The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

So Camille had threatened to drag me to the New Age shop in Evansville. The original game plan was this: Camille would go pay her car insurance. I'd meet her in the Depress-O-Mall parking lot. Then we'd go to the New Age store in downtown Evansville.

What actually happened was this: Camille went and paid her car insurance. Then she called to ask if I'd like to grab a bite to eat, and I said sure, whatever she wanted to get was fine, as there isn't much I won't at least try. We visited the Super Buffet on Burkhardt, and Cecil (Camille's fiancé) was in tow; I'd only met Cecil once or twice before, and I'm always trepidated when people bring their significant others, but he's a good guy and it was nice to get to know him a little better. (Camille said she was worried that I'd feel like a third wheel, but it wasn't like that at all.) We got to sit right under the widescreen TV and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, had fun making up our own dialogue (since we couldn't hear the actual dialogue), and mocked the D&D nerds at the next table. Camille also had a run-in with the chocolate fountain.

We went downtown to Earth Comforts, which for a tiny little shop (that I'd probably passed a bazillion times, given that I worked downtown for yonks and continue to play downtown; it's right next to the main Rape Me Up The Ass Bank building) contains a lot of stuff. It isn't a conventional New Age shop--most of their inventory is locally made and/or handmade, so it's not the usual Llewellyn texts and whatnot. I hadn't been going to buy anything, but wound up dropping $20 on candles and incense, since 2010 seems to be the year of Having A Little Faith so far and I kind of miss my pagan roots. ALSO: they have a fuckton of tea, which you can buy by the ounce, so I bought four ounces of ambrosia tea. I am excited, and will definitely need to pay them a repeat visit.

Camille and I were turning over packets of herbs; I mentioned my childhood/preadolescent obsession with herbs, which has faded but which I think I'd like to revive, and then this segued into a discussion of Camille's encyclopedia of magical uses of herbs and how she'd left it at home.

Camille: Did you want to go to Borders? :D
l33: Well, I wasn't planning on it, but we can. (I was driving, since Camille's car has no working heat.)

Cecil had another obligation, so we parted ways at the New Age shop, but Camille and I headed over to Borders, where I proceeded to go nuts with the rest of my Christmas money (MOST OF THE STUFF I BOUGHT WAS ON THE SALE TABLE. THAT MAKES IT OKAY); I checked out with my bargain notebooks and so on, we sat down for coffee and flipped through tattoo magazines (one of Camille's obsessions), and then I got up to buy archaeology magazines and a bargain book of old maps because old maps are awesome and I totally don't feel any Terra Incognita resurrection coming on why do you ask. (forgottensanity: Yes, I know I owe you e-mail. I will get to that. But first I must sleep.)

Sometimes the best days don't go according to plan. I got almost nothing else on my list accomplished, but it was a good day nonetheless, and I don't feel any self-loathing about it, which is even better and less characteristic of me. Damn braces; bless relaxes.

I'm thinking about revamping my bio entry to include such hot-button issues as my atrocious taste in music and omg I love samurai and so on, but I haven't actually gotten to it yet.

Just got done with The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd the other day. I wasn't sure what to expect, but hey, it's Ireland, it's historical fiction, I had to read it. On the whole, I enjoyed it, though I had some nitpicks with the first part, set in the pre-Christian Iron Age.

Being familiar with the mythology, my brain kind of wanted to put a lot of the character names in the mythological framework and kept going "lolol Conall Cearnach" even after I told it not to. This was rather irritating, though I was ultimately able to make it stop.

( SPOILER WARNING. Do not read if you have any intentions of ever reading this book. )

Also, I believe the word is geisa rather than geissi, but I've seen it spelled at least two different ways, so I can't be sure. Also also, I'm not familiar with Irish noun-case morphology. Whee, lookit l33 sling linguistic terms like she has any idea what the hell she’s talking about! (For those not familiar with the word, it is sometimes translated as "taboo" but also has overtones of "condition", in the sense that a condition is placed on one that one must commit or omit certain behaviors or acts, or in the sense that one lays such a condition on oneself.)

Oh, and this article should be required reading for canars new and old, or for anyone who has ever found it necessary or expedient to take on a magical/religious/magicoreligious name. (Yes, I do have one. Yes, I broke one of the rules mentioned herein, although not for that reason; I use an epithet of several goddesses, because of its meaning. You'd have to really know Greek religion to know the epithet in question, though, which I'm sure does not make it okay.) I shall excerpt just a bit for the delectation of dethorats, as her beloved cousin (or his namesake) is directly mentioned.

It took one person of Lady Pixie's acquaintance only a few minutes to blur together Gwydion son of Don, and Girion, Lord of Dale, into the craft name "Lord Gwyrionin"--and several months to find out that the name he had invented, and used throughout the local pagan scene, was also the Welsh word for "idiot".

Also, the enterprising Patrick Brown is in the process of turning THE ENTIRE ULSTER CYCLE into a webcomic. (I perhaps extrapolated a bit too much, but the impression I gained was that ultimately the story will cover the entire Ulster cycle.) What he has thus far is rockin' with Dokken. AWWW YEAH.

In conclusion, the ancient Celts. :D