Genevieve

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The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...

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weekend warrior wounds
2002-07-22 - 11:44 a.m.

It's just before noon, I've had 32 ounces of Diet Cokey caffeine goodness and still sleepy. My hands are worn, sore, cut, blistered and burned, shoulders and back are tight, but is was a very productive weekend.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Tuesday was Wonderful Wendy's birthday, and a small group of 8 took her out to Timpano's Italian Chophouse in Rockville. It wasn't a surprise, but we did have fun, polished off a few bottles of wine, some desserts got passed around the table and an excellent time on the whole. Wednesday, Roland, David and Alan worked in the shop on cutting the blanks for the chair pieces. I can't remember what I did, but I'm not a shop monkey. Sawdust and Gen's allergies need not be combined, and I hate to wear those masks. ugh. Thursday was back to LC, which was lovely and low key and I got to vaccum before taking off to LC on Thursday night. And friday, ah friday...

Friday was Alan's UnBirthday Party. I've always wanted to have one since seeing Disney's Alice in Wonderland and the Unbirthday Party they were having... A very merry un-birthday to you, to you, to you! A very merry un-birthday... Since Alan's birthday always sucks, this year it's on the Sunday after Pennsic, and usually involves striking camp, lots of labor and sweat, or 10 loads of laundry and putting stuff away, or any number of miserable tasks. The one year his birthday was on Wed of War week, known as Atlantian Day, I saw him briefly in the morning, and then afterwards in bed at night, but we were so busy, we never got a moment of peace together during the day. So, with all this madness in mind, I decided, although late in the game, to hold an emergency Un-Birthday party for him. We all dressed in our party shirts, and tried to surprise him, but as we found out with his Pelican, he's not an easy one to surprise. Despite the rule that guys don't pick up on subtle hints, and certainly not the ones you want them to pick up on, he catches any and all subtle hints that elude to surprising him with something fun. sigh. Kirsten tried to keep him in the shop later on Friday night, no go. She tried to keep him occupied upstairs on the computer looking at more pictures and research on the chairs, no go. Finally I told him to take a shower before heading out to dinner with Wendy and Rob, and he took the shortest damn shower in the world. Argh! And then Tara arrived early, "so I could do her hair before she went to a party in Rockville, *wink,wink*". Let's just say he wasn't fooled. At least he did humor me some while I redid his ponytail and asked him if my outfit was okay for dinner, and all sorts of madness until more folks could arrive to make it a bit of a surprise. Sigh.

But despite it not being a total surprise, we all had a great time. Alan went back up and changed into his Al's Grave Digging Company- We dig 'em deeper shirt and there was too much food, not enough cold alcohol, but we managed through, enough to get many folks sufficiently drunk, and we were up until 2am, without the aide of Red Bull and Vodka this time. Roland and I of course both got Alan the same kind of scotch for his birthday, which continues the hive mind effect that Roland, Mel and I have. I stayed up until 3am cleaning up, since I drank a Diet Coke and the caffiene gave me a cleaning kick until fatigue took over. The party was good, lots of fun folks, which is amazing since I sent out the message on Thursday. :) Thanks guys for making it a fun night. I really appreciate you coming together last minute for the beloved Alan. Yes, Rags and Kymber, I left you off the distro list since I knew you'd be out of town and didn't want to taunt you.

And then Saturday came way too early. At least two folks in the house were hurting. But then Roland and David arrived and the four of them went to work on the chairs in the garage, and I took a nap on the couch, trying to recover, reading a silly magazine David left behind on Friday night, and trying not to drool on the leather. Then I got up and went over to Wendy's and we did shower walls. Ironed them, sewed some, marked them on the shower structures, grommeted the tops of the walls, and then took them over to our backyard for gessoing them. Ugh. I'd like to state from the start that I was against the gesso project, I thought the walls were fine just as they were, no one in our camp is that modest that shadows are that disturbing, and besides, they'll be sandwiched bewtween the common tent and another tent on the side. But, BUT, we did them. Laid them out in the backyard, found out brick patio was too lumpy to paint, took bed plywood pieces up from basement to create mostly even painting surface on patio under layers of protective stuff, and we were off with the rollers staturating the walls with thinned out cream paint to add thickness, strength, and opacity. (Is that a word?) That's where the blister is from, using the rollers gave me a blister on my poor delicate hands. pout. All told, we slaved from 2:30 to 8pm on those damn walls, and only did the two interior walls and one long shower wall. Then the chair crew ceased their efforts and collapsed in a tired pile on the family room floor still admiring the prototype and the lovely embroidered cushions on it. It was at that time that we realized that delivery sushi would be the most perfect thing in the world and had sushi delivered to our house for 4, Roland having chinese instead. And life was happy and good, and I puttered in the sewing room a bit while Wendy and Rob went home to bed, and Alan and Kirsten discussed the next stage of the great chair project. It was 1am before we realized it was late and past time for bed, and we all collapsed mightily.

Sunday brought a harsh wake up. Gen was from her bed, untimely ripped, and sent to working on more painting in the backyard. I was awoken with "Wendy and Rob are here!" answered with a Huh? Ugh, flop, "No!!!!! ... fine I'll get up... Wendy and I got the second wall gessoed by noon, all the pieces baking in the sun, and then we paused for a shower and went to the sweat shop that is Wendy's sewing room. We then dutifully banged out a few projects, between the two of us we had a pile of productivity that included three hoods, several butt cushions for the new chairs-stuffed and ready for hand sewing, bags for the pieces of the new chairs-color coded for each couple, and a pile of ironed fabric. Thus the burn. I foolishly reached around the iron to straighten something and touched it briefly with my forearm. owie owie owie! I'm sure the welt will go away soon. Then, after a late dinner at Harry's and some well needed alcohol, we went back home and I sewed two of the cushions shut, sore fingers, and made it to bed by 12:30am after dumping the clean laundry on the bed so that it would get folded before we went to sleep. It was ruthless I admit, but necessary.

I don't remember where the paperlike cut on my index finger came from, but it's there and I had to get the black fuzz out after sewing madness. I hope to sew our cushions shut tonight while watching Witchblade, and maybe, just maybe get to bed at a reasonable hour for a change. But I doubt it. :)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... Huh? where was I?

Oh, the some of the funny highlights of the weekend were the painted feet from the gesso experiment, Wendy stripping the bolt for her favorite sized embroidery hoop for her Janome machine, and having to scavenge one from the Gigahoop. And the PPG role reversal. Mel had things happen to her in JellyStone Park (Yogi's lame girlfriend is named Cindy-Bear BTW) so she took on the Blossom role. Wendy was forced to be the cheerleader perky role when Gen with too little sleep and caffeine in the system was grumpy, and therefore became a part-time Bubbles. And finally Gen with her honest admission to the stupidity of the projects and plans played Buttercup for the day. It was truly bizzare.

And you'd be so proud. Gen did not retaliate when Wendy painted her foot. She could have painted Wendy back, but then again, that would have required finding an unpainted place on Wendy to begin with. ;)

Oh, and some of you are wondering what this psycho chair project is...

Alan and Kirsten are making copies of the Glastonbury Chair, 8 total to be exact, with much cool help from Roland the Tool User and David with his Mighty Slothlike Powers. To view more pictures of the prototype, try this link.

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