Hello, pets. A busy couple of days!

Friday we went to the OC Fair and had a great time. We went to all the displays (Ken’s brother’s photo didn’t place, but his nephew Austin’s water color [Monet by a five-year-old—and it was really good!] won second in his age group!), ate way too much bad fair food (the Cheese on a Stick was rather disappointing—I was hoping for a mozzarella stick when it was in fact melted Velveeta covered with corn dog coating), considered doing the freefall drop (they haul you about 160 feet into the air and then drop you out of a cage onto a big net that’s about the ground) but it was too expensive, and just generally hung out. We sat and listened to a gardening talk, and entered in the free raffle for stuff. I wanted to win a plant. What did I win? Fertilizer. Yeah. Fertilizer. Wooh. Marty was such a sweetheart and offered to trade me for the daisies he won. He said he had lots of dying plants and could use the fertilizer more. He was probably lying.

I also bought a canvas parasol for $20, which is a steal. All I could find SCA-wise were paper ones with flimsy frames, which don’t last long (and there are way too many Chinese-y ones for my taste. Nothing like yesterday’s event, where a woman in rather nice Roman garb was carrying a Chinese parasol. It’s even worse when someone in a cotehardie has one. I know, bitch and moan.). But also at the event, I had several people thrilled with my parasol, so we’re thinking about having Mom (who’s going back to the fair) buy out the lot and then we’ll re-sell them. The canvas is off-white and I’m going to pain purple crescents on mine. :-)

We got home much later than expected, and mostly collapsed. Cleaned a few more things out of the living room. Answered any truly crucial e-mail. Watched “Monk”. Slept hard.

We overslept yesterday, but at least for me, it was necessary. (When I re-set the clock to snooze, I rarely actually sleep; normally I just doze. Yesterday, several times, I immediately slammed back into REM sleep, until I finally screwed up the alarm altogether.)

The event was about 2 hours south, in the San Diego area. This was CP Prize, short for Crown Prints Prize, the annual fund-raising event for the Kingdom newsletter. It usually rocks, and this one was no exception. There’s a huge raffle, and there was tons of stuff in it this year. The spinners and weavers of the Kingdom do a sheep-to-shawl raffle, wherein they make a shawl that day. This year the wool was from period sheep that also supplied the wool for the cloaks in The Lord of the Rings movies. I mean, personally the same sheep, not just the same type of sheep. The Scribes Guild (almost typed Scribbles Guild, hee) raffled off a lovely scroll blank. And so on. We ended up with about 3.5 yards of red linen (which happened to have been donated by Ceridwen, who told us that if we needed more, she has another 60 yards of it! I don’t know what Ken’s planning to make out of it. I don’t look good in red.) and a book on the Renaissance (or, I should say, yet another book on the Renaissance… ;-) ).

I was a little grumpy about getting there so late, and I didn’t feel good when we arrived, but that all went away swiftly as we settled into the groove of the day. I got lots of signatures to let me put photographs in the SCA Site Guide (and I made Count Joe’s day, apparently, by choosing a picture of him, even if it is a fighting picture and his face isn’t visible), and spent some quality time with Albra, and more importantly spent quality time with Ken, who had decided not to fight that day but hang out with me instead.

Afterwards, we went out to Claim Jumper with Meg and Matt. For those of you who’ve never experienced Claim Jumper, let me explain. It’s a lot like TGI Friday’s or that type of restaurant—a variety of food, steak, appetizers, drinks, etc. But at Claim Jumper, everything is on steroids. I once wasn’t terribly hungry and ordered a stuffed baked potato. It was the size of a football. Matt once ordered ribs, and they were like the ribs at the beginning of The Flintstones, that make the car fall over. So we did our best to be circumspect. I had a half Cobb salad and a crock of French onion soup, and it was all very wonderful. Meg and Matt planned to split the prime rib, but CJ were out of prime rib, so they ordered the porterhouse steak. Well, they discovered a ladybug in their watercress garnish, and the manager comped them the steak. No complaints about the service! And the waiter was a trip, and asked us about the SCA (Ken was still in garb), and generally needed his Ritalin dosage lowered, but in a pleasant and efficient sort of way.

Then we made our way home, and curled up and watched the first ep of “Angel”, thanks to our new TV system. “Angel” started when we were in Wales and not long after we started watching “Buffy”, so we saw it only sporadically. I barely remembered the first ep. It’ll be fun to watch them all in order, finally. (We have the first two seasons on DVD.)

We slept in a bit today, then headed to a park for the Baronial Curia. This is a yearly thing at which the populace gets to ask the Baron/ess questions anonymously (well, as anonymously as we want it to be. I handed over my index card in front of everybody, and in at least one other case someone freely said a question was theirs). It was interesting and informative, although it dragged on at times and there were definite hot spots. While I was there, I warped the inkle loom and completely wove the entire thing (the equivalent of two more arm bands).

We came home to find Meg, Matt, Julian, and greyhound Hobbes waiting for us, with three of the four slavering to dive into the pool. They all stayed for hours, swimming and playing Kill Dr Lucky and eating pizza. Wonderfully relaxing and fun.

After they left, we did some house cleaning (third load of laundry is in right now, dishes are in dishwasher, all stuff from weekend has been put away, took out trash and recycling, etc.) and then settled down to deal with computer work. I’m caught up on GWW stuff and I can see the bottom of my In Box, even if I have a few more e-mails to answer.

Two more episodes of season one “Angel”, and now it’s time for bed. G’night, pets. Hope you all had a stellar weekend, too.