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Back at work. Servers were still down when I got here, but they're fixed now. Whoo hoo.

Had a great weekend. Saw lots of friends and helped with that good old event we've been griping about so much. it's done now. Was lots of fun, really it was.

Turned out just as we planned really.

And now, back to the regular grind. Dance practice this evening. That should be fun. If I can survive work today. That's the first key.

At least I got lots of sleep. Fell asleep about 6:15pm I think and didn't wake up until 4:30am. Not a bad night's sleep all in all.

And I even got to stir up some trouble on-line in rp. Which means that all in all it was a wonderful weekend. No wonder I'm purring.

boredom

sucks, even if Borgdom is worse.

Somebody help ... I'm slowly going catatonic here ...

I need stuff to do. Preferably stuff I can do while at work.

What to do when bored ...

Okay, since I’m so blastedly bored, I’ve decided to bore everyone else too. So here you go.

The past few days, in a nutshell:
Thursday, Grant and Kyle came over and helped us out with our heraldic trouble making. We made favours for 23 of the knights of the round table, including King Arthur. And we even made one up for Guinevere too. It was fun. Had Chinese food for dinner from Holee Chow. Local fast food chain that cooks the food right in front of you, so you know exactly what you’re getting. Ky made the favours on Tuesday or Wednesday really, so on Thursday we made little felt bags to hold the tokens and we put ribbons in the favours so they could be worn and Ky made a couple of banners. She is definitely an artistic genius, as I’ve mentioned before.

And by the end of the evening, even I was beginning to get the hang of the hot glue gun.

Friday, stopped at the grocery store and made a stew when I got home. Peeled the recipe off the internet somewhere, and modified it slightly so that it included slow cooking all the ingredients over 16 hours in a crockpot. Didn’t even taste test it and just eyeballed the spices. Did some housework too. Well, at least a little. Did a very little bit of rp I think, though Friday evening is mostly a blur.

Saturday, got up about 7:15am. Checked the stew, yup, still there. Checked on sleeping body on the pull out couch. Yup, still there. Alrighty then. Headed out to get bread … without even having a coffee first. Of course, that might have been a mistake, since it took me an hour to find the bakery. Which was only 7 minutes from my house, once I located it. Sigh. Picked up a lot of bread type things, stopped and got donuts and a cup of coffee for myself, took myself home to get ready.

Got home and chatted briefly with Mr. Ath. Why, well, cause he was there!  Ate a donut. Ath and Lancelot returned from their outing and brought more donuts, so we had a good feast. Phone rang, and off I went to the event site, with the first car load of stuff. We were actually a little early since there’s an exercise class in there Saturday mornings – step aerobics to be precise. So we had to wait. I remembered a few things I’d forgotten and I called home to get them brought along with the rest of the crowd. People started to show up, and they did bring banners. So we started taping banners to the walls with green painter’s tape, the kind that doesn’t pull paint or leave any marks. While this was very nice to the site, it made for some hilarious moments as banners decided to fall at inopportune times during the day.

The knights in shining armour decided it was a lovely day outside, and they moved themselves there. Conveniently enough the room we were in had a lovely bank of windows so we could watch the fighters enjoying themselves from the nice airconditioned coolness of the hall. Yes, it actually was relatively warm for an October day in Canada. I got to sit at the entry and play troll. Which means I got to collect money from people as they arrived. Fun, wow. I survived the day on coca cola and pixie sticks.

Ky got to run around and make sure the rest of the world behaved and went off according to plan. Apart from a sore foot on her part, I think it went well. Certainly, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the event, from many different sources. It was remarkable how many new players in the SCA showed up. And they did all seem to have a good time and intend to return. Which is a Good Thing. ™ I don’t think the event broke even, but that’s cause I think the alcohol sales weren’t hot enough to pay for the special occasions permit our government insists we buy. If not for that, I have a feeling we would have broken even. Which is an amazing thing for such a small event. Yay, Ky! She did a fabulous job … I learned a ton.

Morganna, Merlin, Mordred, Arthur and Guinevere were all big hits.

I don’t think we’ll do another one next year, but perhaps the year after I could be persuaded. After all, next year, we get to pull off a crown Tourney. This will be a lot of work, I can tell already. But we have a third person enlisted to help us out. Kyle has (been) volunteered. Between the three of us, I know we can manage. Heck, we could manage without him, but this will just make everything easier all around. In fact, I think I shall also pull Ziggy in on our planning committee. Just cause.

I know I got thanked by several people for providing people with a nice relaxing ambiance, and for giving them the opportunity to do things without forcing it down their throats. Not in so many words, but that’s the gist of it, at any rate. We also got told that this was an old-style event, as in a beginner event. Which is an idea that does have some merit to it. It was not set up to be the autocrats provide the amusement. We deliberately set it up so that we provided opportunity and people could have fun, however they chose. Funny thing, it worked better than many events recently when autocrats have tried to run things more stringently.

The potluck went off really well, even if it was earlier than most people expected. Thing is, while a very few people had eaten a late lunch, most folks were starving by 4, so we started them eating. And it did work really well. My stew all went – it was good too! I tried some. The bartender provided by the Community centre, Beth, was really nice. She had a good time watching us and I have a sneaky suspicion she might come out to play with us sometime in the future. Now of course, Ky and I have bread galore in our freezer, not to mention a few other things. And I have a report to write about the event. But those are minor things. Good things even.

After the event, a few people came back to our place, helped unload the cars with the mask making paraphernalia and all the stuff we’d brought with us to the event. Then we sat and chatted until well after midnight. In fact, as I recall, Ky, Ath and Mr. Ath went up to crawl into their respective beds around 2. I stayed up to chat with Lancelot for a bit. Cause we hadn’t had any chance to chat at all hardly during the day. My friends Lisa and Jamie went to bed early, due to Lisa having a nasty bad evil headache. In any event, I went to bed sometime around 4am, I think. Got up around 10 to start the coffee pot and make sure everyone got up to head off to their respective homes. Ath, Mr. Ath, and Lancelot were the first to go, I think, though that might have been Jamie. He had to leave pretty early too. Lisa stayed to chat with Ky and I till shortly after noon. Then she too had to head off to buy a camera. Which left Ky and I to figure out where everything was and start cleaning up. The clean up still isn’t quite finished, but we’re getting there. The house is in one piece, which is a good thing. It even has something new to make my day.

My Mom came out to the event. Yes, it is true. Every once in a while, my Mom just has to check if I’m still semi-sane. So out she came to visit the event, even though she has an inner ear infection and isn’t quite feeling well. She arrived, gave me a hug, found a chair, and then looked at me to say, “Dara, I need to borrow two people.”

Okay, this is just not something I’m used to hearing from my Mom. “Huh?” I replied, ever so elegantly.

“I need to borrow two people. I have something in the jeep and it has to go to your house.”

I blinked. Yes, I am sure that is what I did. “Mom, what are you talking about?”

“You can’t be one of them, Dara.”

Oh. Well, you know, my Mom is odd that way, but once she said that, realization struck. I do have a birthday sometime in October. So, Alery and my friend Grant volunteered and they helped my Mom bring this gift over to my house and even put it somewhere, covering it with a curtain that hasn’t yet made it over my windows. So now I have a new curio cabinet, all lovely rose wood, with a mirror at the back and glass shelves, to display some of my dragons on. Hurrah! For those who don’t know, I have a collection with about 65 dragons .. at last count. And more keep joining me all the time.

So that’s the event done. And then on Sunday afternoon, I got to do a little bit of RP. Jen got another guitar lesson. Dewshine and Windkin had an argument. Cascade was in a naughty mood and got chased by her lovemate after she dropped some milkfruit down his shorts. Just another day in cyberville.

Went to bed at just after 6pm. Awake at 4:30am. Which brings me to today … and that’s the subject of another post.