And wished some safe journey, some happy convention, and we are collapsing at home.
Our only regret is that the weather is absolutely beastly—half of WA caught fire, it seems, and a lot of folk up by Twisp and elsewhere have terribly bad situations, smoke is a constant pall, making people react and cough and burning sensitive eyes; last night a piece of ash fell at the Pirate Banquet, either my cooking or something wafted on high winds. The sky looks like MZB’s Darkover, the true Bloody Sun, with apricot skies: it still heats, strange though it seems. And we thought it might rain Friday, but that forecast is up in smoke, (pardon me), and we’re forecast for 25 mph winds and thick blowing dust mingled in smoke.
We are pretty sure we can get the beautiful fish dome to work, but right now the constant falling ash which makes the pond just murky green (carbon is a nutrient for unwanted stuff) —so we have just thrown up our hands given the conditions out there and said we will get it to work when we can see the bottom. It is glorious—should be wonderful, but we need to see what we’re doing.
Jane and I’ll be at Sasquan on Friday: that will be our convention day. Beyond that, I think we’re just going to rest and write until about Monday, when my publisher becomes our guest…we have had our quiet dinner for 25 or so…it’s a wonder our little house can manage it, but we did—and thanks to the wonderful help of people who, while being guests, pitched right in and carried chairs, moved tables, hung decorations, and helped us wash dishes, pull weeds, and ran pans between the grill and the house. We caught nothing on fire, which goodness knows we don’t need. And overall we are in better shape than we were going into it all. Shejicon people are wonderful. In a perfect world we’d all be close neighbors…and the sky would not have smoke in it.
Happy to hear you all had a good time. It always feels like a bunch of good people hang out here. You two don’t get much time off otherwise, so it’s very nice that you could spend such an enjoyable time together, and do a lot of fun things.
All the smoke sounds as if it’s time to get the air purifiers going again; I hope that with those you’ll manage to keep breathing and keep your eyes un-irritated.
For those visiting Sasquan: have some more fun; and for those going home: have a safe trip, please.
I know Jane and you wanted me to stop somewhere near Buffalo or Gillette, WY, but when I went through those cities, I was so wide awake and still pumped up on adrenaline, I wouldn’t have been able to come down for hours. As it is, every hotel in the area was well over $115 per night, with one of them being $160 for a single bed, one person….and they called it “America’s Best Value Inn”…hah!
Anyway, I kept driving until I got to Wall, SD, and stopped in the EconoLodge. The room they had available has a king-size bed, it’s a smoking room, (but I stayed in one on the way out, too), and it was $85.00. I took it! It has a shower, a bed, and of course, wifi, but I did want you to know I got this far, so far. If you were tracking me, you already knew that, of course. (If I didn’t tell you, the amount of time you can track me can go back 3 days, or so, although it normally defaults to 1 hour, you can adjust it, and then the box below that will also give you some options as far as duration. If you notice little red dots on my route line, you can click on one of those and it will tell you where I am/was, what time, how fast I was going if that information is available to the system…..
I left my hotel at 4:55AM, hit I-90 East at 5:02AM, and made it to Wall around 8:30PM (Pacific Time). I’ve covered almost 975 miles today, and the trip was extremely smoky all through Montana. I got to Missoula and it seemed as though the smoke had closed in. I thought getting on the other side of the Continental Divide east of Butte would help clear it up somewhat, but it kept getting worse. I can see the moon tonight, but it’s still smoky out there.
Thank you for hosting us again this year, I know it was a big ordeal, and I hope I was able to provide some assistance not only to you and Jane, but also to Ready for her coordination, etc.
I’ll let you know by PM when I get home, that should probably be tomorrow night, although I might wait over and stay somewhere Friday night, too.
Lol—I caved in and slept all yesterday.
You stay safe!
The smoke from the fires made it to the Denver area. I work less than seven miles from the mountains. The smoke was so thick you couldn’t see them. Just gray to the west with a bright orange sun. Take care of yourselves, the air quality in your area must be horrible and breathing problems from the smoke can last longer than the fires.
Yep, it’s an apricot sky again: we had a little blue yesterday, but now we have blowing dust added to the smoke.
The good news is humidity has risen to 55% and temperatures are dropping, which helps the firefighters.
There was smoke all the way to it seemed like Mitchell, SD.
It’s now 2:30 AM, Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday, August 22, and I just pulled in the driveway about 10 minutes ago. I was looking for a place to spend the night, and it got to the point where I just said “To hell with it.” because I was getting very close to home.
The cats are ecstatic, I’m back, poor Sydney almost went into hysterics trying to get me to pet her. Even Sophie came up to me and was happy I was home. Maggie is a bit shy when it comes to me being anywhere but in the living room on either the couch or the recliner.
Is Jane working on her blog? The format seems to have changed.
We have a ladder propped up against the side of the house and the Three Stooges have figured out how to climb it to get to the roof (easier than going up the tree, then hopping from an overhanging branch? I dunno). This morning at oh-dark-thirty in the bathroom, there was a ‘meow’ from the window. Froofy was peering in from the ladder to see what the nutty hew-mons were doing.
I just checked her blog, the “Recent Comments” column is gone, there’s an archive listing by category and by month, and then there’s a box that has sample text in it……
Maybe an update got done to WordPress that changed Jane’s page?
It’s a nice readable font, even on my not-new android phone.
The air flowed out of the North today. Our sun was wan and sallow. Visibility around 1.5mi. While a good wood fire smells of caramel, it was sharp and pungent today.
SASQUAN is officially over and readyGuy and I are packed and ready to leave for home. We had a great time. Although the time was short we had some quality time with Surtac and Bret Grandrath. We’ll post more about ShejiCon once everyone has returned home. Many thanks for all the assistance from our Associates who attended.
The floating fishdome is now happily installed in the glorious pond.
Just wanted to let you both know that Ian and I have made it safely back to Santa Rosa, and that tomorrow we pack up our spoils of conquest and make the long journey back to our island home. Hugs from us both, and thank you again for hosting yet another great Shejicon. 🙂
kbd broken (drink spill). no luck. – waiting on rush replacement. 🙁
Wednesday is the anniversary of the big Krakatoa explosion, FWIW.
I just saw an ad for a local grocery that has a sale on “Alaskan pollock loins”. Fish have loins? I didn’t know that!
What’s the book say? “loin, n. 1. the part or parts of the body of man or of a quadruped animal on either side of the vertebral column, between the false ribs and hipbone.” Hipbone?
Guess marketing’s been smoking the Catepillar’s hookah, words mean anything they want them to mean.
@paul – The ever-handy google says this: Loin – This is the prime part of a fillet from a large round fish. It is the part of the fillet which is above the spine, sometimes called the top back loin. Loins are typically cut from fish like Tuna, Swordfish, and Marlin.
So the loin is more or less the kidney area of the back, between the ribs and the pelvis/hips, on both sides of the backbone (or in fish, apparently on top of the backbone)? I got that completely wrong! I thought it was the fold between belly and thigh, in front, mostly because of some rather mental connection I made from some biblical-themed phrase I read between offsping and loins, and because it’s a 4-letter word starting with L, as is the Dutch word ‘lies’ (pronounced ‘lease’) for that fold.
I don’t see the connection if it means the lower back. Unless it’s because raising kids was backbreaking work for biblical patriarchs? I can’t quite correlate that either – for the mothers, yes, but for the fathers?
Not looking up unknown words, but learning to guess their meaning from the context where one encounters them, does sometimes lead to wrong conclusions.
I would say that the dictionary definition Paul quoted sounds more like the butcher’s definition of a cut of meat (such as pork loins or beef tenderloin). The keyword there is that definition refers to quadrupeds, and thereby to connotations of cuts of meat.
But that doesn’t match my mental definition of the area of the human body that we mean in English when we say the loins. Loin or loins tends to be more poetic or archaic or Biblical, these days. We have phrases like, “to gird one’s loins” (either for battle or to get dressed) which is a more literary reference from, for example, the King James Version of the Bible. Or the word loincloth. Hey, Tarzan wears a loincloth, (sometimes) so it must still be cool, right? 😀
The English word loin or loins, used to refer to the human body, typically means the pelvis, more or less, the part of the body covered by undershorts or swim shorts, or yes, a loincloth. The word is connected with procreation for men or women: “out of the loins of” (various Biblical figures) means conceived by a man or woman. So it’s a polite, roundabout way to refer to reproductive organs, almost, but also to the general region of the pelvis, hips, lower belly, groin, and so on. What would be (in the Jacobean / Elizabethan / Shakespearean era) modestly covered up and not directly talked about. :: whistles innocently :: (Hmm, though that might depend on which play or sonnet or… what part of town one was in, back then.)
And as far as fish go, I’d say the definition with regard to fish has not enough bearing on humans or quadrupeds, despite whatever traditional connection there would be from the butcher’s and fishmonger’s perspectives.
In other words, I think your own mental definition of what the English word means, compared to the Dutch cognates, is pretty accurate.
I’d need to look up the etymology to be sure if it’s Norman versus Saxon, but loin(s) is definitely good Middle English (loyne, loine) and early Modern English (KJV, Shakespeare, et al.).
It matches the idea for Dutch “lies” you gave, around the fold between the belly and thighs, pretty well.
So I’d say this is an example where one English word can have three rather different definitions of an area of a human, quadruped, or fish body. I’d say that’s how to make the distinction: It’s which type of creature about which one is speaking, that determines the detailed meaning of the word.
(Hmm, knowing there’s a Dutch cognate doesn’t help me guess if loin and lies are from a Germanic or a French source, or separate sources, also given that Norman French had Latin and Germanic and a few Gaelic / Celtic sources. I’d guess Norman French for loins in English, though. Middle and Modern English tended to adopt Norman French cooking words instead of native Anglo-Saxon Germanic words for food and cooking, generally speaking.)
…Checking my dictionary for the definitions and etymology. American Heritage Dictionary, college edition….
And chickens do NOT have fingers!
No chicken lips, either. Nor buffalo wings.
And…though fish don’t have fingers, apparently, fish fingers with custard are rather tasty. At least if you’re a Time Lord.
* Note: I had to try fish fingers with custard, after that episode, just to see. It’s a bit unusual, but it is tasty. Heh.
Thanx again to everyone. I honestly thought my shoestring budget would see me through, but even if the cost of everything hadn’t been 10% than I expected, my hopes were rudely dashed by the IRS finally losing patience with me. Thank Ghod that they did so *after* I’d paid for my hotel room, not before, I would have been in *real* trouble then. I couldn’t even afford to replace the batteries in my camera, sorry no photos from me. Even with that damper, I had a good time overall; it was worth the sacrifice. My next paycheck (EOM) will clear up the IRS issue, and numerous other small debts I’ve accumulated. I’ll pay my outstanding book fine to the public library and be able to borrow books again (the worst deprivation of this period). The month after will be almost pure gravy, I think I’ll be able to acquire a decent used car, or at least make a down payment. Been car-less since late 2010, be very glad to correct that.
ack, “10% more than I expected”!
Wishing you clear sailing and may everything work out.