Happy Summer Solstice!

Happy Summer Solstice!

I know that a lot of people regard Memorial Day Weekend as the beginning of Summer, but Astronomically, the beginning of Summer is the longest day of the year, which (in the Northern Hemisphere) is today!

Read more about the longest day (courtesy of NASA), and see more about the human aspects of the solstice with some great pictures of Stonehenge.

From here on in, until right before Christmas, the days will be shorter and shorter, and for a while, it will get warmer and warmer before the diminishing sunlight makes it cooler.

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Here is everything you need to know about every science fiction TV show this week (and a few more shows).

Leverage premiered last night with two episodes! And, as usual, it was spectacular!

This afternoon (late), the SyFy Channel will be airing their new, very long (4 hours) movie, The Phantom. It was on last night, but I didn't get to see it due to some other shows I watched/recorded. I was going to provide a link, but the only one I could find that seemed relevant was one that was to a page that had so much data that I wasn't able to load it, and didn't want to frustrate you with it.

Tonight, we have a rerun of The Big Bang Theory.

There's also a new show that I discovered last week, thereby missing the pilot. It's called Persons Unknown, and is about people who are abducted and find themselves trapped in a small town. They don't know where the town is or why they're there, and, most importantly, how to get out. It's shaping up to be a fabulous show. You can probably find the two episodes that preceded tonight's, either on the internet or video on demand.

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If you have hypothyroidism, there is a blog post by Jeffrey Dash that you should read, print out, and show your doctor! It turns out that all the arguments doctors have been giving me concerning why they want to use Synthroid rather than natural desiccated thyroid are completely backwards. Synthroid is the one that has varying potencies and is unstable!

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Well, I saw someone at the Vet's Center on Saturday.

The day started out very early for both Holly and I. Then we ran into a bit of traffic and took a wrong turn, and arrived only five minutes late.

It was an interesting experience.

I got to talk to a nurse practitioner rather than a doctor, and she was an interesting person to converse with. She asked some interesting questions which started me thinking in new directions. She asked about vitamin D levels, and said that 4,000 IU of vitamin D might not be enough for me. It just sounds like so much! Apparently, an IU must be a very small amount, or else people really need a lot of it! If you use sunscreen, you might want to take that into account and take some supplemental D. And you might want to rethink your sunscreen use. Look it up on the internet.

Basically, since sunscreen has become available and been in wide use, skin cancer incidence has gone way up! Researchers are beginning to find that the sun isn't as bad for you as was previously thought. We always knew it actually had health benefits in the form of boosting vitamin D levels, but most people judged that they'd rather have low D (which could be boosted with supplements) than skin cancer. Researchers have also been studying the contents of most sunscreens and discovered that some of the chemicals widely used in them are actually carcinogens!

Personally, I like a bit of sun without using sunscreens. I'll only use sunscreens if I'm out for long enough to potentially cause a burn, and only use sunscreens that have an aloe vera gel base and the sunscreen, and don't have a lot of unneeded chemicals. That way, I get a bit of a tan, a dose of D, and safety! And if I do get a little bit of burn, the aloe vera gel is the best thing for it. If applied immediately after even a bad burn, it can have your skin back to normal the next day in my experience.

One thing she asked me about is joint pain, which I had, but started using Omega 3 capsules and MSM. It's been working great until this last week, when I've had more and more joint pain in my right hip. I need to go to the store today, and the pain has gradually increased over the last week to a point where I'm almost afraid to walk to the store. I keep hearing stories about women who have a bone break and fall because of it, and I wonder about what kind of shape that bone is in. 

I had a bone density scan about three years ago, and they told me my bones weren't as good as they'd like, but that I was certainly in no danger of breaking bones just by walking. But they measured it on my left hip in spite of the fact that I kept telling them that my right hip was the one in bad shape! So, I really have no idea at all.

Wish me luck on my walk!

Have a wonderful week!

Doctor Appointment on Saturday--Let the Insanity Begin!

I have a doctor's appointment on Saturday, and I'm already wound into a knot over it!

Actually, I started on this on Monday, but it wasn't so bad then. By Saturday, the only thing that will keep me from freaking out is extreme tiredness from getting up so early.

But Holly and I have to get up really, really early for this, and she has to do a lot of driving because the Veteran's Hospital in DC doesn't believe that, because I haven't been to the hospital in a while, I'm capable of telling that the hearing aids they issued to me don't work. I need a doctor to assess the problem and refer me to the hearing section.

My DVR isn't working, either, and I'm wondering if maybe I should take that along for him to look at, too. I didn't know that doctors did electronics, but then again, they don't do medical problems, either, for the most part.

This is nearly the stupidest medical thing that I've seen done that's not even really medical.

Here's some examples of things that I was told politely (usually, although one doctor did call me a hypochondriac) were in my mind and didn't exist:

• A sinus infection (you'd think they could believe you about infections, at least)
• Paget's Disease of the Bone
• Allergies (OK, these are a little trickier)
• Hypothyroidism (although most doctors won't diagnose this, but that doesn't excuse them)
• Scarlet Fever
• An overgrowth of bone blocking my ear due to Paget's Disease (the ENT at the VA hospital insisted that my ear was perfectly OK after just looking at the outside of it)
• A friend's mother was told that the cancerous tumor (the size of a watermelon) was her imagination and given Valium for it!

Doctors in the United States are a joke!

I hate doctors, and don't want to go unless there's really no other choice.

Yes, there are a few of them that are good. And I really appreciate them when I can find them.

The rest just want to get paid, avoid getting sued, and don't care if they kill you as long as you pay them.

Oh, and in the example above, my friend's mother did die from her imagination (in the form of cancer).

And, at least 50% of the time, they insist on doing something really harmful to the patient. I'm getting so I won't agree and take medication, etc, unless I look it up on the internet and verify that it's actually a good thing for me to be taking.

Well, let me stop complaining and get on with my life.

I hope you're having a better week than I am!

A Smidge of Twilight of the Dogs

John read my blog from the other day about making Twilight of the Dogs and he called me yesterday to make sure I knew that I'd made some mistakes.

One of them he mentioned was in the following photo:

The person on your far left (who I had seen around the set, but hadn't met) is Barry Sigismondi, with Ralph, Aloma and Gage, going from left to right.

John said he'd call me and go over all the corrections, which I will correct in the original post in red.

If you'd like to find out more about Twilight of the Dogs, click here. That's an archived site, and it sometimes has trouble loading. John says that the photos are all there, but you have to wait a bit for them to load. Yesterday, the internet told me that site didn't exist, but then today it loaded without a blink, so if you have a problem, try again later. Some of the photos loaded for me right away, some took a while, and some just gave error messages and refused to do anything else. It's possible that they, like the site, will load at another time.

He also said that he has copies of some photos, some of which I took, and as he gets the time, he'll scan them for me so I can put them up here. He's already put up a photo of Nancy, who I talked about in the post, but didn't have a photo of. Here she is:

John's exact caption for this (so I don't get in any more trouble) is: Costume Designer Nancy Handwork works on Mona Goss' wardrobe on location at Laurel Sand & Gravel for my film Twilight Of The Dogs. Summer 1993. 

That one costume I did for Gage was the only one I did for the movie. With that single exception, all the costumes were made by Nancy, who is really fabulous at costumes.

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Mostly, I'm posting today to let you know that I haven't forgotten you.

I am starting to write the instructions for the project I'm going to make for the Lion Brand Imagination Contest.  This particular project is not only for the contest, but it's a present for someone, and I don't want to spoil the surprise, so I won't be showing any photos here until the contest is over and it's given away.

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And I wanted to mention that I didn't realize that A Boy and his Dog was on Flix last night until right before it came on. The story is based closely on a novella by Harlan Ellison, so if you're a fan of his, you won't want to miss this movie, if you haven't seen it already. I recorded it on my DVR, but that will be gone at the beginning of next month, so the recording will go with it.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Smells Like Making Movies & Twilight of the Dogs

The first time anyone used a smoke machine around me, I couldn't stand the smell!

I asked John how he could stand it, and he said "It smells like making movies!"

That was when we were working on Invader. Later in the movie, I happened to inhale deeply during a crowd scene, and was hit with a severe coughing fit, but not long after that, I acclimated to it, and when we started on Twilight of the Dogs, and someone turned on the smoke machine, it smelled like making movies to me, too.

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Due to some personal problems, although I took lots of photos while we were making Invader and Twilight, I don't have them in my possession, although I do own them. They're stored where I can't get to them.

But, not too long ago, Tim Davis, who did special effects makeup on Twilight and a lot of other things on Invader, as well as being in both films, put a collection of photos from Twilight up on his Facebook page and he gave me permission to use them here. So, all of the photos in this post are from him.

First, let's see the stars of the show:

That's Gage Sheridan, above, in the fabulous costume that Nancy Handwork designed and made for her. There was a blue jacket with a skirt that was deliberately designed so that it could be pulled though her legs, tuck into her belt and become pants. It was very ingenious, and Gage liked it! Gage played Karuy in the film (an alien). She's a really fun person!

Here's a photo of Tim Sullivan, who starred in the movie and also wrote it.

He looks really fierce in this photo, and well he should. This was taken on location at Laurel Sand and Gravel in Laurel, Maryland on a very hot day! He played Sam Asgarde in the film.

Above is Tim Davis on the left, and Tim Sullivan on the right, dressed for the movie.

I've been looking for some photos of Ralph Bluemke, but I'm not seeing any that actually look like him. Below is a photo of John Ellis, the producer and director of Twilight, on the left, and Ralph on the right. As you can see, the character he played, Reverend Zerk, was caught in a fire at the end of the film, and you can hardly see Ralph for all the makeup. That is all makeup by the way (courtesy of Tim Davis)!

Below is (l to r) Gage, Ralph and Tim Sullivan. I suspect that Ralph was in the middle of getting made up for the end of the film. I don't know what was going on with Tim at the moment. He looks like he's got a flight suit on.

Here's a shot of someone I don't know on the left, Ralph, Aloma Alber (who did out PR) and Gage. I'm pretty sure the guy on the left played one of the deacons.

Here's a long shot of Ralph as Rev. Zerk, and he's supposed to be playing a holographic video game. That looks like Alicia Sehring in the striped shirt, and Gary Waxler in the blue shirt.

Below, we have Tim Sullivan, Bambi, who played Gertrude, and Doug, who was one of the animal wranglers on the movie. We not only had Bambi the cow, we had Doug's horse, whose name was, I believe, Diablo, a dog (right in the beginning of the film) and some tame rats.

And here's Gage, milking Bambi. I'm sure you all really wanted to see that!

Now, on to the crew as well as the cast and what happened while we were filming.

Here's Tim Pace who was the gaffer for the movie. That means he did all the lighting and electrical work, or rather his company. Light Works did. Tim was the one who built the fabulous science fiction van and the R2 unit seen in previous posts about Star Wars.

Here's Tim Davis whom you've seen in previous Star Wars posts and who did the special effects makeup for Twilight. He's got stage blood all over his hands.

Here's Aloma Alber, who did publicity for us, dressed as one of the dogs. We had a lot of extras, but John tried to get all the crew into the film somewhere, mostly in crowd scenes.

Below is a crowd scene that I was in. I also got a close up in this scene, and it's the only place in the movies I've done where you can actually recognize me.

In the front row, second on your left is George Stover, who is famous in fandom. I'm in the second row from the front, the second from the left, and my friend, Wendy Joines is in there somewhere sitting near me. My former husband, Steve DesRoches is also in there as one of the guards with guns, but I can't see where he is in this photo.



During the movie, we crucified Gage's character, Karuy. That's Gage up on the Viking rune, algiz, which is a rune of protection. That's John, looking up at her with his back to the camera.

Finally, after the introductory photos, we're getting to the ones with the stories.

One morning, Aloma and Ralph were tiptoeing around and confering on somdthing, and generally doing all sorts of stuff. I kept asking them what they were doing, and they kept telling me that they were busy and not to bother them.

Eventually, I found them right before lunch with some fabric that was stiff as a board that they had soaked in Tim's stage blood, and they were very unhappy. After some coaxing, I eventually discovered that they had been trying to make a costume for Gage. They wanted one of the white tabards like the disciples of Zerk wore in the movie (see the photo above), but they wanted it red. I informed them that trying to dye a tabard red with stage blood wasn't going to work, but since they had just failed at that, they had pretty much figured that out.

So, with less than two hours left until they were supposed to film the scene where Gage was supposed to wear the costume, I set out to create a whole costume.

The first step was to jump in the van and drive to the fabric store (15 minutes). Then, I frantically ran around the store looking for red fabric and all the notions I would need for the costume. I found it all, got a length of the material cut for me, and dashed to the check out counter, where I desperately tried to hurry the woman there. She was very nice, and attempted to strike up a conversation with me. It started with "Ooooh, that's pretty material! What are you going to make with it?" I told here that we were making a movie and that I needed the fabric to make a costume for it, and that I was in a terrible hurry. But she wanted to know who would be wearing the costume (Gage), and all about the character she would be playing. I told her about Gage and that she would be playing an alien named Karuy, and she wanted to know what Karuy was going to be doing in the scene where she would be wearing the costume. All this while, I had been trying to get her to hurry. Finally I told her Gage would be wearing it in the scene where we were going to crucify her.

The woman looked at me with an expression of total horror, rang up the sale and got me out of the store in record time!

I rushed back to the set, and sewed the costume during lunch, and had it ready for them to shoot after lunch. Also, although Gage liked the dress, she couldn't seem to figure out that the costume had an outside and an inside, and  in some shots she's wearing it right side out, and in others it's inside out. Here she's shown wearing it the way it was intended to be worn, right side out. The cut on her face is some of Tim Davis' makeup.

Not only did we crucify her, but later we also gave her a funeral pyre.

That's not really Gage on the pyre that Walter Suarez is getting ready for it's big scene. Walter did all the pyrotechnic effects for the film. There was at least one explosion, we completely burned a wall down (we built the wall that we destroyed first, and left the structure it was in undamaged), and had the fire department out for a section near the end of the film where we had the funeral pyre, and where Rev Zerk gets caught in the fire and dies.

Here's the pyre going up.

And here's the fire stunt. I'm glad Tim took this photo, because I saw Ralph standing behind the fire screaming and writhing as though he was caught in the fire but this looks like they actually set someone on fire, and if they did, I missed that.

I know. You're thinking "How could anybody working on a film miss something like that?"

Well, the movie was filmed mainly at a tobacco warehouse in Marlboro, Maryland, which was pretty open and full of bugs and mosquitoes. We saved the night filming for the end, and did it all in the last two weeks of principle filming, which happened right around this time of year. I didn't know it at the time, but at the beginning of the last week of filming, I came down with Chicken Pox. I never had it when I was a kid. I was uncomfortable, and very tired and kept falling asleep, but didn't realize what was happening because of the circumstances.

Filming at night, we had a big problem with mosquitoes. Everybody was covered in itchy little red welts, so I didn't notice that some of mine were different. And since we were filming at night, I didn't notice that I had a problem with the light, except for every morning at 7 am when I drove home. I thought I was having a problem with my contact lenses because my eyes were all teary and smeary in the morning.

I had a raw spot on the side of my mouth, though, and John said it was a cold sore. I told him that it couldn't be because I'd never had Chicken Pox, but every time he'd go past me, he'd say "That's a cold sore." I'd yell after him that it couldn't be. After a week of this, though, it finally dawned on me that I actually had Chicken Pox. I missed the last couple of days of principle filming because of it, and when I told John he said "See, I told you it was a cold sore!"

Back to Walter and his explosive effects:

It's hard to see what's going on in this photo, but there's a railing in front of a big black board with technical looking stuff that's a background for the place Karuy's supposed to be infiltrating. You can see the bit of blue in the costume Gage's wearing toward the right bottom of the board, just left of the light near the center of the photo. That looks like Alicia behind the camera.

I was there that day (actually, the photo looks like it was taken right over my head) while they were shooting because Nancy couldn't be there, and they needed someone to sit there and watch Gage for discrepancies in her costume. For example, she was fine in most of the takes, and then, for some reason, the back of her jacket got flipped up, and I had to stop them for a second and smooth the jacket down so it wouldn't cause discontinuity.

Well, she was supposed to sneak in front of the board, and then be seen and have people shooting at her as she tried to take cover. The board was rigged with "sparky hits" which are tiny charges that throw off sparks and make kind of a "pppft" sound when Walter set them off with a control board he had rigged to set them off in order to make it look like someone was shooting at her.

We did the take, and John wasn't happy with it, and said something sarcastic to Walter about the sparky hits. something about them not having enough "oomph."

We all took a break while Walter re-rigged the board, and did the scene over. We started up again, and when the shots happened, I swear everybody levitated about two feet in the air, because Walter had rigged the board with real squibs, not sparky hits, and they are as loud as real gunshots, and since we were inside the warehouse, they were not only unexpected, but deafening!

Here's my friend, Paula, made up as one of the dogs.

And here's a group of the dogs from near the end of the movie. That's another friend, Bazil White, near the right of the photo with a black shirt and head scarf, and something long over his shoulders.

I don't recognize anyone else in the photo, but we put an ad in the newspaper for extras, so there were a lot of people I didn't know that played "dogs" which were supposed to be survivors of a plague aggravated by a nuclear bomb dropped to try to eradicate the plague.

The day this was taken was very hot, and in the afternoon, Walter came around with a half a watermelon he'd scooped out and filled with watermelon chunks, strawberries, and a lot of other very cold fruit. He was walking around offering it to people saying "Potassium, anyone?"

Walter was our explosives expert, but his father had a catering business, and Walter used to help him with it, and he did things like that for us every once in a while. One very miserably hot day, he surprised us with strawberry shortcake made with frozen strawberries, and the day that shot was taken of Tim Sullivan at the beginning of this post, he broke out a whole frozen watermelon for us.

About the extras, I was talking to one of them who told me that on the previous day she and some of the other dogs had stopped at McDonalds on the way home after filming, and the girl who served them tried to give them some coupons for very low cost meals because she thought that they were really homeless!

The rest is random photos. Here's Gage in the mirror.

Here's Gage with some of Tim Davis' makeup.

Below we have Tim Davis and John Ellis.

Here's John making a toast to the crew and cast near the end of filming.

I probably have some more stories about the movie, but that's all for today.

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Knit In Public!

It's World Wide Knit in Public Day!

Well, sort of.

The website says that you can pick which day you choose to celebrate it on. From the twelfth to the twentieth of June. I suppose you could celebrate it all of those days if you wanted to, also.

The site at the link above wants to sell you lots of stuff. They have a store. But they don't tell you about knitting in public in your area. You can find out more about the history and founding of the "day" here.

I thought I could find a website to send you to with more information about activities in various places, but it seems to be very unstructured. If you google it, you can find information about a few activities in a few places, but there's no one centralized location to find out what's happening near you.

But keep in mind that you don't have to have a specific planned activity that's coordinated with a lot of people. You can just take your knitting with you and knit in public all by yourself! Then again, that makes it all just like any other day for me. I tend to carry something to knit with me whenever I go out, unless it's just walking to Safeway or the library, both of which I can see from my apartment. People on the bus ask me what I'm knitting, especially when it's a sock because I've gravitated toward the two-circular-needles method of knitting them, and I guess it looks funny to people not familiar with that method.

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I planned to knit in public at the Potomac Celtic Festival today, but Holly's not feeling too well, and she's got a problem with her foot. She says it feels like she stepped on some glass, but she can't find any glass or anything else in her foot. But she doesn't want to either walk or drive much today, so we're not going. I'm disappointed, but not terribly so. If I go, it means a lot of extra driving for her, and I hate to do that to her. It also means that if I went, I'd feel terrible from all the walking later today and for the next few days. And, on top of that, after the expense of the TiVo, I really don't have any money to spend unless I plan to starve at the end of the month.

So, I think what I should do is find some hard cider to buy and drink this weekend, and find a nice little Celtic or other special treat for myself to buy next month. It's just not a Celtic festival without scrumpy!

While I'm on the subject of scrumpy, I found the lyrics to one of my favorite folk songs, Dead Dog Scrumpy on the internet. And, as if that wasn't enough, here's a video of the song so you can hear it!



When Holly was younger, I put together a tape of folk songs that were humorous, and this was one of them. This next one was also on the tape.



It's called The Vicar and the Frog, and is here performed by Fred Wedlock. This was also one that Steve did for SCA (along with Scrumpy). They are not, I hasten to add, period songs for SCA, but period subjects. They'd both be great songs for the Celtic festival, too. I may not be getting something neat at the Celtic festival, but this is something for you.

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There is some good science fiction on TV this weekend. There will be a new Doctor Who on BBC in America this evening, The Hungry Earth.

Two of the Librarian series will be on TNT this weekend, Return to King Solomon's Mines and Curse of the Judas Chalice, plus I Am Legend, which I saw last weekend, and was surprisingly good, and Transformers, which I haven't seen yet, and don't have high expectations for, but I'm going to check out.

I watched Hancock last night on Encore, and was surprised at how good that was, too. Since it was on Encore, it'll be on again a few times in the next few days, so check it out!

There's probably a lot more, but I'm sure you can find things to watch on your own.

Have a wonderful weekend, and don't forget to knit in public!

Sad Thursday

I got up yesterday, and almost immediately, the TiVo I ordered arrived! I was going to link to information on the one I got, but they're not available anymore, and I got one of the last ones. There's a new model out instead, but that's not what I bought.

This was both good and bad.

Good because it arrived, and bad because it and my TV don't have any connectors that are compatible.

As I've probably mentioned before, the RCA plug inputs on my TV are broken, and the only input to the TV is now coaxial cable. The TiVo has no coaxial out, only RCA plugs, S-video and a couple of other connectors. But since none is coaxial, I can't plug them together.

The tech people at TiVo told me that I need an RF Modulator. They said I could get one from Radio Shack for $10. Well, it turns out that's true and not true. They do have one for $10, but it's not available on line, and very few of their stores have it. The listing said to not even bother to go to the store without checking beforehand to make sure that the particular store had it.

I checked with Amazon (and some other places), and found some very basic RF modulators for as much as nearly $200. But I also found two really neat ones on Amazon that are available for somewhere between $20 and $25! Actually, if I had known about RF modulators, I would have bought one long before now.

The two I saw have 4 input sections (which accept several different kinds of input) on the back with an RF (coaxial cable) out to the TV, and four buttons on the front so that you can push them and switch between the different inputs! So, I can plug in my DVD player, my DVD recorder, and the TiVo, and I can not only use the TiVo, but I can watch DVDs again! The very idea makes me so happy!

But, unfortunately, I don't have about $30 or so to spend on a modulator plus shipping, so I'm going to have to wait until next month to be able to do all this.

I'm not usually a sad person, but for some reason I don't understand, spending all my free money this month on a TiVo and then finding out I can't use it until next month is making me so sad, all out of proportion to the situation. I don't know why, but I think it's me, and not the situation.

So, I've been amusing myself by reading the instruction book that came with it. If it works the way it says, it'll be amazing!

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I'm still thinking about and working on (mentally) the Lion Brand Yarn Imagination Contest. I keep thinking there must be a winning idea somewhere in the back of my brain. If there is, it's been doing a great job of hiding from me. I've been looking for information I don't have in hopes it'll spark an idea.

But you might be interested in checking it out.

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Well, at least there is some good stuff on TV tonight.

Stargate Universe is on SyFy right now and has been all day and will continue into the evening with a new episode which will be followed by a new Merlin.

There will reruns of Medium (CBS?) and Supernatural (the CW) on toninght, too.

Not much, I know.

Buck up, July is coming, and that's when all the good stuff will be back. And I'll have my TiVo up and running just in time! Can't wait!

Have a fabulous Friday and a wonderful weekend!