I accidentally shaved off my beard a few days ago.
This has happened before, so I was careful this time – carefully set the length with the length-setting dial. Started with my moustache because I wanted to leave the beard long, just trim up the edges.
However, the clipper protection cage is apparently how this clipper adjusts length – the dial slides the cage in and out, controlling its distance to the clipper element – and it seems to have been improperly clacked onto the clipper with the result that despite setting the dial to a moderate length, it shaved off one third of my moustache, leaving me with two-thirds of a moustache and a bare spot where the final third should have been.
I know from experience that had I tried to symmetrize my moustache by shaving a third away from the other side I would’ve been left with a rather narrow bit under my nose, a moustache that went out of style here in Austria in 1945. Yeah so anyway back to the drawing board.
Speaking of drawing board I have been looking for something to do with all the fibers in my garden so I fell down a Youtube rabbit hole of DIY twining/stringmaking tutorials.
Did you know that twine making is probably the oldest human cultural… thing? That led to everything else?
Like, after twisting some twine from the leaves of day lilies in our garden and… enjoying how soothing it is to just sit there and twine for hours while chatting on the terrace, I began to wonder what one does with all this twine. I finally found a website that had a list of things you can do. Three of their suggestions were, seriously, “wrap it around a stick, wrap it around a rock, wrap it around a seashell…”.
Did you know that the oldest man-made fibers discovered so far (and they were probably making string before this but being organic traces are harder to find) were found in a 90,000 year old Neanderthal settlement? My friends and family do! So string-making… predates homo sapiens? Or at least, homo sapiens have no monopoly on it.
And when you have all this string, it leads to other things.
You ask yourself, what am I going to do with all this fucking string? I am going to need a vehicle to move it around (invents wheel). I am going to need a bag to hold it in (invents weaving). Ack my bag fell apart (invents sewing and knitting).
Etc etc.
Actually I stumbled onto string-making while looking at basket weaving tutorials, after finding out that one harvests willow switches in the winter. So to kill time until then I started clicking videos of basketry-adjacent stuff in the right margin and the rest is history.
My wife used some of my twine without asking first to tie up the roses, I was shocked at first but I suppose that was ok, proved it works, and plenty more where that came from.
Feels nice to be out from under the boot of Big String.
Lunch at Altausseer See in Altaussee near Bad Aussee near Grundlsee
Today, or yesterday (I am vacationing so my grip on time is more tenuous than usual) I was served a memory from a year ago, a picture of me with a butterfly tickling my nostril at the fish restaurant at Toplitzsee, where we go every year, or have gone each of the past five years, as we have fallen in love with the lake one lake over, Grundlsee, and the surrounding mountains, and other features of the landscape etc in the vicinity; however when we hiked to Toplitzsee for more fish this year the restaurant was closed since we made the mistake of going on a Tuesday and it’s closed Tuesdays, and the second time we went it was open and the fish was good but no butterflies, only mosquitos; likewise when we (in this case my daughter Beta and myself, my wife Alpha having returned home on Thursday to take care of the cats while Beta returned here (she had gone to our house a few days prior to replace her sister Gamma as catsitter because Gamma – who had been with me at Grundlsee at the beginning – was going to Innsbruck to give a presentation at a conference, and to climb in the climbing gym there, which is said to be the best in the world) went to Altausseer See in Altaussee, near Bad Aussee, which is one town over from Grundlsee, for a hike and lunch. While walking around the lake, which is pretty and amidst pretty landscapey views, we were a bit worried whether we would get a table at the place, a rustic restaurant on the bank of the lake, it being tourist season and Friday and noon, but we needn’t have worried because the place was about a third full, if that, when we arrived and we took an empty table and that is when the fun started (the hike had been fun too, except for one stretch with a lot of biting flies) because it seemed to be… New Waitstaff Day? or something? Like first I ordered a “Loser Bier” which is a brand of beer named after a nearby mountain, it comes in a bottle which is good for taking “funny” selfies, which I have been known to do; however, and maybe fortunately, the waitress (a different one from the one who had taken my order) brought a large glass of beer (ein großes Bier) and I was like, internally, all Who is hard of hearing here, you or me? but said nothing because I figured, more beer for the same price and probably the Loser beer selfies are getting old. Then, having studied the menu I asked her what a particular burger, named after the restaurant, was, i.e. was it just a regular burger or what? and she said Yes it was a regular burger. But when my food came it was a fish burger, which I discovered later, after she had gone yet I did not mention it to anyone because 1. fish burger was tasty 2. i figured maybe the burger I ordered, named after the restaurant, was indeed a fish burger not a regular burger and the new waitress who had gotten my beer order wrong had simply not known better. Later, after Gamma and I had eaten a waiter arrived with a regular burger and said, you were served a fish burger right? And I said Right and he said, But you didn’t say anything when it was served? And I said, no problem, just give me the regular burger too and he did and I didn’t know what the fuck was going on but it turned out I had to pay for both burgers apparently because I had failed to point out their incompetence to them immediately, which had not been possible for me because as I mentioned I had not been sure the fish burger was a mistake but I didn’t want to argue and paid; if I had started complaining to the guy I would still be there complaining, wrong beer, wrong burger, right burger not very good (too much filler in the patty), unfriendly blame-shifting waiter. So we paid and left. The waitress who took my money (the 4th waitstaff member to grace our table) had not been involved in any of the mistakes so I still tipped her, a decent tip by Austrian standards but a little paltry by American standards, sort of hit the sweet spot with the percentage, small enough so that it seemed on my end that I was penalizing them for their misdeeds, while large enough that they would not notice anything. Then we walked to our car and got there just as the first raindrops fell and by the time we got home thunder and lightning and lots of rain, it was great.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, Feral Living, ferner liefen