Renaissance festivals weren’t a part of my childhood. The American southwest celebrates a more macho frontiersmanism: cowboys and indians, rodeos, gunslingers and sheriffs. And the festivals emulated that type of historical lifestyle. Performers lassoed cattle, twisted rope, boiled lye and ash into soap, and executed dangerous stunts on horseback. It was fun, but didn’t mesh well with a nerd culture. Sword and sorcery just wasn’t a thing.
And it’s funny to think that Ohio used to be the frontier. But I think that since the land works better for farming, as opposed to ranching; and the locals’ culture is mostly derived from Europeans and Scandinavians, vs Spanish (because really, Spain isn’t considered a European nation in the academic sense) – that the concept of enjoying medieval European history maintains stronger roots.
Whatever the reason, I like it better.
I also never posted about it before. So here’s some pics from this year’s Ohio Renaissance Festival:
My old man in a mushroom shirt and wizard’s hat. He could totally pull off a Radagast look.
The kid shooting a ballista. Proper siege equipment training is crucial.
Munch munch turkey leg.
And there we have our crew of nerds. Way better than rodeos.
…is unlikely to catch fire, as it is now constructed of “Galvalume® coated steel with Sherwin-Williams Weather XL finish”, which is “cold-rolled steel that is hot-dipped in aluminum and zinc alloys”. So it’s unlikely to rust as well.
Fire and water – that’s two of the elements.
It’s also “typically rated for wind speeds of 120–160 mph — equivalent to EF-2 tornadoes (111–135 mph)”.
There’s wind.
And, it’s UL 2218 class 4 rated, which “means the roof can withstand a 2-inch steel ball dropped from 20 feet without cracking, splitting, or losing structural integrity.”
That counts as earth.
Yes – our roof is now likely the strongest part of the house.
Like most of the house, the existing roof was old and subjected to poor maintenance and former “repairs”. It’s always been a point of confusion to me that shingles are attached to the sheathing with nails that are over an inch longer than the boards are thick. The industry standard is apparently to waterproof a roof by punching thousands of holes in it, while simultaneously creating a hazard to many a cranium that dare to stand up too far in the attic. But I’m not a roofer, obviously. There must be a reason.
As for the prior homeowner, he had disconnected the attic fan, resulting in extreme temperature fluctuations which led to dry rot. The shingles were bent and shedding sand, and water intrusion was beginning. A full overhaul was needed, lest I fall through the roof and finally be freed of this mortal coil.
But first I needed to spend all my money. Leave nothing behind upon death, right? Isn’t that the Boomer credo?
And fortunately that wasn’t hard to do, especially not when selecting premium materials. It’s a pity I’ll have to strip the nice roof out and replace it with crappy shingles when we finally have to move out. Because, leave nothing of value to the next home-buyers, right? Isn’t that the home-seller’s credo?
But for the meantime, we’ll have a nice roof to enjoy.
Working with sales people is always a mixed bag. I had much experience with this when shopping for an HVAC replacement.
Sometimes they’re old people with no sense of humor. Sometimes they’re young people who haven’t acquired sufficient knowledge to talk about their products. Sometimes it’s obvious they’re trying to pull a psychological evaluation on me to bleed me dry (I’m not filling out a questionnaire on my feelings behind the purchase). In this instance, however, they appeared both mathematically-challenged and, shall we say, pushy on certain products, like a used car salesman. I initially asked about metal roofing, and was immediately dissuaded because of its high cost.
So we spent the remainder of the consultation looking at traditional asphalt shingles, colors, and cost. And when done with our selections, received a quote. Then we had a brief couples’ financial discussion. Then, before committing, I asked, for curiosity’s sake, what the metal roof quote would be. It turned out be about 10% more – which was perfectly doable. Rather than indulge potential buyers for a sales quote on a requested product, they had sized us up and steered us towards a more budget-friendly product. Which we rejected, because we wanted the metal. And that wasted us all a lot of damn time.
What followed was a confusing purgatory of delays and no-contact from the parent company. Bad weather, underestimated timelines of backlogged contracts, and failure to call and leave messages despite their protestations to the contrary, which left us impatient and annoyed. But eventually, they committed to a date.
Fortunately, the people actually doing the labor were far more competent than their administrative counterparts. Open to requests and forthcoming with information, only a few minor complains impacted the operation – which they willingly fixed.
I have yet to climb up there, mostly out of fear. Those standing seams look difficult to navigate, and I want it perfectly dry before I do any adventuring of my own. I anticipate gutter-cleaning and light-hanging to be somewhat more difficult, but at least the roof won’t need any further attention for what should be the remainder of our natural lifespans.
Oh, and we’re the first ones in the neighborhood to get a metal roof. Ha!
I don’t think anyone’s conditioned from a young age to enjoy clothes shopping. For many, if the cruelty of the hand-me-down experience can be avoided, the alternative is to accompany mother to a store no one wants to be in and waste an entire weekend day arguing over style preferences and cost. The end result is inevitably a wardrobe that’s strictly utilitarian, and doesn’t encourage much in the way of self-confidence.
As an adult, this retail experience is just as bad. My generation may have been raised with digital technology, but it wasn’t always there. The current younger generations weren’t merely raised with it, but fully assimilated by it. Consequently, I notice that they tend to navigate the physical world in a state of non-associated delirium, often blocking entire isles for no apparent reason, because whatever’s being fed into their wireless earbuds has overwhelmed their cognitive processing power, leading to a bodily shutdown. The best case scenario is that they’re a customer, which merely presents a physical obstacle. At worst, that’s the store employee whose attention you need to flag down to complete a transaction. But at least with this group, their response to any forced verbal interaction is general indifference.
A worse group to have to deal with in public is boomers. As customers, they exhibit similar behavior as physical roadblocks, but it’s because their brains have just atrophied naturally. They didn’t need the technology to shut them down, though that doesn’t stop them from trying. If said boomer is also trying to multitask with technology at this moment, well, you’re never getting down that isle. And if the boomer is the store employee, prepare for spontaneous anger and condescension.
A millennial – my generation – tends to want to be as small and invisible as possible when in public space. Just let me shop without attitude. And if the millennial in question is the store employee, well that scenario is increasingly unlikely, because we’ve done everything in our power to avoid that type of work, up to an including suicide. Because when we had to do it, all the customers were boomers, and that relationship collectively broke our souls.
As a millennial, here’s a typical in-person shopping experience:
Employee is a boomer = transaction is outright hostile, always.
Employee is a millennial = unlikely scenario.
Employee is a zoomer = transaction is dismissive or hard to complete at all.
But there’s more to this than generational differences. People, being inherently shallow, immediately judge if someone’s worth their time to interact with. An employee, being forced to interact with customers, modifies their approach to hasten or prolong the transaction based on this superficiality. Specifically, it’s saturated with gender bias, which can’t be escaped when shopping with one’s spouse. If the couple in question is not conventionally attractive (which, to be honest – we’re middle aged now and not terribly athletic, so take that for what it’s worth), here’s the experience:
Employee is male = (looks at the wife of the couple, assumes the man has no taste in nice clothing), transaction is dismissive, or, in my own personal experience, avoided by the employee at all costs.
Employee is female = (looks at the wife and husband as a unit, assumes the man has little money), transaction is completed with a heavy dose of suspicion.
Mix these categories into all their possible combinations, and it adds the anxiety of not knowing exactly how the employee will make the experience unpleasant, but it definitively will be.
Fortunately, technology – the force destroying both older and younger generations – has once again come to the rescue for a millennial. Mail-order clothing based on user surveys, combined with style recommendations derived from user preference, has delivered unto me designer brands that I would never have considered purchasing before. And now, I have a very nicely-stocked wardrobe, obtained without horrible customer service!
Oooh, look at that closet!
While I have utmost empathy for the service industry worker, there’s something specifically unique about the clothing industry. It’s even worse than the automotive dealership, which in itself is not known for impartiality. Every time a clothing outlet closes nearby, I remember a bad experience and laugh. This is a retail nightmare that can go away, and I’m perfectly fine with being blamed, as a millennial, for one more thing that we’re killing.
