Five Things on a Monday

1. Work/Programming
Last week I did a cart-before-the-horse and presented a design for the prototype I’ve been working on for the last 2-3 weeks. There was still good feedback from the group.. but it was kind of nice to be able to say “it works this way” instead of “I kind of think it might maybe work this way.. but I may need to play with it.” OH, that and my new-new pet project got official approval for me to work on it (good thing since that’s what I’d been doing for the last 3 weeks or so). So that’s going along swimmingly.

No one in the office noticed anything weird when I “worked from home” from Montana. I told them that was the point.

2. Home
Still loving the house. This last weekend we had a cleaning binge. With being out of town to Montana..and then working furiously on a bunch of projects for Crown the house had gotten a bit messy. We spent most of Sunday cleaning, vacuuming and straightening. It wasn’t hard to do.. but it made a world of difference. I still need to spend some quality time in my sewing room and tame that growing monster.

This week we’re planning to be completely out of the storage unit. That does mean the garage will runneth over. Whatever. It’s what we need to do.

As of today we’ve been in the house for a month. I need to contact the Property Management and get on their case to fix the things that we identified on move in. Last night I finally got tired of putting our wet towels on the floor (the towel bar broke the first day in the house) so we installed a new bar.. but seriously that’s -their- job, not mine.

3. Health
Contacts are full of win. I’m terribly please to be back to wearing them. I told Fearghus I “feel prettier wearing contacts”.. he told me I look pretty either way. Aww.

Weight is still weighty. Not sure what I’m going to do about that.. other than argue against eating out.. and cook more veggies. Meh.

4. SCA/Projects
The first weekend of this month we flew out to Billings Montana to attend Artemisian Crown. The event site was my parent’s farm so it seemed wrong to not attend. That and Allegiant Air is now flying directly from Oakland to Billings for ~$100 round trip (well $100 before they start nickle and diming you to death). We flew out on Thursday (which I took off of work) and then I “worked from home” on Friday from my parent’s house.. and then we attended Crown on Saturday and flew back on Sunday. It was a secret from my Brother and his Wife. They were due-ly surprised.

This is the first time I have attended a Crown tournament in another kindgom. It was weird. There are things that I’ve come to depend on as constants which it turns out weren’t actually constant. Three simple examples which caught me off guard:
1. Their fighting field was 36’x36′ which they divided into four fields. It just felt TINY! West Crown fields are 300’x100′ and are divided into 6 fields (or this last one, into 4 fields). For finals the herald announced that the populace could approach the list ropes to witness finals.. and I was scared to. I’ve never been that close to fighting and I was afraid some stray shot would fly out over the ropes because they were so close to it. Definitely weird.
2. None of the populace camped. Okay, I know it got down in the 30s at night.. so it was a bit chilly.. but still. The only people who camped were the merchants.. and even then my parents invited one of them to sleep in the front room of the house. My parents had already given rooms to Their Majesties of Artemisia and their Retinue. BUT STILL! It’s a Crown event. And people drove 9+ hours to get there.. and we had a HUGE bonfire. Just weird.
3. Their fealty oath is different. At final court they made someone a member of the Order of the Pelican and at the end they were reciting the fealty oath. I thought to myself “Oh! I know how this goes!” and mentally started mouthing along with it.. only to stop short when I realized they were using different words. In the West the oath holds “until the King departs from His Throne, or death takes me or the world ends” In this Artemisian oath they swore “until the mountains crumble into the sea”. I just sat there gape-mouthed. And then I kind of teared up. Someday I plan to move to Artemisia.. and someday I hope to be a peer.. and this means that someday I’ll be mouthing some other fealty oath.. and that kind of makes me sad.

This last weekend we attended Western October Crown. We decided to day-trip but stayed in a hotel on Friday night so we could be on-site early Saturday morning. On Friday night we parked in the hotel parking lot next to a big delivery box truck. On Saturday morning, as we were packing up to leave the front desk clerk came out and let us know that during the night that box truck had hit our car. She gave us the driver’s contact info.

We were well within the lines for our parking space. It looks like when the truck driver went to leave, they pulled forward and then went right too soon and their bumper hit the side of our car. The bumper then hooked our headlight, ripped it out and creased our bumper. The right front quarter panel, headlight and probably front bumper will need to be replaced. We’re working with them to get this handled.. but it meant that we had to drive home with only one headlight. Add to that.. the car just looks creepy with an empty eye socket. Fearghus has started calling the car “Popeye”.

It was a grumpy start to the day.. but we still made it to site in time for Fearghus to sign up on the lists. He was #15 on the unbelt side. He says that’s the lowest he’s been in the list for probably 5 years. Fearghus did get called over to stand with the Chivalry.

Because I am one of Zanobia’s Queen’s Artisans I was going to need to sit in the A&S Display pavilion for the display. I consorted for Fearghus for the first two rounds.. but then I had to go off and setup at the display pavilion. It’s the first time since I started consorting for him that I haven’t been actively present for all of his fights in a Crown/Coronet list. He went 5 and then sent me a half-dozen roses.

The display went great. There was some initial stress that we didn’t have nearly enough table space but that got worked out and everything got setup. For food I had made Prince-biskets, Stuffed eggs, gyngerbrede and sweet leaches(milk jellies). Sadly the sweed leaches drowned in melt water in the cooler so I had to toss them without serving any of them. All of the food items were well received, in fact I think a lot more of the Gyngerbrede got eaten than I expected. It is very strong and will absolutely clean out your sinuses.

We had a pretty constant crowd of people walking through the display. In fact there were a lot more people than I’d expected. Usually the display pavilion is kind of empty so it was a pleasant change to see so many people coming through, looking at the items and sampling the food-ie bits. I am very glad that I had a dress dummy to show of Arianwen’s dress. It showed very well (especially when Fearghus started sending me roses and I stuck them down the back of her dress so they almost made a rosy halo over the dress form). My blue kirtle displayed less well (think heap of blue shapeless cloth with a description pinned to it). In retrospect I think I should have stuck with 1 bigger item (Ari’s dress) and then a handful of other smaller items. As I expected, people came through to browse the showings not to inspect them critically. In all cases the single-page description seemed sufficient and in fact I’m not certain most of the descriptions even got read. Although I kind of wanted to include a couple of 6-10 page papers in depth about some of the items.. I think it would have been wasted effort.

Tonight I’ll get started on my secret superhero project for Cynaguan Coronet.

5.
I had the good fortune to catch a brief glimpse of “Pillars of the Earth” on television. It’s a mini-series that actually aired a few years ago but was being re-broadcast recently. It’s set in the 12th century.. and costuming is a bit “off” if you ask me.. but it’s still interesting to see the medieval attitudes in action. What if you really did believe with every ounce of your being that your sins would send you to Hell.. and that only a priest could absolve you of those sins so that you could get into Heaven? That would give the priest, and the church a lot of power.. and as is known.. absolute power corrupts.. absolutely. If you haven’t seen it I definitely recommend checking it out. It’s probably available from Netflix.. I plan to order it from Amazon.

Future:
Oct 20 FREE WEEKEND!!
Oct 25 Cynaguan Fall Coronet
Nov 3 FREE WEEKEND!!
Nov 10 Colligium Occiental
Nov 17 Mists Fall Investiture
Nov 24 Thanksgiving and Golden River Anniversary (my parents will be in town)
Dec 1 Housewarming/Holiday/Shots Party

August 31, 2013 My wedding in Billings Montana