Or, Buffy meets A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is just too good for words.

And this is why I stay the hell away from teen!witches.

Wow - everybody repeat after me. Playing with herbs can be as dangerous as playing with drugs. More so, ’cause herbology is not that common field of study. Well, unless you grew up at a ren faire. Or had a wilderness/survival nut for a parent. (I had the former.) Thankfully, the poor kid in question just wasted a lot of saffron (My god, does she have any idea how much that stuff *costs*?!) and ended up dyeing herself yellow. Embaressing, but not catastrophic. She might have just as easily managed to poision herself.

There’s potential for several rants here. The “Herbs do not fix everything” rant, the “grumble grumble stupid little teen!pagans rant”, the “massive influx of trendy neo-pagan books aimed at the teen, preteen, and fluffhead crowd is not doing us any favors” rant… and I’m sure there’s one or two others knocking about in my head.

Oh yeah, the “internet research should be taken with a grain of salt and backed up with some good reputable books and at least one actual person who knows what they are doing” rant.

So, of course, if I try to go off any any of this, I’m going to loose focus (more than I already have) and wind up making none of the points I want to make. Gah.

After seing the problems Dori Smith has been having with a disgruntled customer, I began thing of ridiculous questions/demands that get tossed at my mother during an average day. (She runs her own buisness selling her sculpture and books at art/craft shows and ren faires)

1. “Do you make these yourself?” (After watching her do a live demo)
2. “I bet I could make this at home” (Heh - you could try.)
3. “Can I barter for this?” (This usually from drunk ren faire patrons - one guy wanted to trade a *turkey leg* for a $48 dragon. Grrr….)

My current pet peeve? LJ’ers who angst and whine when they come to the shocking conclusion that even though they call it a “journal”, they are posting their (perhaps) innermost thoughts to a *web page* that anyone in the world can read. And (gasp!) people can link to them too!

Hey, I’ve gone off on this tanget before, but there’s a new twist. Some of these kiddies have taken the attitude of “security through obscurity”, thinking that only a small circle of friends and family will care enough to read their postings, and so refuse to deal with the fact that they are posting on a global medium. The idea that *total strangers* are suddenly reading them and linking to them is met with shock and even a little horror.

To all of these folks, I have to say, thank you. I needed a good laugh.

I want a tote bag. Actually, I really need one. my current bag of choice is an army surplus knapsack that is literally older than me. My mom used it when she went to college, and handed it down to me sometime in my early teens. It’s been with me everywhere, and I’ve mended, patched and replaced things on it to the point where it is barely recognizable for what it once was. I don’t think it’s going to survive another round of mending.

This leads us to my current project - creating a new bag that will serve me as faithfully. I would buy something, but I’m picky, and good totebags or knapsacks are very hard to find. So I’m going to make one. (Hey, I’ve got this great sewing machine lying around that don’t use nearly enough…)

Yesterday involved hunting around the remnants table at the local fabric store until I found some nice light upholstery fabric (and fighting the urge to pick up some muslin and try my hand at making a new skirt….)

Then came the cutting, assembling, pinning, and sewing. The cats got locked up in the bedroom for this (as I quickly remembered why I don’t sew much anymore) Well, thanks to my inability to judge size accurately, I now have something that is less tote bag sized and more large duffelbag sized. So tonight will be the night of seam ripping and trying again.

But at least I’m having fun.

Copulating couples target of ‘Roachman’ doomsday attack

Also known as the DMV. ‘Cause I had to renew my driver’s license, and although I could have done it by mail and saved myself some hassle, I like having a current photo ID on hand. Saves me from other hassles.

So, what did I learn?
1. Toddlers are evil.
2. Parents of toddlers are even *more* evil
3. The snacks in the vending machines are almost as old as I am (uck and bleah… worst .75 cents I ever spent)
4. My new license picture sucks even more than the last one. Sigh.

All that being said, it was a relatively painless visit. The folks behind the counter were on the ball, I had all the needed info, it was just the waiting around surrounded by the living drek of the earth that sucked.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an actual quote:
“May I have your attention please? Everyone, especially those of you with small children, please do not dial 911 on the pay phones unless you really need the police to show up. Thank you.”

I had been wondering why the officer was there.