Rough Stone is Good for Something (WoW)

I was wondering if the Rough Stone I was obtaining in the course of my copper mining had any value. Turns out it's used to make sharpening stones and mace weights. I've now got a bunch of those. Oddly, it seems I'll be using a fair amount of linen in the construction of weapons... go figure. I've so got to get Darzun another bag of some kind; there's just not enough room in his one bag and backpack for all of his professional tools and materials.

No Rush on Iris Fair

Well, the Shire consensus is that Iris Fair is an event we would like to do, but August 20th isn't a good date. I'll be looking into alternatives and see if I can come up with a better date, but my first glance at the extended Kingdom Calendar shows almost nothing open in the fall, November 19th being the only possible exception. It may just not happen this year.

Never Visit a City at Rush Hour (WoW)

I attempted to take care of a little business with Darzun last night before leaving Ironforge. Big mistake. Lag Hell. My system literally couldn't get caught up enough for me to type "/quit" in real time. Fortunately the keyboard cash worked and I was able to signout.

Playing in the morning definitely works better for me. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and figured I might as well get in a little WoW time. It's MUCH easier in the wee hours of the morning. Darzun picked up his mail (a bag and an axe from Escovar), learned to use the axe, completed a couple of quest, and stocked up on copper ore. I'll probably try to do some refining and forging tonight.

I also learned the cooking profession; I figured I might as well, since you can have some non-trade professions, and it gives me something to do with all the boar meat I'm finding (I even have the Boar Ribs recipe in my bank box; oh joy, I have to go back to a city again).

Iris Fair Bid to be Voted

Tonight is meeting night for the Shire of Glaedenfeld, and my bid to do Iris Fair on August 20th will come up for a vote. Based on last week's comments, I daresay it will have no problems, but I really would like to nail down a couple of open items on cost, like the cost of renting portajohns for the weekend. Nobody seems to keep rates for such things online. I guess I'll just have to call this afternoon if I haven't heard back from Cumberland Centre (who I was hoping could tell me the service the usually use and their rates).

It's so wrong, but still so cool.

Aaron Williams, the writer and artist of Nodwick, posted a link to a Honda Del Sol dressed up as an X-Wing on his blog this morning. I'm not sure I would do it with mine, but it's still really, really cool.

Nothing of great consequence...

There's nothing of great consequence occurring today, although I did submit my entry for Kingdom Arts & Sciences via the online entry form. Francesca and I will be dancing Laccio d'Amore again. Hopefully we can get in enough practice between now and then to make it worth the effort.

The real update for the day is the expansion to my link list, which you can see in the right column. Have fun browsing.

And so the weekend ends...

The "Mile Long Yard Sale" was decidedly un-thrilling; we brought entirely to much stuff back with us (and no, we didn't buy anything). My good lady Fjorleif is currently working on getting rid of it through Freecycle so we don't have to put it back in storage. The day was cold, intermittently rainy, and pretty darn dull. I do have to compliment Denise, our hostess (our tent was set up in her yard) for making the day far less miserable by providing lunch and generally being very gracious.

All things considered, I would much rather have gone to Shadow of the Wolf (the Shire of Redewolfe's first event) on Saturday. I hear it was actually a rather good event, if small.

The panelling in the cabin is almost all finished up stairs. I also managed to squander a few hours playing World of Warcraft over the weekend. Escovar (mage) hit L10 and Darzun (paladin) reached L8. I've found it can be surprisingly difficult to give away equipment that I'm not going to use. I've still got a "green" axe that I'd like to give to a L5+ warrior somewhere, but I haven't been able to find one.

No Dance This Week Either

I sent a message to my mailing list asking if anyone was going to attend dance practice, and as of yet nobody has said yes, but several people have said no. I'm therefore saving myself a couple of hours of boredom by calling off the whole thing. I'm beginning to wonder when, if ever, we'll get back to having practices.

On a different note, there's an event down at Cumberland Centre this weekend that I unfortunately will miss. Redewolfe is holding "Shadow of the Wolf" down there, and I wouldn't mind day-tripping, but that's the same day that we have a space reserved at the "mile-long yard sale" in Watertown, so I'll be busy. Grumble, grumble.

We started having fighter practice outside this week. I don't know why I was so totally inept Tuesday night, but I felt really out of it. I need to set myself up a pell or something. At least the yard sale should clear some space around the house.

Cabin Progress

Oh, the joys of a weekend of yard work. Once again, muscles I forgot I had are reminding me of their existence in a painful manner.

However, we have the yard pretty-well mowed, a garden started, panelling up in the cabin, and electricity run to the cabin. Not a bad weekend of work: many thanks to all those who came out and pitched in. Rich and I still need to finish that game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit to see who is truly the more serious Star Wars geek.

Next weekend will be the mile-long yard sale in Watertown, where we shall hopefully divest ourselves of large quantities of space-claiming junk and make a little cash on the side.

Dance practice this week; here's hoping that I will actually have students.

As if I didn't already have enough to do...

I must say that I've been mildly annoyed that the last two awards I received didn't come with "regalia". Usually you get a painted-leather medallion with the Order of the Argent Comet, and a belt token with the Order of the Argent Rapier. I guess the King wasn't kidding at Gulf Wars when he said that the regalia stockpile is really low.

So, I figured I'd have to make my own regalia, and if I'm going to do that, I might as well make lots of regalia. To that end, I'm researching how to cast pewter in soapstone molds. I'll be doing my early experiments in plaster, since I don't want to go through a lot of soapstone on mistakes (I can always melt down the pewter mistakes). Plaster molds won't be as durable, but they'll do during the learning process. I've already got a cheap set of carving tools (I won't buy expensive ones until I'm good enough to warrant them). Basically, all I need to do is order metal...

And then he gave me crack...

Rich set me up with one of his old PCs, which is substantially better than the dinosaurs I've been running, and a copy of World of Warcraft last week. I managed to get the computer together Sunday afternoon and install WoW, then I spent four hours downloading and installing patches. He assures me that it's worth the effort. I killed thirty minutes this morning creating a human mage and getting him up to level two. There are legitimate concerns within my household about how much of my life this game is going to consume; we shall see.

I've cobbled together an event proposal for August 20th. I guess I'll be bringing it up at the next shire meeting. We shall see if they act on it in a timely fashion.

Gripe, Gripe, Gripe

I'm feeling rather unappreciated today. I had near-zero attendance at dance class last night (again), which makes it pretty darned difficult to teach anything. Only one person made a good-faith effort to let me know she wouldn't be there, so I basically wasted an hour and a half. Grumble, grumble...

More Swetnam Tricks

I worked with several of Swetnam's techniques for single sword last night, and they turn out to be pretty interesting. Of particular interest is what I've been calling the "two handed beat". Basically, you put your off hand on your own blade and use the extra force and leverage to beat your opponent's blade aside. With the extra strength you get from the off hand, you can smack someone off-line easily, but you can also control your own point so that you don't go off line with the momentum. You therefore create a beautiful window of opportunity for a thrust to your opponent's body.

I need to get off my duff and convert my Swetnam paper into a web page...

Insulation Monkey

Over the weekend, we managed to finish sticking insulation into the upper floor of the cabin; I spent most of the afternoon hours in a silly jump suit and filter mask. I think I looked like one of the evil scientists from ET. We also carried the panelling up there, but haven't nailed it in place, yet. Since we're planning to visit my parents over the coming weekend, I don't expect there'll be much progress this week.

Jodi may come out to her first fencing practice tonight, but I'm not sure. She disappeared from work fairly early without me getting a chance to confirm. It'll be nice if she makes it, though. More drills for my little students. They must submit to my will! Or not... I haven't actually received my replacement Authorization Card, yet, so technically Corbin has to be in charge. Heh, heh... he'll love that. "Do paperwork, foo!"

We'll also be having dance practice this week, after several weeks off. I really should come up with a lesson plan, but such things are always so dependent on attendance that it's rather impractical. I guess I'll just wing it as usual.

My congratulations go out to Llewelyn and Ursus for joining the Order of the Meridian Blade.

Fencing Drills

I started doing drills on Joseph Swetnam's techniques last night at fencing practice. The cross-body parry with the dagger is very effective, if you can remember to do it. It will catch just about any thrust to the body, giving you a nice counter opportunity, too. I'll have to keep working on that one a lot.

Defense of Marriage

OK, this is a totally off-topic rant for me, but why not: it's my blog, after all.

Here's what I think about defense of marriage: marriage is an institution that has traditionally been administered by religious authorities. Ministers, priests, mullahs, and so forth have been pronouncing people married since the invention of the wheel (if not longer). Modern governments have taken it upon themselves to assign rights and responsibilities to married couples, but I really don't think it's their business deciding who can and can't get married (assuming the interested parties are of legal age and not too closely related).

Therefore, if two individuals can find a religious authority willing to pronounce them married, they are married, no matter what the state or the general population thinks. To deny them the legal rights normally accorded to married couples is religious descrimination, which the Constitution of the United States expressly forbids.

Please do not manipulate these statements to conclude that only a religious authority can marry people; common law marriages have been around for ages, too. I just don't think the government should be saying "these two people can be married, but these other two can't".

Gulf Wars XIV

Oh, what a week. It had it's up times (like La Gran Companiya kicking copious amounts of heiney in the Rapier field battles) and down times (like the almost-everpresent cold, my lady being laid up with a hip injury most of the week, and the rather unfriendly ravine battle). I think the ball list that I put together for Tuesday night was pretty well received, I just wish I'd thought to put together a snack bar like the Trimarins did. Maybe next year.

Apart from the ravine battle, the rapier fighting was pretty good this year. We just didn't have it together that day, it seems. I couldn't seem to hit anybody (although that improved some when I borrowed Zofeia's 40-inch epee), and I think I spent more time walking back to the resurrection point than fighting. Maybe it was War Point Fever, but there seemed to be an awful lot of hard shots going around both ways in that fight, too. Some people take this stuff just a wee bit too seriously, methinks.

The fort battles fought after the ravine battle were much more fun. No war points were at stake, so everyone relaxed. Somehow I ended up being the overall commander of my side during the first two rounds of that battle (mental note, if you ask a bunch of Dons who's in charge, they'll probably give it to you). Commanding wasn't actually a lot of work, though. People who knew each other had already grouped together, and some of them already had goals in mind; all I needed to do was make sure there weren't any gaps left uncovered. We won the first two battles (both as defenders and attackers), then I went back to camp for a shower, thinking they were done doing schlager battles for the day (I'd gotten enough of epees at the ravine). Seems my side lost the two battles fought after I left, so I'll shamelessly take credit for the wins. Not really -- those groups I talked about earlier seemed to have a good idea of what needed doing and took care of it, my strategic contribution was pretty small.

We had town battles later in the week (among hay bales arranged into streets and buildings), and Her Majesty Ashildr was able to make it out for the fighting, too. I wasn't in charge of more than a few people in those, but our side ruled the day completely. Feodor and his 45-inch schlager are wicked in a narrow alley.

Did I mention the Rose Tourney? For me, there wasn't much to it. I drew Don Edward Mercer in the first round of a single-elimination tourney (which wasn't even the usual 2-of-3 per round), and I was out after one fight. *Sigh*

Anyway, back to battles. Field battles on Saturday, and La Gran Companiya rocked. I was on the company's offensive flanking team with Corbin and Ysabel. There was much chasing of Trimarins in the backfield in the first battle -- I'm still wondering who the bantery fellow with the big silver buckler was that we chased for 15 minutes -- talk about fast on your feet. Second battle, I got picked off pretty early, but Ansteorra (with whom we were fighting this year) still won the battle. After that we fought a friendship battle: Ansteorra and Trimaris against the rest of the Known World. Apparently after spending the rest of the week fighting each other, Ansteorra and Trimaris were not prepared to cooperate as allies -- I think that was the shortest and most decisive of the three battles.

The big news for Meridien fencers was the announcement of the new Meridien Order of the Blade (aka "the MOB"). Yes, we have a new armigerous rapier award in our kingdom. Congratulations to Tormod, Damiano, Edmund, Erik, Irene, Ricarte, and Regne.

I'd like to thank those who came out on Thursday evening to wish my wife and I a happy anniversary. We'll try to make it a bigger party next year.

That mostly wraps it up for Gulf Wars XIV. Hopefully we'll see a bunch of our friends again at Border Raids in June (as well as at assorted smaller events between now and then).

=Ciao=

Back from Gulf Wars

Long drive... very weary... more tomorrow.

Departing for Gulf Wars

The packing of the tubbies is complete, and the packing of the transport is about to commence. A week of pre-cooking and freezing, planning the Meridien ball, and researching obscure fencing texts culminates in this. Needless to say, you won't hear from me for a week. Hopefully I'll have stories and pictures to share upon my return. Try not to let the mundane world fall apart while I'm gone.

Geekification

My friend Richard continues to lure me down the dark, techie path. I updated the software of the Glaedenfeld Forum this evening. It's not an update anyone would notice, except maybe some lowlife hacker scum who wants to crash the forum and exploit the server that runs it. Nonetheless, I can feel the nerd flowing through me.