Raise the Mast at the Docks

Yesterday I joked on the phone with Lilya about finding the ship in the dark. She planned to find them easily because, “They’re the loud group” and I reminded her, “Everyone’s loud at war.” And I suggested, “It’s not like you’re going to see masts and sails and know you’re at the docks.” I was wrong. The group next to us actually brings a huge mast and sails, a wooden dock, ropes, and other dock-decorations and sets them up in camp. Sadly they weren’t up last night when I was looking for them, but they’re up today and look amazing.

The “Coffee Bar of SPLEN-dooooor” was a huge hit this morning, although there weren’t really that many people in camp. I actually had to go “hawking my wares” with the neighboring camps. They, of course, were very grateful and I seem to have made best friends with the little 5 & 6 year-old girls who were happy to have hot chocolate with marshmallows for breakfast. There were even some adults who were thrilled to have marshmallows for breakfast, too.

The biggest task today was to go shopping with Lilya and Dillon, since their garb was mostly trapped in their truck [a long story involving a brother, a boat, and no brake fluid on the boat trailer] in a shop somewhere. Since Lilya will be doing my vocal coaching, we’re doing a trade. We found an amazing wool tunic at Ceridwen’s that was so perfect for Dillon, and then after looking at the entire site and finding almost nothing for Lilya, at the last stop we found a treasure trove. There was a choli and pants in silk noil, the thinest linen blouse you’ve ever seen, and the perfect Turkish coat in a flannel lining and a heavy embroidered outer fabric. On walk about we also found a purple and silver metal-thread head wrap.

So they were dressed for the weekend (since Lilya had the sari I gave her last weekend for when it was hot, the new coat for when it was cold) and we could just enjoy whatever we wanted. Lilya had a friend out from Utah (who also knew a mutual friend of ours from Oxnard that had moved several years ago) and she was a blast to hang out with too.

Lots of shopping and some wonderful food court stops later, we were relaxing around the camp for the rest of the afternoon. It was really hot (we are near the Mexican border!) but it wasn’t completely unbearable, and Catriona brings a shaded kitchen when camping, so we all sat around there, relaxing and chatting.

I did take the time to do the afternoon announcements as my volunteer shift for the event, and had a lovely time going camp to camp, delivering the announcements right up close, without shouting. Several people were impressed at my heralding shift, since they’re used to either (a) being ignored and no one comes all the way out where they are or (b) heralds just stand on the road and shout, and never come right up and talk conversationally. And in a brewers’ household, I was offered the yummiest lemonade I’ve ever tasted, since I had to decline the alcohol (“Sorry m’lords, I’m on duty right now.”).

Dinner was on our own this evening, so those of us who didn’t have household dinner arrangements wandered back to the food court where I had the yummiest custom food ever. There was a muscled, slim, good-looking man in a kilt serving Corned Beef and Cabbage who was very sweet and allowed me to substitute chicken for the beef and still get all the veggies that looked so good. It was the most generously portioned meal I’ve seen sold on site, and the yummiest chicken I’ve had in forever. Hats off to Tamlin’s!

Finally, Lilya was planning to sing at the Royal encampment some time that evening, and while we were waiting for everything to get started, we hung out at Duke Edric’s encampment for a while. They were serving “Turkish Coffee” (for real!) and it’s given me some ideas about getting the same for future events.

And I finally got to chat with some folks from Isles that I’ve met in passing and never got to know real well. Ximena is just facinating, and I can’t wait to get to see them at other events in the future.

When everyone finally went over to Royals, there were other bards performing first, and I was just exhausted and frozen. So I begged off and went back to camp for my cloak, but just couldn’t make myself trek across the site *again* for the performances. Instead, I joined the White Star (the ship’s crew) around the campfire to listen to stories and songs and sagas, watch the captain get *way* too drunk on rum, and then collapse in bed for tomorrow.

First Night Camping

I would entitle this “First night at war” but for those of you who are not part of the SCA, this might be mis-leading. When my friends and I from that middle-ages re-enactment club go camping for days at a time, usually the theme is that we are “At War” with another Kingdom, and the fighting scenarios include troops of knights and other armored fighters, doing battle with “swords” and shield, using field tactics, storming “castles” and other scenarios. So this is to set the scene, and now back to your regularly scheduled catch-up post.

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I did some of my packing the night before, and the rest this morning. I’m really quite glad I had the “Coffee Bar of Splendoor” already together from last weekend. I seem to be getting a little better at time management, because over breakfast (Denny’s down the street because it was fast, sit-down, cheap, and had coffee) I made notes about all the things I *wished* I could do, and then did a realistic time estimate on how long it would take to do each. Then I evaluated “what would the consequences be if I *didn’t* do this step?” which helped me put the whole thing in perspective.

When in reality it would take an hour to enjoy lingering over my ironing and watching an episode of TV at the same time, but the consequences would include sitting in rush hour traffic on a get-away Friday AND a holiday weekend, it was easy to walk away from that task. Were I not careful, I’d have done that first because then my room would be clean when I got home. I did need to dismantle my bed before leaving because Geoff and Mer are staying home this weekend, and putting together Geoff’s old loft bed for me.

Finally I decided on the bare minimums, which included cleaning the kitchen while packing my kitchen items and the last of my downstairs organizing. It might sound like cleaning the counters and other people’s dishes aren’t as important as packing and leaving, but I’d been away a lot this week and when I’m not home, the kitchen slips quite a bit. And I enjoy my vacations MUCH more when there’s a clean kitchen at home.

The drive was uneventful, even though there was plenty of traffic even WITH leaving by 2:30-3:00, but I enjoyed taking PCH and taking in the ocean before sitting in north-San-Diego-county traffic. Even the sunset was lovely, making the trip that much nicer. I got on site (at the SCA gigantic camping trip for the weekend) while it was still light out—another one of my goals for the weekend.

My roomie Mel is part of a household that has a nautical theme, and supposedly “all the ships” would be “at the docks.” I drove through the park and never saw anyone I recognized from their households, so I went ahead and parked my car and started looking for them on foot.

Met a nice lady in the parking lot who hailed from Northeastern Ohio (where I grew up!) and had a lovely chat before starting on what turned into a three-hour hike looking for my camping space. A three-hour hike in the dark is exhausting, and sadly the food court had closed before I could stop for dinner.

So I visited some other friends in their camping area around 9 or 9:30, and when they offered me a snack I started to actually cry a little with joy and exhaustion. It was all very silly, but bananas and cookies make a wonderful dinner in the cold and the dark. One of the guys there knew where “the docks” were supposed to be, and walked me out to a dirt road I never noticed, out towards the archery fields, where we easily found two pirate groups and my friends.

Turns out my camping group had only gotten there around 8:30 which explains why I couldn’t find them at 6:30. *grin* So, the camp is all set up, we’ve all had a lovely garlic chicken and veggies dinner in the dark, and my roomie has offered me a place in her pavilion (since on top of everything, my friend Lilya still hasn’t arrived yet with the tent she was planning to loan me). Time to sleep and start early tomorrow with coffee bar for everyone.

Preparing for June

There are times when I find that time is more blended, less segmented. Today is a great example. Although it’s only Thursday, my brain is whirring with what to pack tonight, how to get on the road tomorrow, what I’ll be doing while camping Friday through Monday, and when we’ll be back in the studio next week after being away for an entire month. The drummer, keyboardist, and guitarist in my band have each taken a week’s vacation—consecutively. So for a month we haven’t been in the studio.

On the drive home last night, it dawned on me that there was something in my CD player. (Because there’s only so much George Noory that I can listen to on the radio without going stir-crazy.) So I popped it out to see what it was, and it was a band recording with the melody line for two sets of lyrics I was supposed to write and learn. The guitarist ended up writing one of them, because I just didn’t think I had the frame of mind to write lyrics for a song entitled “Sex Dream.” I have to say, he did a great job on that one and I’m glad I asked him to write it. Now I’ll just tweak it so I’m comfortable singing it. Anyways, I still need to write the lyrics to the other song, and ideally several more, if we’re to finish our 3rd CD by September (at least finish *writing* by Sept., which is our goal).

So today at work I’m letting another Tom CD run in the background, to remind me all the songs available and to start better memorizing them. He came into the studio with an hour’s worth of music on eleven tracks and just said, “Oh I wrote a few things, you might like them.” I love them. But they are all instrumentals for now, so I have to complete the lyrics as soon as possible.

Hence time is blending one segment into another and it’ll be June already and I should be well on my way. I may need to set up some weekly/monthly goals [have X, Y, and Z done in June, have A, B, and C done in July…] so that I’m all caught up again.

The best thing is that strong emotions evoke more lyrical creativity for me, and I’d qualify my silly jr-high-like crush from the weekend as a dose of strong emotions. So even though I’m certain we’ll just be friends and this is not someone I would ever be dating, I’m thankful for the jolt of creativity from it all.

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Which is also to say it might be a few days until I can post, because I’ll be out camping with between 1,000 and 5,000 of my closest friends. I’ll keep some logs along the way, so that I can catch you all up quickly afterwards.

With all my love!

Photo Albums are Hard Work

Whew, wow. After taking months and months to get a photo album created for a website for my friends, last spring, I’m pleased to say it only took two days [working nearly 6-10 hours a day] to get the album done this time. So I hope my dear friend Brian knows that I really did this all for him, since he was the one bugging me last time.

If you don’t already have the link, I’m proud to present a photo album from an event this past Saturday: http://www.darachshire.org/galleries/Anniversary/

I’m doubly proud of my photography as well as my webdesign. Yippee!

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Some other good news in my day today: We had medical screening (for free) at work today. They tested our blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, and body fat. I know that my mom and sister and I tend to have low blood pressure, and as I’ve too much weight for a while, it’s climbed to the “normal” range. And I donate blood regularly, so I’m pretty up on my blood pressure every two-three months. But I’ve never had the other bits tested before. Apparently I have *really* low cholesterol, and all the medical staff there gave me enthusiastic thumbs up for that reading. Glucose was also low, and so I’ve no symptoms of problems there.

And body fat, although I knew what the reading would probably be (the level that says “you should lose weight”) I did learn something very encouraging. My lean body mass is much higher than I thought it was. When you’re 5’4″, the old charts always say you’re supposed to be around 120 lbs. Ha! My lean body mass is 150 lbs—so I can stop worrying about being some skinny-binny some day (not like I was really worrying) because even at 0% fat, I’d be more than that. So I’ll probably have my body fat checked again in another six months, to see what progress I’ve made on my exercise, food, and weight loss regimen.

What a wonderful discovery today.

Well, after all that hard work on the photo albums, it’s time to (a) find some dinner at 9 pm and (b) do my laundry before sleep.

G’night!

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Recently Listened to: Aileen & Alexandra Grill, “Sof Ma’arav L’dor Vador”

Does Filing Work Like Hangars?

You know the old saying that if you leave empty wire hangars in the closet, unchecked, they multiple when you’re not looking? I got that feeling last night when I started digging into the filing that had piled up around my home. I’ve got some major furniture re-arrangements going on, and so there were several piles of paper that just got shuttled around from shelf to shelf until their “real home” was decided.

Well, I decided that part of my cleaning-up-after-the-event-activities would be to put away my filing. Finished up one pile, looked around, noticed another one, flipped through it and found “Hmm, I don’t remember having two piles of filing-yet-to-do.” Finished up the second pile, looked around, found another one that was also just normal filing, sat and finished it, too. Looked around and… You get the picture. Hours and hours later, I had so much put away, so many clean and empty shelves, and a really small “To-Do” pile left on my desk. Pretty cool.

The only drawback was that I was wired at 2 am from all the industriousness of cleaning, and I just couldn’t stop and go to sleep.

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Yesterday there was no journal entry, because yesterday was a Migraine Day. It always amuses me that I don’t recognize a headache at first when I’m sleeping and one starts to come on. I toss and turn, confused and perplexed, until I finally wake enough to say, “Oh, take something for the pain and this will get better.” I came into work after lunch with this summary: It’s amazing what Meds, a Nap, Food, Coffee, and more Meds will do for you. Ah, better living through chemical engineering.

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My roomies brought down the big moving truck full of Geoff’s stuff, and I hear that the garage is filled to the brim. But the new exciting thing for me is that I’m getting a loft bed frame from Geoff, custom-made by him. And he’s even offered to set it up for me, while I’m away camping with friends this weekend. It was nice to see that he seemed to be in good humor about it all, and I’m very thankful that he’s offered to assemble it.

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Recently Listened to: Sarah MacLachlan, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” and Aileen & Alexandra Grill, “Sof Ma’arav L’dor Vador”