included a lot of fresh vegetables as finger food -- sugar snap peas, baby carrots, and there were also beautifully ripe slices of cantaloupe and watermelon. Not to mention the mango salsa. There was a schedule in the kitchen that said when various goodies were due to come out; the one that caught my eye and Eric's too was the wasabi-tuna salad.
In the second place, there was the astronomy room, featuring a star globe that lit up, and two huge maps of the moon, one for each side, and a kind of exploding diagram of the universe, and a star map showing which constellations are up during which months for this latitude. And solar-system curtains, too. Lydy told Eric and me how she could never see the man in the moon, despite the scorn of her interlocutors, but she could see the young woman in the moon. Eric showed us how to see the rabbit in the moon.
The wasabi-tuna salad duly came out, and was judged basically good, but with insufficient wasabi. Erica, who had made it, agreed that it needed more. Some people couldn't taste it at all, but to my tongue it had the ghost of wasabi, most of which went right up the nose, not with the large pleasant shock you get with a piece of sushi, but very, very quietly. Possibly hunting the rabbit in the moon.
Then there was what one of the hosts called the Dungeons and Dragons room, I think, though what struck us, besides the computers, was the dollhouse with a set of Star Trek action figures, and the smaller dollhouse with some kind of comic-book action figures; also the blackboard with fine chalk eggs, rather than sticks. Eric and I agreed we'd have loved to have those when we were kids; you could tell just by grasping them that you could get a lot of elbow motion into your writing and make really big designs.
The yard was fascinating too, all full of ferns and Virginia waterleaf and stepping stones with depictions of insects on them, not to mention the full-sized basketball hoop mounted at toddler height, and the pile of muffin tins and other bakeware in the big patch of mud.
I was acutely aware of how out of practice I was at socializing. I got to talk to Daedala, who was wearing a stunning purple skirt; and to discuss with Larry Sanderson whether one should try to plant peas at this late date-- he recommended snow peas, if I must do it. We also had a very nice geeky moment when I explained that tomatoes stop setting fruit if the nighttime temperature doesn't drop far enough, and Pier said that was because tomatoes had originated in the Andes. I had more brief conversations with a lot of people I don't see much of, and that was all very satisfying, but I kept having to retreat to look at the cool toys or the stuff on the walls. Finally I went and spoiled myself rotten by sitting on the floor next to Eric and leaning against the sofa David was sitting on.
Not too long after that Eric and I walked back to my house. Lydy caught us up on the way, and David came home not long after. I did a couple of needful chores, and then after some consultation Eric and I decided to walk to his place rather than taking the bus.
Pamela
