Catered food rocks

Tue June 7 – The yummiest food ever at work today: An incredibly well-seasoned turkey (in those big thick slices like at Thanksgiving), great mixed veggies, scrumtious mashed potatos, and then cream puffs and chocolate-covered strawberries for afternoon dessert. I’m so thankful they don’t serve food like this every day.

Silliness at work: http://tinyurl.com/8ltkm

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Recently listened to: Kate Bush “The Hounds of Love”

Tiny notes

Mon June 6 – Finally did my monthly “flip the calendar” routine, and I’m starting to think ahead about how I plan to blend other people’s time management books and techniques into my personal version. I’ve really enjoyed the “Time Management from the Inside-Out” book (definitely hits how I think and act) but I’m also still reviving reading “Seven Habits of Effective People” and looking at how I use my paper planner and my electronic planner in conjunction. Clearly I need a keyboard for my electronic planner—of all the things about my last Palm, I miss having a keyboard the most.

Forgot dinner again—I’m such a weirdo. But I did step on the scale this morning, and I’ve either lost 6 pounds if you believe my scale, or 12 pounds if you believe my scale AND the scale at the medical screening last week. I’m inclined to believe “six” rather than “twelve” at this point.

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Recently listened to: Kate Bush “The Hounds of Love”

Bouncy bouncy fun fun fun fun fun

Sun June 5 – Let’s see: Church, the Park and the guys at Fighter Practice, the afternoon at Donna’s, a tired drive home, and forgetting to eat dinner.

The afternoon at Donna’s was fun. We were getting together specifically to work on (a) the security issues and internet access on her desktop computer and (b) practicing ASL together. It amazes me how much I still remember from Jr. high and spending time with Mary and her family (ASL was her first language). But I am nervous sometimes “teaching” ASL tips to Donna, since I know I am *not* as well practiced as I should be, and I wouldn’t presume to say that I was fluent in ASL. But I have learned some tips here and there, and I hope that I’m doing it justice.

And before I jetted off to Donna’s, I stopped off in the park to see my Shire buddies. Because guess what I got back yesterday at Coronation?!? My armor!

Yep, I’m going to learn (or is that re-learn?) to do that sword-fighting stuff again. After the camping trip over Memorial Day weekend, my friend Thomas posted to an email list a long story about how much fun he had with javelins on the war field. And he’d like to develop teams of javelineers who can work together—one person throwing, one person handing off additional javelins.

So I wrote to a friend of mine to see if she ever used the stainless steel breastplate and backplate that I gave to her. Turns out she can’t fight after all (her retinas could detatch if she received a hard enough blow to the head), and so she was happy to bring back the armor.

I took the armor out to the park to have the guys look at it and help me evaluate how to build my full armor kit. Then I kicked off my shoes (can’t fight on the grass in heels) and practiced handing javelins to Thomas. We timed it—we can lob 12 javelins in 24 seconds without any practice! Wow. So this is definitely as exciting as I thought it would be, and suddenly have more stuff in my schedule all over again. *grin*

Coronation

Sat June 4 – I’m reminded again how glad I am that I’m still a non-smoker again, since being around someone who hasn’t quit yet gets tedious quickly. I felt a little awkward asking her to go wash up so we could sit and chat around the house while I folded laundry before leaving, but not so awkward that I kept silent. And she’s a good enough friend to not take offense.

For quite some time I’ve been meaning to sew little linen bands (almost “headbands” in the modern sense) that I can pin my linen veil/head covering to when I’m in my middle-ages costuming outfits (garb). You can see here, http://www.darachshire.org/galleries/Anniversary/image123.htm, that I’ve cheated a little bit. That veil is being held on by tiny safety pins under the veil, hooked on just a piece of black ribbon. It worked well enough for a day tourney and all the days camped “at war,” but it was finally time to take some action and get something nicer.

So I grabbed some linen scraps from my sewing boxes, a needle, thread, and scissors. Packed them all with Æduin’s new pins from Thursday, and headed to the event. Rather than spin yarn all day, I spent most of the time hand sewing the new linen bands. I even created a cloth button from the linen and a button loop from the thread. The whole project came out wonderfully, and looks a little like these examples here: http://www.virtue.to/articles/veils.html … the only difference being that I’m still cheating and hooking the barbette under the back of my hair, rather than under my chin. But someday I might finally put up with a chin strap. It does look nicer with a real barbette. Hmm.

Coronation itself was okay, but certainly I was glad to be there to witness the Laurel ceremony for Thomas Bronwell. For you non-SCA types: There are three “levels” of rank in our society: An Award of Arms (Lord or Lady with a capital L), a Grant of Arms (The Honorable Lord or Honorable Lady, also His Lordship and Her Ladyship), and a Patent of Arms (Sir, Dame, Master, and Mistress). There are three “pillars” to the SCA as well: Service, Artistic Achievement, and Prowess of Arms (Fighting). Knights are the Peerage for Martial Arts, Laurels and Pelicans are the Peerages for Artistic Achievement and Service, respectively. These are the highest “awards” given for achievement in our society, more or less. [This is the short version of the story.]

Anyways, I’m positive that I cannot recite *everything* Thomas Bronwell is skilled at, but some of the points mentioned as he processed in for the ceremony included Calligraphy, Illumination (fancy artwork that goes with Calligraphy), Costuming, Poetry, Philosophy, Heraldry, Alchemist (I think they actually said this, and it probably goes with the fact that he’s *made* pigments and inks for his calligraphy and illumination), Dance, and others. I’d personally add “And really nice guy” but that might sound silly in the pomp and circumstance. One of my earliest SCA memories include Thomas and Colm and I at Estrella (a camping trip in Arizona, in February!), and those gentlemen escorting me and entertaining me in the midst of “5,000 of our closest friends.” They were perfect gentlemen, and I’ve thought of them fondly ever since that event some 11-12 years ago.

There was also a repeat performance of the military presentation to the Queen, although not nearly as heart-stopping as last weekend at war.

Lilya was also staying for the feast, as a performer and an organizer for the performances, so I opted to stay for “Feast Off-Board” which means staying around, but eating your own food. I’m actually fairly glad I chose this—not that I wouldn’t want to some day enjoy a feast put on by Guiseppe (renowned for his cooking) but because I really enjoyed the food I had packed for lunch during the day, and I didn’t eat much for lunch. So the food was neither wasted nor was I hungry waiting for the next course to be served.

I sat outside with some 14-yr-old girls, and we had an amazingly silly and fun time together. Clearly I don’t watch enough movies or cartoons, but it was easy to follow along and understand what’s big these days (Invader Zim?) and even learn silly quotes from the shows (“Always make room for the tuna” and “I miss the cupcake”). Silliness personified. Oh, I will have to find out from Rhieinwen what it was that made us first coin the phrase, “I make it a point to never worship anything I cannot pronounce” because for the life of me I can only remember saying it at Sage once upon a time. But the girls loved it! Astra made a good point about the Name of God Being Unpronounceable, but since I think it was more like a fantasy, Cthulu-type, reference, she agreed that this was probably a good rule of thumb.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s okay. Sometimes some of us aren’t sure either. Silliness, horror films and novels, movie quotes, and tired people make for funny quotes out of context later.

Girls’ Night In

Fri June 3 – I would call work uneventful, and then my evening was really just filled with good friends. Mel threw a little girls-night party this evening, including friends from her SCA household, her sister, and two friends from work. They made cookies with this elaborate electronic pastry-shooter (that’s the best way I can describe it) and we sat around watching “Bridget Jones’ Diary” (the first one) over pizza, drinks, cookies, and frosting. It was really fun, and it’s been forever since I sat around watching movies with friends.

Lilya also came over late this evening, since I’ll be driving her to Coronation tomorrow. We tried to slip out after the movie to get my laundry from war done (finally) but the laundromat apparently *does* have business hours after all. So I plan to sneak out early (6 am) to do the laundry myself, and then come wake up Lilya so we can get on the road.

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Recently listened to: Kate Bush “The Hounds of Love”