Well, that's not bad. Just a half an hour to gather my notes from June, post everything, and start a recap entry.

Sorry about the "flurry method" of journaling, but since I believe that every new day is a new chance to make better habits, I won't exactly promise that I plan to do better, but it is on my mind.

Let's see, what else happened in June to catch you all up...

The biggest thing is that my roomie Mel and I are planning to move out and get our own place. Our third roomie is dating this guy who moved in with us. We said we would give it a try, and it's really too small an apartment to have four people and two cats. (Felines, not me. *grin*) So Mel wrote me an email one Wednesday with "Do you think our apartment is too crowded? Would you like to move out?" and then we spoke to our roomies that night. Well, actually only Mel and Mer and Geoff spoke because they started without me. But the misunderstandings were cleared up when I got to talk to Mer late that night (a chance meeting in the kitchen) and then both of them on Thursday night.

They're going to try and find someone to move in with them since Geoff really doesn't want to have to move again. (I don't blame him, I had three addresses in 2004 so I know how tough it is.) Mel has been doing a lot of walking around our neighborhood, checking all the "For Rent" signs and looking at apartments. So far we've looked at five places, put in an application on one, and are considering a second one. July's going to be tough because if we really get a new place, we may have to pay rent on two places at the same time for a while. But I think this is going to be a healthy move for all of us—they'll have room for all of Geoff's stuff, plus they just got engaged!, and Mel and I will have room to spread out a little too.

Mel is even planning to help me dig into all my storage boxes and finally get rid of stuff I no longer need to be toting around, which thrills me to no end. I'll get to unpack all my books, which I've put off doing since we're suddenly planning to move.

Adventures in June also included two additional fighter practices: First, one week that I just used a sword to do slow-work (learn to move the sword correctly all in slow motion). Thomas and I also did a ton of javelin practice, and I was just bouncing with excitement. Literally, jumping up and down happier than I've been in years.

And then an old friend, Angus, has decided to sell all his SCA stuff because he can no longer fight (more medical reasons to put down the sword). So he opened up his backyard to the Shire for a yard sale last Sunday, and I got there really really early with the intention of buying armor. Most especially, I was hoping to get a helm. And I was in luck! I bought a helm!!

After the yard sale, we all headed back over to the park for the actual fighter practice, and I wore my new helm for the majority of the afternoon. I did more slow sword work, some work at the pell (a practice form that you hit), and got quite a bit of instruction from both Wilhelm and Sabas. The hard thing about getting into fighting is that everyone has advice, and I'm having to re-learn to filter and soak up the knowledge without feeling scattered about it. But the guys are so well meaning, and have even written emails apologizing for confusing me. It wasn't exactly a confusion, but just a "gee, how do you guys do it when everyone tells you something different about fighting?"

I also got some great advice about how to re-do the padding in my helm, how to get the rust off the helm, and all that. It is so much fun getting back into all this!! Yippee!!

And finally, on the fighting front, some friends of mine are also gymnastics coaches. They're going to help us all learn how to work out, stretch, and recover from injuries so that we can be better at our fighting. Rather than just be "weekend warriors" we're all going to learn how to workout during the week to afford the energy to do the sword-fighting on the weekends. There are a couple of guys who do this (workout 5x a week to be capable of this sword hobby we love so much) and they are incredible inspirations to us all. I'm glad that my excitement about fighting is happened at the same time all my friends are going through a revival on how to do this *safely* and *correctly* because I know that my fighting experience is going to go on a healthy path.

Work has been a very swamped experience lately—mostly because they gave me a project I absolutely loved working on, and they gave me someone else's project because he had to leave town to be with family. So I'm working long hours and enjoying my work, but it's tough to squeeze everything else in at the same time.

Some other bits of my past month: A 40th birthday party and celebration of chocolate with Brian and with Elizabeth. Saw two live shows at my Mom and sister's community theatre, got to spend the night at my sister's and spend some time with my nieces. Dinner with a co-worker from my last job—she and I are going to set weekly goals for working out and eating right and check in with each other regularly for encouragement and accoutability. Dinner with a shire friend who has been driving between Ventura and San Diego to see her grandson. So she stops off in Orange County for a dinner break, and we got to catch up on life together. I may try to go swimming with her when I'm in town on the weekends.

And the big project this past month: Hope and I have completely redesigned the shire website. We're launching the redesign today, so if you go to www.darachshire.org you might see our "Be Right Back!" page, or later in the day you'll finally see the new re-design. When the new site is finally up, go to the "Webwright's Page" and click "Refresh" on your browser... you'll see the photos on that page rotate between four images of Hope, me, and Hope and me together. One of them is really really silly, so enjoy.

That's it. Those are the highlights for June, and Happy July everyone.