CaySwann

Today's Entry Includes:
Prologue
Wed Jul 5: Packing, Flying, Arriving
Thu Jul 6: Embroidery, Arriving on Site, Bardic Relaxation
Fri Jul 7: All Day Rapier, More Bardic Goodness, Tons of New Friends
Sat Jul 8: Rental Car, Shopping, Partying, and Bawdy Bardic
Sun Jul 9: Leaving, Flying, Babbling
Mon Jul 10: Recovery and Resetting What is my Normal Life

Prologue: First, if you didn't catch it, I've also posted a little back-dating entry with a recap of Mom's show, brunch with Grandad, party with Elizabeth, party with Raz, the movies, and party for Mina back on June 16-18.

Also, a huge thank you to everyone who's been leaving me comments and personal emails about both my job loss and my trip to Wisconsin for the SCA event called WW. Your comments have really warmed my heart, and I love you all bunches.

So, back to now! I'm back home safely from my wonderful wild tour of Minnesota and Wisconsin, although my body-clock is still on Central Time. In fact, my body *switched* to Central time as soon as I arrived. But I'm telling this out of order, so let's get my calendar set up try to tell my
story chronologically.

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Wed Jul 5: Packing, Flying, Arriving - I spent the morning doing the financial and paperwork tasks, and just decided what was sewn was done. Being let go had an advantage: I had a check for all the vacation I had on the books. So I deposited the money, took out a ton of cash, went home, and paid a bunch of bills. I put most of the surprise vacation money to paying off some credit cards, which was a nice treat.

Once everything was paid, organized, and tucked away, I picked up my house a little bit more and stuffed everthing into one checked duffel, one carry-on bag, and a purse. I managed to get some snacks and drinks for the entire week, just in case I was caught between activities. I winnowed my spinning bag down to just one project, my lucet, my kumihimo, and the embroidery for Mateo's cloak. Got my iPod synch'ed, my checklist, and hit the road. I was aiming to be ready close to noon and leave no later than 2:30 pm, and Adrienne and I were on the road by 2:10. Not bad! *whee*

The airport and the flight were uneventful (yay), and I had no trouble meeting Teffan outside in Minneapolis. We turned in early, which probably had a lot to do with fixing my sleep patterns.

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Thu Jul 6: Embroidery, Arriving on Site, Bardic Relaxation - The first morning I was staying at Teffan's apartment, I woke up at 5:50 am dreaming that it was 7:50 am and that I had overslept. Some quick math for you: It was still 3:50 am in CA when I awoke. Hmm. That's pretty early, even for me! But I got up, got showered & dressed, had everything repacked neatly, had breakfast, and was embroidering Mateo's cloak before Teffan was ready to head to her office. She needed to put in 6 hours before we could hit the road, so she gave me an empty cubicle to hang out in while we were there. I got lots of embroidery done, and we had a silly time at the white board several times. Teffan did a flow-chart discussion of all the schools of fence, who belonged to what and which, and I learned lots of names before ever meeting some of my new friends. It was great prep, and gave me the idea to really go out of my way to meet folks and learn their names while there.

She also (bless her!!) printed lots of lyrics for me, so I not only spent some time re-memorizing my own music, Lot's music, and the Mateo songs I had on hand, but she gave me some additional Mateo lyrics, some classic Northshield songs, and some cover songs I might likely hear at bardic circles. She also (bless her again!) took me over to the local mall to get an extra iPod charger from the Apple store. I remembered the wall-plug portion, but forgot the cord to connect them. *sigh* So I got an extra cord, an extra car charger, and charged the iPod on our drive.

We had an uneventful drive, although we apparently saw a disproportionally high number of highway patrollmen out on the freeway. We stopped for touristy photos at the "orange moose" and saw the obligatory "Fresh Cheese Curds Today" road-side sign, bought more drinks and ice for the event, and rolled in sometime in the late afternoon, maybe just after 5 pm or so? Mateo was on the field teaching Rapier Melee tactics, but said "hi!" across the field at us.

We unloaded at the School of Tyranny campsite, and had a very nice and leisurely set-up time. It was a little strange to be camping without any of my camping equipment, but it all worked out in the long run. Svetlana found me, after having arrived on site at 9 am and setting up way in the distance. This turns out good for everyone later in the story, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. She and I went over to merchants in the late afternoon to get some dinner, although most of the merchants weren't set up yet. I did get sucked into a fiber shop (whee!!) on the corner, mostly because I glanced over and thought "I have that book, and that one, and that one, and oooh... I don't have that one!" I refrained from book purchases, but I bought a big felt hat, a hat pin, and a lucet, before tearing myself away from all the yummy distractions.

We had a nice lazy Thursday evening, once everything was all settled and we were dressed for the event. I got to meet lots of the folks from/with Tyranny, and finished up the last of the embroidery for Mateo. He was beyond thrilled to have his cloak back again, and impressed and thankful for the repairs and the bonus embroidery. I added the "Hell Hounds" fighting unit interlaced three celtic dogs in burgundy-on-burgundy and I tell ya, I'm hooked on embroidering clothing now. We joked throughout the entire event that if you wanted to just accidentally lose your clothing by leaving it with me, it would come back embroidered. *giggle*

Once the cloak was done and handed off, we all went out with Mateo when he got his guitar to go find a place to play and sing for the evening. I promised him I would bring my flute to the event, and boy am I glad I did. It was so easy to fall back on providing harmonies and instrumental accompaniment & improv every time it was a new song or one I didn't know the words well enough to sing along. I also got a sense of how he writes/composes, which made every new song easier and easier to accompany. One nice thing about guitarist songwriters: They tend to compose in the same keys over and over again. This makes improv so easy!

We all hung out at the Coffee house, although we put in a brief appearance at the Bardic circle, too. Just an aside -- Caid, we are doing *wonderfully* about pulling up the quality of our Bardic events lately. Let's just say I've seen both the very best and the very worst that can happen at a Bardic Circle. And I've seen the most gracious behavior, even in the face of some of the less entertaining moments, so kudos to Northshield for being so sweet. But I'm glad to know that our local efforts to keep taking Bardic events to the next level really are paying off. We have much to be proud of here in Southern CA SCA events.

But finally around midnight-thirty or 1 am, Svetlana and I were freezing and ready to gouge our contacts out of our eyes. Teffan's friend with a tent for me hadn't actually arrived yet, but it worked out just fine since Svetlana's tent was more than big enough for the two of us, and bless her she had enough ground-padding to share with me. I had one thin blanket, one tiny pillow, plus all my garb, so I managed to mostly stay warm enough.

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Fri Jul 7: All Day Rapier, More Bardic Goodness, Tons of New Friends - I woke way too early again (of course!) but I knew the coffee house would be open at 7 am. So I found a way to waste time getting ready slowly from 6-7, and wandered in for coffee and some quiet time right at 7 on the dot. I made close friends with one of the coffee house guys, not the proprietor but the morning guy named Iman, and we have fun chatting all through the entire event. I also took photos of some of their set up in the coffee house, and have some fancy dreams/plans about how to do my Eilidh's Coffee Bar of Splendoor modeled after al-Fadouk.

By the time I wandered back to Tyranny around 8:30, some folks were finally awake and getting ready for the day. The big task for Friday was the opening event at the Rapier field: The Princess's Sleeve tourney. The very same person who started the list ten years ago was on the throne again, so it was a wonderful anniversary for Her, too. Cealfind (pronounced KAY-lin, just like our Caelfind in Darach) (also known to some as Alanna) was bummed she hadn't finished her new linen jacket for fencing, so I convinced her to give it to me while she was on the field. Masheed loaned me her two-person folding camp chair (or camp bench) for the weekend (thank you darling!) and so I was able to not only enjoy the shade, attach buttons for Cealfind, but also keep my projects up off the ground and neatly tucked away on the chair when I was running around taking photos. I also took pictures on Teffan's behalf, because she just loves getting photos at events, and almost never gets photos of herself in fencing.

I got to meet Her Highness, Gwyneth, some of her attendants, and the Kingdom Seneschal on Friday morning. I also ran around with my goblet, offering water and/or gatorade to fighters all day on the field. They were woefully short-handed for waterbearers, so it was just natural that I should pitch in. And there's something really pleasant about being handed a cold pewter goblet from a lady for a drink rather than a straw from a gallon jug. (hee hee)

The Sleeve tourney was amazing to watch, also, because the opening portion was run as a gigantic challenge field with fighters just finding an opening spot, fighting, and going on to another challenge. The rule was you cannot fight the same person more than once, and only the winning fighter needed to walk back to the Lists and report a win. Each fighter was only on one List-persons' tally, so they split up the 45 fighters on two lists to keep the tally going as fast as possible. There was one tie in the top-ranking eight fighters, so they had a nine-man Semi-Finals portion at the end. There was an extra fighter who fought the "by" fights, so everyone would be the same level of tired, and the final nine fighters were in a single-elimination best-2-of-3 lists. For the third time in the history of this list, someone who authorized that day won the Sleeve. Most of my friends were actually in the final nine, which was wonderful for all my picture-taking tasks.

During the lull after the Sleeve tourney, I ran down and got a plateful of lunch munchies for Mateo, and then hung out on the rapier field still watering the fighters as much as possible. Those fighters who weren't drinking enough *during* the lists were finally happy to accept a drink from us. I really met the bulk of my Northshield friends on that rapier field, and plan to sit down today and jot notes to myself of all the names I learned and all the people I met. I don't want to forget all the amazing people I got to know, and how fun it was to see their faces when they learned I'd flown in from California just for this event, and just to get to meet all of them. It was wonderful.

The melees were delayed, cancelled, and then re-instated, then the "Defenders of the Dark" tourney was hosted by Margalit. I was planning to go wander through merchants because I was really getting tired and overheated, but since part of the Defenders' tourney was about having your own personal herald, how could I leave? Svetlana and I entered the lists together, and I got to give Northshield a little taste of Caidan field heraldry. Svetlana and I were personally thrilled with how well it went, even though she was out of the lists in 2. But my dear Michael won the lists, so that was a boon.

Oh, I missed Michael's arrival the night before, when he arrived around 2 am and was shouting "Eilidh!!!" from Gate. They teased him and gave him the "kids' bracelet" at check-in, and assigned me as his adult guardian at the event. We have been having WAY too much fun with this new relationship: Michael is now my SCA son. Oh, this is very silly, and yet it explains so much! It's not that I have "Michael brain" like we joked at Estrella (that camping trip I did in February in Arizona) but that apparently the reason our brains are so identical is genetic. *giggle* Michael came out Friday specifically for the Sleeve and Defenders' tourneys, so I was thrilled to see he won at least one of them.

Friday dinner back in camp included wild turkey that Ulwyn shot himself and then prepared for us at WW. Wow, you don't get that much in Caid. (Btw, it was *really* yummy.) Then it was out-and-about for more bardic wonderfulness and partying with the Kingdom. I didn't make it to the Artisan's Open-House, but we came in on the tale end and hung out with folks, until it was time for Baroness's Bardic Competition. We got there just in time for Mateo to enter (singing and playing "Do You Want to Be Queen?"), and then the last year's winner and the Baroness of Jara. conferred to decide the winner. In the lull while deciding, a few of us filled the time with some pieces related to the theme of "Your Inspiration." So I got to actually sing for Northshield this time, and gave them a performance of my "Darachshire" song Back As I Remember. To be honest, the best part of the song, for me, was hearing Mateo giggle for the White Star verse. *beaming smile*

Mateo didn't win the Bardic competition, but his friend that also plays guitar won. Darn, I never did introduce myself to that other bard on guitar, and I should have. But I did stay and play flute a few times with the guys on guitar, and got several compliments on both my playing and singing. And I think it was Friday night when I told the tale from Dede Korkut about the Shepherd and the Mad King, but now I'm not sure if that was Friday or Thursday. Mateo walked the Baroness of Jara. back to her encampment, and I slipped back to my shared tent with Svetlana. She arrived with Rowen about 5 minutes later, after having just run into Mateo who said "Hey, I lost my Eilidh." *laughs* Gee, and I thought I'd lost him, so it was all amusing.

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Sat Jul 8: Rental Car, Shopping, Partying, and Bawdy Bardic - I managed to sleep until 6:30 this morning instead of 6:00 am like the morning before, but still I slipped out quietly and spent my first hour at the coffee house with my Northshield friends. Talib and I hung out, being silly and enjoying Iman's company and anyone else who would come in for morning drinks and would take the time to share their name and a handshake with me.

The camp of Tyranny was waking just as slowly as ever (hee hee), and when Svetlana was finally awake, she and I left site to go get my rental car. Next time (!) I go to WW, I'll plan to fly back on the day AFTER the event, so that I don't lose any event time. But of course, I didn't know better when I booked my flight this time, and I sort of modeled my flight on what they guys did when they came to Estrella. So I missed most of the fighting on Saturday while we drove an hour to the local tiny airport, had lunch along the way, got my rental car, and headed back to site. We tend to forget how far apart things are when we live in California. Here, everything is all packed together. There, everything has lots of SPACE between places!

But we got back just fine, somewhere around 2 pm or so, I think, and I got the car put away and back into garb. I dropped by the fighting field for a little while, hung out in the coffee house to get some iced Moroccan mint tea, and then went shopping. There has to be something wonderful about walking around merchants in another Kingdom where just 2 days ago I only knew fewer than a half-dozen people by sight on site, and then when you're out alone you hear your name called out by the Kingdom Senescal so she can introduce you to yet another Peer of the Realm. Shava and I chatted for a bit with Alexander (a new Kingdom officer Deputy), she took another couple pictures of me because the ones yesterday hadn't turned out well she said, and gave me her business card. This reminds me I'll have to remember to have my cards on me tonight.

I bought a few pennanular brooches from Ingrid the Crafty and had a wonderful chat with her. I love her work, and I'll be getting more of it again in the future. I bought a surprise present for someone and had it shipped since there's no way it would fit in my luggage, and the merchant didn't want to haul it home to Maryland. He's an amazing artisan, and I cannot wait to get more of his wares in the future, too. My mission for myself was to find a t-shirt that said "Northshield" on it, but the T-shirt people were sold out already. *sigh* I'll have to get one in the future. My other mission was to find a ring. So, here was the amazing thing: I found a ring with a Northshield compass rose on it, and bought that for myself. Hmm. I have no Caidan jewelry but I now have a Northshield ring that I plan to wear everyday with my normal silver rings. *grin*

I also found two CDs by one of the Bards that Teffan recommended to me (the one who sings "My Mother's Savage Daughter") and bought those CDs immediately. I cannot wait to listen to them and put them on my iPod. I definitely plan to learn some of her work to sing in Caid. (That reminds me: I need to remember the name of the Bard I met at Gate on Thursday. Hmm.)

Anyways, dinner back in camp was Beef, so I ate more of Dunoon's meat pies instead, which were so darn yummy with venison and buffalo. Then everyone got all spiffy for Court and I met up with Svetlana after I finished my meal. Bless her, she's decided she wants to be my minion (hee hee) and so she carried Masheed's camp-bench to court and got us a spot up front. I took several pictures in court, and thoroughly enjoyed the differences in Northshield presentations of awards compared to Caid's.

I had spent some time reading all of Teffan's award scrolls at her place on Thursday morning, and they actually customize every single award. If your AoA is because you did so much to autocrat the Whatsit Tourney, your AoA scroll will actually SAY that. None of the award text is boilerplate. It made me think that maybe in Caid we've missed out on something with our award structure. Also, with boilerplate text, we've gotten in the habit of having "award promissories" instead of actual award scrolls, and we already know what that has done to the scribal backlog in our Kingdom. I've got new scribal supplies now, and I'm really looking forward to making "real scrolls" soon, but wouldn't it be amazing if we found a way to start occasionally handing out the REAL scroll at the giving of some awards?

Anyways, their court was amazingly fun to witness, and I'm *really* glad I went.

Afterwards, it was the big party night for the event. It was also the evening that Mateo declared "Sing in Camp Night" so we didn't have to go out to anyone else's Bardic anything. I'd saved my Bawdy songs from the Bardic at Estrella and at Potrero for Saturday night, so I sorta knocked 'em dead with Come Roll Me Away and with The Bargain (also known as The Widow and the Devil). I pushed too hard on the Kaarna song, which isn't something I've done in a very long time. But I think I covered for it okay. Both songs I slowed down enough that everyone really caught all the puns and all the jokes, which was immensely encouraging. I'm going to have to remember to do that in the future.

Mateo did a long set, and it was amazingly cool that I'd been out on so many of his Bardic sets earlier in the event, because by now I had a repetoire of which songs I played along with on my flute and which ones I sang with him. I'm definitely addicted to playing my flute at Bardic events now, and will do MUCH more of it. And I think those present enjoyed it too, which was encouraging. I also told the tale of the "Pansy Pink Viking A-Frame" which was too darn fun, especially for an audience that had never heard it before. It grows in the telling, which is half the fun.

Mateo broke a string on his guitar at one point, so I was somewhat his self-appointed stage manager and had put away the guitar for him. Ulrich retrieved his smaller traveller guitar, but it wasn't as loud, so he really only did about 1 or 2 more songs on that instrument before going out and on walk-about. I put away the traveller, then hung out with Leona for the next hour or so. We got to have some lovely girl-bonding time, and she got to hear some Estrella and Gauge stories she'd never heard... which was wonderful since Gauge is her Don and she misses him from Northshield. I simply adore her, and wish I'd spent more time with her all event.

Finally, I really wanted to go to sleep, but I needed to be saying my goodbyes on Saturday night because I knew I wouldn't be there in the morning when everyone was packing to leave. Leona and Wren took me about, looking for Mateo since he as the last goodbye I needed to find. Earlier in camp I was able to leave my email and journal address with several folks (Deirdre, Masheed, Cealfind, Leona, and Arnona) and say my goodbye's to each of them. I'd also wished I'd gotten to know Jock better, but we promised to spend more time hanging out at the next Northshield event I make it to. *grin*

We finally found Mateo, Moira, Deirdre, and some girl I hadn't met yet [Yes, with over 1100 people through gate, there were still people I hadn't met... even after the nearly 100+ names I'd memorized]. To be honest, I felt slightly bad that I didn't even ask her name, but I was just exhausted and really only wanted to spend some time saying goodbye to Mateo. I think of all my friends in Northshield, I'll miss him the most, and not just because of the music we share in common nor the embroidered wardrobe. But he's one of my favorite people in the SCA in general. I think that's about all I can say without my eyes misting up a little bit. I understand Leona even better because of what she and I share in common. *hugs to Leona*

Anyways, we got to say our final goodbyes, share several hugs, a few jokes and silliness, and I wandered back to my camp alone. In all things, we still end our days and nights alone, so you need to live the kind of life where you can retire alone with happy memories in your heart. To be honest, it was the funniest thing that finally cheered me up. Every song I thought of, to hum myself to sleep so to speak, was making me sad.... until I thought of Jock's filk. Mateo filked "The Gambler" for Jock, with lines about leeches and sawing off people's feet. Around the camp fire earlier, Jock protested "I've never sawn off anyone's feet!" and I could swear I heard someone say "Yet." Jock -- thank you, dearheart. You put a smile on my face at 3:50 am when I needed to get to sleep!

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Sun Jul 9: Leaving, Flying, Babbling - Now here's the scary part: I awoke at 5:58 am on the dot, not the slightest bit tired after only two hours sleep. That's remarkable, even for me. I was *really* glad I had stayed up packing neatly before going to sleep, because all I had to do was roll out of bed, get the car, and pack my bags. I was off-site by 6:30 am, which meant I missed going to the Coffee House because they weren't open until 7. But I'm on their email list, so we'll catch up again later.

Stopped for coffee and a bite at a McDonald's, got a full tank of gas, and found the car rental return with no trouble. (Thanks, Teffan, for the great directions!!) I was at the gate before they were even taking passengers, so I was able to sit, have a snack, and then board nice and early. I also planned for sleeping by not even bothering with my contacts Sunday morning. I slept almost the entire flight, which was truly a blessing.

I babbled non-stop to Adrienne from the time she picked me up at LAX to after our lunch outing together. These are mostly *her* friends in Northshield, although sometimes I knew I was chattering about folks she hadn't ever met. But still, it was wonderful to come back and tell my Dub-dub stories to someone who knew most of the folks I was talking about.

Since I had slept for almost the entire plane ride, I wasn't sleepy, but I was in a weird "what do I do now?" space after lunch. I watched some television just to relax, which finally put me to sleep. I woke again at 11:30 pm, after passing out around 6 pm, and had to watch another hour-plus to get sleepy enough to make it through the night.

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Mon Jul 10: Recovery and Resetting What is my Normal Life - Of course, I was awake at 4:30 am today, so clearly I'm still on Central time. But being up early helped me get caught up on some email before going out and getting my camping laundry done. It's heart-warming to see all these new dresses in my laundry, it means I actually completed several projects! Yay me!

I've been composing this journal entry from about 10:30 am until 1:30 pm, and I know that I need to start doing some serious job-hunting, but I really want to finish one or two more "organize/clean-up" tasks around the apartment first. Plus, it's been a week since I've been to my home shire where my mail is, so I really ought to go beat the traffic and pick that up and pay bills again.

There's no band rehearsal tomorrow night, which means I'll get to spend the entire evening out at White Star practice and get to see my family-west (as opposed to my family-north with whom I just spent a week visiting). I miss my Northshield family already, which says a lot.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: It's impossible to list all the blessings I'm thankful for today. I think they answer to the name of "Northshield."