Weekend report

This weekend was fairly uneventful for me. My parents were due home from their week in West Virginia on a church youth group work mission, so my sister and I spent most of Saturday cleaning up the house. No, there were no wild parties whose evidence had to be destroyed; rather, my sister had a sinus infection that filled no less than one and one-half kitchen garbage bags with used tissues, and that tends to mean things like 'cleaning the kitchen' and 'vacuuming the pool' go somewhat neglected. My parents were shocked to find the house so clean, and even more so to discover that Ali had recovered enough to cook a really first-class, kick-butt dinner. Kudos to my little sister.

Sunday was spent at the NY Renaissance Faire, because it was cool outside whenI woke up and I figured it would be that way the rest of the day.

(pause for evil laughter)

Yeah, you get the idea. Thankfully, my Ren garb is menswear, and is therefore quite baggy around the strategic upper-body sweat zones. I sweltered a lot and spent a lot of time at the water fountain rather than paying $2.50 for bottled water, but it was a fun experience - especially whenI hung out around the archery booth. I had my Hoyt recurve with me and wound up demonstrating proper use of the booth's bows to more than a few people. The guys runing the booth didn't seem to mind. Most common phrases of the day:

1. One finger over, two fingers under.
2. I know it seems odd, but if you're shooting right-handed, the arrow goes on the left side of the bow. It'll fly straighter.
3. Pull with your shoulder, not your arm. The muscles in your back are stronger.
4. Don't worry. Even the great Genghis Khan had a hard time the first time he went out with his bow to hunt mice as a little boy.
5. No, they don't sell these here. Great whacking broadswords that can decapitate a man, yes, but bows, no.

On another note, the gentleman who was kind enough to email me about the Chinese History web site (eee! eee! a real scholar liked what I wrote!) sent me some information about eunuchs in CHinese history and government. I'm going to have to give these guys their own entry, I'm thinking. There's way more stuff than can fit in the Zhou entry, and it's just not fair to leave a topic about which there's been so much misinformation over the years up to a couple of paragraphs in a single article about something else entirely. Gonna have to write up a special disclaimer, though. This is definite legs-crossing territory for at least half the readers.

Today's pulp survival tip is #69. Do not let anyone know you play a musical instrument unless you want to wind up being forced to do it to prevent the Evil Villain from killing somebody or the Supernatural Menace from running amok.

They say that when you fall off the horse,

the only thing to do is get back on. . . well, I never actually fell off a horse*. But the theory's the same whatever you do, so today I went to Top Quality Foods, formerly (and to a lot of people, still) known as Maxim's Oriental Market. Screw worrying about posertude, I haven't had scary Japanese candy in months. Today's purchases:

One box of chocolate almond smash Pocky. Verdict: Not too bad, but since I'm not enthralled with nuts to begin with and the cookie-like portion of Pocky has never made me happy, the only thing that'll make me likely to buy Pocky again is if I can find the legendary Pocky For Men.
One bag of Coconut Candy. Perhaps this should more accurately be labeled Candied Coconut. It's slices of coconut meat, dusted with what's either confectioner's sugar or coconut powder or both, and it tastes somewhat sweeter than my memories of normal coconut. Not bad, even if it is the only food product I currently own without an ingredient list.
One bag of my old favourite, W Taste Coffee Candy. It's squishy. It's Japanese. It's got coffee powder on the outside. It's good.
And, for 99 cents, two cans of banana-flavoured grass jelly drink. Nothin' keeps people from drinking your stuff in the office refrigerator like buyin' something that scares the frick out of 'em. Besides, Na informs me that it's supposed to be good for the skin, or something.

It also turns out Top Quality is now selling bubble tea. Or will be, anyway - they've set up a counter for it and they have signs up, but the signs aren't in English, so if they say 'we'll be opening this for business in September', I don't know it. I'll check it out next time.

*(Unless you wanna count the time last year that Daisy suddenly decided she wanted to lie down and roll in the dust while I was still on her back, and I didn't so much fall as jump off as soon as my feet were within safe reach of the ground. I got back on another horse, thank you.)