Happy Imbolc

OK people, today is Imbolc, the first celebration of Spring, actually Impending Spring. The name is derived from a word that means “first milk” when lambing ewes started lactating in preparation for the new lambs. Traditionally I get my first haircut sometime between today and Valentine’s Day because I don’t have any sheep to shear, and because after leaving it grow all winter I really needed a haircut by now. Well I still need a haircut, and I’ll probably get one “soon”.

Other news I really need to make a trip to the nail salon and get my toes done as I’m getting caught in the sheets again unless I wear socks to bed. We have an extra blanket on the foot of the bed to keep toes from getting cold so wearing socks to bed is just redundant.

And I found the path to get back to my old comfortable composing page, so I don’t have to jump through multiple hoops just to create a post. Seriously, what they are doing is not unlike reinventing the hammer and saw every few years and expecting carpenters to know how to build houses in spite of not knowing how the new tools work. Seriously, all I want is to be able to type what I want into the page and be able to do italics, underline, and strikethrough as tools to lend emotional context to my text. and be able to edit the width of the pictures to match the width of the columns of text. Let me test that one.

Well everything works the way it did before, as you can see. So nice to not have to learn how to use a hammer-saw-brush to make posts, and have tools that do what I want them to do. I just wish someone would ask before changing and getting rid of the tools I have been using, especially since there was no notice of how these new tools worked, or how to use them to do what the old tools did.

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My ears are freezing on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I’m writing this post today looking a lot different than I did yesterday. For one thing I changed shirts 😉 For another thing I got my head shaved for Spring. Also yesterday I buffed my old Warlock7 with a few new magical items from the new campaign, one of which was a stole (like a priest would wear) that upped my Eldritch Blast from 4d6 damage to 6d6, and the new group also added 3 to all my stats retroactively, because one of the treasures they got added 3 to all party members’ stats. This raised my dex to an outrageous-for-humans level of 21 (the max for normal humans not magically enhanced is 18) as well as enhanced all of my saves because some of my saves were pretty abysmal before the upgrade (it’s a wonder Sparrow survived long enough to reach level 7). Also group rules required me to reset my HP to maximum based on the +3 upgrade I got from their treasure. This was a major help because my HP went from 37 before to 63 after the upgrade. Again, it is a wonder Sparrow ever survived to reach level 7. I was playing Sparrow way out of my pay grade. Or his, at any rate well above what his stats should have allowed him to survive.

At any rate we had another Searing of the Sheep ritual to banish Winter this morning. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

It was a grey overcast at the start of the ritual.

Lighting the chalice and the god/dess candles.

Protecting my clothes from tiny bits of cut hair.

The first cut is the deepest.

My “barber” is having fun while my arms are trapped.

A “mow-hawk”

And now the beard is gone.

Making the final buzz

The hair piles up.

Nobody wants to see my lip

And once again we have banished Winter from Texas for another year.

PSA, Opus

Pictures of the shearing on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I’m doing this post on the old desktop machine because the new laptop does not have image manipulating software. I got the pictures from the Shearing of the Sheep ritual last month but had to do a lot of brightening up so that they were usable, because while the flash was bright enough to dazzle me it wasn’t bright enough to get a good picture. There was some blurring of some of the pictures because of laughing as everybody was feeling a bit giddy about the ritual (since it was announced that the cutting part would be as goofy as possible).

First we had to figure out how to keep the hair where the birds could get it and not down my shirt.

And a few minutes later it’s easier to see we re-purposed a garbage bag as a barber’s apron.

Moving outside to the chair under the parking lot light.

And here is where the Mohawk starts.

And a pause to “admire” the handiwork.

Both ears showing now.

I looked so distinguished with just the tuft on the chin.

And the finished project.

As I said the focus for the camera was adversely affected because the photographer was laughing so hard. I hope you enjoyed the pictures of my shedding 4 month’s worth of hair and beard.

PSA Opus