Ah, Sunday
Jun. 28th, 2015 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teddy_radiatorTheHubs™ and I just uploaded the second episode of our 'Teddy & The Bassman' Podcasts, and I'm pretty pleased with it. When it comes right down to it, podcasting is a perfect medium for me - I can rattle away, talking about everything and nothing, and once we edit it down, I almost sound intelligent. I think I come across as earnest, full of half-baked ideas and in love with the sound of my own voice - in other words, it's a fairly accurate depiction. What I really love is editing and putting it all together with music and idents. That's the fun part. I've been promoting it like mad on Facebook - I bet my friends there are sick of the sight of me badgering them as I get the page and the group up and running.
I cordially invite you to listen in to our podcasts - we have tried our best to make them fun to listen to, and easy on the ears, and a little silly as well. You can catch us on The Bearded Pods Network, along with The Bearded Ones, and The Lucky Ten Thousand podcasts. They are both top drawer
We bought a firepit this weekend - pretty hilarious when you think that the average temp here has been around 98F all week. But I've wanted one for ages and this one had a solid 4-star rating by a respectable number of customers and Home Depot was pratically giving them away, so...
I also wanted to chronicle the addition of a chair to the SteamLib. This chair has probably the best provenance of anything I own. It was a lobby chair in a hotel in Pelzer, South Carolina. Sadly, you can find very little on the tiny town of Pelzer, and what is online seems wildly inaccurate. It was originally founded around four large cotton mills; my family worked in them for several generations, and my grandfather was one of the foremen. According to my aunt, there was a very nice hotel in town during the turn of the century, and depending on your sources it either went out of business or burned down. In any case, my grandfather acquired several of the chairs that graced its lobby. To my knowledge, I have the only one left. In my family, it was always called 'The Pelzer Hotel Chair.'
Even as a kid I had a great love for history and lore, and I pestered my aunt into giving me the chair, which she reluctantly did, on the proviso that I never sell it or give it away. That has been an easy promise to keep. When I inherited it, it was covered in a dismal brown fabric - my uncle Jan had reuphostered it, and when I took it apart to re-cover it, I found old pieces of cereal and wax paper boxes he'd used to stiffen the cloth on the sides.
It sat in my dad's workshop while I moved from this state to that, and while I was living at home with him after my marriage ended, he and I decided to work on it as a joint father-daughter project. We got as far as sanding and re-staining the arms and legs and putting a wooden seat on it (the original had been dodgy springs and mangy horsehair that we had to abandon). Dad's deteriorating health meant we had to abandon the project before it was finished, and once again it sat in his workshop while I moved to England for that stage of my life.
When we moved back, TheHubs™ and I vowed to cover it and use it in the house, but we discovered we just didn't have the smarts to do it well. Fortunately, there is a little upholstery shop in town that was willing to take on the project for a song, and it's been with us ever since. Thirty years after my aunt gave it to me, the chair was whole again.
It sat in our bedroom, mainly as a repository for clothes and the many stuffed teddys I've acquired over the years, until the SteamLib became a reality. It now looks as if it's where it truly belongs. Funnily enough, Sevvy never even jumped up on the chair when it was in our room, but he spends hours snoozing on it now:
I envision it sitting between the two bookcases, and one day I hope to have a matching ottoman. In any case, it's good to see it properly showcased in the room.
~o0o~
It's been a week of incredible highs and lows on the news front. The awful tragedy in Charleston left us all reeling, and because of it I and my fellow South Carolinians have been taking a more concerned look at the necessity of the continued presence of the Confederate flag flying over our capitol. I think the flag is a symbol of great divisiveness, and yet a part of an undesputable history of our state. The fact that South Carolina cannot reconcile those two facts means that, to me, we need to find another symbol of our history. In many ways, I don't feel qualified to debate the subject, as I have never been part of either camp. I didn't grow up in a family that imbued the flag with any sort of feeling of either supremecy or oppression. It represented no great emotional impact or pride for me, other than how I saw its effect on others to whom it did represent these negative things. I held a certain, arrogant disconnect from it, because it had never affected me personally. I don't think anyone in South Carolina can use that as an excuse anymore.
The Supreme Court ruling over same-sex marriage made me so very happy. I have several friends for whom this was such great news, especially here in SC where backward is the new black. There was a great meme on Facebook that made me laugh so hard I had to quote it on today's podcast - "My Facebook feed looks like a battle broke out between the Confederates and a Skittles factory."
I didn't send out any query letters last week. Boo me. This week, I have promised myself to send out at least ten. I need to get that back on track. I truly don't know why writing seems like such a burden right now. It saddens me.
Well, I'm going to retire early tonight. We have promised ourselves to get up early in the morning and tackle the jungle outside our house. Our neighbours will probably sing Hallelujahs - we have the tattiest lawn in the street. After that, I hope to get the house in shape and invite Mom over for July 4th goodies. It's been too long since we've done any entertaining, and I miss it.
At least I hope to retire early. Some pillock is already shooting off fireworks. Typical redneck guy; too eager to wait, shooting off early. Sounds like he has a million of them. Either that or World War Three has started.
I cordially invite you to listen in to our podcasts - we have tried our best to make them fun to listen to, and easy on the ears, and a little silly as well. You can catch us on The Bearded Pods Network, along with The Bearded Ones, and The Lucky Ten Thousand podcasts. They are both top drawer
We bought a firepit this weekend - pretty hilarious when you think that the average temp here has been around 98F all week. But I've wanted one for ages and this one had a solid 4-star rating by a respectable number of customers and Home Depot was pratically giving them away, so...
I also wanted to chronicle the addition of a chair to the SteamLib. This chair has probably the best provenance of anything I own. It was a lobby chair in a hotel in Pelzer, South Carolina. Sadly, you can find very little on the tiny town of Pelzer, and what is online seems wildly inaccurate. It was originally founded around four large cotton mills; my family worked in them for several generations, and my grandfather was one of the foremen. According to my aunt, there was a very nice hotel in town during the turn of the century, and depending on your sources it either went out of business or burned down. In any case, my grandfather acquired several of the chairs that graced its lobby. To my knowledge, I have the only one left. In my family, it was always called 'The Pelzer Hotel Chair.'
Even as a kid I had a great love for history and lore, and I pestered my aunt into giving me the chair, which she reluctantly did, on the proviso that I never sell it or give it away. That has been an easy promise to keep. When I inherited it, it was covered in a dismal brown fabric - my uncle Jan had reuphostered it, and when I took it apart to re-cover it, I found old pieces of cereal and wax paper boxes he'd used to stiffen the cloth on the sides.
It sat in my dad's workshop while I moved from this state to that, and while I was living at home with him after my marriage ended, he and I decided to work on it as a joint father-daughter project. We got as far as sanding and re-staining the arms and legs and putting a wooden seat on it (the original had been dodgy springs and mangy horsehair that we had to abandon). Dad's deteriorating health meant we had to abandon the project before it was finished, and once again it sat in his workshop while I moved to England for that stage of my life.
When we moved back, TheHubs™ and I vowed to cover it and use it in the house, but we discovered we just didn't have the smarts to do it well. Fortunately, there is a little upholstery shop in town that was willing to take on the project for a song, and it's been with us ever since. Thirty years after my aunt gave it to me, the chair was whole again.
It sat in our bedroom, mainly as a repository for clothes and the many stuffed teddys I've acquired over the years, until the SteamLib became a reality. It now looks as if it's where it truly belongs. Funnily enough, Sevvy never even jumped up on the chair when it was in our room, but he spends hours snoozing on it now:
I envision it sitting between the two bookcases, and one day I hope to have a matching ottoman. In any case, it's good to see it properly showcased in the room.
~o0o~
It's been a week of incredible highs and lows on the news front. The awful tragedy in Charleston left us all reeling, and because of it I and my fellow South Carolinians have been taking a more concerned look at the necessity of the continued presence of the Confederate flag flying over our capitol. I think the flag is a symbol of great divisiveness, and yet a part of an undesputable history of our state. The fact that South Carolina cannot reconcile those two facts means that, to me, we need to find another symbol of our history. In many ways, I don't feel qualified to debate the subject, as I have never been part of either camp. I didn't grow up in a family that imbued the flag with any sort of feeling of either supremecy or oppression. It represented no great emotional impact or pride for me, other than how I saw its effect on others to whom it did represent these negative things. I held a certain, arrogant disconnect from it, because it had never affected me personally. I don't think anyone in South Carolina can use that as an excuse anymore.
The Supreme Court ruling over same-sex marriage made me so very happy. I have several friends for whom this was such great news, especially here in SC where backward is the new black. There was a great meme on Facebook that made me laugh so hard I had to quote it on today's podcast - "My Facebook feed looks like a battle broke out between the Confederates and a Skittles factory."
I didn't send out any query letters last week. Boo me. This week, I have promised myself to send out at least ten. I need to get that back on track. I truly don't know why writing seems like such a burden right now. It saddens me.
Well, I'm going to retire early tonight. We have promised ourselves to get up early in the morning and tackle the jungle outside our house. Our neighbours will probably sing Hallelujahs - we have the tattiest lawn in the street. After that, I hope to get the house in shape and invite Mom over for July 4th goodies. It's been too long since we've done any entertaining, and I miss it.
At least I hope to retire early. Some pillock is already shooting off fireworks. Typical redneck guy; too eager to wait, shooting off early. Sounds like he has a million of them. Either that or World War Three has started.
