I started to work on the vast amounts of junk in our living room. First target was a large amount of unprocessed mailed that we had brought in and neither of us had adequately reviewed. Most of it went straight to the recycling bag. There was one really nasty surprise: A form from the County for Tom’s benefits that we had missed and is now weeks overdue. I will fill it out and send it in. I suppose if I grovel abjectly and abase myself sufficiently they will accept it.

Our Michigan friends called about 6 PM Friday, saying they were coming in that evening. So I had to find or make places for our four house guests. I moved mia_mcdavid‘s stuff off of the bed in what was Tom’s room. I then cleared a path through the stuff in her office to the bed in the back of that room. It was not quite as hard as digging the Panama canal :-)>

For the other two I was going to rely on the couch and sleeping bags, but Mia reminded me in a phone call that we had a double bed futon in a basement closet. I dragged that up, and, after clearing sufficient space, laid it out on the living room floor. I found a couple sheets and pulled out some of our colgaffneyis plaids for blankets. Quite appropriate plaide means “blanket” in Gaelic, and we use them for that purpose while camping with colgaffneyis.

As on previous visits, they were easy guests. They cooked breakfast Saturday morning, coping well with our kitchen. Not terribly surprising, I have known Roy since 1969 and Donna since 1975, and introduced them to Mia in 1977.

After breakfast they relaxed for a while, then went off to the Ren Faire. They hooked up with the Morris Dancers there, who were also old friends of Roy and Donna, and had a good time. They invited me to come along (they had a sufficient supply of free passes), but I declined. I guess I am sufficiently jaded about the Ren Faire (I had been there a couple weeks ago with colgaffneyis) that I preferred to work on my own projects and tasks around the house. They left for Michigan this morning. I have since returned the futon to the basement, washed all the sheets, and remade the beds.

I continued to work on the box for colgaffneyis water jug. It is coming along OK. Using grade ZZZ plywood was probably more trouble than it was worth, but it has given me some useful practise.

I am also experimenting with an old-style finish, a mix of beeswax, boiled linseed oil, and mineral spirits. I have seen this often recommended, but had not experimented with it before. The problem is that beeswax is solid at room temperature, so I had to melt it before adding the other ingredients. Think about those ingredients….. I did not burn the house down. I pulled it from the heat as soon as I started to see smoke. The mixture is cooling on the back porch. Sometimes my interest in traditional technologies has interesting interactions with my mad scientist instincts :-)>

I went out to the Metro’s fabric warehouse this afternoon and bought some wool and linen. It will become clothing for colgaffneyis and similar events. I have this great urge to dress as a 16^th century Irishman, and now I have the necessary fabric.

I am setting up another old computer. I installed Windows on it tonight, and will install Linux later this week. An unpleasant surprise was to find that some recently purchased memory did not work–I tested it on two different computers, running both Windows and Linux. I need to find the receipt and take it back to the store. If they will not give me an exchange or refund, I know a competitor. Meanwhile, I used some other memory chips I had lying around. Not quite the same megabytes, but usable.

I went back to St. Mary’s this morning. The Rector preached another fine sermon, in which she referred to a book by one of her professors. I put 2 and 2 together and guessed (correctly!) who that professor was–I knew him (and was impressed) back in 1976-77). After the service I joined a discussion group. That was a delight; I do not get many chances lately to sit down and discuss church issues with any one except Mia. It was an old pleasure rekindled, and crucial for connecting me with a faith community. I have missed it.

I thought about visiting Tom today, but with Mia absent that is chancy. He is very much a Mama’s boy. Also, there was a lot I wanted to do. I will try to visit him next Saturday. That weekend is overshadowed by a difficult work assignment on Sunday, so I thought I would make this the weekend for me.