I don't mind the rat race but I could do with a little more cheese.

Personal Pennsic gear is staged in the entryway, clothes are hanging on a rack in the dining room, and the cooler is waiting for perishables in the kitchen. Everything but the cooler and my bag of street clothes is ready to go in the truck tonight. Hubbyfink asked me last night if I was excited about going back to Pennsic on Wednesday and I was not, to be perfectly honest. But today, now that the end of prep work is in sight, I have butterflies in my stomach from excitement.

Between me and the end of the workday are the completion of site drawings for three Canadian nodes, a mid-year review with Bossman, a high level design for a router consolidation in Bangalore, a staff meeting, and answering any emails which require my attention. Should make the day fly, right?

Up - I don't have to sew anything for Pennsic. While procrastinating on ironing linen with which to make Roman clothing, I pulled all my linen dresses and boy clothes out of the SCA closet to see what, if anything, might work for this year. Happily, everything I couldn't wear last year now fit perfectly and a few items are actually much too big. I left the fabric on the sewing table and spent yesterday ironing dresses, tunics, and smocks. I cannot express how thrilled I am not to have to sew.

Down - Got into a self-loathing spiral after taking my measurements while celebrating being able to get into clothes. I've lost one inch on my tummy, waist, and hips since February. But but but... I've lost 10 pounds and I've been working out and and and... Of course, that would explain why I haven't done much in the way of dropping pants sizes in many, many months. Hubbyfink tried cheering me up by reminding me how strong I've grown this summer and how I'm able to do things that I couldn't do two months ago. I hate getting all tied up in numbers. I need to focus on how I feel and I felt pretty great until I pulled out that blasted measuring tape.

Up - The monitor, mouse, and keyboard Bossman sent last week arrived today and work perfectly. I'm so happy to once again have a fully functional workstation.

Somewhere in the middle - OMG Pennsic land grab is this weekend!!!!! Wait, this is totally an Up, provided the labor disputes don't turn into a strike and I have to give up my vacation. Bossman keeps telling me to plan on being able to go camping, but I'm still a bit fearful.

I'm on a call from 6pm to 8pm and I decided to log off work for a couple of hours between my regular work hours and the after hours call. During that time, I hauled Pennsic gear up from the basement and packed my clothing chest with medieval undies (smocks, breeches, hose). While packing my trunk, I made a distressing discovery: I have only four light-weight smocks. I forgot that I had thrown out four or five smocks earlier this year because they were so badly stained or worn out beyond repair. I have three medium-weight linen smocks, but that's still not going to get me through twelve days of medievaloid camping.

So. Guess what I'm doing as soon as I get off this call?

Good gravy, how'd it get to be noon-thirty? Must be all that work I've been doing. No conference calls or firedrills to disrupt my groove. What a delightful change of pace.

Second quarter exchequer reports are rolling in. This makes me a very happy regional officer. I think half of my groups have reported as of this morning and we're five days ahead of the due date. Whoo hoo!

Mostly lazy weekend. I wanted very much to start staging camping gear in the dining room, but I knew that it would drive me bonkers if all the gear were piled up for a week. It's not like I need to hunt things down anyway. We have a shelving unit which is devoted solely to camping gear in the basement. Everything stays packed in its respective bag or box until it is used. Well, everything except the bedding. I went ahead and piled the wool blankets and duvet cover on the dining room table. And a couple of pillows. Oh dear. I'm not sure where the sheets are. I'll need to find them tonight. I usually keep the sheets and featherbed in the blue trunk, but the fabric I purchased at Gulf Wars is still stowed there. (Yes, I know.)

Oreo has become a better pet. He still gnaws on the protective cord covers, but he hasn't destroyed anything in several weeks. I'm even able to hang the toilet paper roll the correct way without him unraveling all the paper. He snuggles with me in the morning while I hit my snooze bar over and over and he pays careful attention to my morning and evening beauty routines. I'm so glad he's a part of our family.

Hubbyfink, Margie*, and I are now pre-registered for Pennsic. I've had a change of schedule and plans and will be able to attend Land Grab as well as my usual week-and-a-half of camping. Hubbyfink will be onsite for the three weekends. Margie's not fond of camping and will stay home and terrorize Oreo while I'm gone.

So. I need to finish my pink gamurra, make a bunch of big-sleeved Italian smocks to replace my more narrowly sleeved English smocks, and knock out an overdress or two. I'd like to braid up the hanks of light blond hair in my craft drawer so I'll some fake hair that almost matches my current hair color. Those are pretty much the only projects I need. I'd like to add more decoration to the tent, but that can wait a little longer.

Hubbyfink's project is to create slats for our new bed.

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*I've been using Basil as our ghost since we started camping in canvas, but I didn't feel right about registering him; although, technically, he's more of a ghost than Margie at this point.

I realized that my gamurra sleeves are just a skosh too short to pin to the dresses. A quick eyelet at the top of each sleeve and a lacing ring on each shoulder strap of every dress fixed that little problem.

I tried making a full cuffia (coif) last night but having too few brain cycles left provided me with a less than satisfactory result. I have jettisoned making any of these until next month at the earliest.

I have also jettisoned finishing the pink gamurra from the project list. Maaaaaybe I'll take it to Pennsic and do the handwork in camp. Maybe.

I have figured out which hat I will wear to the Mad Hatter Tea Party. Muahahaha!

I'm two days in to "Torchwood: Children of Earth". I didn't read under anyone's lj-cuts about the mini-series, but I couldn't help but notice all the emotional posts in plain view at the end of the series. ( Speculation which contains a spoiler for Day 2. )

In other TV news, I've got the DVR set for "Being Human" (vampires AND werewolves? It makes both Hubbyfink and me happy [we're both ehh about the ghost]) and "Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead". We should be home from Land Grab in time to watch DW, but I'm taking no chances. I can catch up on "True Blood" via OnDemand so I don't have to give up precious DVR space for that show.

Oh hey, "Coraline" and "Robot Chicken: Star Wars Special Episode Two" are out on DVD. I might have to snag those and "Children of Earth" when the latter is released next week.

(Huh, yeah... the intarwebs say I was born on a Friday; all this time I've thought it was a Monday.)

Anyway, I wound up being super busy with work yesterday. Thank goodness I was at home or it would have been another shattering day. I seriously need some vacation time. Obviously, there was no illicit garment finishing while on the clock. Once I was off the clock, however, I got to work on drafting a cioppa (another style of Italian overdress) pattern and building a cioppa out of the oh-so-stretchy fuschia gabardine. The bodice pattern sort of worked, but when I used the wool, the stretch of the gab plus the stretch of the bias cut caused all sorts of ugliness. When I get another chance to try making this garment, I'm going to use the same v-neck method Cynthia Virtue recommends for houppelandes. It certainly worked on my purple houppe; we'll see if cutting an on-grain line and then pulling the shoulders apart from each other give a better looking v-neck. And then we'll see if I can keep those shoulders pulled apart rather than trying to snap back towards my neck. Thankfully, I have enough fuschia gab to make a new bodice. We'll see if I have the endurance left in me to make the dress.

In not-fail news, I have striped the major seams of the pavilion roof and am halfway through painting the seam near the top of the roof. Tomorrow, I'll finish that seam and paint the seam along the top of the valance and then I'm done painting the pavilion for this year. I hope it looks as good in one whole piece as it has looked as individual parts on my sewing table. Tonight, I started the handwork on the yellow gamurra. Still have the hem and eyelets to go. I managed to finish the hems of all my breeches (by machine, guh) and sewed the bedskirt panels which needed extra length.

To do: finish the stack of gamurra sleeves (ugh), build a couple of cuffia (coifs), sew another giornea or two (at least those are easy and can be mostly machine-sewn) and... is that it? Yeah, I guess that's it. Oh, and then pack for Pennsic. This time next week, Hubbyfink and I'll be sawing those proverbial logs in our pavilion.

The goose turd green gamurra is complete and hanging in the closet. I have become an eyelet-making machine, rawr. On deck: blue gamurra.

Six pavilion seams are painted. In another twenty minutes I'll return to the craft room for the next three seams.

Hubbyfink worked on clothes rack v2* this morning by sanding down the edges and smoothing the holes for the rod. While the tent dried, I slapped the first coat of stain on the uprights and second coat on the rod.

Hubbyfink has also taken all the hardware off the green chest so that it can be repainted blue. He's going to sand it in preparation for the painting either tomorrow or Monday.

I don't feel cocky, but I think we'll get everything done. We should be hitting Troll about this time in two weeks. Yay!

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*Version 1 was made of much too wide boards. Someone thought the rack needed wide boards. Someone else reexamined last year's photos of the borrowed rack in her pavilion and noted that the uprights were much thinner than what we had on hand. That same someone purchased narrower uprights two weeks ago and had the other someone drill all the holes last week.

The uprights for my clothes rack are sanded and all holes are drilled. I can't think of a better way to have spent a couple of coolish evening hours in the backyard after a hard and angry-making day of work. I need to get some more stain, slap it on those puppies, and call the project done.

I'm thinking about taking a personal day on Friday and I'll probably start the tent painting. Can't wait!

Now to download "Point Lookout". Mmmm... bloodthirsty rednecks.