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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
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Spouse and I are going to see the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin today. It's a little early for full bloom, but there is a rumor the national park service will shut down the tidal basin entirely due to overcrowding and covid. Cherry blossoms are a popular tourist event and I have missed it every year due to work or whatever. We went late one year and the plum trees were blooming (they are beautiful), but the cherry blossoms were long gone. Spouse says the crowds are not nearly as dense as they've been in the past, but there are still a lot of people. Hopefully there won't be many people on a weekday. I know, I know, let's rush over to the thing they want you to stay away from or they will close it, thus guaranteeing it gets closed. I am That Jerk. If I'd already seen the cherry blossoms I would stay home. But I haven't.
Feeling very clever, giving myself backpats. I have two shopping carts. The one I picked out for myself has a built in chair, but the wheels have a weak attachment system and need replacing, and one my mom got for me is smaller, but has nice stairclimbing wheels. You see where this is going, yes? I took the stairclimbing wheels and put them on the better cart with lousy wheels. Seems to solve the problem. I'd already got the e-clips to fix the axel fastening issue. Then, even luckier, I scavenged a sheet metal piece from the dumpster that is about the perfect thing to make a sturdier bottom for the cart. The cart was made for plein air painting, or picnics, not so much for hauling 30ish pounds of bulky gear. Without a reinforced bottom it will be toast. So once that's done I ought to be able to get the tent, lattice thing, sign, umbrella, shoe rack, and other stuff in the cart, carry the suitcase style folded table, and have a backpack with product. Theoretically it should work. It will not be fun, but it should at least be possible. (Maybe I am nuts for trying to make a carless booth work, but I can't just be like "oh no, have no car, can't do anything, cry cry". Besides, I have seen people take way crazier stuff on the bus.)
I'm working on a way to jury rig a sunshade on one side of the tent. I would say half of my jury rigged projects are successful and the other half is a total waste of money and time, so we will see. I bought two cheap plastic flagpole holders (the kind with interlocking teeth that let you adjust the angle of the flag) and I'm going to cut the excess plastic off the base and clamp them on the tent legs with hose clamps, insert a length of PVC pipe, and sew up a fabric shade to slide over the pipes. All the ready made options either didn't have the right angle or were $50+. Because of the height of the tent, I need the shade to angle up so tall people don't run into it. I originally bought the umbrella because I thought it would add that extra patch of shade, but after clamping it to the tent frame it can't quite adjust as I'd like, plus it seems like it would be vulnerable to wind gusts, so I'll probably stick to clamping it to my chair. Who cares if a chair falls over. I've looked at pictures of other people's outdoor craft booths and I'm like, yeah, super cute, but you're screwed if a sudden breeze comes along. Once when I was vending at the tanana valley state fair a couple of 10x10s were literally picked up and sent tumbling down the fairgrounds by a rogue wind gust. Brown trousers time. You only have to see that once to get obsessed with hefty tent stakes and weights and fastening down all your displays.
Being the drama vulture that I am I have been searching stuff like "craft fair disaster" and "shitty craft fair" and "craft fair fail" just in the hopes of finding something vaguely entertaining but mostly I get earnest sounding articles about trying to trick people into buying wreaths, or generic advice anyone with half a brain could figure out on their own. After the cricut drama (which resolved itself somewhat when the company backed down, but they lost a lot of trust and the subreddit is now a schizophrenic mix of "look I made a thing and I am in LOVE with my new machine" and "the competitor's product is my real true love now, cricut can never be trusted") I have lurked a bit in the etsy subreddits and other craft business related subreddits, most of which are dead and boring and dead boring. I am sure men have to deal with this in some form too, but women sometimes fall lockstep into this "positive polyanna sisterhood" thing and (in my uneducated bitchy opinion) it spawns the most boring, banal, room temp IQ stuff ever. Maybe it's the pressure of the mommy/family cult - maybe women are more real on other platforms - I don't know - but there is precious little actual interesting dialogue happening. Then again, I am an outlier as far as life paths go and sometimes I forget that. I can't grasp the impact of motherhood/kids because it was never something I wanted. I was in elementary school when I promised myself I would never have kids. Childhood seemed miserable and chances are, my kid would be ostracized like I was and why would anyone deliberately put another human being through that? The world has always been a cruel, cold, miserable, selfish, painful, fucked up place. "Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." So "mommy" stuff falls flat for me, and that makes it extra hard to connect with women sometimes, especially if their mother/wife identity is front and center. Like, congrats, you're a pastel colored torturer. Good job. Obvs I can't say any of that. It's probably unfair to be critical of things that 80-90% of people completely center their whole life around.
Maybe being a weirdo just means you are constantly doomed to wonder where all the other weirdos are. Surely there is a giant gathering of them just around the corner, and we will all have witty banter and talk shit about unnecessary bows, wall art word decals as commentary on society's desperate need to feel sophisticated, and that dumb cockeyed handwriting font everyone and their dog uses these days. Sigh. But it's sort of like the Vegas commercials, where everyone is a young, attractive model, living the high life in a luxurious casino, and then you go to Vegas and (shocking) it's packed full of average bloated middle age loud uncool tourists being loud uncool tourists. The glossy craft world illusion is that everyone is a talented designer with good taste, creative ideas and solid business sense and the only reason their stuff isn't selling is due to "the algorithm". The reality is 85% of people are busy furiously flooding the market with substandard slightly altered copies of the 10% that lead the pack (and probably half of those are farming the 85% that copy for profit in an incestuous loop), there's 3% malicious shysters ripping off others and possibly 2% doing something so genuinely skilled and unique that they cannot be duplicated.
There's r/craftsnark but it's heavy on sewing/knitting/crochet, sadly. Not my haunt.
But I did find this which sounds like it could be amazing with the right company.
Took my walk around the lake yesterday. Grey and drizzly, which was good because it means less people. Seems like sunday in particular brings out the grumpies. The lake trail is popular so I normally cross paths with a couple dozen people and I do the exaggerated covid nod (mask on) or wave. Some people are in their zone and don't respond, but most are very cordial. But sundays in particular, people seem cranky and snooty. No idea if it's the mask they don't like (in which case they can go fuck themselves because my mask has a chickadee and it's adorable) or they're just garden variety jerks outraged that someone else has the nerve to also go for a walk on a sunday.
There's more new green leaves peeking out. Hyacinths blooming. No sign of the mythical otter yet. Still not many turtles out. Bullfrogs croaking, I think.
Spouse and I got into a discussion of how "the machine spirit" in warhammer 40k is similar to people talking about "the algorithm" in regards to instagram, etsy, youtube, etc. I think I am going to sub in "the machine spirit" in conversations from now on when referring to "the algorithm". Basically the same thing. I could see an influencer making a shrine and doing a ritual to appease the algorithm before they post. Pray to the algorithm or you'll get shadow banned. Some enterprising person could start a business selling algorithm good luck charms. Tech is becoming too complicated for the layperson to understand, and thus crosses into religion and superstition.
Anyway, off to see cherry blossoms.