Which is a relief. The swelling evidently diminished enough in my fall-abused back that it popped back with a sound like a manhole cover going back on—we went ahead and took a lengthy walk, and it seized up again, so I am sitting here with an ice pack, and it is de-seizing. The temporary misalignment caused a pins-and-needles sensation and sciatica (that’s burning pain where one of the major nerves to the upper leg gets annoyed: since the main upper leg nerve exits from the spine and passes through a fairly narrow gap in the pelvis where a muscle also goes through [the pirifomis]—you can get some grief also if you overexercise the piriformis muscle and it restricts the space for the nerve as it goes through.) That sensation is miraculously gone, and I’m real glad to know I’m not going to have that discomfort longterm. I know many people have it, and it’s a very bad sort of pain.
The toes I dropped the chili can on (I thought it was only one, but it got the big toe and the second toe) are an interesting shade of blackish purple, which promises to turn an interesting sequence of colors. At least neither is broken, and I missed both the joints, and the toenails.
I’m trying not to do these things, honest. Trying to watch where I’m putting my feet. It’s my natural gracefulness.
I suggest painting your toenails lavender or lilac, and then adding greens and yellows as the toes change color. You could end up with a nice floral still life on your tootsies. Iris, maybe? Narcissus? Violets? Lilacs or lavender themselves? See, Jane could consider it a challenge in miaiature, sort of a converse Tiffany or Fabergé sort of thing. You can claim you have the best designer lacquer….
Yeah, a bit extravagant for a couple o’ cans o’ chili, huh?
About that manhole cover sound? Why am I having mental images of the Borg Queen, there? LOL.
Terminator Umpteen-Eleventy: The Author Strikes Back!
sounds like the house gnomes and gremlins do a good job pranking you. have you tried leaving whiskey out? It’s supposed to work for the faeries.. not sure on the others:)
Well, we know we have a bannik. Vodka works on that one. But hmm. Whiskey, eh?
A bannik is supposed to have the ability to predict the future and you should
find it in the sauna or bath. How do you know you have one? What does it share with you about the future? Ask it if I will survive the current school year. Wonder if we have any banniks, faeries, gnomes, or gremlins?
problem I run into with the bribery.. is.. the balance between not enough, and leaving too much. too much and it can get a wee messy… think frat party, spring break:) btw- for the bruising, if you can get comfrey leaves, crush them into a poultice, it helps with bruising and will speed recovery:)
how rare of banniks? have not come across them. had a family of ogres on the property at one point. a friend “asked” them to move on:) much easier than trolls, which.. very territorial, from what I understand;)
Sometimes when bribery will not work, you have to resort to expulsion. I ran around our house when we first bought it with ti leaves and salt water, banishing whatever bad luck we might have inherited. There had been a series of minor mishaps, but the blessing/banishing seems to have done the trick. For these guys, okolehao would probably have been necessary. I wonder if the ethnicity of the alcohol has much to do with its efficacy on various household spirits. Maybe you should lay in a supply of sake for potential kappas under your bridge 😀
ayup on the expulsion- funny story to follow- friend of mine is a geo-mancer? dowser- extremely good at working with the land. totally changed the way I look at landscapes, literally, that is. and the little I have picked up from him when he did work, and a presentation he gave, barely scratched the surface, i’m sure:) between my word and the work of others.. the land here has been multiplically cleared- but then, intuitives also regularly attract guests.. is there some cosmic neon vacany sign that flashes in the ether? oi! 🙂
sakki? hhmm.. I was thinking good russian wodka:) ( but then I’m polish-esque (?).. and very interesting re the ethnicity of alcohol v efficacy.. food for thought there… hhmmmm might have to do a range of tests and case studies..
anyway- on to funny story:) one of my teachers, andean/quechuan/mestizo(?). we were talking about clearing and unwanted guests. for me, it was mice.. and oi! on that! 🙂 ( gone now, thank whomever:. sooo- he was telling me about when he bought his place in rhode island ( he splits time between cuzco and here). anyway- he quickly ran into a huge problem with squirrels, in the attic. he tried inviting them to leave, he did clearing, he did ceremony, smudging, extraction work.. the whole deal- and this guy.. got game. he even tried the have a heart traps. ha! so he’s getting pretty frustrated, thinking, damn.. he’s going to be living here for a while.. and really not wanting to share the space with intrusive invasive and just plain annoying, squirrels ( who are not as cute in reality, as they are scampering about in the park:). so having exhausted his repertoire of polite approach, he draws the line. gets in the car, down to walmart/store.. buys a shotgun. he’s done- they’ve crossed the line and if they won’t leave politely, he will end this ongoing war of attrition. he gets home. squirrels are gone. absolutely and totally gone, and he’s never had them back:) moral of this story… not entirely sure, other than – sometimes you have to be prepared to be mean, in order not to have to…? or- squirrels are psychic and omniscient:)
btw- what kind of leaves did you use? I do a lot of cleansing/ clearing.. how do they work? what/ how effective? I have some heavy duty smudge I make, haven’t used ti:)
No smudging involved with ti leaves; you make a brush of them, and use them to flick salt water into each corner of all your house rooms. In my case, I was also telling the whatevahs that it was time to find new lodgings, because I wasn’t going to tolerate the shenanigans.
Very good to hear that the back is starting to mend, CJ-ji, and that the toes, although presently ugly, weren’t too damaged.
This is what I get for not having read the Chernevog / Yvgenie / Rusalka books or Faery in Shadow / Tree of… Books yet. I had to look up “bannik.” (Can I help it if I thought of Stark from Farscape?) I finally found where wiki is of more use than my dictionary app (the American Heritage Dictionary app was costly by comparison, but useful.) the AHD didn’t know what a bannik was but wiki was quite helpful. I had at least gathered it was a spirit or a creature, rather like a brownie. But that wasn’t quite so. Now, however, I am better informed, and presumably any such folk won’t be miffed at me and mine. More likely, they’ve decided it’s too dang hot and dry, and moved to better country.
I don’t know one way or the other about such things. I only know they might exist, even if science can’t quite say aye or nay. Sort of on the theory that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our modern, scientific philosophy. If nearly every culture has spirit-beings, ghosts, and unusual creatures, then perhaps it’s worth considering that there’s some good reason humans as a whole think such beings exist.
Well, there’s that and that I know of a couple of things I cannot explain scientifically, but they were so. I used to be more “sensitive,” but I think that has somehow gone dormant, or else I’m less aware and able to sense or interact consciously with such perceptions or abilities. I used to be able to have “directed” dreams occasionally, which was very interesting, if not always exactly useful. So, in other words, I believe there’s something to it, but I don’t know how to explain or prove it.
Oh dang, that just gave me a strange story idea that mixes science fiction and fantasy or old traditional beliefs. — Copying that to a file right quick. Whether I’ll get to write it, I don’t know.
I remember The Catfantastic series had some great stories involving things like that. A tale by Andre Norton about a cat, Thragun Neklop. Another tale whose author I don’t recall had a cat battling a dimensional vortex of some sort from a dryer, and other neat tales. The books are, last I saw, out of print and not in ebooks.
That does it. I have got to unbox and shelve my books.
I have friends with a gremlin. It usually limits itself to hiding stuff; they find that pairs (or more) can find the hidden items, because the gremlin can’t hide it from more than one at a time. Or so I’ve been told.
Further to the suggestion of comfrey leaves. I also suffer from an excess of grace and use geranium oil dilute with a carrier oil (e.g. almond or grape seed oil).
By lightly annointing bruises often during the day, this has helped my multi coloured bruising disappear quicker than anything else.
The discussions on uninvited guests, both seen and unseen, is terrific. I hope that you all will tell more about it. I never considered that this house may have the unseen sort of guest, being a new house, built when we were also young and uninteresting to such guests. However, in time’s slippery way, nearly three decades have passed and we and our house may be more attractive, or not. It would be one way to explain events, but maybe not the actual explanation. In two houses I lived in before moving here, there were definitely some sort of unseen residents which were not corporeal pests like mice or squirrels. I just put up with it, knowing it was temporary lodging. I like learning more about this, but I’m not willing to set out whiskey or vodka yet.
I won’t say I don’t have uninvited guests living with me — there was a rat that got into the walls once, but he has since joined the choir invisible — because sure as I say it, I’ll get one. Talk of gremlins reminds me of that classic Bugs Bunny cartoon from the early 1940s of Bugs vs. gremlin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1xqrdtJs8w if you’re interested.
if the request for elaboration was for me– quick note:
on new properties: 1, there is always the element of what was living on the land prior to its being developed? and 2. what sort of things have caught a ride, aka hitch-hikers, into/ onto the premises and set up house. There are a myriad of ways something can acquire residence. Energetic things are just like live things, fleas travel on any moving being. some things, like ogres ( from what I understand. this is NOT my area of expertise), travel. Ghosts, can be ancestral or karmic- therefore not in need of locus of origin.
in celtic lore, the fey have always travel along specific routes. this is why in traditional houses, the front and back doors are in direct alignment. if the fey can pass through, all is well. if not, from what I understand, they are purported to move the house out of their way. I believe the milk or whiskey on the step is also a way of keeping them affable.
critters can be a physical heads-up that an invisible presence has opened portals, making entry:)
more than happy to continue this. not sure what the etiquette is on going off-thread on someone elses’ real estate(blog:). more than happy to relocate this, if that is the polite or requested course of action:)
No “guests” here in my farmhouse, except the occasional field mouse or vole, which is usually either chased away or dispatched by the assassins in my aishid. I don’t have any former inhabitants here to give me advice, predictions, etc., and no poultergeists to give me troubles. I have a fair assortment of liquors available for those that are inclined to visit for a quick nip and then scoot out. So far, the bottle of single malt Scotch hasn’t been opened, but I do notice the bourbon seems to be at a lower level in the bottle than I can account for it being.
On the subject of dropping things on feet, I can attest that a 40 ounce jar of peanut butter applied directly to the nails from a height of 3 feet can be quite painful. I’ve also had a 1 pound lead diving weight fall on my bare foot from that height, and the pain was something to remember. I lost nails on both occasions, and one refuses to grow back normally. The podiatrists all tell me it’s not ingrown, but if so, why does it curve down on the edge of the nail bed and start poking through the skin as it grows out? HMMM????
Well, if the foot continues to hurt, perhaps a liberal dose of ethyl alcohol internally will help, too. I’d shy away from heavy painkillers like Vicodin or Percocet, but if they become necessary, then by all means.
Here’s hoping the pain is fleeting, the bruising goes away quickly, and you can walk normally on it.
Lol—we had a ghost once: the former owner had died in the house, and in advancing distress, had started burning wood in a firepit in the family room—which had coated wall and ceiling in the house with soot. Shall we say this was a fixer-upper? A great bargain. First was cutting down the plants that had obscured the windows, and scrubbing everything. When I moved in, I found a small trove of her hair-clasps, etc. And really old bottles in the cabinet. Like antiques. Half the place was mirrored. Thick, silver-backed glass. Ghosts get trapped in mirrors, so they say.
Well, I don’t take such things with great seriousness…I moved in with my gran’s things, anyway, and if any ghost ever crossed my departed gran, they’d get a spectral earful, quite sure of that. So I rattled around in the big old place until several years later, when Jane moved in.
She doesn’t really believe in ghosts, either; but this house was odd. First, it had two ironwork staircases, and iron girders supporting the roof of the big family room addition. And two mirrored rooms. Two non-working fireplaces. Its electrical system was odd: it had two breaker boxes, so if something went out you had to remember which box it was in—one was outside. And the ground wire was copper, as thick as a pencil. And the house sat by a lake.
Now they say ghosts may be electromagnetic effects.
Imagine this house. Its groundwire picked up passing aircraft chat with the tower and transmitted it to our televisions. Found that out because our electrician had installed the electrics at the airport, and he knew that interference pattern. We were hit by lighting more than once. The lake, only thirty feet from the door, bounced radio signals, so our alarm system had to have boosters installed—because of the lake, and the girders.
It had noises. Now, this may be because the last owner had hired a carpenter who cut the stringer board in the attic to put in a concrete-floored shower we had to remove; a plumber who vented the blowoff valve to the upstairs hot water tank to the middle of a bedroom ceiling; and an electrician who used 8 different grades of wire to reach a light fixture in the family room. You’d get shocked if you touched it. We fixed all those. And jacked the ceiling.
But then the ghost took to tripping people on the stairs leading to the family room. Or in the vicinity thereof. We joked about it. But on dark and stormy nights the place had a ‘feel’ to it. Lightning may have had something to do with it.
We put it on the market finally—had to remove the mirroring, as per our real estate agent: and when we did, finally, the whole place felt—lighter. Not brighter. Weirdly lighter. Happier.
When we moved to the new place, next door, I found the little stash of hair clips had gotten moved too.
Y’know, I took that stash right back to the old place.
so, basically, what you’re sayin is.. ur not really makin up all those books/stories.. just writing real-life and changing the names to protect the invisible? ::))
that and. OMG you’re living on a hellmouth (shoutout to buffy-days:)
I wonder if ghosts are trying to help you believe in them:)if you get an urge to clap your hands.. you’ll know where that’s coming from:)
the indigenous teachings share, that our ancestors walk by our sides all the time. this is one reason i am wary of new practitioners. Example. a practitioner might “discover” your grandmother attached to your field. This is not necessarily a bad thing- esp if Grandma is not attached, so much as warding. POOF, the cross grandma over. And never address what drew Grandma here to begin with. Our ancestors, mostly protect us, bring us their gifts and power. When unhealed, their wounds can begin to manifest in the living. They get drawn to those most able to heal them. Think of it as a quantum entanglement. By healing oneself, one also brings healing to the lineage/ ancestor. and vice versa. ( very interesting stories on those sorts of accounts if interested:).
But by removing Grandma, crossing her over, or worse, the inept who perceives an entity, without identity, and banishes her. ack! Regardless.. then there is no layer of protection between the real culprit and the living person/ world. there’s a real yikes, for ya:) Gee, I don’t know why everything has gotten worse. uhhuu.
Good show to remove the hair, too- that quantum entanglement concept.. or as a teacher once noted. it might not be yours.. but once you pick it up. it’s yours;) the good lesson/wisdom, is in knowing we don’t need to continue to carry it around:) Burning the hair would *probably* have worked; sacred space and all the other trimmings, to be safe. But may also be very good to return to its place of origin- maybe there is something that needed working out there.. and/ or karma for someone else. An opportunity through the ghost/whatever for healing, growth,resolution.. who knows:)
did you move.. next door..? as in, not far away at all? if so, it would be interesting to note how much followed or didn’t follow, since some aspects of landscape/ terrain would still be factors- although tiny modification in relation to landscape can make huge differences.. as can building on top of a hellmouth lol:)
Patrick, the geomancer friend noted previously, talked a lot about underground water lines and the impacts of that on.. well.. everything. In fact, the standing stones in scotland- you’ll see them out in fields.. those are not the stone people, or the faeries, etc. Those stones will be randomly set in seemingly bizarre locations- those are re-directing the energy(?) of underground water lines. copper coils have also been used- don’t ask I know slightly more than a gnat might on that one;) I know placing 4 copper coils, curled up in a spiral, with the end into the ground, can redirect a lot of the squirrely energy AROUND a house/ building. if the ghosts are EM effects.. that should dissipate it/ them. granted- aren’t we all essentially electro-magnetic effects?
Sounds like you had the west coast version of my house/ barn. I constantly shake my head in bafflement when trying to grasp the logic behind building decisions. There wasn’t. Often, I think.. it is somewhat akin to Lines, and too many builders ( you sure nailed that concept in fortress:).. again, writing RL(?)..
btw- being a writer/ intuitive/ creative.. do you find that makes you a more natural receiver for.. things/ chatter? or was that house, unique?
I think writers walk around with their antennae up for anything going. Habitually. But that house was, shall we say, one of the more unique. It had been on the market for years before I bought it.
But if I hadn’t bought it, I wouldn’t have had a whole vacant upstairs, and Jane might not have moved down to occupy it, and I wouldn’t be as happy as I am. So I’m glad of the whole experience…it was fun, in its strange way (one day we had 5 service companies in our drive at once and were running out of room to park them)—and we were so ready to move, but with a little regret.
I returned the little stash where it belonged, out of respect for the house and its former owner. So I left with a good feeling.
When I next visited, the place was done up in dolls—the new owner was a collector, and they were wall-to-wall in every room, all those little eyes, staring at you…
I found that odder than I could deal with.
About a blog post’s replies going off on a tangent:
This is, to me, precisely the reason a forum has its uses, while a blog has other uses. I wish there were some good solution that provided both, somehow. A blog is very useful for some purposes, while a forum is best for others. The major difference, to me, is that a blog owner may direct the conversation, while a forum lets everyone start new topics. An owner might then need a category or topic area as a blog or personal forum space. Both are primarily about time, recency.
For that matter, I wish a blog’s structure were better suited to things like Seeking North, in which a story has a sequential, ordered structure, and the comments on it, which of course would be welcome, are related to (either descendants or linked associates) the chapters or books, stories or poems, to which they refer.
Basically, I get the feeling there are other solutions, better alternatives for some purposes, out there waiting to be invented.
Even more than that, I wish fervently that there were better spam safeguards for blogs and forums. This weekend, I get to add a custom mod (written, thankfully, by someone else) to a forum, to block further attempted spam registrations, which are driving me batty. I would’ve installed it sooner, but it’s been a long while since I last did that on another forum software, and it’s important to know what one is doing, and backup properly, to avoid screwing up.
—–
I guess my take on non-corporeal and/or fey beings is that whatever reality or universe or dimension they inhabit, especially if that can cohabit partially with ours, they must operate by some set of understandable rules. Whether we, as humans, can fully comprehend those rules is another question, but presumably, we can understand some of it.
I suppose my definition of a fey being would be some being or creature which is not quite our ordinary critter or person, but has some other metaphysical (that is, not entirely physical) part to itself.
Non-corporeal beings? Why not, I guess? Presumably, they’d have some sort of personal containment field, a skin, to avoid, well, dissipating. How a being of gas or energy would function…beyond me.
But what about “cryptozoology,” lifeforms ordinary like us, but so far unproven, undocumented by science? — There have been many cases of unknown or supposedly extinct creatures that do, in fact, exist as plainly as any other “normal” critter. Of course, you’d say, because you can probably think of many examples from the past couple of hundred years.
Fine, you say, because there might be a Nessie or Champie, or a Bigfoot or Yeti, or various others. The evidence is iffy and disputed, but there’s enough to say there might be such creatures. And if so, then they are also apparently as ordinary as an apple tree or a cow or cat — only they are very much better at hiding, and perhaps those possible hominids (or whatever they are) are hiding because they are fairly smart and wily.
Well, fine too, then. But house elves / brownies? Elves, fairies, trolls, ogres…. All sorts of beings? (And those are just the European versions, the Asian and African and American and Australian versions are otherwise.) What are they? Ordinary, but good at hiding, because they have great camouflage? Or because they are about as smart as we are? Hmm…. Certain of them are supposedly malevolent. Others are more or less friendly, and still others may be dealt with, bargaining, compromise, or at least stalemate. You know, I’ve never seen an elf or fairy or house-whatever. I have nearly always had a cat, and before that, a dog. But the old tales say the fair/wee folk have their ways around our companion animals. I’m either average or maybe a little open or sensitive to such things. So that means…have I simply never chanced across some such fey being, or one’s never chanced across me? At least I’d know to be careful, I think. Hah, or perhaps the old tales turned out that way as much because of the human people involved as because the fey beings were however they were inclined. Are they other-dimensional, intersecting with ours? No idea.
Yes, there have been a couple of things in my life or stories from people I know, which I can’t otherwise explain except…it doesn’t fit the science we know, but it happened, somehow. I’d think therefore, ghosts might be. But I’ve never seen a house-elf or garden-being or woodland whatsits. I’d be curious but cautious, I think. Who knows? If the particular person / beastie got along with the cats and me… well, I suppose… oh, who knows?
Interesting topic, especially with Halloween / Samhain coming in a couple of months.
I suppose I default to, I haven’t seen such, but I’ve experienced a couple of things I can’t quite figure by rational, empirical method, and if there are such beings, creatures, entities about, then they must have their own (meta)-physical laws we can make some sense of.
Worth pondering. Just because the wisdom of the day (or of the age) doesn’t say it’s proven or provable, doesn’t necessarily mean it ain’t necessarily so, I s’pose.
Thousands of years worth of humans from all over the planet…might be right, a little. Sure, they might also be a little crazy or foolish. But then, we “modern” humans aren’t immune to crazy or foolish; just read the headlines and watch the news.
On second thought, you’d likely enjoy reading a good book a lot more.
The news certainly would tend to prove humans are…a bit odd in the head. LOL.
(Not that I’d argue any other critter would necessarily be any better.)
(Though my cats would probably argue in favor of themselves….)
Oh dear – you really seem to be having a time of it, CJ. Ironically my lower back and-ahem-bum have started to play up again. I’ve no idea what triggers it but at the moment I’m finding sitting for too long to be uncomfortable. It might be my SI joint but generally it’s the outside of my hips that annoys me. Anyway you can’t let these things get you down so I took up golf earlier this year. It’ll either cripple my back or force it to shut up 🙂
Anyway I’d like to add a thank you for ‘Finity’s End’. I re-read it over the last week and it’s still excellent. It’s a very emotional book and despite coming from a stable family it always invokes a response from me.
I’m following it by re-reading ‘Excession’ by Ian M banks. A very different kind of book but I love conversations between the ships. The idea of a several kilometre long space ship choosing to call itself ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’ is a classic 🙂
I absolutely hear you on how the strangest things, occurrences, paths.. are incredible opportunities.. if we can look far enough down the line, to what other eventualities open up. Have seen and done enough of that to learn patience and practice prescience(?).. whatever it might be that tries to look forward, not really divination.. but being available for what is trying to line up, and be patient through the quirky patches:) As my housemate notes.. in worst case scenario, is always food for the script ( he does scripts;), character building etc.. I suspect it can also be a catharsis, for the annoyances and nuisances..
btw- re back injuries.. from waaaayy too much personal experience.. best thing for back.. 1, strengthening the stomach muscles.. so they take a more supporting role, eases stress on spine. 2, suppling, yoga/ stretching etc… and staying active ( without falling, ahem:).. but yeah- I had an extremely bad fall from my horse.. no wait.. I was thrown ( delderfield, a gentleman never falls from a horse;).. let’s just say we parted ways, and i wrapped backwards around a fence post- my own bloody fault, I know. And waiting 8-9 months and a complete spasm, to consider getting someone to look at it. because being the foo-idiot I still am.. my first thought was.. oh yeah- that’s gonna hurt tomorrow. And then got back up and kept going. yay team:) They thought I would limp for the rest of my life, scarring misalingment hairline fractures, the whole deal. when I do it, I go all the way:) But- I found that back injuries can be minor nuisances provided one learns to make the life-adjustments:)
as for writers and antennae– yeah, that sounds about right. Might be nice if it was like the car antennae, and would automatically lower when not in use:) oh wait, my car antennae stopped doing that a long time ago. nevermind:)
on the house with all the dolls. I wonder if that made the occupant, invisible one, comfortable- creepy finding creepy and matching up?… most times, spirits.. just want or need something and are very amenable to moving on to where they were supposed to. They’re just lost or a little stuck and need a nudge and a hand. Often it is just a matter of calling on the elders, who will then redirect whomever… wherever- and always with the intent of where they can get help or resolution.
but rows and rows and rooms of dolls and doll-eyes staring — no, that spikes right off the creep-meter. would make me wonder who all and what all was borrowing those eyes and looking out. or like old twilight-zone episode, talking tina ( oldie but goodie;)
I’ve lived in a few occupied houses, and they definitely feel different. one, used to hang out in my space, bc I ws the only one that acknowledged it. everyone else thought i was bonkers. it would make noise if it didn’t like the tv show or radio station- until I would change it. sometimes it/she(?) was just bored and wanted company, and was very good about toning it down on request if I was studying. one night my housemate comes knocking at my door at like 2 AM all flustered with, insisting I come to his room. he asks ” what’s that noise?” and nothing stood out for me. then he asks again. ” what noise”.. he waits and waits, for about 15 secons, until there is something that wasn’t quite a thump or bump, but a something. ” Oh, that’s just the ghost- you know.. the one that doesn’t exist. I’m going back to bed. g’night.” WAIT! with an extremely stricken and terrified look. yeah… who’s bonkers now? 🙂
where I am now, seems to be ghost-free, although there were some native guardians ( indian) and a potent spot up back that needed re-tending. Mostly, my guests are from things I pick up and bring back. lucky me:)
trying to think of the oddest thing I’ve encountered.. there’s an interesting thread:) and oh, if youre interested in the geomancy, patrick’s site ( I think) is dragonlines.net 🙂
okay- I now hear breathing coming from my PC speakers. great, I woke up the creep-meter:)
think I might have to go re-arrange my sock drawer for a while:)