So, I'm spending a week in South Dakota in an "extended stay" sort of hotel. It's essentially an efficiency with fewer hotel-type services and more comforts-of-home-type services. It's sort of making me want to burn 3/4 of my possessions and move into a little condo. That and the snow removal services that come with condo living. :P

Frozen water is cold and heavy. Stupid snow. I'm glad there were two boys and a snowblower to assist, but it was still an epic undertaking.

Ooof. What a weekend!

Wednesday I left right from work to drive out to Sioux Falls, SD where I pretty much immediately crashed for the night.

Thursday I was a big fat meanie and kept nagging Mr S to pack and clean, pretty much all day long. We didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but more than he expected, so we'll call it a draw.

Friday we drove from Sioux Falls to Madison, SD to attend the dedication of a campus building that was being named for Dr Tunheim. There was a dinner after the ceremony and then we were off again to SF since S was playing a reunion show with an old band. We were out way too late, of course, but it was a good time.

Saturday, it was right back to Madison, SD for the DSU homecoming game and a picnic. There was an appalling health care policy conversation that was only salvaged by the presence of kitties to pet instead of strangling some crazy old biddie. I got to meet lots of friends and family over the weekend and it was, in general a Very Good Thing. The end of the evening found us headed back to Sioux Falls AGAIN and, while we attempted but then abandoned a detour, we made pretty good time on the road. There was Scotch and conversation before bed, as that seemed a fitting end to my last night in that place since my first visit had been filled with hours of the same.

Sunday morning came too soon, with more packing, including loading up my poor little Honda. Lunch out with a bunch of friends staved off the inevitable goodbyes for an hour, but the goodbyes were somewhat easier than usual thanks to knowing they'll be short this time. The last drive back to Madison, WI was long in miles and time since it was the last weekend of the month and the cops were out in droves. They didn't get me, but traffic was moving at a slightly more "prudent" pace than usual. Finally, the road ended at MstC's door and a Pirate Party. I stayed up waaay too late, but was happy nonetheless, and even happier to end the night in my own bed.

Monday has been all about appointments and catching up on the weekends business. I didn't get enough done around the house, but I spent A LOT of money on home improvement orders that will make the house more snug this winter... I DID succeed in putting together two pieces of furniture and hanging a picture at least. No more balancing acts when removing shoes! There's now a nifty bench and pretty hall cabinet! :)

And now, to sleep - there's work tomorrow, then class, then much more work to be done around the house. Busy, busy... But worth it!

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up
                                                                         - A. A. Milne


I have the day off for a variety of reasons - recovery from MstC's birthday, various house appointments (chimney cleaning, gasline checkup, door measuring, window ordering, etc) and general cleaning/prep for the arrival of a new Wayward Girl. There is much to do and I am happy that most of it is inside. It's cold outside, but cozy and nice in here with my lovely little labeler machine... :)

The Plan:
Friday - Round-up the plants in the front of the house that I want to get rid of
Weekend - Out of town while the plants die
Monday - pull the corpses and roto-till the front

Reality:
Monday - the little bastards are not even wilted.  >:/  I guess I'll go out and hit them again, more thoroughly this time.


EDIT (4:28): Mosquitos are blood-sucking hellspawn. I need a bat house for the back yard.

This past weekend was a crazy-busy one. My greatest apologies to those I crapped out on at one point or another - I got sooooo much done, though! (I wasn't really reading email lists or LJ, so let me know if I missed something of note) Part of the crazy effort was because of a visit today from an appraiser for my refinance and partly in preparation for company this weekend. I still need to do a fair bit of caulking in the bathroom and, as always, should straighten the sewing room, but in general the house is spic and span! :)

The one major thing of note: reneekytokorpi  is now officially a Wayward Girl! She moved into the Home for Wayward Girls this weekend!      


( Mostly boring list of all I got done the last few days... )

I am looking forward to the end of the week, but I'm hoping the middle will be quieter and more relaxed than the weekend was!

Bed again shortly!

So, after my last post, I was in the mood to go do something - maybe some girly shopping at Cost Plus World Market or lunch out or similar. I was about to call some folks to see if anyone was game when the LeakFrog in my basement went off. (BTW, aaron_pike , thanks! They have been a cute lifesaver.) There was water pouring into my basement. :/ I hurriedly mopped up the danger zone near the carpet and then ran for the wet-dry shop vac I bought for this very purpose and put together yesterday when it started to rain. Well, it sucked up about a cup of water and then quit. I tried different outlets in case it had blown a fuse or something. I took the filter out. I put it back in. Nada. Nothing doing. Unhappiness. >:( So, I have been mopping every couple minutes and really hoping the rain will quit. I did go shovel all the snow away from the leaking area an put down a tarp, so hopefully that will minimize melt- and rain -related leakage - there's not much I can do about run off from other places. It has seemed to help at least a little.

So... anyone wanna come over and be crafty with me, in between my mopping "breaks"?

Well, I didn't really sleep last night so much as take a nap and then hit the stores. There were some things I really, really needed and the sales were good enough to make me suck it up and go to actually shop instead of just point-and-laugh while people watching. 

( Nattering on about shopping at the Maul )

( And the craziest store? Menards, of all places... )

Once home, the window installation guy was here and he went about replacing the last three of the windows in the house that do not have insulated shades. As usual, he was wonderful, friendly, and efficient - if you need new windows, I have the guy for you! I think I already feel the difference in my bedroom. :) It's an expensive upgrade, but I think worthwhile in comfort and dollars. I wanted to install the programmable thermostat, but found I did not have the right tools and I think I want to have someone clueful supervise since there seem to be too many wires in the old thermostat. Besides, it obviously has mercury in it and so I need to figure out how/where to dispose of it anyway.

The rest of the day has been laziness and napping, but I should do something productive soon... maybe I'll tackle the dryer and some of the simpler home improvement projects and/or sewing I have planned. Or maybe I'll take a bath. :P

Well, the ups and downs of the weekend have been somewhat dramatic.

Friday, I was at home working on various little projects. I had just finished a cosmetic repair in the laundry room when the dryer began emitting an odd smell and making a weird noise. That load was almost done, so I unloaded it, cleared the lint trap, fiddled with the vent, and added a new load. Still making an unhappy noise. I puttered with it. Nothing. I jiggled it. Nope. I kicked it. Nada. :P However, having exhausted what I knew how to do and since I had other things to get done, I decided I would need to leave it to be looked at by a professional on Monday. Not something that is really in the budget, but not much to be done for it. However, the later part of Friday made up for it somewhat - I went out to the Brocach and had a lovely dinner, in regards to both food and company.

Saturday morning pretty much just did not happen. I'm not really a morning person, so that was just fine with me, however, between a late start, an underestimate of how long it would take to get to site and horrid Chicago traffic, I got to the Midrealm Bardic Madness site considerably later than intended. Still, the parts of the event we did get to were a lot of fun - the site was beautiful as always, the challenges were interesting, the concert was a lot of fun, and dinner (an ordered-in pizza) was delightful - thanks to grnjenny  for the recommendation and ordering of out tasty dinner and ingusmoen  and others for the company. Afterward, we went to the postrevel at Cerian's house. Theoretically, it was supposed to be "just for a bit" since we were returning to Madison that night and I was afraid the cat content of the house would mess with my allergies, but it was after 1AM before we headed out and 4AM before we got back to Madison. The house was chilly upon our arrival, but since the thermostat was turned down, I simply turned it up and headed to bed, a late end to a truly splendid day!

Sunday started late as well, but delightfully so... Sadly, once I finally got up, the house was still seriously chilly. I turned up the thermostat again, and headed out for lunch at Laredos. However, by 5PM, the house was well and truly cold and it was clear that the furnace had serious issues - the house was at about 55 degrees. Brrr! I waffled for a bit about calling an emergency repair guy tonight or sucking it up and waiting until tomorrow. Finally, the "expense" of taking time off tomorrow and the cold tonight outweighed the extra cost of the Sunday night repair guy. Or at least outweighed difference in the repair call costs. The broken part cost $400 extra. Ooof. At least the guy from the company goldfrog  recommended was efficient, nice, competant, and let me watch to see how the furnace worked or, in this case, didn't. Expensive education...

So, now the house is finally warming up and soon I'll be off to my chilly bed. Tomorrow I'll have to deal with disasters at work and try to see if kumakun  and I can have better luck fixing the dryer than I did on Friday... it's going to be a long week, I think. :P

Still... even with the house-related trauma and some minor physical damage, I'm pleased with the weekend as a whole.

Still thrilled about the whole Obama thing... *stoopid grin* I may eventually have something intelligent to say, but for now I'm settling for a generally pleased and relieved haze.

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So... the ugly saga of the laundry room, abridged: When the exhaust becomes detached from the dryer and you do not notice for weeks (or months?) , the lint will pile up on the floor. When your basement leaks, and the lint gets wet, then dry, then wet, then dry... it becomes as cement and adheres to the floor so firmly you need to use a hoe to loosen it. :( Then, when water is poured on the remainder, the floor is still amazingly absorbent until the layers are scraped off. Oi. Not fun. Also? In addition to all their other crappy household "improvements", the batshit crazy previous residents used the worst ever hose clamps. I didn't think hose clamps were complicated enough to have crappy versions, but there you go.

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Tonight, I realized that I was exhausted... tired from work, tired from loading my car with linen for the weekend, tired from being up too late last night... but I didn't hurt. So, I decided to see if I could break that. ;P I went out and fenced for the first time in about  year. I warmed up with devikat , fenced with Tomas and a newer guy, and then ended the night with Sir Guillaume. (Note to self, pick that fight earlier in the night. :P) I can tell that I've lost a lot, but I didn't completely suck either. I need to remember to fence in conversations, not sentences and I need to work on only taking the clean shots and doing so decisively... I did, however, have a pretty good track record for responding to being rushed by stabbing the offender in the head. It was a good time, if tiring. I've missed it. We'll see how often I can manage to do this - I was full of achey-ness by the end of the night, but it was probably worth it. :)

Saturday, I got some work done around the house before getting ready for the party. I organized/cleaned a variety of things and started cleaning the laundry room. I *thought* I was almost done when I quit for the night, but that was a damned lie and a story for another night.

Anyway, I waited until iarroganti  and teffan  were en route, then got back into the Lady Luck costume. When they hit town, we had a quick dinner and then headed out to the Kegslayers' for their Vegas themed party. (This was the reason I had a Lady Luck costume in the first place. I had hoped to go to the Resort party as one of the Crow Girls from Charles de Lint's Newford novels, but ego_id_non_feci  had a family thing pop up and was not able to go after all. One Crow Girl would just have been sad...) Anyway, the party was OK, again a little subdued, but fun. Possibly one of the more amusing parts of the night was when a room became a "girl's room" and one of the visitors from out East had a brilliant moment of inspiration about male/female interactions, but it's not really repeatable in polite company. :P No less true, just not really printable. *grin* After the party, we all came back to my place for some custard and went to bed at a reasonable-ish hour.

Of course, my neighbors were up at an entirely unreasonable hour - I was doing my best to ignore the chain saw noises, but the sound of screeching metal was finally enough to make me go investigate. Idiots were apparently cutting up an entire cord of wood at 9AM on a Sunday. Grrrreat. I didn't have my contacts in, so I didn't see what they had hit with the trailer, but it was not my car, so I went back to bed. I sort of want to leave them a nasty note, but I sort of think coming "caroling" at 3AM some Tuesday morning might be somewhat more appropriate.

Once Sunday reached a more acceptable hour,iarroganti ,teffan , and I went out to lunch at Ella's Deli. Sadly, no kugel. We did find out what a boolkie is, though. (A vaguely breast-shaped roll, for those of you who are curious.) After lunch, the food coma started to set in, but teffan  insisted on hitting the road. I submitted however, and the rest of the evening was spent in a nap,various phone calls, email, baronial official work, homework, General Meeting, a Trader Joes stop, more work on the laundry room (*shudder*) , and now quick LJing before a shower and bed. So ready for bed! Good night!

Usually, I very much enjoy reading Real Simple - a home-and-garden type magazine, "Martha Stewart for people who don't have that kind of time or money," as I like to joke.

However, this month they had some bookcase decorating tips that are seriously out-of-whack with my aesthetic sense and just plain availability of space. Even in the "lots of books" category their expert says "I'd never place more than 30 or so books vertically without breaking the line with a pretty object" and "leave at least one quarter of each shelf empty to give a sense of airiness." Eeep? I like to put something at the end of a shelf, provided there is a space, but to follow this "rule" I'd need a lot more bookcases... and I already have 14 in the house, not counting those owned by roommates or the ones holding non-book items!

However, I suspect my book-related reality is not in line with the rest of the country... :P  It's just my dorky friends that make me feel normal. (Thanks zandoria!) 

I love thunderstorms and the one that just went through was one of the most literally awesome storms I've seen in some time... Happiness.

(The pure joy is somewhat ruined, though, because while the basement didn't leak badly, the bathroom did. :/ Mopping at 5AM - adventures in home ownership!)

What a lovely weekend! I was full of fail for a huge chunk of the weekend and still managed to have a great time.

Friday, I met up with goldfrog, Mistress S and cass_lee and started driving for Montello. I had forgotten one or two minor things, which already had me feeling dum, but for which we had found workable solutions.... when I realized I had outsmarted myself. I had put the Sleeve in the one place that I could not, would not forget it - in a safe pocket in my car. Problem: I had at the last minute decided to carpool with the ladies and neglected to move said garment into cass_lee's van. Fail. Epic Fail. Since we were already significantly on our way, we tried to problem solve. We decided to press on, since we were almost there and fish was calling... While we were enjoying the best fish fry in the Midwest, the lovely mightyjesse stopped where I had the car parked to check whether I had actually locked it. Sadly, yup, I had actually succeeded with that. :P We were discussing driving back to Madison when I got an idea - I convinced AAA that it would be OK for them to open up my vehicle for my roommate fencingkitty even if I was not there. The operator was not thrilled with this plan, but was ble to be cajoled. Happily, that plan worked.... except that my car apparently has an alarm on it (who knew? :P) and it went off as soon as they opened the car and would not allow the car to be relocked. I thought about it a bit and decided that I didn't care that it remain unlocked - the most expensive thing I had in there was $50 worth of linen and the only person in that neighborhood who would know or care was already int he van with me. That problem solved, the rest of the night proceeded happily and with little to no incident. I chatted with a collection of most excellent ladies while I finished goldfrog's gown - the wonderful arebekah kindly did the hateful, hateful buttonholes, but the rest is all hand-finished in blind stitches. (I have the dress back for some minor improvements/seam finishings, so if I have time, I think I'll hand cover the buttonholes...) I got to bed at a reasonable hour (at least by my reckoning) but late enough to have had quality fun.

Saturday, I got up and enjoyed a lovely breakfast with ladies from the Bad Baroness apartments before dressing myself and goldfrogfor the Princess' Sleeve Tourney. As always, it was a wonderful tourney to watch and I particularly liked her method of choosing her Sleeveholder. In the end, Vincent had the day and I hope he serves her well. After the tourney, we had a wondrous lunch provided by arebekah and former_callixte and then I watched a bit more fencing since the melees had started and spent some time delivering gifties and lost and found items. Then, it was clearly time to send Eithni home. Marion had a nice little nap and then appeared down by the field in time to watch the last of the pick up fights. Then there was the Baronesses' Happy Hour with chocolate Martinis for all, followed by a lovely dinner in the restaurant. damej alluded to a drink related incident in her account of the evening: I ordered with dinner, as is often my wont, both an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic option, in this case a mojito and a Diet Coke. The very new waitress somehow convinced dear Lazarus Gage that one of his friends had seriously ordered a "mojito-and-Diet-Coke." When it arrived, I promptly asked to have it rectified, but the mistake drink was passed around. It actually was not too bad, tasting something like an alcoholic Diet Coke with lime, but 'Rigo decided this was Just The Thing and proceeded to order several of the new drinks... We dubbed the drink a Co-jito and the version the most wise Don Gauge mixed up for Rigo a Rigo-jito. ;)

The evening party was lovely - ego_id_non_feci did a wonderful job - there is a special mix of laughter, starlight, and fire that always makes for a good evening. Many partook of the gambling and other pursuits, but while Marion may sometimes be a bad girl, she is at heart a good English Protestant girl and was appropriately scandalized at the goings on... Gambling and loose women! Marion may be very naughty, but even she is no man's doxy!

When the mosquitoes got to us, we moved indoors, where townies and a bachelorette party provided ample entertainment. Also as alluded to by damej here is a photo of the freakish item of the night - the Phallus of Unusual Size.



goldfrog and I decided to send it to R to see what his Shinto persona would make of it. ;) The night wound down earlier than I would have expected, but in a pleasantly drama-free sort of way. The worst behavior was probably 'Rigo eating a pine cone... you had to be there...

Sunday began, as it often does, somewhat later than the schedule implied. fencingkitty's melee scenario went off wonderfully. Yup, thats the story. ;) There were some successful authorizations that morning, though, including the lovely and talented ego_id_non_feci! Congrats, lady! Then the Open School Challenge was held, with many good bouts and a win for the School of Tyranny, thanks to their mercenary forces from the Midrealm. At that point, the Bad Baronesses decided to pack up and head for home. We considered driving to Milwaukee to meet up with gwyneth1362, but decided we all needed a shower and a nap and less time in the car, so after an appropriate interval, we reconvened at my house for tacos, to be joined by all their respective men as they were available, since R and Sir D were off at Ages and delayed by the black hole of time and money that is SR Harris...

Today, I spent the better part of the day toiling under the sun like a fool with my hired minion, bookotgrove. He was a rented mule for the day, and I worked him accordingly. :P However, he was good natured about it (even bringing me Strongbow!) and we got really rather a lot of work done in the yard and garage. (More work needs doing, though, and I need a babysitter to make sure the bees don't get me dead, so if any of you are looking for minionage (payable in cash, linen, or other barter), let me know...) After a very long, very hot, very well deserved shower, I had a HUGE and utterly gratuitous bacon cheddar burger at Red Robin with fencertand mightyjesse. Round out the night with drinks and conversation at my place with those two plus fencingkitty and you have the makings of a very good, if tiring, weekend. Thank you to everyone who made it possible and delightful!

First of all, to everyone who came to Gulf Wars North, especially those who helped out with food prep or clean up - Thank You! Special kudos to ego_id_non_feci  for all her work!

Friday night fencingkitty and kumakun were still packing when ego_id_non_feci and iarroganti arrived. Noting his tragic lack of linen clothing, kumakun and I began working on a new pair of pants lateish in the evening. He was doing all of the pinning and sewing, I was just providing technical support, so I whipped out a shirt for him in between giving directions. We were up entirely too late getting it done, but the shirt was finished and the pants were at the hand sewing and buttons phase by the time fencingkitty and kumakun went to bed. I stayed up a bit later yet, prepping fabric for Sunday's dye-fest and baking bread to send as provisions to Gulf Wars South.

Saturday morning began entirely too early, but as soon as I was up we were off and running! Sol was our first arrival and right away pitched in to help with cooking, but she was very quickly followed by many others and the house was very soon filled with people and crafting on all floors. I am happy to say that the Home for Wayward Girls was able to provide all the materials and facilities the various crafters and cooks requested, save a flour sifter, but a suitable substitute was procured even for that. The crafts of the day included sewing, embroidery, knitting, research, martial arts of various sorts, fletching, armoring, cooking, and more. iarroganti and lrdfaelan brought me a fun mid-cooking surprise - they went out for some party supplies and came back with a great stuffed froggie! :)

The food supply could only have been called abundant all throughout the day. There were snacks and goodies available all day and at dinner time the kitchen was nearly completely covered in food! I sampled a little bit of everything and was just sorry I didn't have the capacity for more! I particularly liked the BBQ turkey damej brought and the lamb nuggets we made, even though they were nearly the death of relativelylucid and ego_id_non_feci who were unfortunate enough to inhale my pepper powder. arebekah, although she knows me to have a high tolerance for hot foods, failed to read the ingredients on the spice jar I identified as being my "hot pepper powder" and so applied it liberally to the meat, unintentionally unleashing a chemical weapon against the other fine ladies. Other than that incident and some minor messes, dinner went well. Afterwards, we indulged in fruity drinks, including margaritas, pear martinis, cosmos, and more. I failed to remember to bring out the Goldschlager, but we did enjoy some tasty Jello shots (thanks teffan!) and passed around shots of a Tobermory 10 year Scotch that Robert the Stout brought to share. I didn't take photos during the party because I was so busy with infrastructure procurement/cooking/research assistance/socialization, but I could not resist this one of my dear little apprentice working on his linen shirt.


Tasty linen!

Late in the night, after some of us had partially recovered from dinner, we capped off the over indulgence with a sundae bar. I think the party finally shut down around 4AM, but I stayed awake another hour, again prepping for the dyeing day on Sunday.

Today a smaller group of ladies assembled at the Home for Wayward Girls to work on dyeing while others went to the Stock Pavilion for practice. We got a slightly late start, in part due to the evils of Daylight Savings Time, but ego_id_non_feci, dread_ex, arebekah, Alissende, and I were productive enough over the course of the day to make up for it. Because the various dye shop orders were delayed, we decided to forgo working with the limited amounts of madder and cochineal that we had on hand and instead worked with onion skins and birch bark dyes. I DID receive my 50 pound bag of alum, however, so if we decided we wanted to pickle kids instead of just boiling them, that is an option. ;)



Dyeing uses a lot of alum as a mordant, but I generally would not have purchased quite this quantity, except that I found it at a food supply warehouse so inexpensively that, even after paying for shipping, it still was a quarter of the price as I would have paid for the stuff from a dye supply store.

Sadly, the birch bark dye was largely a failure, yielding only a tannish color, but perhaps the dyestuffs were of poor quality since I had skinned a downed and partially decomposed log for the bark. I'll have to try again with fresher ingredients sometime, but it can be difficult, since it is the inner skin that produces the dye, so the dyestuffs cannot be harvested from living trees. If anyone is cutting down a birch tree, let me know...

The onion skin dyeing went much better, producing a range of yellows and greens. We discovered through this process that the three-kindergartner pot is probably iron, not whatever metal the merchant told us, since the test samples from the red onions skins turned green, not red. Post-washing, the dyed fabrics turned green-gold, so any true greens will need additional iron assist, but a mordant may not be strictly necessary with this pot. Photos of the results will be forthcoming, as soon as the washing is done. The first finished samples washed up beautifully though - that particular batch of heavy, loose weave linen was just scrumptious. Tragically, I only have 10 yards or so left at this point...

Here are some preliminary pictures of the dyeing process:


Smile and say "Mordant!"


Mmmm... A beer, linen, and goose-shit green dye, what more do you need?


At Gulf Wars North, we even had a green lawn!

Special thanks to Alissende and goldfrog for the loan of their turkey fryers - I really need to get me one of those. More fire is always fun and these worked perfectly well, even with the ginormous pot.

So, now that everyone has gone, I did some cleaning, passed out for awhile, will do some more cleaning (but much of it will wait until tomorrow), and then be off to sleep for a week, I think. (My body feels like I really went to a War, at least!) I had a great time this weekend - thank you to all of you who came and made it so enjoyable!

Greetings, all!

Just a reminder that Saturday and Sunday will be Gulf Wars North. If you are interested in bringing some food for Saturday, beverages and desserts are the components least well covered at this point. The menu is pretty well covered, otherwise (see below).

In-town folk - if you have some folding chairs you can bring, that may be appreciated, especially around dinner time.

Oh! And as a bonus - I just got my order from Oxbow Books. Yummy food, yummy drinks, AND yummy books - what more do you need?

Today's Thing - Directions!

I recently started decorating and outfitting my spare room. I decided I wanted to have a "high-end hotel"-type feel to the room, with all sorts of amenities on hand. I already had stocked the closets with fluffy towels, wooden hangers and a selection of toiletries and oft-forgot items but decided I should also include a "local guide" like many hotels have, since I sometimes "host" guests while I am out of town myself.

Therefore, today's Thing is a practical thing - Eithni's Guide to Madison! I included common things like local and regional points of interest, local eateries, transportation options, and such, but I also included more specific info that is likely to be of interest to my guests, like the local practice site and the best fabric and thrift stores in town.



Front, including Madison maps, transportation schedules, fliers, and the local "Annual Manual" guide to Madison.          


Back, including regional attractions like the Mustard Museum. The red-backed page is directions to the local Urgent Care, because I am paranoid.

Just for fun and to complete the "hotel-like" feel, I also acquired a Gideon Bible. *grin*

I have gotten three things I have very much wanted tonight -

1) I have a front closet! It is now just for coats and outerwear, complete with gorgeous cherry wood and black metal hangers. Larger parties will still need to resort to coat piles, but there are now two dozen hangers just awaiting guests' coats to hold. The baronial banners have gone upstairs to live in the guest room...

2) I have a guest room/library! Granted, ideally, I would like to have both a library and a guest room, but for now the combination will do. ;) I am just so pleased that, once offered welcome and guest-right, I have a snug little place to put my guests. I can now house two in reasonable luxury on feather beds covered in down comforters, around four before we need to begin filling couches, at least eight before anyone hits the floor. Half the guest room closet is reserved for guests' effects and extra bedding, the other half for the Barony's more fragile fiber-related items.

3) My house was full of love and laughter, even if it did not belong to me... There is a joy and deep contentment in my soul to see happiness and love shared between those who so richly deserve it. A much less intangible and much more valuable thing than either of the other above sources of happiness.