randomly catching up

The festivals/ craft shows every weekend continue to go well and i thank all of those who have come out to say HI to me. However, continuing in the grand tradition of my first ever festival, the thwart-hog continues to plague me with the sorts of illnesses/injuries on festival days that only seem to occur in the Nikiverse.
I woke up with my jaw locked at 4am for the Hereford Festival; given my handling of broken metal daily tetanus didn't seem like too far of a stretch. Good news: as with many Nikillnesses after  a few days of handling symptoms - odd swelling, shooting pains that came and went, a hole in my lip that may or may not have been related - everything cleared up just as i decided that I needed to see a doctor.
Getting ready to leave for the OMHS craft fair I managed to catch my foot on a mirror that is up against a wall and slice the entire webbing between my third and fourth toes. Mind you, the mirror is flush to the wall and I walk by it 10-15 times a day. Ever tried to bandage between and under toes while bleeding profusely? Take my advice: don't bother. Dump on peroxide, wad in a bunch of sterile gauze, tape the toes together and pop two tylenol. You can be out the door in under six minutes, pain-free and without a blood trail. Viva Frontier Medicine!
Last weekend, the Browse and Buy was mostly incident-free so maybe we've broken the chain. We'll see this Saturday for the Emanuel Lutheran holiday craft festival.

When do you wash out your salt and pepper shakers?
I needed to do a refill on my table shakers -blue flower corelle ware from my childhood- and the cooking shakers -tall Tupperware cylinders from everybody's childhood. With Maryland humidity you add rice to the salt to keep it from clumping and normally I just pour more salt in since the rice doesn't come out during use, but this time I decided to get new rice as well. Dumping  the little bit of salt/rice mixture left in both shakers into a bowl I could make the right rice/salt ratio to put back in the shakers and as I reached for them it occurred to me that I never wash my salt and pepper shakers. They get low, I add more, they get low, I add more, over and over again.
In fact, I couldn't recall ever washing them or seeing anyone was them. Ever.
Salt and Pepper shakers are never empty so when would you wash them? Weird.
So I dumped the pepper left into a bowl as well and then soaked all of the shakers and caps. In fact, I emptied my light bulb pepper mill and washed it up as well. Everything is now shiny clean and filled with new salt and pepper. That should suffice for at least another 20 years, right?

Dr Cool basically told me that I needed to do a routine eye checkup before I saw her again or she was going to beat me. Not really, but she did shoot a stern and disappointed look in my direction which is the equivalent of a physical threat to my people-pleasing heart.
Though glaucoma runs in both sides of my family my eye pressure is fine.
But, I am getting old.
My visual acuity is down to 20/20.
sigh...
I know all of you glasses-wearers out there have no sympathy for me at all, but you need to understand that at one time I had 20/13 vision. fTM Brian used to call me Eagle Eye; now I am just Human Eye. It doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?
In fact, my lazy, slacker right eye is way down at 20/25. Sub-par and unacceptable right eye. In fact, I will need 1.0 reading glasses within the next couple of years.
sigh...
In brighter news I think I have found a new look for myself and perhaps the next breaking fad:

Even on a completely overcast,  rainy day my freakishly light blue eyes have to be covered when dilated (look closely and you can see the tiny ring of blue). These disposable UV blockers really work with the shape of my face; I think you will be seeing them on the Milan runways next season.


On the way to the eye doctor a guy backed into my car; I mean, we were on a one-way street, he stopped, put his car in reverse and backed right into me despite my frantic honking.
There was no damage, but what the heck?
He claimed he didn't see me (or apparently my entire freaking CAR).
The doctor commented that a lot of accidents do happen in his parking lot because he is an eye doctor after all, but it actually wasn't in his parking lot.
Do these insane things only happen to me or am I just the only one to admit it?

Speaking of crazy, I took this picture three days ago.

These beautiful blooms were in the midst of naked trees and brush.
They look like something in the azalea/ mountain laurel family which are spring and summer flowers respectively.
Does anyone know if there is an autumn blooming version?
Mayhaps it just bloomed late.
Or had enough energy for a second blooming.
Or didn't get the winter memo.
Regardless of how it was heartening to see this last burst of life.
 
Spontaneous generation has been disproven for centuries, but I can understand why it seemed so reasonable for millennia.
Last week I bagged up all of my trash to go out and then got distracted by something -probably shiny- so it sat in the kitchen. Two days there were tiny flies buzzing around alerting me to my oversight.
It is winter, the doors and windows are closed and there were no flies just 2 days earlier.
Where did these freaking flies come from?
Took the trash out, but the flies remained so being proactive I bought some fly strips.
They are ugly, but effective.
The directions say pull the cord and unwind the strip like a ribbon which sounds easy enough. I don't know what kind of ribbon is familiar to those direction writers because it was all stuck together and then a crazy tube and then in my hair. After 15 minutes more than it probably should have taken my fly strip was ribbon-like and hanging. Despite the difficult installation it did indeed catch all of my magically appearing flies and has been properly disposed of in a trash bag  that went immediately to the curb.

The Browse and Buy last weekend was at the Catonsville Historical Society again this year.  Arriving so early on Saturday that I was locked out of the building where NikCo was set up, I took the chance to wander the grounds.

Last year I only went around the side and saw the giant railroad crossing sign, but I went all the way around to the back where there is a nature walk.
This cool, old rail runs to right before the start of the trail.
I love how it looks like the track has been abandoned and nature is reclaiming the space with plants and rocks.
Wait...
What is going on with that one rock at the end?

Now THAT is random.

Hereford Fall Festival

Well hello there friends.
No, I was not kidnapped by aliens; I have been crazy at work in the studio getting ready for this weekend's Hereford Fall Festival in scenic northern Baltimore County.
Do you like wine tasting, cool farm equipment, hay rides, festival food, crafts, chain saw carving, helicopter rides and/or baby pigs? Then this is the event for you.
Taking place on Mt Carmel Rd, off of I-83 the festival runs both days.
Come say hi at the NikCo booth!

Oktoberfest at Blob's Park

fTM Felicia put together an excursion to a local biergarten for Oktoberfest. When she sent the original email it included the phrases ...it can't quite shake the Moose Lodge feel... and ...like attending the wedding reception of a relative you don't know... both of which made it imperative that i went. Let me tell you, she was not kidding, people. It was amazingly corny. There was paneling, grown men in lederhosen, people playing their own accordions; i wish i could truly convey how awesomely ridiculous the whole extravaganza was. I, of course, pinned up maiden braids across my head to get in a festive mood.
Here we are, Felicia's boyfriend Danny, Felicia, Abby, Lt Com. Laura, Laura's husband Kris, coworker Brian, former coworker and Jami's boyfriend Will, coworker Jami and me:

The food and service were terrible; i mean, horrifically bad. We never saw a waitress and they ran out of food. Perhaps it was just an off night, but if you go, be sure to eat ahead of time.
 However, the entertainment more than made up for it. Polka Family was the band that night and the lead singer made sure that we were fully aware that they had been nominated four times for a Grammy Award; i didn't know there was a Grammy for polka, but okay. They were really good and did a great job of mixing traditional polkas with oom-pahed versions of popular songs. Did i mention that they had groupies? White haired groupies who brought their own cow bells and washboards to play along? I couldn't make this stuff up.
In between sets, there was a local German dance group that shared traditional dances and a bit of cultural background.

      





It seems that the guys do a lot of the fancy footwork while the girls spin, and i mean they spin and spin and spin - i don't understand how they didn't fall down. It was mesmerizing.
The group's leader, in a fabulous thick accent, talked about the genesis of each dance, including this one The Blacksmith's Dance:

Wait, did you just ask if there was a Maypole at any point?
Oh, you bet your bippy they broke out a maypole:

   








 I had no idea that there are all sorts of intricate weavings, having only ever seen/done the traditional over/under steps. It was so cool to be watching the dancers and then see the patterns emerge in the ribbons.
Being out where people are dancing is one of the few times that i really mind being single; i love, love, love to dance. Anyone who has ever seen me dance can attest to the fact that i am, in fact, a horrendously bad dancer, but i do it with a lot of gusto. Well into the evening they were doing a second or third round of audience participation dances and i was vibrating a little in my seat when Kris shouted Let's GO! from the other end of the table. Lt. Com. Laura wanted absolutely nothing to do with dancing so i went out onto the floor with her husband.
We did this fun dance where you circle and switch partners. When i was with someone besides Kris i did a passable polka/fast waltz, but when Kris and I were partnered he said Go Crazy so we did. Here, because i can take the teasing, is a video of the resulting carnage - the laughter in the foreground is Laura and Jami:

Speaking of Jami, she had no idea how to polka or even waltz so i spent a goodly portion of the evening explaining and pointing out different steps. Finally, she and Will were feeling brave enough to go out and try it. The picture is a bit fuzzy, which is how Will described feeling after doing the polka; in fact, he had to sit down to keep from falling down. Amateurs. :-)

Finally, i'll leave you with this video. The dancers brought out cow and sheep bells to play songs. What? you say. I was just as puzzled, but it was fabulous; in fact, i apologize if i was singing along in the video. You gotta watch to the end to see the oldster throw his hat: