Anne E. Mitchell: Thursday April 9th

I am finally feeling better. This was the first day since last Saturday that I have not been taking some sort of decongestant and sleeping aid. I think that I am starting to see the real end of feeling like death warmed over and I am very pleased about it. It has really taken a toll on my ability to stay awake long enough to get any serous work accomplished. I would just crash for a few hours every afternoon and then actually go to sleep rather early for me.

I was supposed to go to breakfast with a wonderful group of gals this morning; I was actually up early and dressed but had several very urgent personal issues that I had to deal with in an immediate fashion much to my irritation. I was a very unfortunate series of event that took place but we have our next event scheduled and I am really looking forward to seeing everyone again.

I did have a very pleasant afternoon. 2 of my favorite new people in my life Margaret Zinser and JC Harrell stopped by the house for lunch. Well they were actually kind enough to walk in the front door with lunch and a very excellent berry and banana smoothie for me. Neither had seen the house and it was really sweet of them to drive across town for a visit.

Sunday is Margaret’s birthday and she is having a little picnic at her house. I am really looking forward to the gathering the list of folks that are going to be there is really a nice group of local artists and friends.

Have you ever noticed that there can be an eerie kind of coincidences that can happen in life? The other day I was talking about claw foot tubs and about how nice my outdoor one is because it is almost 6 feet long. We were also chatting about how a really large tub was specially made for one of the Presidents and that it had to be a double-wide one because he was so large. Neither of us could think of which President it was and both of us just let the question drop. Well it was not 24 hours later when a conversation was overheard about our largest President, William Howard Taft. I wonder what the odds are of getting that information in that manner actually is?

Taft's tub

The largest tub ever manufactured before 1909. Made for President Taft's journey on a naval vessel, it was 7 feet one inch long, 41 inches wide and weighed one ton.

I also learned a really excellent new word this evening. This word is "Steampunk". I have never heard of it but once a quick look-up on the web I was inundated with some of the coolest stuff. The following s a direct cut and paste from…

STEAMPUNK

Steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles, analog computers, or digital mechanical computers (such as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine); these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or with a presumption of functionality.

Steampunk is often associated with cyberpunk and shares a similar fanbase and theme of rebellion, but developed as a separate movement (though both have considerable influence on each other). Apart from time period and level of technological development, the main difference between cyberpunk and steampunk is that steampunk settings usually tend to be less obviously dystopian than cyberpunk, or lack dystopian elements entirely.

Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual craftpersons into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.

(A desktop computer styled in a steampunk fashion)