I would like to report that I've received the first New Year's greeting of the Jewish New Year, from a dear non-Jewish friend, who wrote this morning to wish me a "wonderful Rosh Hosannah". Oh, I SO needed a nice giggle this morning.

Rosh Hashana: the Jewish New Year, usually in September
Hosannah: a word of praise usually used in the Christian liturgy (e.g.: "Hosanna in excelsis")

Thank you, Trystan, for making my morning. Your kind wish is entirely well-taken, and I wish you a happy Tuesday. *hug*

I mentioned in my last entry that I had had a run-in with a piece that I considered too sexually explicit for the Saturday night Bardic circle. It was a very interesting situation: the gentle who told the story has a Tibetan persona and obviously has a strong interest mundanely in Tibetan culture. He told two stories during the evening, stories which he read out of a modern (~50 years ago) book of tales of Tibetan daily life. The first was a cute one about tricks the kids would play on other families in the village. The second went into some very frank detail about sexuality in Tibetan culture, starting out innocuously enough by describing the autumn festival and how boys and girls would sometimes pair off and go off into the bushes.

Then he read a section discussing the sexual practices of monks and nuns. One of the LESS descriptive passages pointed out that a common joke in Tibetan culture was that the dirtiest part of a nun was her finger, because of what she often used it for. The reader read this all word-for-word in a relatively matter-of-fact tone, chuckling at the more humorous parts, and did take the time to warn us that this story would not be appropriate for younger listeners (who had all gone to bed by that time). All the same, it made some of us a little uncomfortable to be regaled with descriptions of masturbation, sexual assault of young boys, and lesbians using eggs for sexual purposes! Especially when the stories he was reading were not SCA period stories, nor did he think they were--his premise was that in many ways, the Tibetan culture of 50 years ago was similar to the Tibetan culture (and other cultures) during SCA period. (Well, so is the culture of several tribes in central Africa, but we don't sit and listen to information on THEIR sexual practices during Bardic circles...!)

Not to condemn this good gentle, who seems intelligent and well-meaning, and wanted to share something he found humorous. I just think we were all a bit nonplussed by his contribution.

(Wooo, look at all the 'dirty' words I used above...I expect my site statistics to go up substantially this week. ;) )

posted by Jennifer Friedman at 8:43 AM

Post-Armorgeddon laundry night. I am discovering over time that there are all kinds of rainy events. First, they vary by type of rain: sprinkle, pour, monsoon, mist, etc. Then by their accompaniments: fog, thunder/lightning, wind, lack of sun. Then by how long/how often it's been raining. Then by the conditions at the site: dirt roads, proximity of activity areas to camping areas, ground cover type (moss/grass/new-mown hay/tree roots/dirt), availability of showers, availability of shelter, cabins vs. tents, etc. Then by how well you have thought to prepare: what kind of tent you're in, how many towels and pairs of dry socks you packed, whether you brought boots, an umbrella, plastic bags, etc. Then by the characteristics of the event itself: will you be fighting? Painting? Singing? Shopping? Sitting or mostly walking/standing? Will there be Court? Indoor, outdoor, or in a tent?

This event was by far the rainiest that I've ever been to, overall, in terms of how close and intimate I got with the rain. Let me set the scene: primitive campsite, newly-mown hay/reeds/grasses on the ground, rain for at least a day BEFORE the event, ranging from sprinkle to pour (no mist until this morning) with no lightning/thunder or wind, showers up a muddy hill and down a muddy path from the camping area (read: not real available), camping in a non-waterproofed handmade cotton canvas pavilion lined with one tarp and old carpet, well-stocked with towels/plastic bags/wool cloak and socks/boots/Rubbermaid, fighting and singing planned, Court outdoors. The sun did not show itself for one minute from Thursday night to Sunday noon. Although the rain let up for most of Saturday, it came back at inopportune times: during the Bardic circle, while we were trying to sleep, right before the large crush of people arrived Friday night, and during Wulfgang's three-part tourney Friday.

So: rain. My main rain memory of this event will be of the moment when we realized the tent was not at all waterproof. Janvier had decided to add in a black plastic tarp between the pavilion top and its metal pipe ribs, to see if it would help prevent greenhouse-effect warming during the day. Turns out the black tarp was the only thing that kept the center of the tent dry. The edges of the top, not covered by the tarp, quickly soaked through and began to drip onto the carpet and other items within about ten inches of the walls. The walls themselves became sodden and contributed by getting anything hung against them wet. To be honest I rather liked the pavilion--it's spacious, attractive, and its octagonal shape promotes stringing ropes across the sides to create privacy (I had my own room!). And my cot was always dry. But the constant dripdripdripdripdripdrip on my Rubbermaid containers...oh praise the Lawd for Rubbermaid...drove me nearly crazy the two nights I spent in the tent.

Friday was cold, with intermittent sprinkling to pouring rain, but I got to be a consort in Wulfgang's rapier tourney (Baron Adrien fought for me) and then again in his heavy weapons tourney (Toki fought for me). Baron Adrien won in rapier, against Janvier, Fiskr, and Gorum, and I got the prize: a neat tabletop lantern. I walked around for a bit with Dahrien and his friend Ivan. Things were sort of aimless; it kept raining, and there weren't that many people there. So, Janvier and I decided Friday night to take up Fiskr and Brigid on their offer to drive us into town to their motel, and see if there was a room left that we could use. We bargained with the woman at the motel desk and got a great deal on one of their last rooms, a jacuzzi suite, and so after a night and a day of miserable wetness and cold (never got above 50 degrees on Friday), we got to unwind with a nice dinner, a soak in the hot tub with companionable conversation, and comfy private rooms with our own temperature controls. We returned Saturday morning, much more able to face the remaining half of the event.

Which, truth be told, turned out to be a lot of fun and very relaxing. In the morning I walked around with a nice woman named Teffan whom I remembered meeting earlier in the year. When I returned, it was almost time for opening ceremonies, which was neat because all of Calontir's Royalty showed up and we had some nice pageantry. While waiting for Calontir, I missed a photo op as His Excellency Niklos, Lord Heir of the Northshield, snuggled with a small Siamese kitten before being called back up to the front by the Prince and Princess. However, Prince Kenneth felt the need to snuggle too, so he and Princess Leyla opened Court, had the kitten heralded in ("Their Highnesses call into Court Hector the Cuddly!"), and they each got to snuggle with the little ball of fur without leaving Court. The kitten was officially named Northshield's first Feline Champion and Royal Mouser. It also made for some nice shtick later on (Niklos: "Awww, can't we call the kitten into Court again, Dad? He's one of Your champions!" Kenneth: "No." Niklos: "Geezzz..." [and he pouts and hides in his cloak]...)

After opening ceremonies I walked up to the merchant area with Owen, who had arrived with his Lady that morning. He also had his Anglo-Saxon lyre, which drew the attention of Merowen, one of the Ladies with whom I sang backup for Mistress Gwyneth at Calontir A&S a few months ago. We had a little reunion and she then pounced on the lyre, and we got to sit down in the picnic shelter for a little while and sing and play. Ed the Tall stopped by and noticed the makeshift leather fold-around bag Owen uses to hold the lyre, and proposed to sew it up that afternoon. So, Owen and I went to Ed's comfy pavilion and kept Ed company while he cut and sewed the leather into a rather serviceable briefcase-shaped bag, complete with secure strap and handle. I finished my 10-strand gold heart kumihimo; the stitch is relatively simple and the effect is stunning. I'm going to make more. Owen immediately converted it into a neck-strap to free up his hands as he holds the lyre, which sorta works as long as he isn't moving. I told him, "Keep it and use it as a decoration on the bag." So he did. Can't think of anyone else I'd rather have carry around my hearts. ;)

Bardic was nice, though as I mentioned, it did start to rain again. I did "Lady of the Northshield", "I Love my Love" (since it worked to such great effect last weekend), and a couple of Northshield classics by request. Also got to do "Stella Splendens" again with Owen, who really has a thing for that song. There didn't seem to be any Calontiri at the circle, though there were quite a few South Dakota Northshielders I'd never met before. Notably: Fiona of the Harp, who is an incredibly talented singer/songwriter/harper, and Tigerna, who is about as different from how I pictured her from her Hall posts as she could be--but somehow exactly the same!

Also had my first run-in with something that I did not consider appropriate for a Bardic circle: not due to crudeness, rudeness, out-of-periodness, the drunkenness of the performer, or anything like that. It was purely the level of sexual content. More about that tomorrow, as this post becomes dangerously long and I risk putting my reader(s?) to sleep...not to mention myself!

posted by Jennifer Friedman at 11:02 PM

Things still look damp for Armorgeddon, especially right now, if the radar is correct. The front is slanting NW to SE over the site and there seems to be rain in its immediate future. We'll pass through it as we drive tonight, probably, but let's hope it is already east of site by the time we arrive. In any case it'll be wet there. I'm wearing boots.

Also, the Amazon.com/Red Cross donation page continues to skyrocket with contributions. When I donated yesterday at maybe 10 am, they had just over $200,000. Now it is up to 86,624 donors and nearly $3 million in contributions. I'd be willing to bet the Red Cross doesn't get this kind of response to their everyday campaigns--and that this chunk of change will represent a healthy part of the money they need for humanitarian response to Tuesday's atrocities.

I am feeling a bit in the minority, to hear all the anger around me: people declaring that if they had one of those terrorists in front of them, or anyone connected with them, they'd shoot them, and people saying we need to just bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age "for what they did" (which is not totally clear as of yet, but hey, why let the details get in the way, right?). I even read a very well-meaning, inspiring article saying that all people, everywhere, need to show unity and support for each other as we prepare a reaction to those who do not deserve to live.

Uh...apparently "all people, everywhere" doesn't mean what I thought it meant; was he saying that "those who do not deserve to live", i.e. the perpetrators, are not people? Very, very dangerous idea, there. After all, the majority's decision that there were those in the world who were not human, who did not deserve to live, resulted in six million of my people being killed, not so very long ago. We need to keep in mind the implications of what we say, folks. We always feel we are on the side of good, and those opposed to us are on the side of evil. They feel the same way. They were willing to die to show how strongly they felt the same way. Argue against relativism all you like--but admit that, no matter who's wrong or right, no matter if there even IS a wrong or right, just about everyone KNOWS they are right, in their deepest hearts. Even those with whom no sane person would agree.

I am also mildly irritated by some of the jingoism I see/hear. Being in the SCA, I understand the display of symbols now better than I ever did: I recall how the sight of the flag at the top of the Northshield's bell tower at Pennsic cheered me, every time I would catch sight of it on the way home to our encampment. I know how the flag is helping people, psychologically. It's comforting to them. But for people to attach so much emotional significance to an object like that just makes me nervous. Cheering at the sight of the American flag, talking about what the flag means (we have unity, we have strength, we have pride, we are shaken but not destroyed, etc.) as though it were all we needed to carry us through this disaster...it all makes me quail a little. When people are shocked like this it's natural that their brains turn off and their emotions carry them for awhile. I'm waiting for some people to turn their brains back on, and decide on a logical and satisfying response that doesn't involve wrapping ourselves in the flag, screaming "U.S. is number ONE!" and throttling Afghanis with our bare hands.

On the other hand, far be it from me to stifle people's expressions of anger...I tell ya, it's a paradoxical business, this being a liberal pacifist. ;)

One thing: wouldn't I hate to be Middle Eastern in America during all this. Imagine being a doctor born in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, and seeing a new look in your patients' eyes, or living in a crime-ridden part of a city and having to go into hiding to avoid 'provoking' street toughs who are just looking for anyone Middle Eastern to beat up on. Maybe it's not that bad yet, but I can see it coming--there are so many angry people in our country, just looking for a voice and an ethnic target. I hope this crisis doesn't give them both. That would infinitely deepen the wounds we have received.

Obviously: no blogging tomorrow, Saturday, or until late Sunday. I will be, with any luck, singing and hugging my way through the weekend with my friends at Armorgeddon. Have a good weekend and here's hoping we all begin to heal.

posted by Jennifer Friedman at 3:02 PM

I am so pleased to see that Amazon has extended its useful and easy donation system to allow customers to donate to the Red Cross in a quick and painless manner. I've used their Amazon Honor System a couple of times to donate to non-profit websites that provide services that I think are important (for example, RefDesk as a useful compendium of reference web links covering every possible topic). Since I'm already an Amazon customer (as evidenced by my particularly full Wish List), they have my credit cards on file, so donating mostly consists of my selecting the amount I want to give and confirming twice that, yes indeed, I do want to give it. No entering numbers, faxing signatures, calculating costs, or additional fees. Amazon has even waived their normal fees to the non-profit for the Red Cross donation program. What a cool thing.

What I find most fun about it is that every time I re-load the page, even if I just re-loaded it a minute ago, the donation count goes up by 40 or 50 people and the amount goes up several thousand dollars. Woohoo! Help is on the way!

I'm still trying to comprehend a disaster of this magnitude that is actually caused by people, and not a volcano, earthquake, etc. In fact, the last time I felt like this, staring at the TV and thinking that if I were a Christian I'd think it was Armageddon, was in Spring 1997 when I was living in Bismarck, ND. Although the flooding where I was was small to nonexistent, we in the State Library felt a connection to the parts of the state that were really suffering, along the Red River. The flood waters kept going up. It seemed like they couldn't go any higher, but they did. We watched people work themselves to the bone filling and slinging sandbags, only to have the careless river crush their efforts in a second, take their property and nearly kill them.

This was dismaying and saddening, but what freaked me out completely was the TV coverage of downtown Grand Forks at the height of the flooding. Of course everyone had been evacuated much earlier--the water nearly covered the downtown, maybe 20 feet deep. Then the fires started. I saw all of this via helicopter camera on TV, late one night: an entire city center, drowned AND burning, ugly smoke rising from the conflagration. I just stared. Gone, gone, it's all gone. Businesses, records, property architecture, all gone, all eaten by water or fire or both. Thank goodness no one was there by that time.

You can't say that, unfortunately, about yesterday's horrors. LOTS of people were there. People were there to get crashed into the side of a building, to get burned in the subsequent explosions, to get crushed in the slide as the buildings fell, to get covered in debris and choked by dust as they fled or tried to help out, and to get crashed in a field if the original target didn't work out. There were even the type of suicides that spontaneously occur when people suddenly aren't sure if they will live or die a painful death: people leaping from windows 50 floors up, knowing they will die quickly at the bottom. This was a people disaster. There's no way around it.

I have said over and over again in this Blog that I believe most worthy institutions of any kind are about the people. The SCA could not mean what it does to me without the people I know and love in the Northshield. No library can provide effective service to its patron base without library staff who care about that patron base, work to satisfy its needs, and practice social librarianship: looking into patrons' eyes, going an extra mile to help them, and showing interest in their lives. This is a really important concept to me: that people are at the heart of anything worthwhile, and that valuing them makes anything work better. So when people are attacked, real lives ended horribly, by people who think and feel so differently from us, that's a huge, wrenching, ugly shock. Can anyone really understand why people kill other people?

I'm afraid of what happened, but more afraid of what will happen. Cool-headedness must prevail. If we grab our guns and go hunting with the intent to get vengeance now, our actions are no more justified than theirs. (Remember, they have an extensive theological and logical system to justify what they did, not unlike the theological and logical system that would urge us to take revenge quickly because an-eye-for-an-eye is a long-standing Biblical example.) I don't want war--I never want war--but of course we have to do something in the names of those who have had everything taken from them, including their lives. What that will be, I don't know, and I am profoundly grateful that I don't have to be the one to decide. I just hope those who will have to make that decision are the right people to do so.

Having been irritated Monday (and since) by the Armorgeddon weather forecast, I had considered not going. After all, I'm not driving, not teaching, don't really have a reason to be there except to enjoy the event and the friendly rivalry. And I am a little rain-shell-shocked after last Friday night at Bard Wars. And if I didn't go, I could work Friday, take Monday off, and have an extended weekend to spend combined at home/in Madison, with my family.

But then I thought: right now, I need to nestle with the people I love. And the best way to do that is to do exactly what I'd planned: nestle with work today and tomorrow, nestle with the SCA Friday/Saturday/Sunday, and nestle with my family Monday night and Tuesday (Happy New Year!). That gets me quality time with everyone I want to be with. I guess I wouldn't mind a tad less quality time with the rain at the event, but that's how the weekend is planned--if I want to ride with the people I had arranged to ride with, I have to go by their schedule. And anyway, if you check the forecast, things are shifting: now it's rain Thursday, scattered storms Friday, and only partly cloudy Saturday (and sunny Sunday). So if Janvier doesn't mind pitching his tent in the rain, and if we can stand one or two squalls Friday, we should be okay. I'm bringing my boots.

posted by Jennifer Friedman at 11:08 AM

Peter Scott of LibDex has just linked my page on his Library Weblogs page, a page I've seen and thoght, "Hey, neat". I feared I wasn't library-related enough (let's face it, this is more an SCA blog than a library blog), but he says he just wants to show that librarians CREATE blogs, it doesn't matter what kind. I'm just happy to be asked. Thanks, Peter!

More about Bard Wars: the tourney was kind of cute. The idea was that for each armored fighting bout, there would be two fights and one bardic challenge. Each fighter would draw a card with a bardic assignment on it (they were fairly easy, for example: "sing a children's song", "draw a picture", "tell a limerick", "read a poem"). If the fighter did not feel up to the bardic challenge, he could 'contract out' to one of the many bards in attendance. I didn't get asked individually, but Chris got asked several times (being one of very few instrumentalists there) and each time, asked as payment that the fighter attend an event in the Northshield. (Smart!)

Rosanore, me, and Christian sang "Belle Qui Tiens Ma Vie" for a Lord who was challenged to sing a love song to his Lady; as we sang, he knelt before her. A good musical moment. I couldn't help remembering singing that with certain people I'd never met before, at Valamer and Gisele's wedding in 1999, when someone from Head Table ran up and said, "They need a love song". I didn't really know Owen yet; I didn't realize the emissary from Head Table was talking to him. People didn't yet know me as a bard, though some had heard me sing in isolated instances. I offered to go get my bardic bag (no book yet, at that point), and Owen's head swiveled towards me in surprise; he said, "Do it." I ran. I tell you, from the moment I met that guy, he's been inspiring me one way or another...

Anyway, the tourney ran overtime so our classes (Rosanore, me, and Christian each taught a class) were pushed back so they ended right before Feast. I thought my class went okay. It was about resources for building a Bardic Book, and I passed around my book, gave a healthy list of websites for finding lyrics/MIDIs/poetry/other info, discussed how MIDIs work, talked about how to get the most out of a music library, and of course covered what I know of copyright (though I'm no expert). My prejudice was obviously towards period music, but I also discussed how to learn music if you don't read music, where to get Calontir-specific SCA music, and supplied at least one source of excellent filk lyrics, plus poetry, short-story, and other literature links. (What bard can help being inspired by the complete works of William Shakespeare?) A couple of people were nodding off; this was 3:30 in the afternoon. But for the most part, people stayed awake and seemed interested.

Feast was fairly good, in a cozy log-cabin-style feast hall with wooden tables and benches. As I was walking up to the building, I smelled fresh-baked bread, felt the uneven path under my feet, saw the slightly worn log-cabin wooden building and the late afternoon sun slanting through the thick forest to either side, and had an unbelievably strong flashback to camp, where before every meal I walked the crumbling path through the woods to the Lodge, where kitchen staff would have just finished the day's bread. Before Friday night dinners, the bread smell was especially strong: fresh challah for the week's most special meal. The feast hall even reminded me of the dining hall at Beber, with its ragged hangings of old banners and posters, poor lighting, dusty corners, and screened-in porch. Oddly enough it made me feel at home.

Lots of us performed at Feast; I got up and did "I Love My Love", after having decided to debut "Away With These Self-Loving Lads". (Sometimes the acoustics of the space, and the psychology of the moment, make your decision for you. I nixed "I Love My Love" at the bardic volleyball thing Friday night at Pennsic, in favor of "Stella Splendens".) "I Love My Love" is one of my few memorized songs, admittedly because we learned it in high school choir; it does make a difference to sing from memory, after all. You can communicate more directly with the crowd because you aren't always having to break gaze and look back at the words. It's also, as I've mentioned, high and loud in spots, commanding attention, and it shut the whole hall up--even though feast was technically over at that point and everyone was in the midst of cleaning up. I got lots of applause and one woman came up to me at the Bardic Circle and said she wished I had won the best performance prize. As the day's most notorious instigator, though, Christian really deserved it, and Rosanore got "best singer" for doing a great piece from the SCA's 20th anniversary event.

Rosanore and I did some Northshield songs at the Bardic Circle, to some applause--more 'popularity' applause than real pleasure. ("Oh, that's those women with the good voices who have been singing all day. Who cares what they're singing? It sounds nice. Clap hard.") Which is okay. We were mostly singing for ourselves. The Circle was a bit fractured and a bit...shall we say...damp, with alcohol I mean (the rain never did start up again), and there was a significant lack of etiquette, with people roaring away on their own conversations and making no attempt to pay attention to who might be quietly trying to start a song on the other side of the circle. It made me feel like Northshield Bardic Circles have improved immensely since I've been going to them. Informal though our circles still are, we are paragons of restraint compared to the people at the Circle at Bard Wars. Not to condemn them, they just haven't had anyone to force them to learn.

I was going to talk about musical officerships in the Shire, wasn't I? Okay, here's what happened:

• Maggie has stepped down as Seneschal and will be autocratting Autumn Rose next year.
  
• Kudrun has moved from Chronicler to Seneschal. (YAY!)
  
• I have moved from Chatelaine to Chronicler. (Sad, but happy. I have missed being Chronicler.)
  
• Brilliana has taken over as Chatelaine.
  

I instantly felt sad when I signed the Change of Officer form and realized I was no longer Chatelaine. I truly love being Chatelaine. But I'm not worried. One great thing about our group is that everyone understands the importance of recruiting, (almost) everyone is very capable of running a mini-demo and showing the SCA to great advantage, and several key people are on the lookout for demo opportunities. Truth be told, we ran an incredible number of demos during the time I was chatelaine (2 school, 2 parade, 2 county fair, one Open House, 2 event public days), and the only one that was actually conceived, scheduled, and run by me was the Open House. For everything else, I was there, helped, printed flyers, etc., but the demos themselves were coordinated by others. So, not being Chatelaine doesn't mean I won't still be welcome to pitch in. Everyone is needed.

I also have some hope that I'll be picked as Principality Chatelaine. Everyone reading this, keep your fingers crossed for me...!

posted by Jennifer Friedman at 11:01 AM

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Geocities (I assume it was from Geocities...it's so hard to tell these days), informing me that my website exceeds the monthly allotted bandwidth for a free site (3 MB) and that if I don't want parts of it shut off during random hours of the day, I need to pay for additional bandwidth through their premium site plan. I'm amazed that my site is commanding so much bandwidth, but knowing that a) site statistics are steadily going up, and b) it's safe to say that more people are looking for photos of me in a bodice than are, say, browsing my bardic book, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. What does surprise me is that this announcement should come just as they are debuting their premium site program (the link is marked "New!" on their main page), and that they should not even mention how much I am going over my 3 MB. It makes it seem like a blatant sales pitch and makes me wonder if, indeed, I am actually going over the 3 MB limit, or if they simply did a mass mailing to promote the new program.

The plan, at $8.95/month, also would allow me perks such as no ads on my site (that'd actually be nice), additional storage space (don't need it), 5 customized "@geocities.com" addresses (don't need them), my own URL (hmmm...but gillyflower.com is taken), and many add-ons/services which are already available to me for free. Sarcasm aside, I'm thinking about it. It would be nice to get rid of that irritating pop-up ad, to rid myself of the stigma associated with a geocities.com address, and to have my own URL. And if it would keep Geocities from further attempts to market their Premium Programs to me, it may well be worth it. ;)

Well, hey. There are many ways to go about it. I'll think about it for awhile. It's not like Geocities has never blacked out parts of my site for no reason, it's just that they've always done it unintentionally, not as any sort of structured punishment for not paying them. ;) Besides, there are other ways to go about getting a domain name, and if I'd wanted to do it before now, I would have done it. So I'll think about it.

Bard Wars was good, but didn't start that way. It was at a ramshackle campgrounds in rural Iowa (which seems bigger than rural Wisconsin for some reason), with cabins that were comfortable but not what I'd call clean. (I found mouse droppings under the blanket with which I'd covered the vinyl mattress. I KNEW I should have tucked it in.) Friday night wasn't pleasant: I arrived at around 11:30, tired and scared, with rain sheeting down around me to the point where I couldn't see anything. Drove around the campsite for 20 minutes looking for a building that looked like it had people in it. As it let up slightly I drove up to the main hall, where 15 people on the porch stood in light and dryness and watched me drive up, none of them bothering to come out with an umbrella and help ease my arrival. I got out of the car in the pouring rain with no umbrella, picked my way through the mud to go up to the hall (hoping against hope that check-in was inside), pushed through several people who didn't want to move in order to get to the door, and went inside.

Dripping, I tried to convince the woman at check-in that she really did know where I was supposed to sleep and what the schedule was for Saturday. (Nothing irritates me more than someone who vacillates, claims not to know, stalls, makes it up, argues, etc., instead of calling for an answer from someone in authority, when asked questions she is supposed to know the answer to.) She also charged me the full amount for the cabin, since I was the first to arrive, despite Christian's having been assured that they would wait until he arrived to charge him for it. This took all my cash, and my checkbook being lost in the bottom of my soggy purse, I got put on the list as 'yet to pay' for site and feast. Of course Chris paid me back, and they graciously spotted me a site token, but it was still irritating. I was assigned to an empty cabin, where I went, shivering, alone, cold, and feeling generally un-SCA-like. I woke up the same way, except mildly pleased to see that the rain had stopped.

The next day, my friends didn't arrive until around 11, but when they did, things started to look up. More about the actual event later, plus 'musical officers' news about the Shire after the populace meeting yesterday.

posted by Jennifer Friedman at 11:53 AM

Today is going so much better than yesterday. In retrospect, the whole world seemed to be having trouble yesterday. One of my library regulars came up to the desk in tears, in horrible pain and upset that the doctor she'd waited three weeks to see ended up telling her he was not the right doctor for her condition. All around me all day, people seemed easily piqued, argumentative, whiny, depressed. Full moon syndrome? I don't actually know if the moon was full last night. The Weather Channel website (sorry, no link if it doesn't give me the information I need) doesn't give moon phases.

Well, so anyway. Last night I got done the errands I needed to get done (or, in a couple cases, established that they for sure weren't going to get done), went home, did laundry, did a little packing for Bard Wars, and spent the rest of the evening playing around on my newly-re-established LambdaMOO account and ignoring two messages on my answering machine. I feel terrible because one was from Tuesday, and one was from Wednesday afternoon--my response was already overdue by the time I got home last night, but I didn't even think to check my messages until I was turning off lights and noticed the flashing light on the machine. Worse, one was from Chris asking about my plans for last night; I sure hope he didn't sit around at home waiting for me to arrive, and miss the meeting. I have GOT to get direct instructions to that meeting site, and then whether I'm coming or not, he won't have to sit and wait for me.

Doing some cataloging this afternoon. It feels good to be caught up on that, at least. Miracle of miracles, things are quiet in the HRC--no more than four or five people here at any given time. Yesterday, there were several times when I was walking through the HRC taking a people count, and counted as many as 12 or even 15. This area seems very different with that many people in it. It is not truly that huge of an area, and having more people in it makes it look smaller, and feel claustrophobic. Now, if I had designed the space... (oh no, not that old litany again! I have to keep telling myself, I'm NOT an architect, I only know what I like.)
posted by Jennifer Friedman at 12:30 PM