My Semi Pant-less Weekend
May. 8th, 2006 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqIf you're looking for info on how Kirin is doing check ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
garething's blog here. Otherwise, I'll get to my perspective on her recent injury later on.
Friday was No Pants Day. I celebrated by wearing shorts - and yes, I'm aware that that is cheating (it should really be show us your skivvies day the way it was described to me). I was going to wear my kilt, but Saturday was Beltane, so I didn't want to wear my kilt two days in a row.
In addition to pant-less Friday, it was also May 5 - Cinco de Mayo, which is a big Mexican celebration (of what, I've no idea). In honour of that day,evilscientist, garething, stephtopia and I elected to go to Chico's Tecate, a restaurant in the NE. garething discusses it here. Short version: Three of us had delicious burritos and Gareth got nothing. Sad really because it is a good restaurant, but I'm not going to be able to convince him to go back.
This is why restaurants that screw up, but comp meals and give away gift certificates, stay in business. It may cost money in the short term but it can turn a mistake into repeat business.
I spent about an hour at archery just fiddling with my equipment. That's my archery equipment BTW and not any other sort of equipment you filthy filthy people!
We went to beer-o'clock after archery for a quick drink and had an interesting conversation with our server. She had heard of the SCA prior to meeting all of us. It was a year ago when she was working for the Alberta Privacy Commission. She was the one who fielded the calls from a local trouble maker who decided to shit-disturb the local group over the information that the (US-based) society was requesting of Albertan members.
She didn't know any of this however - as far as she was concerned, a representative of the group called up one day and asked her some questions, which she answered. We told her that the situation had been resolved, without burdening her with the knowledge of how much crap had to be shoveled to fix things. IIRC the principality Seneschal had to travel to California, under her own expense, to deal with things. Raising the shit storm cost the troublemaker nothing.
Our server has some mighty big shoes to fill (Toni, our regular server for the last few years, has moved to a different shift) but she seems to be pretty good. I'm sure we'll get to know her and love her.
In other pub-related news, Hero the Responsible and I finished up our plans for the Beltane archery tournament, that we would be running the next day. It boiled down to getting our story straight about how much the custom targets were worth (in points) and what the back story of each drawing was.
Saturday began bright and early with the archery tournament. I had on my best kilt and a Union T-shirt. We set up the targets and then told everything what was what.
The first target was the Tree of Life, a pretty straight shoot-the-target-and-total-the-points shoot. The tree was a long straight picture of a tree trunk with a branch growing out of it. you got one point for the trunk, two points for the branch and three points for the flowers on the branch. The point of this style of shoot is to give you something to aim at that is like a castle window, but not.
The next target was the Circle of Medallions. Hitting the red portion of the target got you one point and hitting one of the gold medallion got you two points. The trick with this target was that the center of the target was empty and the medallions were all on the edges (think of a peacock's tail feathers).
After this came "The Lady of the Shields". We wanted to have some kind of matchmaking going on so we were originally going to have three women and three men on the target and you had to "couple them up". You would have shot an arrow to determine whom the first part of the couple would be, then you got a point for every arrow you got in a single corresponding member of the opposite sex. No same sex couples or polyamourous relationships were allowed - not because we're prejudice, but because it would make scoring really difficult.
Of course that was a really hard target to draw so we elected not to do it. Instead, it sort of got abstracted into the Lady of the Shields. Picture a woman sitting down holding two shields (one on each thigh). Each shield is split into four colours (red, blue, yellow and white). For each arrow in a unique color you got a point. If you got the corresponding colour in the other shield, you got three more points. Out of four arrows, that's a possible twelve points. Shooting the lady got you a big fat zero for the end, making this a very unpopular target. About half the archers got zero points on it.
Interestingly, when an archer accidentally shot the lady they reacted in one of two ways. They either put their bow down and walked away from the end, or they tried to finish the bitch off. The latter response was the most amusing.
Then came the poetry shoot, which was my favorite and not just because it was the target I made. You can see it here. The object was to shoot yourself a sentence that you could use to tell your inspiration of your feelings for them. I was inspired by the sweet tart candies. To make things interesting, I added about eight really surreal words (elvis, monkey, etc.). The letters along the outside of the target were so that people could add a word starting with that letter, effectively opening up the contest to the entire English language.
We got some surreal poetry, verging on the Vogon-esque. I'll share them all when I get copies of them back from Hero.
We took all those down and we went to work on the speed round. The target was a fey-like youth standing in a flower blossom holding a bird in one hand. The night before I was talking to Hero about it.
Imagine if you will an idyllic spring day. You're with your true love having a picnic on a lush green hill. A bird flys overhead and turds right onto your sandwiches. That bird was sent by the Anti-Cupid to thwart your romance. He's the spirit of all the little things outside your control that ruin relationships. Missed dates due to flat-tires, food poisoning at romantic little sidewalk cafe's, unfortunate garlic-related incidents - they're all the fault of the Anti-Cupid. So let's shoot the little SOB as quickly and as often as we can.
Scoring for the contest was different from normal. We divided people into beginner, intermediate and master's categories. These we then divvied up into six more-or-less even sized groups of four archers each. One beginner, three intermediate and two master. We gave a prize (a carnation) for each group on each end, and also a prize for the best speed round in each category. Finally, the person who did the best in each group got a carnation. I think we were in the neighborhood of thirty flowers given away.
A quick drive back to the Dalhousie Hive to grab sunscreen and my hat and to let G&S gather their garb and then it was off to the main hall. By the time we got there, we were all really hungry. Simple Simon Meat Pies were promised for lunch, but we were 45 minutes late for it. Then it wasmadeileen to the rescue! She opened up the lunch bar, heated up some pies from her own stock and fed the three of us. To three hungry people, this is service above and beyond the call of duty.
I spent a pleasant hour on troll chatting withhislittlekitty and blue_flydragon. Then I caught the tale end of a talk by Dalton and about an hour of the heavy fighting. All-in-all, a nice way to spend an afternoon.
wendy_licious informed both Hero and I (independently) that we had unfinished business relating to the archery tournament. We had not picked a "most chivalrous" archer. I was given the prize (a knick-knack cup and a bottle of "anise liquor", whatever that is - I joked that it meant William Shieldbiter was in the bottle) so that I could hand it to it's proper recipient during court.
Well I thought about it awhile and decided that the person should be Robert of Clan Gunn. He was free with his time and equipment and was generally helpful. When I spoke to Hero her suggestion was also Robert OCG, for the same reasons. Clearly we had our winner.
The feast appeared and it was very very good.bork107 did the cooking and the main course was pork loin. Easily the most tasty I've ever had. A piece would melt in your mouth and you would think "Damn that's good" and every so often you would hit a pocket of even better tasting pork! Yum.
I also have to say that havingkalchak at your table is nice - he could just reach behind to the serving table to grab stuff, completely eliminating the need for us to get into line for things like tarts.
Court was amusing. I, of course, had to go up to present Robert OCG with his prize. Public speaking always frightens me, but apparently I'm good at it. The trick it seems is to holler and not to "Um" and "er" too much. Hollering is a family trait, so I'm already halfway there.
garething was presented with a medallion for achievement in archery. Jenny (aka "Wilma the Still") was called up for a good amount of embarrasment for forgetting a crossbow at Winter War. When called, she exclaimed "Oh shit!", stood, pounded back her drink in one gulp and went to the front. I think she should get an Emmy for that performance.
Sadly the fun and games ended almost immediately afterward. Not for everyone else mind you, just for G&S and I.
I got a call fromhadriel indicating that her daughter (and garething's) was at Children's hospital with a broken arm. Before I even told Gareth - before I was even off the phone, I knew that we would be immediately joining them. There was no question in my mind.
Well I told Gareth what was happening and the three of us immediately grabbed as much of our gear as we could carry in one trip (along withkalchak's help - thanks Lucky Bob!) tossed it into the car and headed off to the Hospital.
I dropped them off at the emergency entrance then went to park the car. Wandering through the hospital I noticed that people were staring at me. I was still in my garb - in all my kilted glory baby! I was also still in SCA-mode. If I notice someone looking at me while in SCA-mode, I acknowledge them - giving a nod or a brief "Hello" - behavior I don't normally do mundanely. I got quite a few raised eyebrows that night.
Gareth, as I mentioned before, goes into details about Kirin's injuries. For my part I was nowhere near as panicked as he was (not that he was panicky to begin with - just single-minded). Thought I love her dearly, she's not my daughter. This gave me a perspective that the parent's lacked. I knew she was in good hands, and that everything would turn out all right. It wasn't life-threatening in any way. I also knew that the other three would be working on an emotional, adrenalin-charged level, so it was up to me to be the rock. I think I did all right. They calmed down when they saw that Kirin was (aside from the arm) OK and quietly playing.
That's not to say that I wasn't nervous. It came out later when Steph and I were trading funny stories and we pretty much killed ourselves laughing at a few of them - the humour was supercharged by the need to let some energy go.
Steph and I also overheard an amusing story. A doctor was explaining to another family about the drugs they use when they knock you out to set a bone. Seems you have the most intense dreams and you're very likely to talk and react to others while under the influence. So much so that he suggested that family should be present, just friends - less embarrassing that way. He ended the story by mentioning a twelve year-old boy who hit on all the nurses while drugged to the gills. Hilarious.
Kirin went through it all like a trooper. She coped with her injury and even made friends with another girl in the waiting room. They knocked her out for some x-Rays (she did not hit on the nurses), bone-setting and the application of the cast. They kept her around for about another hour for a second set of x-rays (to make sure they did a good job setting her arm) and then it was time to go.
My only regret was not asking the hot nurse for her phone number.
I took everyone home. Luckily it was not too long past my bed time - I was starting to get punchy. Oh, not so tired that I couldn't drive, but tired enough to know that that point was near. Regardless, everyone got home safely.
I crashed. But the night was not over for me, it still had some adrenalin left that needed to get worked out of my system. As I fell asleep, I dreamed I was back in the car driving. Everyone was still with me, like we had been a half an hour earlier in the waking world. I was in the wrong lane of the road and it suddenly ended with me heading towards an embankment. I shot awake with a start, my heart was racing and it took me awhile to fall asleep again.
Sunday was spent shopping, relaxing and talking with friends over a pot luck. Kirin came over with Lisa and we all signed her cast. She had spent the afternoon running around visiting friends and basking in her new celebrity status. It sucks that she broke her arm, but it could have been a lot worse, and as it is, she'll have an amusing story to tell after the injury is long-since healed.
garething's blog here. Otherwise, I'll get to my perspective on her recent injury later on.Friday was No Pants Day. I celebrated by wearing shorts - and yes, I'm aware that that is cheating (it should really be show us your skivvies day the way it was described to me). I was going to wear my kilt, but Saturday was Beltane, so I didn't want to wear my kilt two days in a row.
In addition to pant-less Friday, it was also May 5 - Cinco de Mayo, which is a big Mexican celebration (of what, I've no idea). In honour of that day,
evilscientist, garething, stephtopia and I elected to go to Chico's Tecate, a restaurant in the NE. garething discusses it here. Short version: Three of us had delicious burritos and Gareth got nothing. Sad really because it is a good restaurant, but I'm not going to be able to convince him to go back.This is why restaurants that screw up, but comp meals and give away gift certificates, stay in business. It may cost money in the short term but it can turn a mistake into repeat business.
I spent about an hour at archery just fiddling with my equipment. That's my archery equipment BTW and not any other sort of equipment you filthy filthy people!
We went to beer-o'clock after archery for a quick drink and had an interesting conversation with our server. She had heard of the SCA prior to meeting all of us. It was a year ago when she was working for the Alberta Privacy Commission. She was the one who fielded the calls from a local trouble maker who decided to shit-disturb the local group over the information that the (US-based) society was requesting of Albertan members.
She didn't know any of this however - as far as she was concerned, a representative of the group called up one day and asked her some questions, which she answered. We told her that the situation had been resolved, without burdening her with the knowledge of how much crap had to be shoveled to fix things. IIRC the principality Seneschal had to travel to California, under her own expense, to deal with things. Raising the shit storm cost the troublemaker nothing.
Our server has some mighty big shoes to fill (Toni, our regular server for the last few years, has moved to a different shift) but she seems to be pretty good. I'm sure we'll get to know her and love her.
In other pub-related news, Hero the Responsible and I finished up our plans for the Beltane archery tournament, that we would be running the next day. It boiled down to getting our story straight about how much the custom targets were worth (in points) and what the back story of each drawing was.
Saturday began bright and early with the archery tournament. I had on my best kilt and a Union T-shirt. We set up the targets and then told everything what was what.
The first target was the Tree of Life, a pretty straight shoot-the-target-and-total-the-points shoot. The tree was a long straight picture of a tree trunk with a branch growing out of it. you got one point for the trunk, two points for the branch and three points for the flowers on the branch. The point of this style of shoot is to give you something to aim at that is like a castle window, but not.
The next target was the Circle of Medallions. Hitting the red portion of the target got you one point and hitting one of the gold medallion got you two points. The trick with this target was that the center of the target was empty and the medallions were all on the edges (think of a peacock's tail feathers).
After this came "The Lady of the Shields". We wanted to have some kind of matchmaking going on so we were originally going to have three women and three men on the target and you had to "couple them up". You would have shot an arrow to determine whom the first part of the couple would be, then you got a point for every arrow you got in a single corresponding member of the opposite sex. No same sex couples or polyamourous relationships were allowed - not because we're prejudice, but because it would make scoring really difficult.
Of course that was a really hard target to draw so we elected not to do it. Instead, it sort of got abstracted into the Lady of the Shields. Picture a woman sitting down holding two shields (one on each thigh). Each shield is split into four colours (red, blue, yellow and white). For each arrow in a unique color you got a point. If you got the corresponding colour in the other shield, you got three more points. Out of four arrows, that's a possible twelve points. Shooting the lady got you a big fat zero for the end, making this a very unpopular target. About half the archers got zero points on it.
Interestingly, when an archer accidentally shot the lady they reacted in one of two ways. They either put their bow down and walked away from the end, or they tried to finish the bitch off. The latter response was the most amusing.
Then came the poetry shoot, which was my favorite and not just because it was the target I made. You can see it here. The object was to shoot yourself a sentence that you could use to tell your inspiration of your feelings for them. I was inspired by the sweet tart candies. To make things interesting, I added about eight really surreal words (elvis, monkey, etc.). The letters along the outside of the target were so that people could add a word starting with that letter, effectively opening up the contest to the entire English language.
We got some surreal poetry, verging on the Vogon-esque. I'll share them all when I get copies of them back from Hero.
We took all those down and we went to work on the speed round. The target was a fey-like youth standing in a flower blossom holding a bird in one hand. The night before I was talking to Hero about it.
"But why do we want to shoot the kid - and what does it have to do with romance?"So the next day I got all the archers up front to look at the target and invented the legend of the Anti-Cupid pretty much on the spot.
"Maybe he's the Anti-Cupid?" suggested
"Can I use that?"
"Sure"
Imagine if you will an idyllic spring day. You're with your true love having a picnic on a lush green hill. A bird flys overhead and turds right onto your sandwiches. That bird was sent by the Anti-Cupid to thwart your romance. He's the spirit of all the little things outside your control that ruin relationships. Missed dates due to flat-tires, food poisoning at romantic little sidewalk cafe's, unfortunate garlic-related incidents - they're all the fault of the Anti-Cupid. So let's shoot the little SOB as quickly and as often as we can.
Scoring for the contest was different from normal. We divided people into beginner, intermediate and master's categories. These we then divvied up into six more-or-less even sized groups of four archers each. One beginner, three intermediate and two master. We gave a prize (a carnation) for each group on each end, and also a prize for the best speed round in each category. Finally, the person who did the best in each group got a carnation. I think we were in the neighborhood of thirty flowers given away.
A quick drive back to the Dalhousie Hive to grab sunscreen and my hat and to let G&S gather their garb and then it was off to the main hall. By the time we got there, we were all really hungry. Simple Simon Meat Pies were promised for lunch, but we were 45 minutes late for it. Then it was
madeileen to the rescue! She opened up the lunch bar, heated up some pies from her own stock and fed the three of us. To three hungry people, this is service above and beyond the call of duty.I spent a pleasant hour on troll chatting with
hislittlekitty and blue_flydragon. Then I caught the tale end of a talk by Dalton and about an hour of the heavy fighting. All-in-all, a nice way to spend an afternoon.wendy_licious informed both Hero and I (independently) that we had unfinished business relating to the archery tournament. We had not picked a "most chivalrous" archer. I was given the prize (a knick-knack cup and a bottle of "anise liquor", whatever that is - I joked that it meant William Shieldbiter was in the bottle) so that I could hand it to it's proper recipient during court.Well I thought about it awhile and decided that the person should be Robert of Clan Gunn. He was free with his time and equipment and was generally helpful. When I spoke to Hero her suggestion was also Robert OCG, for the same reasons. Clearly we had our winner.
The feast appeared and it was very very good.
bork107 did the cooking and the main course was pork loin. Easily the most tasty I've ever had. A piece would melt in your mouth and you would think "Damn that's good" and every so often you would hit a pocket of even better tasting pork! Yum.I also have to say that having
kalchak at your table is nice - he could just reach behind to the serving table to grab stuff, completely eliminating the need for us to get into line for things like tarts.Court was amusing. I, of course, had to go up to present Robert OCG with his prize. Public speaking always frightens me, but apparently I'm good at it. The trick it seems is to holler and not to "Um" and "er" too much. Hollering is a family trait, so I'm already halfway there.
garething was presented with a medallion for achievement in archery. Jenny (aka "Wilma the Still") was called up for a good amount of embarrasment for forgetting a crossbow at Winter War. When called, she exclaimed "Oh shit!", stood, pounded back her drink in one gulp and went to the front. I think she should get an Emmy for that performance.Sadly the fun and games ended almost immediately afterward. Not for everyone else mind you, just for G&S and I.
I got a call from
hadriel indicating that her daughter (and garething's) was at Children's hospital with a broken arm. Before I even told Gareth - before I was even off the phone, I knew that we would be immediately joining them. There was no question in my mind.Well I told Gareth what was happening and the three of us immediately grabbed as much of our gear as we could carry in one trip (along with
kalchak's help - thanks Lucky Bob!) tossed it into the car and headed off to the Hospital.I dropped them off at the emergency entrance then went to park the car. Wandering through the hospital I noticed that people were staring at me. I was still in my garb - in all my kilted glory baby! I was also still in SCA-mode. If I notice someone looking at me while in SCA-mode, I acknowledge them - giving a nod or a brief "Hello" - behavior I don't normally do mundanely. I got quite a few raised eyebrows that night.
Gareth, as I mentioned before, goes into details about Kirin's injuries. For my part I was nowhere near as panicked as he was (not that he was panicky to begin with - just single-minded). Thought I love her dearly, she's not my daughter. This gave me a perspective that the parent's lacked. I knew she was in good hands, and that everything would turn out all right. It wasn't life-threatening in any way. I also knew that the other three would be working on an emotional, adrenalin-charged level, so it was up to me to be the rock. I think I did all right. They calmed down when they saw that Kirin was (aside from the arm) OK and quietly playing.
That's not to say that I wasn't nervous. It came out later when Steph and I were trading funny stories and we pretty much killed ourselves laughing at a few of them - the humour was supercharged by the need to let some energy go.
Steph and I also overheard an amusing story. A doctor was explaining to another family about the drugs they use when they knock you out to set a bone. Seems you have the most intense dreams and you're very likely to talk and react to others while under the influence. So much so that he suggested that family should be present, just friends - less embarrassing that way. He ended the story by mentioning a twelve year-old boy who hit on all the nurses while drugged to the gills. Hilarious.
Kirin went through it all like a trooper. She coped with her injury and even made friends with another girl in the waiting room. They knocked her out for some x-Rays (she did not hit on the nurses), bone-setting and the application of the cast. They kept her around for about another hour for a second set of x-rays (to make sure they did a good job setting her arm) and then it was time to go.
My only regret was not asking the hot nurse for her phone number.
I took everyone home. Luckily it was not too long past my bed time - I was starting to get punchy. Oh, not so tired that I couldn't drive, but tired enough to know that that point was near. Regardless, everyone got home safely.
I crashed. But the night was not over for me, it still had some adrenalin left that needed to get worked out of my system. As I fell asleep, I dreamed I was back in the car driving. Everyone was still with me, like we had been a half an hour earlier in the waking world. I was in the wrong lane of the road and it suddenly ended with me heading towards an embankment. I shot awake with a start, my heart was racing and it took me awhile to fall asleep again.
Sunday was spent shopping, relaxing and talking with friends over a pot luck. Kirin came over with Lisa and we all signed her cast. She had spent the afternoon running around visiting friends and basking in her new celebrity status. It sucks that she broke her arm, but it could have been a lot worse, and as it is, she'll have an amusing story to tell after the injury is long-since healed.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 05:29 pm (UTC)I have heard rumours (I read Q's blog) that Q is getting better at running.
Q: When caught, I suggest you deliver S to G for chastisement.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 05:37 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I just took some muscle relaxants, so my powers of associative thinking may be discombobulated.