This wasn't me, but once years ago someone in my editor's group was seeking out info on blood spatter patterns for a novel - which it turned out a year or so later was actually Mulder/Krycek fic.

I laughed my ass off when I came to the particular passage (and promptly emailed the editor, who had in fact been doing a beta on the story).

I learned what a punkah was and figured out a way to approximate one for the stage. I don't know if it was the strangest thing, but it's what I can remember at the moment.

The strangest thing I remember researching/figuring out how to make for theatre was an inflatable cactus penis. I mean, it was a flesh colored cactus shaped giant penis. It is a little hard to explain.

Last big non-ebay shopping binge meant that I couldn't buy, say, another black skirt unless it was somehow markedly different from my current black skirts. Peering into the closet that seems to have meant "patterned." However I can easily do a week of "long black skirts" and no one will notice but me. In fact, I just found the black cotton eyelet skirt I'd been looking for forEVER. I could only find the knee-length one, not the one that goes to mid-thigh.

But I have skirts in other colours too (which means red/red+/reddish), and my tops have a fair amount of mixing. Again, I *can* go for two weeks with only black knit tops to work. But I don't.

The ebay binge gave me a ton of period dresses, and I think that's why people won't necessarily notice the amount of black skirts I wear. I mean, I have 3 or 4 black and white scooter dresses. And then two blue and one burgundy.

Okay, cab called. Going to go get nearer to it.

It is a little hard to explain.

But it's fun to see you try. I think that tops the cactalabrum (tiny 2D plywood cactus w/flashlight bulbs at the peaks. It sat on a saloon piano) I created this summer.

cactalabrum

What is it with theatre and cacti?

I have to leave soon for a theatre meet and greet and then a meeting with a student. I am so darn busy that I need to set a meeting with another student, and don't even have a slot open before Friday (I work from 8 - 5 at my day job, then I have this meet and greet and meeting today, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I teach lab from 6 - 9 and we are doing measurements which I really have to do myself. That is lame!

Okay, strangest thing you've researched for a story, fanfic or otherwise. Go!

I keep wanting this to be farthest you've gone in researching a story, fanfic or otherwise, and have amych win for all time.

ita, I hope they take good care of your head.

Cactalabrum

I need Stacy and Clinton to come give me a seminar.

I've been forced to watch that show a few times, and I do admire Stacy's sense of style, not to mention her feisty personality and undeniable Stacy-ness. It's worth watching just for her. Did I mention that I like Stacy?

But Clinton dresses like a 14-year-old prep school student spending spring break in Atlantic City with his nouveau riche family. Or an extra in a low budget technicolor remake of The Great Gatsby. Pastel sweater vests and matching slacks? Get serious.

I was just reminded of the really bizarre dream I had last night. It was like I was watching a movie that had a pretty detailed plot. It was a Western featuring three women banding together to survive in the Old West, one a young naive pregnant widow (I can't remember who was playing her), another a more worldly-wise woman played by Patti LuPone, and the last a cowgirl-type played by a decently dramatic acting Wanda Sykes (that's when I knew it was a dream, and not a movie!).

Then, the dream got weird--the LuPone and Sykes characters encounter King Arthur and one of his knights, but dressed in medieval leather clothing, not mail or armor, and they were bad men, raping the two women, who then got their revenge by killing them thoroughly by running the men's own swords through them. It didn't veer into Thelma and Louise territory, though, because it ended with LuPone reading a letter from the third woman, who had her kid and got married to a doctor who took her away to China (she didn't love the doctor, but he took care of her and her child, so she was fine with the relationship).

I never remember my dreams, so I don't recall ever having a dream like this before, and it was strange that I remembered so much of it this late in the day. I was talking about 3:10 to Yuma with my sister earlier on Sunday, so that might be where my mind got into Westerns. As for the King Arthur detour, I have no clue where that came from! I'm not even a big fan of LuPone and Sykes, so why my mental casting director came up with them, God knows.

Oh ita, I'm sorry to hear about the ER visit. We'll be home tonight, if you need anything.

I definitely do color with color as well as color with black. (Says the girl wearing the orange print skirt with the avocado top.) Depends on my mood and, let's be honest, what's clean.