How I Spent My Time in Traffic - Back on Monday, I was briefly tempted to spend my "lunch hour" doing nothing but journal updating, but I really wanted to relax and work on some hand-work and watch an episode of television.

I've snapped a few screenshots off the internet and all the news to give you an idea of what filled my Saturday morning. First, this happened Friday night:

Which looked like this on Saturday morning:

And which caused Jeff and I to try and avoid this:

By driving here:


What should have been a 90-minute drive was just under four hours, thanks to the wonders of real-time traffic on my cellphone, being a local on the side-streets, and creative routes to get out of the cross-town traffic that everyone was trying to use to avoid the freeway problems.

But Jeff and I enjoyed our day at Dun Or Anniversary, and an evening with friends at Greek food, enjoying watching another friend at her bellydancing gig.

Baronial things all week - Council meeting was on Monday, so after our afternoon exercise and walking, Meala helped me proofread the calendar handout, and then I hurried off to the meeting. A bunch of us went to IHOP afterwards for socializing and dinner, and I got to chat some more with Amya finally. She spent some time in Italy last year, studying weaving (wow!), and occasionally we get to chat in a geeky fashion about all things String. We're working on some plans for "More String, Better!" as a way to advance additional Arts and Sciences in the barony, and we'll be looking for guest instructors and various topics to discuss at the Arts and Sciences workshops, at Fighter Practices, and other events.

Then on Wednesday, it was our quarterly "Peoples' Champion" mock tournament for the Rapier Fencing fighters. It's our one time every several months to attend in garb, hold lists, and use field heralds, to teach our newer fighters about what a tournament is like in the SCA. Since I've been attending practices regularly for the past year, I've been trying to field herald (shout and announce the bouts) as often as possible. So after my exercise and walking for the day, I switched to garb and long hair, and continued my computer work until one of the neighbor boys came by for carpooling. Wulfic is training to run lists, so I gave him a lift to the practice. The lists ran very well, and I had a warm enough fleecy-blanket to keep poor Wulfic warm and bundled, since the winds kicked up significantly more than he was expecting (and he was definitely under-dressed for the cold). Afterwards, we had a nice time at IHOP over hot drinks and food, and then back home again.

Job Hunting thru last week - The recruiter who found Meala her most recent job had gotten sick with strep throat and had been out for nearly a week after I interviewed with him. He's back now, and although there was a job he wanted to submit me for in Downtown LA, that job had been pulled by the client company. But he got another new job listing last week, and so we massaged my resume a tiny bit and submitted it around Wednesday or so. But then the recruiter found out that the hiring manager was out all week, and wouldn't be back until Monday (today). So I'm still waiting to hear about that job possibility. It would be an immediate one-month tech writer position, both user guide materials and training development, which is tailor-made for my skills and experience, but once again, no word on whether they like me or if they want an interview.

One of my household members is also job hunting right now, and so he's passed on all his favorite recruiters and tips, too. I had a couple of phone calls and emails back from a two sites, and a meet-with-the-recruiter interview on Thursday morning at the bagel shop just behind my apartment. That recruiter works 35+ minutes south of here, but lives just a few miles from my place. So he's always pleased to meet folks up here and avoid morning traffic, so we had a nice get-together and I didn't have to drive anywhere.

Thursday Dyestuffs - Theresa is also unemployed right now, although she has some paying website gigs and a decent severance package. We've been talking about getting together over the dye pot and we finally scheduled it just last week. I'd been wanting to do some yellows and some greens, and since a good indigo pot is *too* dark and I knew I'd need an exhausted blue to get a nice green, I thought this would be the perfect project with a friend. Theresa is also apprenticed to Mistress Flavia, who is very nearly a proselytizer in natural dyestuffs, which means Theresa has lots of great dyeing supplies in her personal stash.

So after the 8 am interview at the bagel shop, Theresa came to my apartment around 10 am, and we got to work over some yarn and dye pots. The yellows came out very nice, but my indigo crystals were expired and the "light blue" it almost gave us, really didn't come out. Strangely enough, my yellow handspun alpaca (mordanted in copper, dyed first in onion skins and tumeric) came out medium brown (with a yellow overtone). It looks lovely next to the other yellow alpaca, but it's definitely not green. Apparently I have issues dyeing things green OR deep red (my other nemesis color). I can get every shade of yellow, orange, pink, brown, or blue... but greens and reds seem to ellude me. I'm now inspired to try to get these colors!

Photos, Photos, and More Photos! - The other major project I've been doing in my spare time, when not job hunting or going to fighter practice or council meeting or events on the weekends or updating my half-dozen websites: I finally got my photo site reloaded and back online! Yippee!

I had www.cayswann.com hosted with one company, and they had two corruption/failures of my site. I have learned to say "Once is forgiveable, Twice is a pattern" about many things in my life, but applied to business, it's a deal-breaker. So I left that business, and then my darling Theresa offered me space on one of her unlimited domain accounts.

So, a few months ago I got the software installed on that server, but I hadn't spent anytime to upload the old photo albums that were lost on the original host. Of course I have backup copies of all the files, but loading them into the interface still had to be done, photo by photo, and that was going to take significant time.

Some friends in my northern shire got married in July, and I'd never looked at their photos. But when I did, it finally lit the spark that got me moving on my own site. So Friday afternoon, all evening, and all night long, I did nothing but load photos to cayswann.

Wilhelm, me, and Grimr (click to see the whole album)

Around 3:30 am or so, I finally realized I was too jazzed by the project to take any time to sleep, so in a rare all-nighter, I showered, got dressed in garb for the Saturday event, and got right back to work on my photos again. Meala was already planning to pick me up between 7 and 7:30 am, so rather than fall asleep and oversleep and make us both late, I just stayed up all night.

I was finally tired in the last hour, around 6 am or so, but I got most of the photos loaded and some video files edited (and up on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/cayswann). I napped on the drive out to Dreiburgen Anniversary, and then woke up for the event itself.

Calligraphy and Games - The GREAT news about that event this past weekend is that after my project day over the dyestuffs with Theresa, I was still project-jazzed on Thursday night. So rather than put off the event calligraphy until Friday, my normal pattern, I sat down on Thursday night and finished all the award scrolls. I also sorted all the painted promissories that had been turned in for the past month, and even took a second look at all the "corrections" scrolls in my stash. Sometimes I get half-painted scrolls or scrolls with some color mistakes. I set them aside, so that I can fix them and get them back into the Royal stash again later. We're really running low on the first-level Service award (called a "Dolphin" in our kingdom), and so I put the fix-it Dolphins at the top of the stack. One of them was just half-painted, so I got out my guache and some background television, and painted until the wee hours. I'm quite pleased with the finished piece, and got everything in my room put away neatly, too.

So, even though I didn't sleep on Friday night because I was distracted by the "Ooo! Look! Shiny!" project of reloading my photos, I was already set for court on Saturday. We got to Dreiburgen nice and early (thank you Meala!), and we had all the leisure time in the world to get ready for court. It was nice to not be rushed for a change. (Gee, I should do that more often.) Court went brilliantly well, and our household friend, Lady Vivienne (Master Gulliver's wife) was awarded her Crescent -- which is a Grant-level award [mid-level] for Service. It was wonderful to pick out her promissory, do the calligraphy, and then pick out one of the nicer woven award cords for someone I know -- and in fact, she even commented on how much she loved the cord, after the event as I was congratulating her. I love my job! I also got some wonderful photos of her receiving her award, which gives me another reason to start editing my newer photos and get them loaded, too.

Throughout the day, I spent time over with Diego and Elisheva, as they hosted the Baronial Chess and Backgammon champion lists. I entered both lists, although this time I was out in my first game for both forms. I did give my chess opponent a run for his money (stumping him several times) but he baited me at the end and I fell for it, directly into a check-mate without thinking. Ah well. And the dice just weren't in my favor in Backgammon this time, so oh well. But the silly fun element of the gaming: I worked as Diego's "Field Herald" for his lists, so that everytime someone won a game, I'd shout to the entire field the name of the winner and the board game type. It was something like this, "Victory to Lord Bob in Chess!" and there were several pavilions of listeners behind me who would cheer everytime I'd announce another winner. It was really kind of fun, and added an element of "hey, everyone else at the event knows we're having a list over here!" to the normally very quiet, isolated lists.

Elisheva is studying Linguistics in grad school right now, and so sometimes we get to geek-out over shared interests. This time, she was agonizing over some homework linguistic analysis, and so we sat together and pondered and chatted about the problems presented. We actually solved one issue together and another time I just quietly dozed as she chattered about complex phonology. The winds were kicking up, and I was acting as her wind block, so I just relaxed and closed my eyes for a short while.

By evening, we had another lovely court, an easy break-down, and then seven of us wandered off to have dinner together. It was nice to eat out with Cassandre and Lachlan -- two friends I know in passing, and I never really spend any time with. I think I'd enjoy chatting with them more often, so I'll be looking for ways to occasionally get together with Cassandre again.

Friends and Get-togethers - Finally, Sunday was our annual Baronial Curia, to discuss the "State of the Barony" and address any questions or issues, discuss our goals and achievements and new projects, and generally give everyone a chance to air their concerns and observations, good or needing-work. It was a little less than warm-and-fuzzy, but I think it was really helpful to get some people together who needed to learn things about one another. Sometimes we all can get so into our version of the SCA, that we miss out on learning from others, so I always appreciate when people can speak their minds. I learned several things that were really helpful -- I tend to forget how much some people like certain things, because I happen to like different things. Hopefully people who had some tough things to say found themselves heard, and hopefully we'll all learn to continue growing and becoming even better each year as we go forward. I know that I'm generally very optimistic, but I did see the light go on in some people's way of thinking. I'll keep working towards good things, as much as humanly possibly.

Afterwards, I went to my household meeting late, because it was scheduled at the same time as the baronial curia. I was the official note-taker at the baronial meeting, so I had to sadly miss the household decompression from our most recent camping event. After we go camping at the biggest events, we like to get together afterwards to talk about what worked and what we'd like to change. Also, the heads of our household are expecting their first child this spring, so we need to all start shifting our ownership of the direction of our household, because those two new parents are going to have their hands full very soon. It sounds like everyone came up with some wonderful goals and projects to work on for the next year or two, and I'm pleased to take up my portion of these projects, too.

Since several of my friends had driven from out-of-town to be there, after the meeting there was lots of just hanging out and socializing with one another. Everyone was feeling lazy, so we ended up ordering pizza, staying in, and just chattering for hours. We watched "Brother, where art thou?" which I'd never seen before, and I enjoyed immensely. Jeff's modern job is as a colorist, so it was also facinating to see what they can do with digital editing, filming in bright-green July Mississippi, and presenting a film that is gold and dusty and aged-looking.

Now, it's a new week, and the wildfires are raging throughout Southern California. Some of the fires are just a few miles from my Mom and sister, but they currently are reporting in just fine. My sister is an assistant principal, so her school is closed and she's busy at one of the shelter locations at another school. Mom sent emails to the family, reporting their latest status, and keeping us all in the loop. I went to sleep last night thinking about more things I need to have squirreled away in my safe-deposit box (all my account numbers, all my policies, new backup copies of all my photos), and about how I'm completely out of food and water in my car. Usually I have a fully-stocked "get away safely" kit in my car, but lately I've used up all the food and drink. Without employment, I haven't restocked yet, and that will be a priority when I'm gainfully employed again.

While working on my journal entry this morning, I heard from the recruiter again who put my resume in for a 1-month gig. Turns out the client company wants to do a phone interview with me on Friday morning. So I'm going to continue putting job-hunt energy into my today through Thursday, and possibly do some web-design paying gigs that Theresa has a lead on. So, more again soon!
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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Nathaniel -- You're an inspiration, as you put your life back together. I'm glad to be here in your life, too.