It's been a busy extended weekend...

Thursday night, I hosted a BBQ for jcwhitaker  and her friends. It was a good time, with a lot of meat (mmm.... meat and carcinogens!) and singing, both choral and bardic. After the bulk of folks left, we sampled absinthe, margaritas, mojitos, and more... probably a bit too much more, but a fitting beginning to the weekend's festivities. I packed hurriedly and then headed to bed since I had to work in the morning.

Friday started with work (ugh). Usually, I don't work on Fridays, but for the summer I have traded some days with my co-worker so she can enjoy long weekends with her hubby. On one hand, this means I had an extra day to come home from Quest this Monday but on the other hand, it meant I went to work with not enough sleep, not enough done and the world's worst packing job in my car. It literally was about as "full" as it was en route to Quest because things were just randomly tossed in. :P Work was work, but soon I escaped, picked up mightyjesse , some booze, and the Jara sunshade and headed north. We got there just in time for our reservation and sat down to enjoy the Fish Fry. Oi. While the fish was as good as ever, the service, which I *thought* had hit an all-time low a couple years ago, was wretched. I made the executive decision that we should raid the salad bar before we knawed off our own arms and that helped at least. Friday night was pretty casual, with some basic prep for the morning, some chattering until late, and of course some tasty drinks until Don G kicked us out of the bar at closing time. 

Saturday began a little damp with evidence of a night-time rain and occasional spitting from the sky, but it never got heavy enough to seriously impede the fun. Thanks to arebekah  and others for providing such a lovely lunch - as usual, it was wonderful to come in off the field to something warm and tasty. The Princess' Sleeve Tourney in the afternoon was fun, particularly because of the A&S/service component (but I'm a dork like that). It was loooong, but I think generally well enjoyed. Congrats to Edward, the new Sleeve holder! And congrats to the Jara fencers - many of you fought really quite well and made me proud to see you on the field!

Unfortunately, Saturday dinner was an even bigger debacle than the night before - we were asked to come back 20 minutes after the original reservation and, although we complied, it still was something like an hour and a half or more from when we were seated to when we got our dinners. :/ Again, the salad bar to the rescue... I was tipsy and hungry from whisk(e)y, but I really pitied the fighters... As it was, I was not over-fond of the chicken parmigana (and, yes, I really did order the chicken parmigana this year ;P) - it is significantly different from Sandy's and I think I may need to find a new favorite on the menu. Again, the evening picked up again post-dinner. We had some drinkies, then my "torchlight tourney" with the torches in question being a car's headlamps because the ground was too firm to put in the torches. I had lovely little foam swords for folks to beat one another with and we had a glorious drunken time. Each round of the reverse warlord tourney* featured a round of drinks for the winners, including some fun ice cubes I had been stockpiling the last week or so. (For those of you that asked, the cranberry-concentrate "rubies" were from this mold and the absinthe's skulls and crossbones from this mold. As a side note- if anyone is interested in ordering a set, note that they are *not* dishwasher safe like may other silicone products - my molds met with a well-intentioned but unfortunate accident this weekend...) Utterly silly fun, but a good way to kick off the partying. I stayed up drinking and talking until late, but slid into "observational mode" around midnight and was less social than I often am. Sometimes it is fascinating to just watch social interactions and reflect upon them and I had a good deal to think about...

Sunday, I was a lazy bump and slept in. Unfortunately, this meant I missed mightyjesse 's authorization bout as I thought she was just headed out to practice and didn't know that ego_id_non_feci  would be a big fat bully and push her into authorizing. ;) The rest of the day was casual, with several planned tourneys and an impromptu one that allowed Her Highness to shoot a lot of "revolting peasants." What a fun event! Thanks to ego_id_non_feci (site steward), damej (gate), otesmacke (web master), cass_lee and iarroganti  (tourney sponsors) and all the others who made it possible by working as staff, marshals, or tourney hosts. We finally left site around 6:30 and stopped by to pester sirzig  and get a burger on the way home. I helped mightyjesse  with some WW things and ought to have been working on my own, but I have been lazy and so now need to address that tomorrow.

In all, an excellent weekend, but I'm glad to have a bonus day tomorrow to catch up on responsibilities!


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

*Reverse Warlord Tourney - everyone starts as "in" and the pool is divided into two equal teams, which then have a melee against one another. The team with the last gentle(s) standing wins. That team is then resurrected and subdivided into two teams (additional players conscripted from the audience if the sides need evening out) and the scenario repeats until there are only two fighters left, who then go best two out of three for the status of Warlord. The dark and the drunk and the silliness only added to the confusion and general mayhem, resulting in a disorganized but wicked good time.

Still thrilled about the whole Obama thing... *stoopid grin* I may eventually have something intelligent to say, but for now I'm settling for a generally pleased and relieved haze.

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

So... the ugly saga of the laundry room, abridged: When the exhaust becomes detached from the dryer and you do not notice for weeks (or months?) , the lint will pile up on the floor. When your basement leaks, and the lint gets wet, then dry, then wet, then dry... it becomes as cement and adheres to the floor so firmly you need to use a hoe to loosen it. :( Then, when water is poured on the remainder, the floor is still amazingly absorbent until the layers are scraped off. Oi. Not fun. Also? In addition to all their other crappy household "improvements", the batshit crazy previous residents used the worst ever hose clamps. I didn't think hose clamps were complicated enough to have crappy versions, but there you go.

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

Tonight, I realized that I was exhausted... tired from work, tired from loading my car with linen for the weekend, tired from being up too late last night... but I didn't hurt. So, I decided to see if I could break that. ;P I went out and fenced for the first time in about  year. I warmed up with devikat , fenced with Tomas and a newer guy, and then ended the night with Sir Guillaume. (Note to self, pick that fight earlier in the night. :P) I can tell that I've lost a lot, but I didn't completely suck either. I need to remember to fence in conversations, not sentences and I need to work on only taking the clean shots and doing so decisively... I did, however, have a pretty good track record for responding to being rushed by stabbing the offender in the head. It was a good time, if tiring. I've missed it. We'll see how often I can manage to do this - I was full of achey-ness by the end of the night, but it was probably worth it. :)

What a lovely weekend! I was full of fail for a huge chunk of the weekend and still managed to have a great time.

Friday, I met up with goldfrog, Mistress S and cass_lee and started driving for Montello. I had forgotten one or two minor things, which already had me feeling dum, but for which we had found workable solutions.... when I realized I had outsmarted myself. I had put the Sleeve in the one place that I could not, would not forget it - in a safe pocket in my car. Problem: I had at the last minute decided to carpool with the ladies and neglected to move said garment into cass_lee's van. Fail. Epic Fail. Since we were already significantly on our way, we tried to problem solve. We decided to press on, since we were almost there and fish was calling... While we were enjoying the best fish fry in the Midwest, the lovely mightyjesse stopped where I had the car parked to check whether I had actually locked it. Sadly, yup, I had actually succeeded with that. :P We were discussing driving back to Madison when I got an idea - I convinced AAA that it would be OK for them to open up my vehicle for my roommate fencingkitty even if I was not there. The operator was not thrilled with this plan, but was ble to be cajoled. Happily, that plan worked.... except that my car apparently has an alarm on it (who knew? :P) and it went off as soon as they opened the car and would not allow the car to be relocked. I thought about it a bit and decided that I didn't care that it remain unlocked - the most expensive thing I had in there was $50 worth of linen and the only person in that neighborhood who would know or care was already int he van with me. That problem solved, the rest of the night proceeded happily and with little to no incident. I chatted with a collection of most excellent ladies while I finished goldfrog's gown - the wonderful arebekah kindly did the hateful, hateful buttonholes, but the rest is all hand-finished in blind stitches. (I have the dress back for some minor improvements/seam finishings, so if I have time, I think I'll hand cover the buttonholes...) I got to bed at a reasonable hour (at least by my reckoning) but late enough to have had quality fun.

Saturday, I got up and enjoyed a lovely breakfast with ladies from the Bad Baroness apartments before dressing myself and goldfrogfor the Princess' Sleeve Tourney. As always, it was a wonderful tourney to watch and I particularly liked her method of choosing her Sleeveholder. In the end, Vincent had the day and I hope he serves her well. After the tourney, we had a wondrous lunch provided by arebekah and former_callixte and then I watched a bit more fencing since the melees had started and spent some time delivering gifties and lost and found items. Then, it was clearly time to send Eithni home. Marion had a nice little nap and then appeared down by the field in time to watch the last of the pick up fights. Then there was the Baronesses' Happy Hour with chocolate Martinis for all, followed by a lovely dinner in the restaurant. damej alluded to a drink related incident in her account of the evening: I ordered with dinner, as is often my wont, both an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic option, in this case a mojito and a Diet Coke. The very new waitress somehow convinced dear Lazarus Gage that one of his friends had seriously ordered a "mojito-and-Diet-Coke." When it arrived, I promptly asked to have it rectified, but the mistake drink was passed around. It actually was not too bad, tasting something like an alcoholic Diet Coke with lime, but 'Rigo decided this was Just The Thing and proceeded to order several of the new drinks... We dubbed the drink a Co-jito and the version the most wise Don Gauge mixed up for Rigo a Rigo-jito. ;)

The evening party was lovely - ego_id_non_feci did a wonderful job - there is a special mix of laughter, starlight, and fire that always makes for a good evening. Many partook of the gambling and other pursuits, but while Marion may sometimes be a bad girl, she is at heart a good English Protestant girl and was appropriately scandalized at the goings on... Gambling and loose women! Marion may be very naughty, but even she is no man's doxy!

When the mosquitoes got to us, we moved indoors, where townies and a bachelorette party provided ample entertainment. Also as alluded to by damej here is a photo of the freakish item of the night - the Phallus of Unusual Size.



goldfrog and I decided to send it to R to see what his Shinto persona would make of it. ;) The night wound down earlier than I would have expected, but in a pleasantly drama-free sort of way. The worst behavior was probably 'Rigo eating a pine cone... you had to be there...

Sunday began, as it often does, somewhat later than the schedule implied. fencingkitty's melee scenario went off wonderfully. Yup, thats the story. ;) There were some successful authorizations that morning, though, including the lovely and talented ego_id_non_feci! Congrats, lady! Then the Open School Challenge was held, with many good bouts and a win for the School of Tyranny, thanks to their mercenary forces from the Midrealm. At that point, the Bad Baronesses decided to pack up and head for home. We considered driving to Milwaukee to meet up with gwyneth1362, but decided we all needed a shower and a nap and less time in the car, so after an appropriate interval, we reconvened at my house for tacos, to be joined by all their respective men as they were available, since R and Sir D were off at Ages and delayed by the black hole of time and money that is SR Harris...

Today, I spent the better part of the day toiling under the sun like a fool with my hired minion, bookotgrove. He was a rented mule for the day, and I worked him accordingly. :P However, he was good natured about it (even bringing me Strongbow!) and we got really rather a lot of work done in the yard and garage. (More work needs doing, though, and I need a babysitter to make sure the bees don't get me dead, so if any of you are looking for minionage (payable in cash, linen, or other barter), let me know...) After a very long, very hot, very well deserved shower, I had a HUGE and utterly gratuitous bacon cheddar burger at Red Robin with fencertand mightyjesse. Round out the night with drinks and conversation at my place with those two plus fencingkitty and you have the makings of a very good, if tiring, weekend. Thank you to everyone who made it possible and delightful!

This weekend I traveled up to Windhavens' Fighters' School with ego_id_non_feci and stayed with her and cealfind. We stayed up entirely too late on Friday night giggling, so we got to site after the first class, but I think the girls still got enough fightin' in. I shoved
ego_id_non_feci into my armor, since I didn't want her to have to wear the Yellow Suit of Shame at an event (hopefully we will address this on a more permanent basis tomorrow...), so at least my gear got some practice. ;) The Baronesses' Salon was a major sugar fest and it was nice to have a separate, non-stinky social space to hang out and chat with people I rarely see. I got to teach a few people how to work whipcording, so that completed my day. Court was a short affair and then we had a lovely dinner out with His Majesty and miscellaneous other folk at the Machine Shed. A lovely hour or so in the hot tub was followed by several giggly hours at Halati's postrevel. I'll never think of camels quite the same way...

Sunday was the real jewel of the weekend, though. There was a historical re-enactor's expo and while their focus was on Revolutionary War and later, many of their wares were of interest. I got a 16th century German deck of cards, a spatula for making viking bread, four yards of a very tasty heavyweight linen, a book on the Jorvik excavations, some pins, some bone awls/bodkins, a brass magnifying glass (one for me and one for fencingkitty), and a 26 square foot chunk of sole leather for hrodir01. The two very best items were two fabulous toys...

First, is a gravity-driven animated figure of fencers - their form is terrible, but their arms move to and fro as the pendulum swings. :)


The second I can only claim half ownership - it was an expensive item, so I share it with dread_ex, but it will live at my house. It is a cauldron for dyeing!



dread_ex and I had been talking about doing some dyeing projects with ego_id_non_feci 's kids, so we started referring to this as a three-kindergartener pot. ;) The pot has a full 22" diameter and stands 15" tall, so we should be able to do some quality projects in it. *happy dance*



Stay tuned for some info on an upcoming dyeing day and *white* linen order!