camwyn | Well, it happened.

Another winter of beautiful warm days has given way to another winter-spring-summer of drought emergency. Bah. I would happily put up with Cleveland weather every winter if it meant we got a proper amount of precip in our reservoirs. (Don't start throwing things. I spent four winters in Cleveland. The only time we didn't get enough rain and snow to choke a horse was when it got so cold Lake Erie froze over and the Coast Guard had to fire up the icebreakers two and three times a day.) Perhaps we'll have a rainy spring - that would help - but... I dunno. I just hope this gets solved better than it did last time we had a dry winter, because in that case the only thing that gave us back our water was Hurricane Floyd.

Meanwhile, I seem to have Spring Break tonight. I still have to confirm this with my school; last week Professor Chang didn't specifically say 'see you in two weeks', but the uni web page indicated spring break began Monday of this week. I'm a little paranoid about such things, especially when it relates to classes I like. If I do have break, I'm going to go home, make dinner for myself and my father (Mom won't be home and Dad's kitchen repertoire is restricted to stuff that has instructions printed on the outside of the can, poor guy), and then go out shooting. Bendis and I are going to the archery range for the first time.

I could use the exercise, she could use the flexibility, and there's really not a better way that I can think of to get good conversation with people who share your interests than to take a traditional bow to a mostly compound range. People under the age of about thirty see it and ask questions about what it can do and how you manage to shoot without sights/stabilizers/etc., or what it's made from, or how heavy it is since there's no letoff. People over thirty get all nostalgic and try to guess the brand of the bow and start talking about older brands or shooters of years gone by. Sometimes they try to recommend archery instructors, but I gotta be honest. The instructors around here all teach Olympic style - recurve bows, sure, but they're made of aluminum and other metals, and they've got weights and stabilizers and laser sights and such. Not what I'm looking for. I like my stick and string setup. Yes, I know, I wouldn't be so traditionalist if my survival depended upon getting dinner with the stick and string in question (that, or I'd practice a LOT more), but you know what? I don't care. Since it's not a matter of survival, I want to see how well I can do without falling back on any more tooltech than necessary. which means Bendis, really.

Other than that not a lot going on. Started watching God of Cookery last night, a movie which is so far pretty entertaining. I didn't know there were rival culinary street gangs in Hong Kong willing to go to bloody machete war over who was allowed to prepare signature dishes, did you?

Today's pulp survival tip is #155: No one is 'just a cook'. Try 'just a person who is surrounded by extremely sharp objects, large thick heavy pieces of metals with handles, and fire'. You would do well not to upset one of these people - you'll be lucky if all they do is spit in your food.