We've got about 45 cubic feet of books. I know there are at least a couple dozen stragglers in various rooms, but that's the bulk of them.

I really hate packing.

While I was buying the guitar cases today, I asked the salesdroid if he had any gut strings for classical guitar. Though he assured me they had three different brands, I was suspicious. I asked, "Real gut, not nylon?" He confirmed, and grabbed a pack. "I don't see gut actually mentioned on the package," I said, after inspecting it closely.

"What do you mean by gut?" he asked.

"You know, 'catgut'. Sheep intestine. Like they make high-end violin strings out of."

"Ewww," he said. "No, we don't have anything like that. These are nylon." Sigh.

Also, today I bought a hole saw which proclaimed on its packaging that it would cut through metal. I wore all the teeth off it before I'd gotten halfway through the lid of an ammo box. Well, that was $11 well spent...

Sometimes, when life is pissing me off, I just have to find a way to keep my brain occupied, to take my mind off things for a while. Coding useless Webtoys is a great way to do it. So I made the Stephen Colbert "On Notice Board" Generator.

It's still kind of rudimentary; about the best I can do in native PHP is to rotate the text, so it's limited to three lines for the moment (and even those are far from perfect). I could get a bit closer with ImageMagick, but the version installed on my Webhost is several years old and missing the necessary functionality. I've asked for it to be upgraded, so hopefully I can get something better working soon.

What I really need is a perspective transform function (either written in PHP, or an external tool that'll take image data from stdin, do the transform, and spit out the modified data to stdout), but I can't seem to find anything appropriate. I may have to write one.

This past weekend was our last SCA event in Trimaris. It was mainly spent sitting at a table selling some things we didn't want to pack up and move with us (fabric, books, various trinkets). For me, pretty much the entire event was an exercise in patience, as I knew what was to come at the end of it.

Funny thing... after the event, I learned from Karen that someone she'd spoken to wanted to talk to me, but thought I had something against him. Oddly enough, I'd thought he had problems with me.

It was held in the church where Karen and I got married. It seemed smaller than I remembered, but I think they still had the same hymn numbers up on the board. If I had to do it all over again, I would (but there'd be some changes in who stood up with us; fortunately, I'm not above a little historical revision with Photoshop).

Finally, it was time for Court! There was a lot of genuinely funny business (such as the King intimidating the local seneschal, who'd walked into the room marked "ROYALS ONLY" and seen the Queen in her "small clothes"). Awards were given, people were thanked... and then Karen was startled to hear the herald call for Mistress Ginevra Visconti.

"You have something for us?" the King asked. Karen looked panicked for a moment — then remembered that she had asked to be released from her vow of fealty (I'd been released from mine at Crown Lyst, as at the time I didn't know Karen was planning to go to Res Domestica). "I'd forgotten about that," the King said, and then they had her place her hands on the Sword of State, which apparently vacuums fealty out of people.

The Queen explained to the populace that Ginevra was being released from her vow of fealty so that she could serve the Crown in her new kingdom without reservation — and then had the herald read out an award: for her long service to Trimaris, a Court Barony. (There's a brief video clip of her reaction here.) Hooray! [Ed. note: Karen says she thinks it happened the other way around ("Before we release you...").]

I was highly amused after Court; among the people congratulating her was the Premier of the Order of the Laurel. Though I was standing right next to Karen, she refused to look at me, and very pointedly excluded me from her comments ("I'm sorry to hear we're losing one of our number", etc.). Like school on a Sunday, as the Fat Albert gang used to observe.

So once again, the midterm elections are rolling around, and the legislators are wasting time on symbolic issues rather than running the country. But in the latest salvo in the gay marriage debate, I noticed this little gem:

"Marriage is not about love," volunteered Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who noted his 31 years of matrimony. "It's about a love that can bear children."

I wonder: if this is the justification for Rep. Akin's stance, is he equally intent on barring the elderly or infertile from marriage? Would a woman with a tubal ligation, or a man with a vasectomy be denied the right to wed in Akin's world? What of those who simply choose not to have children?

Oh, how I wish a reporter would ask him that.

Karen and I nearly died laughing from the photoshop on last night's Colbert Report. I couldn't breathe. I suppose it's funnier if you're familiar with the running joke about Stephen Colbert's Black Friend, but even in its own right, the expressions are just perfect.

Once installed in the frosty non-tropical Midwest, I should have a lot more free time, and won't feel so drained in the evenings. And then the fun begins.

Apart from certain obligations I have to take care of, my number one "just for me" project is the as-yet-unnamed 3D animation. Today I secured the services of a professional radio announcer to do the opening "In a world..."-style narration; he was kind enough to do it for free. It's good to have connections.