There really is just too much over Pennsic to do more than summarize the best parts of it.

We arrived very late on Friday night. It was dark and cold and wet. I made the executive decision that I would rather pay for a hotel room than try to set up in that. Hurray for one last night in a real bed!

I took two classes from Ragnveig Snorradottir - Viking Domestic Architecture and Denmark before Jellinge - they were both wonderful and I can highly recommend her as a teacher if you ever get out to Pennsic.

My classes were a smashing success! I had about 35-40 in my Pictish World class. The real winner was the Beautiful Rolled Hems class, though! I literally had eighty or more people show up! When I did the "magic" part of the stitch, the class went wild. The last row actually stood up and applauded... and the class next door came over to find out what the hell was going on. *grin* Since it was such a fast class, though, I snuck in a second class on whipcording for those that wanted to stay. (Spread the disease, spread the disease!) Even better, for the rest of the event,  I had random people scurry up to me to show me their just-completed projects. :) Happiness.

Revelation: People are willing to pay a reasonable amount for extensive handouts, provided they are quality handouts. Resolution: Must revise handouts so the Pictish World can have a freebie basic handout and an optional for-sale nice, fat illustrated packet . Nummy.

I finally got to meet judithsewstoo  in person. We geeked, the apprenti and I took her class, she gave me some tasty silk string and I gave her some feedback on her class.

Tuesday rocked. Waterbearing, classes, hanging out with the apprenti, fun in camp, the Northshield party, and a tipsy stumble home under starry skies. Splendid.

Apparently, I can corrupt people by osmosis - I got one of the Greyfox boys to start handsewing a linen tunic in camp. :) For some crazy reason, he wanted more than 3 shirts and asked for help picking out fabric, which I did... He looked disappointed that he would need to wash and dry it before he could do anything with it, but I then helpfully offered that I could show him how to cut it out of a piece of washed and dried linen that I just happened to have on site... I explained the stitches and the construction steps and offered to help him sew it, but by then he wanted to do it all himself. Hurray!

Further geeky fun - Bardic Bread around the fire and the "Greyfox A&S Pavilion" on our porch. :) It was too cold Wednesday night toget the bread to rise, but I baked over the fire on Thursday and Friday nights. Friday night I even got to try out a new yeast starter that was sent to me by one of the mercenary households. I only used about half, so now I have a little zoo on my countertop at home.

I took a very interesting and useful class about working on parchment and bought some calligraphy toys. I must talk to Gustov about some of what I learned/remembered.

The courts were full of twelve kinds of goodness. Congrats to everyone, especially our Draco Incarnates Leif and Astrid and to the geek-boys Duncan and Svein! :)

We made good time on the road home, got only moderately lost in Chicago, stayed mostly awake on I-90 (hurray for paying missed tolls online), and my traveling companion and I still liked each other when we got home. :)

Cool purchases: forged nails, pumice stones, soapstone for a viking lamp, jet beads, bone dice with ring-and-dot pips, and a giant silver button.

Best thing I learned: a completely stoopidly easy way of making circle/dot marks like are seen on so many early period artifacts. I can't believe it didn't ever occur to me, it was so obvious... Sometimes it's the simple things...

Best acquisition: A very nice mirror from Northstar Armories. I've wanted a period mirror for a long time but the ones I found were either ugly or not up to my standards in some way. This one is delicious in all ways and has a really spectacularly clear reflective side - most ot the metal mirors are a little on the fun-house mirror side. The mirror is modeled on the Trelan Bahow mirror, which is early even for me, but is essentially the same as those seen on the Pictish Symbol Stones. I found it after I spent my war budget, though, so I was foolishly waffling about it... but then Mr. Svein bought it for me as a War Prezzie. The first thing I did that night was sew a linen baggie to protect it. :)



See info on the mirror here and on general bronze age mirrors here.

Yay, War! Its good to be home, but I already miss it...

Here's my plan for Quest:

Friday I will be mucking about with Norse foods. I've bought a bunch of period-appropriate ingredients, I'll be bringing my cooking implements of doom, and you should join me if you way to play or just want to chatter at me while I cook. I'm not sure where we'll be camped, but I'll feed you Norse snackies if you find me.

Saturday will be the teach-y day. I am teaching a string class at 1:30PM and will be doing a library roadshow at 3PM (see descriptions below). I'm planning on bringing a selection of fiber arts toys and my Elizabethan books. If you have anything in particular you would like to see, either fiber-wise or book-wise, let me know and I'll try to bring along appropriate resources for you. Also, let me know if you want a private session of any of my classes and I'll do my best to get you in sometime on Saturday.

See you Friday!


( Fiber fun... )

( Research Library Roadshow )

I'm working on a project for my April Thing-a-Day and a thought has occurred to me. I am going to be attending Silks, Needles, and More and the sewing skill I most want to teach is something best taught in 1-4 people groups and generally can be taught in 5-10 minutes. Therefore, it is not necessarily a particularly good normal class. What do people think about my offering to hold a "wandering class" where people could catch me in the hall between classes, during lunch, etc and learn in small groups. I'd have kits and instructions, but then people would not have to waste a class period on a simple, but I think important, skill.

So... thoughts? comments?

So, something was bothering me about the 35th Anniversary event and I could not quite put my finger on it... And then iarroganti commented that he had heard some people discussing the event on their way out the door and that they had never learned so much at an event. Suddenly I realized what the problem was - a teaching event and I didn't teach a blessed thing all day long. I certainly had plenty else on my plate and I did indeed enjoy the classes I did take, but it still felt odd...

It is sort of strange, but I think one of my most favorite things about the SCA is the endless opportunities to learn something... and then teach it to other people. I think that is one of the reasons I have never felt strongly attracted to other more specific reenactment organizations - I am a quality authenticity wonk, but the 1000+ years of our "period" allows for endless research possibilities and the opportunity to experiment with new challenges while still retaining a focus on my primary period of interest.

I enjoy knowledge for knowledge's sake, but there is something even more appealing about purposeful knowledge, which is why I think the majority of my classes are hands-on and/or practical classes. I do teach a few theory or history classes, but those are generally aimed at sucking people into delightful Pictish pursuits, so there is an ulterior motive there. And that, I think, is the core of the appeal. I love to suck people into a subject, to see that light go on in their eyes and their fingers start to twitch to try it, to seem them grasp the possibilities and the joy of the subject. It doesn't matter if I am playing with ego_id_non_feci's monsters, or teaching at an event, presenting at an academic conference, educating medical staff, or speaking to elderly folks, whether it is to a single person or an audience of dozens, I am rarely as happy as when I'm teaching...

I don't think I really have a point here, just nattering on - I have known for a long time that I enjoyed teaching, this weekend just underscored that for me....

OK - a little professional rant here about the evils of the drug companies. Stick with me - this is longish and delves into chemistry and molecular structures, but I promise it will make sense and be worth it in the end.

When drugs lose their patent and generics are about to hit the market, the Evil Drug Companies have several nasty little tricks to extend the patent. Once way is getting approval for new indications, another is bringing lawsuits against the generic manufacturers for technicalities, and another is by coming out with a "new" copy-cat drug that they market as being better than the original. It is this third case I would like to discuss today.

Because of the way that carbons work in molecular structures, sometimes there are "chiral carbons" - carbons where the other molecules that stick to them can be arranged in one of two specific ways. This makes it so that there are essentially two drugs with the same chemical structure, but that are put together just slightly differently. The molecules are non-superimposable mirror images of one another. A great visual analogy to this is your hands - they both have a thumb and four fingers, but you have a right and a left and no matter how you turn them, they will never be the same. In fact, sometimes these carbons are referred to as "right-handed" or "left-handed" because of some optical effects they have in solution.

Anyway, usually, they way the molecules (fingers) are stuck onto the carbon (hand) are random and often it turns out to be about a 50/50 mix when the drug is made in the lab (it is possible for there to be other ratios but how and why that happens is complicated and beyond the scope of this post). Sometimes, both forms of the drug work just fine, sometimes there is one or the other that is responsible for the activity and/or side effects of the original mixture. Think of the activity sites in the body as gloves - sometimes you have a stretchy knit mitten - anything vaguely hand-shaped will do - but sometimes you have a tailored leather right handed driving glove and only the right hand of the person the glove was designed for will fit it. It is the same way with drugs- sometimes that chiral carbon matters, sometimes it doesn't.

So... the Evil Drug Companies, seeing that their big earner is about to lose its patent, will sometimes try to figure out which of the molecules is the active or more active form. They can usually then either figure out how to manufacture just that type or how to separate the two molecules after they are made. This does two things - it usually makes the process more expensive and it means that they can patent this "new" drug as a brand name drug. With sufficient advertising, they can even make people believe that this "new" drug is better than the old one. That is usually a lie. Sometimes both of the molecules were active and one was just chosen for its patentability. Sometimes the inactive or less active one was just "junk" - essentially taking up space but not doing anything. Rarely is the side effect or efficacy rate significantly changed by these little tricks.

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Some examples:

Claritin (loratadine) 10 mg and Clarinex (desloratadine) 5 mg
See? They are using the right-handed molecule (ergo the "des" prefix on the generic name) and only using half as much, because they have taken out the left-handed loratadine that presumably was inactive. Now they have a drug that can be prescription only and brand name! Yay! Money for the Evil Drug Company!

Celexa (citalopram) vs Lexapro (escitalopram)
This one is a little harder to do the direct comparison because it comes in multiple dosage strengths. (In this care, it is an antidepressant that can work at different strengths for different people.) However, in general, the Lexapro doses are half the Celexa doses. This time it is the left-handed molecule that is used (es = S = sinister = left).

Prilosec (omeprazole) 20 mg and Nexium (esomeprazole) 20 mg
Oooh! My favorite. Remember all those ads about the "Purple Pill"? Remember when they started talking about the "NEW Purple Pill" and the pill got these adorable gold stripes on it? They were trying to get people to stick with the brand name product when omeprazole went generic and the generics were shockingly no longer in a purple capsule. Horrors! It won't work if it is not in a purple capsule! They touted all this "evidence" that Nexium (oooh! even the name implies progress!) worked better than omeprazole, but if you look at this mathematically - if the left-handed molecule is the one that works and the dose of both the mixed drug omeprazole (active and inactive) and the "pure" drug esomeprazole (all active) is 20 mg, which would you expect to work better? Perhaps the one with twice as much active ingredient? Shocking. But they don't want you to take two of the cheap-o $0.60 pills when you could take their $6.00 per pill Purple Pills! Look! they are shiny! and Purple!

Thalidomide
Thalidomide is a chiral drug too and only one of its molecules is responsible for the terrible birth defects seen in children of women who took it during pregnancy. However, it (and many others) cannot be marketed as a single type of drug because the human body can interconvert the two types of molecule and change the beneficial form into the teratogenic form after the drug is consumed. Some other drugs have this conversion happen too, but it can be of little or no consequence if the other form is benign or beneficial.

***********************************************************************************************

So, the take home message - when your doctor prescribes something - especially something you have seen a lot of commercials about - it is worth asking the doctor and/or your pharmacist if there is something older, cheaper, and just as good. Often, there is. Keep your money, don't give it to the Evil Drug Companies!


For those of you dorks interested in details:
Chirality the basic background chemistry
Enantiomers includes a list of drugs where this technique has been used

Please bear with me, this is a longish post... It has been a busy and difficult week with no posts, so now I have a bucket of little tidbits saved up that have been simmering for a few days - some brain stew, if you will. I likely will have one or two significant posts on specific topics in the coming days, but to get the little stuff out:


Linen
The first batch of linen came in. The good news? It will be $4/yard. The bad news? It is significantly lighter weight than the previous batches from this seller. I have some linen from other sources just arrived or enroute (from jtdiii and other dealers) so I should be able to fill all the orders for light-medium weight black linen, but I now have some excess 55" wide black handkerchief weight (~3.5 oz) linen for sale. I have about 60 yards, $4 a yard while it lasts - comment or email.  The gold linen is also in and cut, so orders for white, black, gold, and brocade linens will all be available for pickup at Coronation.


Birdies
Tweet and Derelei have pretty obviously decided to be a bonded pair and she has been making nesting-type gestures for a bit now, so I bought her a nesting box. However, this as brought issues with Astrid to a head - the boys were willing to accept the box as Tweet's and only Tweet's. They quickly clued in that they should not mess with it beyond the occasional nibble on a corner. Astrid is naughtier though. She was all interested in the box and, even after some pretty solid smack downs, insisted on messing with it. Nevermind that before this time she showed no interest in nesting and, even if she were interested, her potential partner options are... erm... poor. I lurves the boys, but they are somewhat lovably defective. I'm not even sure that they are clear that she's a girl. I eventually had to separate them so poor Astrid is spending some time in "birdie jail" - a smaller cage I keep for such eventualities. I'll give them a few days to cool down and then see if giving Astrid a box too will solve the problem. Keep your fingers crossed for me...


Work
Gods, work is eating my brainz. It is public enough now I can explain. Care Wisconsin is part of the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) that serves at-risk populations of special needs patients. Care Wisconsin's population is almost 700 frail elderly patients. One of our sister WPP organizations, Community Living Alliance (CLA), serves Developmentally Disabled (DD) and Physically Disabled (PD)  populations. For a variety of reasons, they will be transferring all their Partnership patients to us as of May 1. That is nearly 400 extremely complicated patients suddenly joining our plan all at once, for a total census of 1,100 patients for whom I am responsible. Yoiks. This also means that since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services won't let the get rolled into our existing formulary, I have to maintain and report on two separate programs through the end of the year (read: gigantic headache). Plus, the Nurse Practitioners at CLA are not used to our model of practice, so there will be a huge amount of adjustment and hand-holding in the coming months as the new staff and patients are integrated. I will have some pharmacy help for the month of May and we are looking to hire someone ASAP, but with the pharmacist market being what it is, I'm not very hopeful. We have a great work environment, great benefits, and we are doing good work. However, it is hard work and the compensation is below average, even for Madison, so it is hard to attract people away from the "big guys" like the UW and Walgreens. Throw in the added fun of developing the 2009 formulary and my days are packed and often long.


Sewing
I am so inspired by the books I have been reading, the files I have been obtaining from museums, and the lectures I went to in Milwaukee. Now I just need 20 yards of a scrumptious white and gold brocade, 100 yards of matching narrow trim, 40 yards of matching wide trim, 15 yards of a scrumptious velvet, 50 yards of compatible trim, 500 pearls, 1000 free hours to work on it and a budget of $4000 to appropriately accessorize. :P The late period stuff is so pretty, but SO expensive. (Note to all y'all beginning sewers - more expensive to do it right, not actually and harder, however.) At least I have a giant stash of pearls... Anyway, dread_ex, ladyroisin, relativelylucid, casslee, corvusjoyous and likely others will hopefully benefit from my recent studies as they have clarified how to correct some issues I've seen in dresses and how to go about correctly drafting others... Now just to find at least some of that time and motivation...


Library Woes
Some of you heard me complaining last week that I needed to return one of the books in my "permanent collection" - books hardly anyone else ever needs or uses and so live on my bookshelf where I can refer to them at my leisure, as I use them regularly. (whymc refers to his as his "remote library storage facility" so I'm not the only one...) However, I have not been good about checking my UW email this semester and, to my horror, I discovered last week that not only did some wretched little undergrad RECALL my book, but I was a miserable library patron and it was now overdue. Now this did not present a financial problem - the UW does not charge overdue fines - it DID however pose a problem for using ILL (Inter Library Loan) services, which were the reason I was logging in at all. Blast and Damn. So, I swiftly returned the book so I could have my ILL rights reinstated.

Tonight, I discovered that the wretched little undergrad who recalled the book was none other than
jinglymushroom... who was recalling it forilaifire. ;P At least I know the boy is using good sources.


May Day/Jararvellir's 35th Anniversary
Jara's Anniversary event (May 3) is coming up quite rapidly. The theme this year is an educational symposium. While there are a fair number of classes already on the schedule, we could use more. Please contact me if you would be willing to teach! My "One Kingdom" track only has one opening left, but there are many throughout the day. Also, Jara folk in particular - get in your Baronial and AoA recommendations ASAP so I can start plotting to give people what they des... errr... to reward people appropriately. ;)


Quest
I am planning on attending Quest this year and just bought the airline ticket, so I am pretty firmly committed. (It falls in May when I will be having back-up at work, so by god I'm going...) Since I don't get out to that end of the Kingdom terribly often, I am thinking about offering a class or two. Last time I was out there (Crown Tourney, Fall 2007) I offered both Research and the Pictish Tunic classes. Both of those classes had only about a half dozen students each, so it probably would be OK to do either or both of them again, but I have many others in the repertoir, including Pictish history, Whipcording, 10 sewing tips in 5 minutes or less apiece, dyeing, misc sewing and embroidery techniques, autocratting, waterbearing,  rapier armor/garb, beginning illumination, surviving War, building a period/periodiod kit, etc. plus others that could be developed based on interests/needs. The dyeing and C&I ones would be harder to transport materials for and/or teach in uncertain outdoors conditions, but the rest are do-able. Any of you folks with more of a grasp on the interests and needs of the West end of the Kingdom want to chime in on what I should offer to teach (either from the list or as a wish-list?)? Conversely, anyone who has been to Quest, could you tell me what you most recommend about the event?


Yay! That's all for now! Watch tomorrow for either a report on inspirational research or a session on pharmaceutical education, depending on time and my whim. Maybe you'll be "lucky" and get both.

Awhile ago, I asked for people who might be interested in teaching super-basic, ideally hands-on classes for an idea I had. The general idea is to have a whole session of classes where people are encouraged to experiment outside their comfort zone, for fighters to take a fiberarts class and musicians to pick up a sword, etc. The courses are meant to simply give folks an exposure to something different - perhaps to spark their interest, perhaps not, but the real purpose is to give the students a taste of something different...

Of course, I can't find that original post and the responses now. I do, however, have a date and event for the idea! We are having a educational symposium at Jara's 35th Anniversary on May 3rd. If you are interested in my little experiment, please contact me. 

Hiya all -

I have the revised Uberlist! If anyone wants it in nice MS Word format or the class summary, contact me offlist...

Course title: SCA Camping Primer

Instructor: Eithni ingen Talorgain

Class meets: Wednesday, June 27, 2007
   (discussion section optional)

Category: Crosslisted in "Anthropology: SCA culture"
and "Public Health and Safety: Enjoying the Outdoors"

Credits: variable, depending on previous coursework or
comparable real world experience.

Tuition: Your attention and questions!

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I will be teaching the above class tomorrow at the UW Stock Pavilion for first time campers and first time SCA campers who are planning on camping at WW and/or Pennsic. 

I've always been a little OCD and so liked to use a packing list. I therefore decided I should make a comprehensive packing list for the newbies to use (One list to rule them all! Mwah-ha-ha!). The concept is to have the list be exhaustive so that gentles can cross off the things that do not apply, but wll not forget anything they may need. To that end, I combined my list with every SCA Camping packing list I could find, organized into rough categories.

Please review the following and let me know if you think there is anything else that should be added or if any of the items on the list require further explanation (see the last section of the list). 

I plan on making an essentials list as well, but not tonight...

Thanks for the assistance, folks!