Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

The good news is:

• I am over my post-Pennsic cold.
• I have been exercising regularly since I could breathe again.
• I’m actually eating like an adult lately.
• Work hasn’t exploded. In fact, there have been just enough crazy moments to keep me entertained this month.
• I have rediscovered the glory of teatime.
• Threadless T-shirts is having their $10 sale. For those unfamiliar, Threadless produces small runs of amusing and random shirts such as Emo Bear, Diabolical Hot dog and, my personal favorite, the Loch Ness Imposter. I find their shirts run a little small, so if you want to be carefree and use your dryer on them, order a size up.

The bad news is

• I have a case of the blahs.
• My car is still in need of a knock sensor (but it’s not like I drive it much).
• Pennsic Laundry still haunts me.
• I really need the upcoming long weekend.

Good out-numbers bad, I’m stopping here.

blah, car, food, laundry, random, sick, teatime, threadless, work

If you haven’t seen Stardust yet, go this weekend. It’s a delightful fairy tale in a magical land. I think I’d seen the trailer twice, and not since before Pennsic, so I went in fairly free of expectations and was totally delighted by the creativity of the story and world. It was a fun movie, rich in detail and character. I have to say that I enjoyed it thoroughly.

We also got excellent previews before the movie including: The Seeker: The Dark is Rising and The Golden Compass. (POLAR BEAR POWER!) Now I need to get my Susan Cooper books from Maine so I can re-read The Dark is Rising series.

movies, neil gaiman, stardust

I’ve posted the first round of my Pennsic photos. The second round will come later and include more of the fencing photos. I took a lot of photos at the Champions Tourney. Enough that I was tempted to go offsite for another 2gb memory card for the camera…

The shots behind the link (clicky the photo) are mostly of people in camp and up at that tournament. There is, of course, the gratuitous “drying our boots by the fire pit” photo as well. Hurray for the Stargate!

The heat, wet and lack of space on my memory card gave me excellent excuses not to go up to the field battle. I get really paranoid about getting the new camera wet. Funny that. Oh, not to mention the mud… goodness there was a lot of mud. This was definitely one of those years when I didn’t feel like I needed to stay at War past Midnight Madness on Wednesday and I probably could have skipped that as well. It’s best we stayed — the canvas dried out a bit making it lighter to pack up and move — but the volume of rain really made it tiresome there for a while.

pennsic, pennsic xxxvi, photographs, photography

Pennsic was hot, humid, wet, damp, and great. I have a cold now, but I think the happy chinese medicine nisaa gave me held it off an extra day (so I could help unpack yesterday) and in general lessened its impact on my life. Hurray! Of course, that still means I’m rundown and congested today, but that’s better than having it hit me Saturday or Sunday.

So here’s the quick rundown of things I want to remember for next year while I can still remember it.

Lessons learned and/or reinforced at Pennsic this year:

• I need another large memory card for my camera.
• We need to level our bed next year.
• Acupuncture is amazing.
• Heat and humidity of mighty oppressiveness make it easy to skip Pennsic classes.
• Rain and mud of mighty quantities make it easy to skip Pennsic classes.
• More linen and silk.
• Viking apron dresses are key and I should make some.
• Food at the food court is boring and fattening. We should bring some food to grill in camp next year.
• On the topic of food, it’s such a pity to watch an amazing bed of coals go to waste in the Stargate (our amazing firepit) each night… I should put together some interesting things to bake in the coals for breakfast. (Either in foil or a dutch oven or both…)

I’ve imported all the photos from my camera’s card. Most of them are of the Rapier Champions Tournament, unsurprisingly. Most of the sunburn I got was from that Tournament too. Hopefully I’ll get some of them up this week. I’ll probably throw the whole series from the Champions tourney somewhere other than Flickr for you fencer types.

After 2 showers and a loooooong bath, my toenails are still dirty but the rest of me feels clean. I should start to tackle the laundry next. Eek. Laundry.

heat, pennsic, Pennsic xxxvi, rain, sca, sick, travel, weather