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I had a good weekend. We took Friday off and headed up north to rally the troops and head to Kingdom Crusades in Darlington, MD. Despite a late start, all went well. I'm soooo pleased with the coronet I bought from Aldred that morning. It meets all of my requirements for a fine piece of jewelry. It weighs nearly nothing, it hinges for easy transport, it's pretty and it was a good price. Woot to Mike and his talents!

I told everyone that I was originally going to buy a vacuum cleaner but apparently was now buying a coronet instead. But I went home and looked at the ever growing piles of dog hair in my house and did some budgeting and decided I could have bling bling and a new vacuum in my life.

So I ran out and bought the Dyson vacuum from CostCo. It rocks. It must say something about me that I ran out to go buy a vacuum cleaner last night and then did my own test on the living room floor. I vacuumed with the original Hoover I have and then followed up with the Dyson to see what it would pick up that Hoover left behind. It was so neat I actually vacuumed the whole house and came back home tonight to vacuum again as a test. I was one step away from making my own infomercial.

So for those who missed it, here are some pics from the weekend. Enjoy!

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We went down to Rocky Mount, NC this weekend to make molasses. My dad and uncle make it every year on the family farm. Every year, the process is a little different and the molasses comes out ever so slightly different. Here are some pictures of the weekend.

The cane gets topped and cut down, then fed into the mill to squeeze the juice out. The engine that runs the mill is an old Model A Ford with not much left to it but the steering wheel and engine and rear differential. After pressing it and filtering out any junk, it gets put in a large flat pan to cook over a fire. That process usually take five to six hours (hence the flash being used that night in the pictures). It then gets poured into donut icing buckets to be jarred.

The pictures of the farmhouse are the house where my father and uncle grew up as kids.

My Cat the Dare Devil

I left on Friday night for the event in Northern Virginia. I sat in the floor with my kitty, wondering if she would be okay. Her back side had gotten a little swollen and I was worried that something was wrong. But she was eating and meowing and acting very active and normal. So I thought maybe I was just being overprotective. Mom called on Saturday around lunch to say that Isis was sick and she was taking her to the vet. Thanks to my mother's expert care and the emergency vet, my cat is now sporting a fashionable blue collar and two shunts in her back draining her absess.

But other than angsting over my cat, worrying that I was a negligent cat mother, my weekend was great. I was worried about going to the SCA event on Saturday because of all the bad weather, but it was a beautiful day! I had a wonderful time of lounging about with friends and buying TONS of fabric at the silent auction. One particular prize was 13 yards of orange corduroy that I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but it's going to be luscious, whatever it is.

I also met several new friends on Saturday who were very nice. So I had a good little "play date" as it were.

Sunday we made great progress on a new camp bed to replace our old one. It was a fairly relaxed adventure and we even managed to fit both the old and new beds in the car to get home.

Oh, which leads me to other discussions of my car. The Puddin' and I checked in at the front gate of the event on Saturday. I was holding Rich and my membership cards. I had a check to pay for our fees. Rich was standing with me. They took our information and my check. They looked at the information and wrote Rich's name on an index card to put in "his" car. I took the card, stunned, and walked out with Rich ... and immediately started poking fun and my sweet. "Oh, can you open 'your' car so I can get to my purse? What a nice BMW you have, Puddin. I know because there's a card right in the dash that says Puddin' Puck-Eater for all the world to see." I am not criticizing those who worked the gate as they were just trying to get cars labelled. But I did get worked up about it a bit.

And on that note, I leave you with one more picture of my sweet kitten, as she has nested herself on my arms and I'm losing feeling in my fingers.