jamesq | Shoot for the Stars!

I had a fantastic weekend. Certainly, it was the best in recent memory. The negative karma incurred by the rest of the city drowning in a deluge of biblical proportions was offset by the huge positive karma I gained.

Friday I got off early from work. The only glitch being that I had to run an errand at SAIT. You see, I'm going to try for a Java certificate there. The entry-level Java course requires an entry-level course in C. Now I've been coding in C for so long that I could probably teach this course. Rather than take the course and fall asleep repeatedly, I opted to get credit for work experience. I called up SAIT a few weeks ago to see what hoops I needed to jump through to do this, they told me I needed a current resume, a detailed job description and a letter of reference from my boss. Having assembled all of those things I went down there to hand it in.

Turns out I needed all that and a form that had to be signed by my boss. I had to go back to work after lunch to get him to sign the form. Afterwards, I went back to SAIT to hand it all in. I'll (hopefully) be hearing from them soon so that I can apply for some classes.

That evening was the party I had semi-organized for

spookiemonkey (birthday), Brain (birthday too) and vRyan (just because he was in town). The pouring rain managed to clobber my plans - of the 30 or so people I invited, only about 3 showed up. Everyone had a bunch of lame excuses like "The highway was closed" and "I didn't want to drown". Feh.

K showed up though (and actually got drenched because the bus driver let her off at the wrong stop) and we had a good time.

hadriel and

kermie_canada got me interested in Queer as Folk, which is not a show I would have watched normally. My other option was to play "bang". Hmm. A card game I'm not terribly interested in, or hanging around with the girls while they watch gay porn. It was quite a dilemma until I realized I'd have K with me.

After she left I kept watching it - it's actually a helluva good show!

I woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off - I had a vivid dream of my father yelling, "JAMIE GET UP" down the stairs. It was his voice from before the stroke, and what he would holler whenever I had something important to get up early for. It was such a vivid audio memory that I sat bolt upright in bed (startling Zabu something fierce). For a split second I thought he was still alive and that the previous ten year hadn't happened. My heart was racing, having gone from a sleeping rest state to the sort of adrenaline-fueled, your-life-is-in-immediate-danger, state that makes you feel it pounding in your chest and roaring in your ears.

If I believed in an afterlife, I'd be tempted to think the old man was trying to tell me something from beyond the grave. I doubt he'd think the Dragon Blinder competition was that important though.

The reason I had my alarm set for a Saturday morning following a party at which I'd been drinking (that's twice now that I've been tipsy, for those of you who're keeping score) was to compete in the Dragon Blinder competition.

garething picked me and

kalchak up and we showed up sufficiently early that the place wasn't open yet. Oh well, we spent a fun ten minutes chatting with Hero, Malabar, Rhiannon and Felicia.

The Calgary Archery Centre opened and we set about practicing. Lots of people showed up, including some familiar faces from Edmonton and Saskatoon (which have their own archery enclaves). Now these folks couldn't compete for Dragon Blinder (Only members of the Barony of Montengarde can hold the office). Doesn't mean they didn't shoot though - they had a parallel tournament that included them and people from within the Barony who either couldn't hold the office (Malabar) or didn't want to (Dalton).

I discovered three important things at this competition:
1) Beothuk's mom makes chocolate chip cookies that are at least as good as my own.
2) Jenny's boobies feel pretty good.
3) I'm a much better archer than I thought I was.

I came in second for the Baronial Championship! I lost to Elias, which was not surprising - the man is awesomely talented. It's actually pretty nice - I get huge bragging rights, but I don't actually have to stand up in court for the next year. Stay tuned for when I try to win in AS 41! On the bright side, I won't be competing with Elias.

The competition was a blast. It was double elimination for the first half (for the first round I had to shoot against Shieldbiter. It was a "buy" but I still beat him). When they had narrowed it down to eight archers from each group they went to a "most points" system. I walked behind Jenny (who was the list mistress) and was completely dumbfounded that I was in second place! This led to a best two-out-of-three shoot with Elias and I. The target was pretty hard. You could aim for the small head of the big body - since they called the competition Dragon Blinder, I aimed for the head. Plus, the only way I was going to beat Elias was by getting the points-rich head as he shot for the body. Good strategy but it didn't work - Elias took the first two rounds.

While we were shooting, the rain came and drenched the city. It wouldn't end for awhile. If you're really interested,

nikitaa took pictures.

I skipped watching the rapier (Dragonblade) and heavy (Dragonslayer) tournaments. Instead, I spent a few hours visiting with vRyan.

I did want to go to the feast and court though. Not to eat the feast mind you - too many pickles for my taste - i just wanted to hang out with the SCAdians (I was also hoping to see K, but she never showed up). The bad news is that most of the people who wanted to be off board didn't bother showing up at all (no doubt because the rain was coming down in sheets). There where twelve sets of tables - nine of which were for feasters and three which were for off board. Now they're kept separate so that only people who pay for the feast eat the feast. It also meant that there were three tables for about six people. I sat down with RK who was sorting photos. She seemed pleased to see me. Then ML came up and said "I saw you were by yourself so I thought I'd come over and keep you company". This was two pleasant surprises in quick succession!

Sexy women coming up to me to say hi? Before K this would have been unthinkable, but it's happening more and more often. Am I loosening up? Are people recognizing me as a regular? Is it because I've lost twenty pounds? I don't care so long as it keeps happening. Not that ML or RK are potential romantic partners (I like RK, but she's not my type and ML is in a relationship). Social phobia may be a bitch but I seem to be pulling myself out of that quagmire.

I had previously thought that I had hit the creep threshold with both of these ladies (RK & ML). Apparently I had not (or more likely my creep threshold hypothesis is completely bogus). I ended up having a nice chat with both of these wonderful ladies while the feast was going on. Afterwards,

wendy_licious waved me over to her table - and also chided me for not immediately inviting ML over (RK had left to socialize with others at this point). Of course I corrected this faux pas!

A pleasant chat and then court. I was going to record it all for the website, but I completely forgot! Of well. Elias got his award, as did several others - including ML!

wendy_licious also took me aside to discuss a special project of her and

wackynephews. It's hush hush for now, but it was a real honour to be asked. Unfortunately I have to go see a doctor now. With the good comes the bad I guess.

There was much socializing after court. I watched several people play toblero and chatted with a whole raft of others. And then came the announcement.

Someone announced that the police and fire department were evacuating the building because of a gas leak! Turns out this was incorrect - what had happened is that the river(s) were breaching their banks and the authorities wanted to evacuate Inglewood (where the event was held) so that they could shut off the power and gas to the neighborhood.

Well we had the hall cleared in record time, though a lot of folk's gear got a good shuffle into random vehicles. A few of the kids got upset. Unfortunately they hadn't figured out the difference between this is urgent and this is life-threatening, at least when the grown-ups are rushing around and being all serious. Alarming for the kids, true, but I found it exhilarating in my already up mood. This is something that Montengardiens will be talking about for a long time. It's starting to be called Dragonsoaker - though the rain had actually stopped a few hours prior to our evacuation of the Alexandra Centre.

wendy_licious and

wackynephews gave me a much appreciated ride home, along the way we saw just how high the rivers had become - it was unnerving. I've never seen the river that high. I guess nobody else had either because I heard later that the river's level on Saturday was the highest it's ever been since they started keeping records.

I slept in Sunday - neither alarms, championships or my late father woke me up. I got up and had an awesome 8 Km run (2.5 minute run, 2.5 minute walk. Repeat 12 times, 1 hour total). I actually made it to within a kilometer of Crowfoot Crossing (which means it's closer than I thought) On the way back I encountered a fairly decent garage sale and ended up buying a couch (needed), a chair (not needed), a graduated cylinder (not needed, but fun nonetheless) and an original edition of the Deities and Demigods book!

We went to the Cheesecake Cafe as a going away brunch for vRyan. Later gaming got cancelled, which was a minor disappointment, but of no real concern compared to the fantastic weekend that occurred.

Whew! I'm tired just writing about it all.