Ken’s showering; then we’ll grab lunch and head back to Gresham/Portland. We’re in Springfield/Eugene now, having just spent the weekend at An Tir’s Twelfth Night.

Ken finished work Friday afternoon and rescued me from the lobby doldrums. We took the Trikon car to Jiffy Lube and sat in a McDonald’s and I finally got my caffeine fix, and then we were on the road. Dinner was at a local chain of seafood restaurants. I had Mediterranean shrimp (very garlicky and wonderful!) and garlic mashed potatoes (hm, do we sense a theme here?) and salad with pesto dressing. Ken had jambalaya. Happily sated, we continued on to our hotel here. We changed into garb and walked over to the next hotel, where the event was actually being held, for the Masque Ball.

The hotel and staff were pretty amazing. The Event Steward gave the chef recipes and so there were three period meals (German, Spanish, and Middle Eastern/vegetarian) on the menu. (Alas, we never got to try any of them; they were a wee bit pricey, anyway). There was also mead available as well as the usual bar drinks. Tabletop water coolers and lots of cups were everywhere.

The Masque was fun. We wore our Green Man/Woman masks from Harvest Tourney. We hung out with the rapier fighters that Ken knows up here, and danced. We ended up teaching some of the dances to whatever group we ended up in; it was nice to help out. They dance Selinger’s Round much differently here, but I never got the chance to ask the Dance Mistresses about documentation.

Saturday morning we grabbed breakfast here in the hotel (I had breakfast quesadilla—cheese, egg, sausage, bacon, and chiles, with salsa, sour cream, and guacamole on the side—extremely tasty) and then wandered over to the event in our houppelands. Sat in Court for a bit; enjoyable, but not nearlyl as interesting when you don’t know anybody getting the awards. So we mostly browsed the merchants and shopped. Spent a lot of time chatting with the lovely man of Gaukler Medieval Wares—he sells period artefacts as well as makes replicas. He _gave_ us another Mr. Happy Pants (one of the rude pilgrim badges) because we bought one at GWW and then promptly lost it (we figure it’s rattling around the RV we rented…)—what a sweet thing to do. (We also saw him give an earring to a woman who’d bought a pair previously and then lost one.) We bought a pair of small buckles from him, for the garters I’m going to weave for Ken. Let’s see, I also bought two very reasonably priced ($10 each!) Celtic knotwork throws (purple and black) with which to make a caftan-type garment for lounging in at home, and Ken bought yet another book on da Vinci (a small hardback that’ll be good for reading on his many flights).

We ate a small, late lunch and then left in early evening, changed back into mundanes, and headed out to a local mall. Ken bought five pairs of pants at Ross, and then we went to see “Two Weeks Notice”, a Sandra Bullock movie. (Which means I can forgive the lack of apostrophe in the title. Mostly.) It was fairly amusing; predictable in the way romances are, but with quite a few laugh-out-loud dialogue moments. And Sandra looked yummy. After that, we had a lovely dinner at a local rib/steak joint. Both of us had steak and Caesar salad (and I got anchovies on mine—yay!), and I had more garlic mashed potatoes and Ken had sweet potatoes. This was one of those restaurants where they give you a bucket of peanuts and let you dump the shells on the floor. I think men like this concept far more than women do. Not that I felt any need to leap up and sweep.

Sunday morning was Queen’s Champion Rapier, in which Ken was allowed to fight the bi. (For the uninitiated, this means that if there’s an uneven number of fighters in any round, a fighter called the “bi” fights the person who doesn’t have an opponent. A win or loss counts for the fighter, but the bi isn’t part of the tournament.) He enjoyed that immensely. For my part, I finished an embroidered hanky that I’ve been working on forever, and started braiding another lucet cord. (The current Majesties of Caid have asked for handmade cords on which to hang award medallions.)

Ken’s finished showering; must pack up and go!