Finally - finally, finally, finally...

[byslantedlight]

...Job 2 and Job 2.2 are over! Well, 99.9% over except a couple of relatively minor things that I can't do until other people get back to me. But over in the sense that after five weeks (wait, five weeks, was that all?) I am taking a day off tomorrow. Three days even, cos I am not working over the weekend either (for the first time in five weeks). Yeay!

D'you remember how I actually thought that Jobs 2 would be a nice break from Job 1 and I might actually have the time and inclination to write at the same time? Silly, silly Slantedlight... Although I might have, except for unexpectedly having to take over a second team alongside my first and... oh well. Done now, and there's a few days to relax a bit. *g*

Of course now I'm not quite sure what to do with myself until I start work again on Monday, back at Job 1... *headdesk* Hopefully I'll think of something... *g* I nipped over to a nearby sixteenth century National Trust place this afternoon when I realised I was done - it was so nice to get out! That bed? That's a "campaign bed" - they came apart and folded up, and that's what officers actually took with them when they were off on army campaigns, or exploring or the like back in Victorian times! Oddly enough I'd just been reading This Thing of Darkness (by Harry Thompson - brilliant book, about Darwin and Fitzroy on the Beagle) and it'd described Darwin taking a bed with him on a trek over the Andes - presumably it was something like this. Mad!

So I think hopefully I'll get out again tomorrow - maybe Bath, but actually maybe Exeter for a change, I've not been there for yonks, and I've always liked it... or maybe just Taunton, or... the world is my lobster! Well, anywhere within driving distance... *g* And there will be catching up of emails, and lj reading and posting, and tidying up of the wee annexe, and... stuff. Yeay!

How're you doing? *g*

Comments

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Love the long pathway and door. Where were you, exactly?

The idea of taking a bed like that on campaign seems a bit much, doesn't it? And sort of girly looking, which I guess goes to show how much our ideas of manhood have changed.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

it was Lytes Cary - and a very nice visit too. Friendly, knowledgeable guides around the house, happy to chat at the end of the day - always nice! - and then pretty gardens to wander at the end. And there may have been an ice cream. *g*

According to wiki, it was as late as the 1930s/40s that pink became "a colour for girls" rather than/as much as for boys, and we just seem to have got worse and worse at using it to try and differentiate between the idea of "strong" boys/men and "tender" and "pretty" girls/women. So when you say "girly looking" that's definitely only current sensibilities showing through! I hate that it's become a kind of circle now - is something "girly" because it's pink, or does being pink make something "girly"? And what the hell do people mean by "girly" anyway - which I rather think is more to the point...

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

I guess, for me, girly is the same thing as feminine. And it's not so much the color, as the detail. The arched headboard with valances, the dust ruffle. It just doesn't fit with how I perceive something as being masculine. Stupid of me, I still hold to some of the archetypes I was brought up with.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I assumed the headboard and valances etc had a practical reason, probably to do with keeping out insects and the like (though I could just be harking back to four-posters!) And to be fair, I also presumed that the fabric itself was chosen by the woman who furnished the house rather than being the fabric that would have gone on campaign with the bed (though maybe it would!) - and I forgot to note that, when I wrote about the bed.

I've got to say, I really don't like the word "girly" when it's used to describe something - what's the male equivalent? That decoration is "mannish" or "manly"? The implication is that "girly" is delicate and weak and pretty, and the male equivalent is tough and practical, and I don't associate those qualities with either gender - I've met delicate boys and practical girls, and pretty men and tough women, so... so I must admit, the word just rubs me the wrong way!

But it is all too easy to hold onto those ideas we grew up with - I know I catch myself doing it far more often than I'd like... *g*