*sigh* The house is quiet and empty, after a long, busy, stressy weekend.

Friday I did a lot of cleaning and prep work for the event, houseguests, and the Strawberry Party, plus a run out to site to drop off banners, the high seat, and miscellaneous other critical items. (I did not get to quite everything I had wanted to do but since we had lost power on Thursday night I was somewhat behind on my chores to begin with.) I made experimental sourdough bread and sloe cheese as I was waiting for folks, and they turned out acceptable, if not quite what I was looking for, but such is the nature of experimental cooking. All the expected guests got in safely and we even had some folks who were staying at a local hotel drop by for awhile for a Scotch tasting. Once the guests were back at their hotel or abed downstairs, I made a quick run out to the grocery store, showered, and then hit the hay myself around 2AM.

Saturday morning came entirely too early - I started getting "can you bring..." texts and emails about ten minutes before my alarm went off, and that set the tone for the day - things were busy-busy-go-go-go!, but that was probably for the best anyway. I'd planned to get on site by 8AM, figured it would be more like 8:30, but finally got there around 9AM. The first part of the morning was consumed with dropping off requested items then setting up the A&S and getting the entrants settled. I had set up four 8' long tables, thinking that would be one more than necessary, but by the end of the afternoon, all the available space and some of the windowsills were full! Somewhere I have a complete count of all the entrants, but we easily had thirty very high quality entries, so I was mightily pleased. When HrRM's champion was not on site right before court, for a brief, shining moment, it looked like I might be able to carry the axe into court, but then he showed up at the last moment and the axe was wrested from me again. (*pout*) Ah well, Coronations involve enough up-and-down for me anyway - between being called for the end-of-reign thanks, the creation of a new Pyxis, and the oaths, I spent a lot of time pacing the aisle. :P goldfrog  and R's last court was simple, but touching - I'll miss having them on the throne, even though I'm sure S&A will do a fine job themselves.

After court, I checked in with A&S again, got only a few moments to chat with friends from near and far, then went to investigate lunch. I was hoping to fight and so decided to pass on the Scotch egg and instead settled for a granola bar for lunch before hitting the rapier field. The Queen Mum's tourney was a lot of fun, but I am still woefully out of practice and so slooooow and messy. :/ However, I brought out the pretty buckler for the first time in about two years, so there were a lot of folks who had not seen it before and I got a lot of compliments on it. I got to play with Duke T, fencert , and some other fun fights before having to bow out of the tourney to attend the WW meeting. The meeting went well, with nothing earthshattering, but some good groundwork laid. Then I had about 20 minutes free wherein I went to go check on dread_ex  and was hoping to see cass_lee 's pelican-y business, but I had to go attend TRMs at the A&S before the principles were able to be collected. As part of the A&S display, I had all the entrants who were able attend their work at 4PM for the opportunity to discuss it directly with TRMs. I think it went over well and gave TRM the chance to meet some of the artisans and learn a bit more about their arts. After TRMs departed, I met with a small panel of peers to choose the Peer's Prize winner and counted all the beans to determine the Populace Prize winner. Right quick, it was time for court prep and evening court. There were some very pleasing bits of business on the docket, but many of them are confidential for now, so I'll keep them to myself. I can report that the winner of the Populace Prize was S for his wire weave, the winner of the Peer's Prize was rezansky  for his handsewn and embroidered tunic, and the winner of the Royal Prize was G for his multi-item entry. It was a near thing in almost all of the categories, though, since there were so many really excellent entries - both TRMs and the Peers had to discuss at some length before making a decision and the choice was in part dictated by HrRM's wish that each category have a different winner. 

Following evening court, valkyr8 and I discussed new bags for the Jara High seats as the ones that I made simply are not working. I got the car partially packed and then headed down for feast. Wow! Feast was one to remember and arebekah  really outdid herself! In addition to the truly tasty set menu, over a dozen guest cooks presented a dish to the head table and one of the lower tables to be judged on taste and presentation. The lovely and talented relativelylucid's pudding won for taste (yum! and I usually don't like that sort of thing) and the E&A team won for presentation. I do have to say that tcsumner had a really marvellous hyppocras, though - I'm afraid that coming so late in the feast, it may have suffered from sensory overload. :P I packed up with all haste and headed home, where the Strawberry Party was already in full swing. I quickly put to rights the few things that still needed to be set up or corrected (the original plan for set-up crew had been foiled by car trouble but things had gotten more-or-less rolling anyway) and then started pouring the frilly drinks. cass_lee  and one of the party guests kindly went out for more ice and strawberries when it became obvious how much had already been eaten by the time I got in. However, they returned quickly and the sweet freezy drinks flowed freely. Usually, I outlast my guests' energy, but between being sore from fighting, the giant dinner, and otherwise it having been a very taxing day, I shooed out the last of the guests around 2:30 when I simply could not stay awake any longer.

I was out so completely, I never even heard katrionans  and her brood leave, nor did I hear iarroganti  moving about and once again being so helpful with the party clean up, nor did I hear corvusjoyous  come in and drop off my oven, roaster and other assorted things lent to the feast. :P Thanks for your assistance, folks, and I'm sorry I was a bad hostess - I finally came to sometime around noon and then with barely enough time to have lunch with the last of the guests and see him out the door.

The rest of today contiinues to be busy - more clean up, dinner to celebrate a friend's 50th birthday, then General Meeting. Ooof. Off I go!

First of all, birdie update - Poor little Tweet is doing somewhat better. She is still not quite herself, but she is more spunky and has been getting stronger in her flying around the house. She's still avoiding the other birdies, so a large part of her disheveled appearance is from not having her face preened in a week or better. Hopefully she'll get more social again as time goes on...

In stories of my own personal damage - just before practice on Wednesday, I thought I would quickly sew up a little project I am working on... Which of course ended in disaster. A few times in my life I have sewed myself but usually it has just been a few layers of skin - this time I did a really good job. The needle went all the way through my index finger - about 1/8 of an inch from the edge of my finger on the top, a full 1/4 inch on the bottom. Luckily, fencingkitty and kumakun were home. Once I realized how bad it was and that I could not remove the needle myself, I called kumakun once, trying to stay calm... and then more urgently when he didn't come right away. (He later explained he thought it was just his warning for departure for practice.) It quickly became clear that we needed to take the needle completely out of the machine to get it out. kumakun tried to be quick and efficient, but every time he had to cut or move things, I felt sick or faint. (Yuckyuckyuck.) Finally, I was disentangled and was able to hold my hand down onto the futon while he yanked the needle out. Yum. Soaking the finger in alcohol was even better. (Ovaries of steel! as ego_id_non_feci said.) Luckily, since it was a puncture wound, it didn't really bleed until the needle was out, so the pretty little white linen project stayed pristine, regardless of the little drama. Even better, I have had a series of awesome band-aids - a fat white one, then a pirate one, then a strip o' bacon band-aid. Not necessarily a good decision, but I got a band-aid anyway! :)

I finally worked myself up to sewing again late this evening. I have a thousand things I need to do this week for the 35th Anniversary, but I still want to have a pretty new gown for the birthday party. Sadly, the pattern is just not working. I need some professional fitting help on the back, so I think I may need to go to Clothiers on Monday...

Hopefully, this weekend will be more successful. I have an uber-geeky plan for my Bardic token and I am looking forward to the event itself.

Well, this weekend was a seriously mixed bag.

Coronation was a wonderful event. It was splendid to see ladyroisinknighted and I was most honored that she not only let me dress her, but that she asked me to speak for her. It's odd, I do a lot of public speaking in the SCA and for my job, but that was as nervous as I have been about it in years... It just felt so important to get it *just* right... The brains, they are a weird place. 

Also, I got to spend a lot of time chasing down people in order to deliver linen-y goodness and the pile of other little items that I needed to distribute. While this sucked a lot of my time at the event, it also meant that I intentionally touched bases with a number of damn fine people I often end of missing altogether at busy events. Even better, I touched base with two people that I needed to excahnge information with - one is a lovely Nordskogen fellow who is making me some shoes and the other was bebe_lily, who I am using as a "sample baby" for making ittsy bitsy garb. :) I also used the 300+ yards of linen I had to distribute as an excuse to bring my wonderful new cart. Oh, happiness! It made toting the linen in much easier (still two trips, but at least not twelve or more!) and I got to amuse Steel by giving the little monster a cart ride around the parking lot. Sadly, once again, I failed at getting decent photos of the event. As in none. :P I suspect some will go up on the Gallery in the next few days and teffansent me a few from her phone, but I had such good intentions... *sigh*

I got home to find that Tweet is about the same as when I left. I had felt guilty about leaving the little patient for the weekend, but there really was not anything I could do for her. It's the sort of thing that she'll either make it or she won't - there isn't really anything I can do, and I think maybe that's what bothers me the most. She's doing the shivering thing still, but does not always cuddle up to the space heater, even when it is available, so I'm not sure what to do about that. :(

The rest of the weekend was sort of a mish-mash of unsettling, disappointing, or otherwise unhappy things. An elusive motel that never did let us in, a smoking room that was what we were told was the only room available when others later got non-smoking accommodations, memories of time and place and the brain weasels associated with that, missed connections and misunderstandings, a disobedient body and a weekend-long headache, philosophical discussions that stirred a deep discontent, not nearly enough sleep, a speeding ticket and travel plans disrupted... By the time I got home I was just fried. I should have worked on a dozen things that had been back-burnered last week, but I crashed out for awhile, played with the birdies, pouted that my quart of chocolate ice cream somehow had managed to evaporate, took some meds for the still lingering headache, and went to bed for real. 

And today? I'm still stuck at work almost 3 hours after quitting time working on the formulary, which is due by midnight. *sigh*

Ai. And so it goes, news of another friend passed into the dark. It has been a year for that, I am afraid.

For those of you that knew him, Karl was a sweet and giving man, skilled with leather and never too busy to chat. He had been ill for some time, but a long good-bye does not make it easier. His kind words, helping hands, and smiling face will be missed.

Swift journey, my friend.

I NEED to listen to my intuition more often.