averygoodun42 | Quick "hi"

Hello! I'm not available right now, but if you leave your username and an IP address you can be reached at, I will return your comments as soon as I am able to.

My new computer arrived! The good news is that it's a glorious machine that has a stable OS (Linux) that will, in the long run, make life so much less frustrating.

Bad news? First of all, connecting to the web is not trivial. We'll be putting money away for a while to buy the router needed to be able to use the DSL we've got, so in the meantime, we'll be using the old, dying computer.

Also, we're not used to Linux. It will take some getting used to. That will be a bother.

But, at least a lot of basic programs are already installed by my wonderful, fabulous B-I-L. I think that this is DH and my combined birthday present... I suspect that, anyway. Fabulous present. Fabulous.

So, that's one reason why I won't be available, is because DH has been hogging my computer *cough*his computer*cough* so I haven't been able to do anything.

Another reason is because I'm in the middle of a couple of projects that are kinda time consuming and exhausting. For example, I'm building a coffee table. I finally got sick of having Babe knock over the masonite and canvas frame perched atop the plastic crate and have started doing something about it. At first it was very ambitious. I have a piece of leftover maple plywood that I was going to make a frame for and it was going to be a work of art. In a shoddy kind of way.

Then I looked at the price of maple furniture legs. Yeah. Buying a cheapo table at IKEA would be less expensive. And, looking online to see if I could cannibalize some lower end IKEA coffee table for its legs, I found one that was just about the same size as the table I was planning. For $10 more than I paid for the maple frame to hold the plywood (which I then returned).

So a trip to IKEA was planned. Then my fiscal responsibility caught up with me. I looked at the masonite and canvas frame again, and said the hell with it. I nailed them together with braces in between (it's rather scary watching Babe bend the masonite as he stomps over it) and have been making a frame for it out of the disassembled pine-board door frame that's been waiting to be taken out to the trash for the last few months.

It actually might look quite nice when finished, though I've decided I do need to buy something to finish it. A piece of glass. The masonite/frame thing will be floating in the frame (for easy reclamation when masonite or frame is needed for a painting) and for a decorative finish I'll use whatever I like underneath a piece of glass. Thing is, I need to either buy a piece of glass the right size, or a glass cutter to use some of the glass that's in the pile of trash waiting to be tossed.

It'll be shoddy, but it'll be a coffee table that's in proportion to the room. Mostly. So that'll take some time to finish up (need to sand the legs (reclaimed excess handrail that's been painted) down to the wood, attach the floating frame to outside frame, and then deal with the glass situation. Bah.

And there's some other stuff as well. Like Babe being a 20-month-old kid who needs more attention than ever. And rehanging all my artwork into some semblance of attractiveness. And the discovery of playgrounds. And actual, honest-to-God Summer weather. And...

So, you get the picture. Actually, when I'm all finished, I will post pictures. I hopefully will feel like bragging.

And now that I've spent a good lot of time writing this post instead of revising chapter 11 (and starting chapter 12), I guess I should go...

But then there was the funky dream I had last night where Draco and Hermione got trapped in this old lady's house with mo wands or means of escape. Turned out the lady was a werewolf, and the full moon was the next night. THey had to work together to figure out a way out of there, but there was some seriously messed up magic going on preventing them from a simple solution. It was not romantic at all (the previous part of the dream was, which was the set up to the old lady's house) but they seemed to be building up a rapport when Hermione was magicked out of there to learn from a Goddess/Potions Mistress
how to make a certain potion (wolfsbane?).

Oh, and it all took place in the Alps on a Hogwarts ski vacation type deal where everyone was being paired off. It was actually quite similar (or at least reminiscent) of "His Draught of Delicate Poison" by the ~~cruel~~ lovely Subversa. I think there might have even been a certain Mountie in the mix, though the only thing I can remember about that was a red coat...

So, yeah. I'll have to see if I can salvage that and make it into a story. Maybe. If I have the time.

When I'm not writing or revising...

bye.