Witty Title Here - I'm not feeling very witty, since I'm feeling very snuffly. When Scott was over for costuming on Thursday, he was all sniffly and had a slight head cold. I think I caught it, and it settled in on Saturday night while we were camping. It didn't help that camping at Morro Bay means the marine layer rolls in and gets everything wet. It was kinda hard to breathe well at night, with the air so wet, but it was cold so at least it wasn't warm and muggy.

But to tell the story more accurately, I'll back up a little bit.

Friday night I had a wonderful dinner with Rae and Renata at their place, and was pleasantly surprised that no one drives those freeways those directions in Friday rush hour. Visiting them after work will be fairly simple. I may have actually gotten there in 20 min or so, which is unheard of in Southern CA for any drive that distance. Dinner was yummy and simple (chicken, green beans, corn, watermelon, ice cream), and we ate outside on the back patio. Renata splashed around in their backyard pool, while Rae and I talked further about the apprenticeship arrangement. We're still both into the idea, and she's given me some preliminary assignments to work on, mostly to do with research. I'm happy to have spent some time with my brainstorming lists, and starting to assign priorities to each of the projects.

Saturday morning, I packed up for the Morro Bay camping trip with my household -- a once a year, non-SCA, just camp on the beach (or wherever) trip for the fun of it. This one was a hefty drive north, easily 4 hours of drive time, and so I had to pack carefully to get my minimal camping equipment and leave room for Eric as my passenger, and all his gear too. Picked him up, and we had a mostly uneventful drive to Morro Bay. The last 10-miles, my car started to sound funny to me, but I tried to ignore it and just deal with it later. I'm worried what it could be, but in the middle of four-hours-north, there wasn't much I could do.

We had a lovely camp site, and a lovely Saturday night around the fire with friends. Raz and Maggie made it up, with their daughter Casey, who spent most of the time running around on her scooter with the kids in the next camp on their bikes. Lot and Caterina were there, me, Marcos, and Matt and Tamara. Dinner was the encore of last year's "Food on a Stick" theme -- something we all want to continue from now on. We each brought our own main entree food (beef kabobs, hotdogs, turkey kielbasa, portabello mushrooms, sliced onions, peppers), and apparently almost everyone brought sm'ores fixin's. Next year, we'll make sure we don't have three bags of marshmallows! *hee hee* While we were roasting our dinners, deer wandered by, across the road, nibbling their dinners. And before the last of the sunset light was gone, we were singing around the fire. During one song, it was one of those tunes with lots of harmony. Two more deer wandered into the brush, and as they walked by, they just kept watching and listening to us singing. It felt like we were calling the very woodland creatures out, with our dulcet tones. *grin*

We we first set up camp, Eric had the good idea that we could split/share our tents. So we set up my double-high queen-sized bed in the small tent, and pooled blankets for the night, and his bigger tent as the equipment and stuff and changing tent. It was nice to have a place to put away all the coffee bar and food, inside a tent, to protect it from wandering animals. And, we had a tent large enough for walking around, as the place where we could change clothes. Eric was the perfect gentleman, sharing the bed-tent with me, although apparently I neglected to mention I talk in my sleep (which is always worse when I get sick). He'd wake up each time I was talking, and carry on a conversation with me, which would wake me up since it was never the conversation I was dreaming about and responding to, so we got a good laugh out of it. I felt bad for tossing and turning and waking him up all night, but neither of us were cold, since we had twice as many blankets between us.

I got up early Sunday morning, and joyfully discovered that although the camp showers were labeled "two minutes for a quarter," the water was both hot and free. So after a nice long hot shower, my head felt less stuffy, and I wandered back to camp to get breakfast started. I wrapped my cold wet hair in a fuzzy scarf, put on the Coffee Bar coffee, and was ready as everyone else started to wander out of their tents. We had hot coffee, hot spiced cider, two pans of potatoes and onions and spices, a pan of eggs and onions, a pan of turkey kielbasa, trays of bear claws and grapes, and a wonderful time enjoying the outdoors with friends.

The boys wandered off to see if the Natural History Museum was nearby, and the girls were chatting about marriages, weddings, proposals, babies... Caterina has been married for 6 years, and is expecting her first child. Maggie's got 8-year old Casey, and Tamara just got engaged. They compared wedding rings, stories, etc. And I just listened, and packed down camp the entire time. It was a little strange -- I like being happy for them, but sometimes I don't like thinking about how little faith I have left in ever not being single. Ah well. I mentioned to Eric on the drive up, that I fell like I'm at a zero-percent-chance feeling nowadays, and he said, "You can't be at zero, if you're still talking about it." Hmm. Maybe it's time to shut up about this then, if he's right.

Anyways, that sounds worse in writing than I was feeling, so I'll stop talking about it in here.

The car drove wonderfully all the way home, only occasionally giving me that strange feeling I noticed on the last leg up. I did put another quart of oil in the engine, which made it feel even better. I was glad to be a local, who knows how to skirt the bad driving-south-on-a-Sunday traffic in Santa Barbara, but we still were hitting LA in the late afternoon. Eric wanted to make it to Dan's church by 6pm, to see Dan's baptism. Dan's a friend from the SCA and for the fencers, a friend from Tattershall. We got there early, and were treated to sit in an air-conditioned theatre while they ran a tech-rehearsal before evening church services... Welcome to LA folks, this was a rock-n-roll church.

But after services were done, they had the baptism class do their baptisms, and we took pictures of Dan for him. We met some other SCA friends who were there for Dan, plus a couple of aunties who were beside themselves with joy for their nephew.

And in typical LA-fashion, we wandered to the Starbucks a block away, drank our lattes outside and chatted, till it was time to go find dinner or fall down with hunger. I drove Eric back to his place, drove home, nibbled cheese and a bite of tuna, and collapsed into bed with a box of tissues. I think the worst of the sniffles might be over, but I am dealing with body aches and overall "I'm sorta sick, aren't I?" feelings.

Tonight is the first Arts-and-Sciences night for the Barony, at Meala's house, and the first in a 4-part series on designing scrolls, being taught by Aliskye. So I'm skipping the exercise walking at 5pm (postponing it this week till I feel better), and I'm hoping I can make it to the A&S scriptorium.

Oh, and Scott asked me last night if he can fight for me in Crown tourney again this fall, so I'll be preparing for that in the first weekend after Labor Day. That's it around here, hope you all had a lovely weekend.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Dan, for inviting us to be there on your special day. I hope this is a good beginning for you, marking years of good things to come.