Yesterday was an absolutely amazing day, we got to make our own frame drums!

I had some doubts going into this about how good a drum I could make. I don’t see myself as a very musical person, and for most of my life drums were foreign things that other people used and made, not me. I saw making a drum as a great challenge and was happy to tell myself “nothing to be ashamed of if your drum doesn’t turn out, it’s the first!”

Then on Thursday night we journeyed for our drums. I met with a color-changing snail in the lower world who told me that I just needed to relax and my drum would be fine. Good advice. Whenever undertaking something like this I tend to be an obsessive perfectionist, which is no good – I get worked up about things if they’re not perfect and I have a miserable time with it. This time would be different, I’d do my best and not worry about the details. Have fun, work hard, and come out with whatever I come out with.

The results? Absolutely stunning.

Our drums this morning. They are still not entirely dry in all the corners and thick bits, so we can’t take them out and play them, but already we get an amazingly good sound when we test them. Aren’t they beautiful? Mine’s the one on the left. I can hardly believe I made something so beautiful, I’m absolutely thrilled!

The back of our drums this morning.

It was a beautiful day for making drums, warm out, sunny, perfect! Some people worked inside the garage, and some just outside (garage door was open so it was one big space really).

The elk skins when we pulled them out of the water they were soaking in for 2 days. I really couldn’t believe how floppy it was, like a thin piece of rubber, the skins were so hard and thin when we put them in the bucket on thursday.

The first step is punching holes in it for the sinew (also soaked and floppy) to go through. The skins aren’t hard, but they are somewhat thick and it’s skin so it has the tough qualities of skin.

Stringing the sinew the first time, this is just to get a basic shape in place and stablize it so it can be tightened.

This is the first stringing of our drums. After it’s strung you go around a few times to smooth everything out, tighten it, smooth, tighten. It’s hard work, and many of us had trouble with the sinew breaking if we pulled to hard. Finding what was too tight and not tight enough wasn’t easy.

This is after going around a few times tightening, you can see that it really starts taking shape when compared to the previous photo.

Eventually our drums were finished being pulled, smoothed and tightened and we put them outside on the wood pile to dry. All of this took us from about 10:30am until 1pm, when we took a break for lunch.

After lunch it was time to make the beaters. This is harder than it looks! We spent about 2 hours working on them.

We were finished around 4. My hands were sore from everything I’d done with them, but I was exhilarated. My drum is beautiful! I actually made a wonderful, beautiful musical thing and didn’t beat myself up over it! It’s so perfect!

[EDIT]I just received the group picture from Jim Frank of us with our drums, photo by Jim Frank:

After the drum-making I was way too pumped to just go home. I was so excited about the drums and how well this whole sm thing is going that I told Michael I wanted to go out. We came home and dropped in IRC to see if anyone was around and wanted to see Serenity with us, but alas, no one was. So we went on a date to the movies, just the two of us. We ate at Max & Ermas, where the food was good and service was excellent, the wait to get a seat was bad but we called ahead so we missed most of it.

We got to the theater for the 7:55 showing, I was pretty excited. I avoided everything that talked about the movie, didn’t even watch the trailers because I wanted to be entirely surprised, all I knew about the flim was that my friends who had gone to see the preview shows said it was awesome (and I had the unfortunate luck of reading a journal entry yesterday morning that mentioned something about it, d’oh).

The film was amazing! I admit I was somewhat skeptical that a movie based off of a TV show (even a great TV show) would be good. But it was, one of my favorite movies this year, and it’s been a good year for movies!

Today we might make sushi and have some carrot cake. We haven’t made any solid plans, I want today to be a relaxing day. Too much “we have to be at $place by $time” this week.

I had a good day yesterday.

When I came into work there was a confetti explosion on my desk, and my boss had left a card and a gift, aww! How sweet! The gift was a very nice cat picture frame (I have a half dozen pictures of Caligula hanging around my cubicle). I got cards from a few other co-workers, overwhelmingly cat-themed – oh dear, am I that cat lady? Another co-worker has a husband who works for one of the big pharmaceutical companies in the area and she’s always giving everyone company advertising stuff – pens, pads of paper, tissues, lotion and the most fun one yet, a pedometer! She gave me one of the pedometers because she “knows how much I like gadgets” *glee* She also gave me another picture frame (I’ll put a picture of Michael in that one) and a candle. So nice!

At lunch my boss took me and the other woman in our department out for lunch at Applebees to celebrate my birthday, it was yummy.

After work Michael made dinner and then we headed down to Malvern for the Shamanic drum circle. On the way down we stopped for gas and I got out of the car to pull a leaf out that was stuck to a windshield wiper since we left the house. For some reason I didn’t just toss it aside, I kept it and decided to bring it with us to Malvern.

The drum circle was interesting, there were a lot of new people, and only 4 of us were there because we needed to do the drum making too. I had a nice time, when we finally got to pick out the elk skins for our drums it was about 9pm, we put them all in a large bucket of water and them Jim asked if we had any herbs or anything we wanted to put in. We didn’t have anything… except that leaf! So I went to the car and looked on the ground to find where I had tossed that leaf, I found it and put it in the water with the drum skins.

We got home around 10pm. I was tired, but took a few minutes to check my email and drop into IRC. I went to bed soon after.

I’m still tired. This morning I didn’t want to get out of bed, less than usual sleep and the fact that it was so cold outside of the snuggly covers of the bed made getting up difficult. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the cold, it’s a very refreshing feeling after this summer. It just makes getting out of bed much less appealing. And it was colder than I thought, 41F outside when I got up, and we had the windows open! No wonder Caligula invaded our bed last night! (Wow, “Caligula invaded our bed” sounds really freaky o_o we’ll have to name our next cat “Fluffy” or something with less perverted associations).

And now it’s Friday. I’m wearing the pedometer, it’s fun, counting all my steps. The only problem is that it talks o_o Talks when I set it, talks if I hit a button on the side. I’ve managed to hit it twice today, d’oh. But so far I’ve walked .79 mile, woo! I can see this silly thing becoming quite an addiction – creating websites! graphs! fun statistics about how much I walk on workdays and weekends! Or, more likely, the novelty will wear off by tomorrow and I’ll let it die.

It’s beautiful out, I’m going for a walk now.

[EDIT] Of course I go for said walk, it’s so nice out, and the pedometer falls off and hits the ground. It didn’t hit that hard, I don’t think much of it, put it back on. About 20 minutes later I look at it and realize it hasn’t changed at all. It’s broken! Arrg! Stupid cheap thing! Oh well.

Today is my birthday! %D YAY!!! I’m 24 now.

And happy birthday to and too!

I love carrot cake. More than chocolate cake. More than pie, more than ice cream, more than brownies more than just about every dessert I’ve ever had, those few desserts that surpassed the carrot cake in deliciousness were exceptional occasions and not repeated.

I think just about everyone I know in real life knows I love carrot cake.

So guess what I’ve eaten every day since Sunday?

Carrot cake!

Birthday week is always the most yummie. Not only do I get my favorite cake, I get to try different kinds from different places. Sunday (and leftovers Monday) was a fairly basic cake from a grocery store, not terribly elaborate (baked in a bread pan), not too much frosting, but also not too many nuts. A pretty good cake! This was from Michael’s mother.

Tuesday at work they ordered a half chocolate and half carrot cake from Clemens. That carrot cake was really good, nicely decorated for the two of us in the office with September birthdays, lots of yummie cream cheese frosting – especially on the corner piece I got. I was forced to bring some home ;) so I’ll be enjoying some this evening as well.

But not all carrot cakes were created equal, and although I’ve never met one that I didn’t like, there are characteristics that make some yummier than others.

Carrot cake has some key tasty ingredients:

Carrots
Spices
Nuts
Cream Cheese frosting
(some even have raisins)

My favorite arrangement of these is:

Lots of carrotness
Not so much spiciness
coconuts rather than walnuts (This is difficult to find, I don’t actually like walnuts, but I can handle them in carrot cake)
Good amount of frosting, but not too much

And so, the top 3 carrot cakes in this area come from the following places:

Woodside Inn, Schwenksville – This is 2 miles from my house, they’re pricey and their dinners are nothing to write home about. But oh, my, god, the carrot cake there is the best ever! (chocolate cake is very very good as well) They meet all my perfect carrot cake requirements! They do make them special order for people to pick up, but I’ve never looked into it. I should, it would make the most perfect wedding cake.

Whole Foods Market, North Wales – They make the most amazing desserts, so when I’m done filling up my cart with whole grain pasta and healthy fake meat sausages I can splurge on dessert? I guess so! I convinced Michael to pick up a carrot cake from there once, and we’ve been hooked ever since. I’m happiest when we’re able to get our hands on one without a coating of walnuts on the frosting (that’s a bit much, I end up trying to take them of), but it’s always good stuff and the normal size is 10″ – good size for just two of us.

Dutch Oven Bakery, Limerick – This is a wonderful, dense cake. I couldn’t believe how heavy the box was when we bought one. But oh how yummie it is! I guess the density is the reason we generally don’t go with this cake, it’s so filling and not so good to bring home for just the two of us. We usually enjoy this with other carrot cake loving friends. Besides, if I go to this bakery for a carrot cake I know I’ll end up leaving with a few danishes and chocolate chip cookies too.

Nice, I just wrote a whole entry about cake. I’m such a girl.

We’ve been busier than usual lately.

Tonight I think I’m going to finally take some time to clean the Rav4. Poor R4 hasn’t had a bath in over a month, and it’s been a few months since he’s been completely vacuumed and cleaned inside. It’ll be nice to do that while the weather is still nice.

Tomorrow we need to hit the grocery store, then relax for the rest of the evening!

Thursday (my birthday!) we’re going down to the Malvern Sweat Lodge to soak the skins for the drums we’re making and participate in a Shamanic Journey group.

Friday night we’re headed over to a show for Michael’s uncle, he’s a sculptor (website) and we’re excited to show up and show our support, his stuff is great.

Saturday we’re heading back down to Malvern for the actual building of the drums.

Sunday we are thinking about going to Assi plaza and getting fresh fish to make sushi at home. This will be my big birthday present! It should be fun. And if it doesn’t work out we’re going out for pizza. I win both ways! Mmm sushi…

I’d really like to see Corpse Bride and Serenity sometime soon, but I don’t see it happening for another few weeks, next Friday is most certainly reserved for Wallace and Gromit and more than one movie in a weekend is a bit much (especially for my wallet! Freaking $9-something per ticket…).

I am having way too much fun with this. “discovered” it this afternoon.

hour:~# apt-cache show oneko
Package: oneko
Priority: optional
Section: games
Installed-Size: 156
Maintainer: Steve Dunham
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.2.sakura.6-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.5-13), xlibs (>> 4.1.0)
Filename: pool/main/o/oneko/oneko_1.2.sakura.6-1_i386.deb
Size: 34762
MD5sum: 685372cbafab3248b8eb654f82ae057f
Description: a cat chases the cursor (now a mouse) around the screen
A cat (neko) chases the cursor (now a mouse) around the screen while
you work. Alternatively, a dog chases a bone.
Tag: game::toys, interface::x11, use::gameplaying, x11::application

Awww! And now you get screenshots.

oneko kitty running over irssi

oneko kitty sleeping

I’m running it as: oneko -tora -bg grey

…when you’re using IE and have no form of adblock.

Do people just get used to the constant barrage of popups and advertisements?

It makes me crazy.

Gosh I’m tired!

Today we spent the day over at the Malvern Sweat Lodge for a “Work Day” which consisted of chopping and stacking wood, pulling weeds and a few other small projects. Jim, the owner of the lodge and our teacher of shamanism, has been really great to us and we figured that helping out with this work day was the least we could do. Michael split wood with a woodsplitter and I spent most of the time weeding and piling wood. It was warm out, but not too hot, it felt good, especially when the fall wind blew through.

A little after 1 in the afternoon I was getting pretty tired, and Jim sent Gloria and I up to the store for some potato and macaroni salads and some desserts. I was all to happy to ride up with Gloria, guess what she drives?

A Mini Cooper Convertible! *Just* like this one:

*GLEE* It’s a nice car, six-speed! She said that she’d never been ticketed for speeding until she got this car, but now she has two warnings and a ticket. I am not surprised, this car screams “pull me over!” And six-speed, she willingly admitted that you only use that when you’re going 70+ and that’s when she got pulled over. And the dashboard looks like an airplane! It’s so cool, everything is engineered in that car for the highest coolness factor %o

Still, I don’t think I’ll get one, it rides quite low to the ground and I live on the hill of death.

We went back to Jim’s and set up food for lunch, ate around 2:30. Jim makes the greatest chicken! It was a great lunch, especially after working so hard. We finished up and hung around there until about 4:15. It was nice.

Around 4:30 we left to go to the “Authentic Native American Powwow At the Okehocking Preserve” in Willistown Township, only Jim, Gloria and us stayed long enough to head up there. We seem to have missed all the “events” for today but we were able to see the vendors, one of whom is Mia, from our Shaman group. Mia is the artist of Guiding Spirit Design and her artwork is absolutely amazing, I knew some of her artwork would end up at our house somehow, and today was the day! We bought a print of this picture: Gemini. Neither of us is a Gemini, but we don’t believe in Astrology either, we just thought it was a beautiful picture (although Capricorn was rather stunning as well). We brought the camera, but only stayed long enough for a couple pictures.

Of the main powwow area (of course nothing was really going on..):

And one with (clockwise from left) back of my head, Jim, Mia, Gloria:

I looked around the other vendors to see if I could find the walking stick I am looking for but had no luck. We left around 5:30, I was pretty exhausted.

Now we’re home. I’m going to make some breaded chicken and relax for the rest of the evening.

But first, a cute picture of Michael and Caligula.

OK, putting the camera away now.

Seriously, what the hell?

I’ve been meaning to take a picture of this bull for a long time. It’s about 2 blocks from our house, in a normal, wooded suburban area – this bull is on a corner, on some guys lawn. It’s so random, and scary when you’re taking a walk in the evening and don’t expect it.

I don’t tend to have the type of friends that send me stupid forwards, but the workplace is a different story. People here delight in sending out junk to everyone, each time I delete it and send a polite email back to them asking not to send forwards to me.

But one boring afternoon I decided to read one, the subject was: “A good idea”

For some reason, instead of deleting it, I filed it into my miscellaneous folder. I’m glad I did, this stupid mail has stuck with me. Not because it’s a good idea, but because it’s such a horribly perfect example of the misplaced sense of entitlement that so many middle-class Americans have.

And so I proceed with my sarcastic, liberal response to this. I didn’t send it back to the person who sent me it, but perhaps I should have.

Oh and I’m not going to mention that the woman who sent this to me has a signed photo from Laura Bush in her cubicle because this really is a non-partisan issue and I don’t entirely blame our inept president.

Oops.

From: Co-worker
To: Everyone, in, the, office
Subject: FW: Fw: A good idea re: Gas Prices

> This is certainly worth a shot and it helps protect
> the troops in Iraq at the same time.

I’m sure.

> I heard we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon
> by the end of summer. Want gasoline prices to come down?
> We need to take some intelligent, united action.

I agree, let’s stop buying popular grocery-getting giant SUVs!

> Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

Let’s hear it Phillip, no let me guess. We rally to make the government and corporations pass energy policies that actually encourage conservation and development of new technology that doesn’t depend on a non-renewable natural resource!

> This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t buy gas on a
> certain day” campaign that was going around last April
> or May!

Gosh I hope so!

> The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew
> we wouldn’t continue to “hurt” ourselves by refusing to
> buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it
> was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea,
> has come up with a plan that can really work.

I don’t know about the oil companies, but I laughed because this is extraordinarily short-sighted. The fact there were 2432 different versions of this forward, each with a different no gas day, aside.

> Please read it and join with us!

OK Let’s hear it!

> By now you’re probably thinking gasoline priced at about
> $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.19 for
> regular unleaded in my town.

$1.50 is super cheap. The demand world-wide has increased dramatically over the past decade, and gas prices go up in that model just like everything else.

I’m quite sure $3.19/gallon is still the cheapest gas in the world.

> Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have
> conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas
> is CHEAP at $1.50-$1.75, we need to take aggressive action
> to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace…. not
> sellers.

Oh, I’m conditioned by the oil companies and OPEC nations? Sorry, I thought it was basic economics – supply and demand. I don’t deny that the oil companies do things to exaggerate this model, but they aren’t entirely to blame for gas prices doubling. This rate that you give is quite reasonable.

But I agree that we do need aggressive action, make your next car a fuel efficient car, you’re just commuting to work everyday after all, why do you need a Hummer? Cutting your gas consumption by more than half would drop demand, prices will come down. You know who else this will teach a lesson? The car-makers, we want fuel efficiency, not giant SUVs that get 8MPG.

> With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we
> consumers need to take action. The only way we are going
> to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in
> the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas!

Yeah, that’s what I said.

> And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

Bu
ying a more fuel-efficient car doesn’t hurt yourself. Crash tests have shown that those giant SUVs aren’t more safe than a safe car. Do some research into safety tests and then buy accordingly.

Additionally, there is no risk in raising the awareness about the lousy energy policy in this country. Contact your local representatives and tell them you want your state to pass stricter policies when it comes to fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions. Several states already done this. It might lead to a short-term rise in how much it costs to get your car inspected, maybe you’ll need to put a few bucks into the vehicle for it to run better, but in the long run it will help.

> How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop
> buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if
> we all act together to force a price war.

“War” seems like a strong word, but alright.

> Here’s the idea:

I can’t wait!

> For the rest of this year, DON”T purchase ANY gasoline
> from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON
> and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be
> inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices,
> the other companies will have to follow suit.

Wait, what? This sounds as silly as the no-gas thing. Do you work for a competitor to Exxon/Mobil? More importantly, do you seriously think this will work?

[EDIT] I don’t deny that Exxon/Mobile is evil, I just don’t agree with the reasons outlined in this email

> (Tony’s words: I already don’t buy gas from Exxon/Mobil because
> they get their crude oil form the Middle East and some of that
> money ends up supporting terrorists to help them kill our troops
> and I’ll be damned if any of my money goes to terrorists even
> if it’s unintentional because my son is a Marine, so I buy
> gas at either Gulf or Sunoco because they get all of their
> crude form the US or Venezuela.)

Holy crap. Tony, I’m sorry, you just totally threw me for a loop. Do you know what else indirectly supports terrorism? EVERYTHING! Especially that Ford Explorer in your driveway.

Maybe I was harsh, I just got myself labeled a liberal who doesn’t support our troops. Everyone knows that Venezuela is our buddy, just ask Pat Roberts. We certainly should buy from them instead, there haven’t been any whispers about us invading them too if we had the resources *cough*

> But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of
> Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It’s really simple to do!! Now,
> don’t whimp (sic) out on me at this point.. keep reading and
> I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

Please don’t, or I’ll be forced to degenerate further from a liberal political commentary to “Email Cartoon” sarcasm.

> I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you
> send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)… and those 300
> send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) … and so on,
> by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people,
> we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers!

(Now you’ve done it!)

And if you don’t forward this you’re not a patriot and maybe you are a terrorist and hate america and you’ll never get a boyfriend!

> If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten
> friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
> If it goes one level further, you guessed it…… THREE HUNDRED
> MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10
> people and DON”T purchase ANY gasoline from EXXON and MOBIL.
> That’s all.

MATH IS NEAT!!!

> How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out
> to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION
> people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!
> I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential,
> did you! Acting together we can make a difference.

OMG LOL LOL LOL!!!!11 THAT’S AMAZING!!!

> If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

i don’t understand all ur math :( but u sound smart i will forward it to every1 in my addre
ssbook kthxbye!

> PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30
> RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.

ALRIGHT BECAUSE I AM ENTITLED TO CHEAP GAS BECAUSE I LOVE AMERICA!

> THIS CAN REALLY WORK! It will work even FASTER if you send
> it to everyone in your email program. I just did.

OK MY EMAIL PROGRAM AOL CAN SEND EMAIL SO FAST LIKE ASAP BBQ!

I’m done now.