This is all I wrote yesterday, so rather than put in a piddling entry, I’ll just paste it here:

“I still have a headache. What is this, day four? Whatever it is, it sucks. Although, it’s never gotten so bad that I can’t do anything. It’s just always _there_. And I’m not sleeping well because of it; lots of REM, especially in the morning. Bleah.”

At some point in the course of the morning, however, the headache miraculously (it seemed to me) drifted away. I kept pausing, expecting to feel it, and it wasn’t there. My neck hurt like the dickens, though, probably from the short massage I’d gotten Saturday. Ack.

So, let me go back in time and catch ya’ll up.

We slept in on Friday, and then I spent much of the afternoon painting Caidan crosses on a parasol for Her Majesty. In the process, I watched most of an ep of “Jonathan Creek” that I’d started watching earlier, two eps of “Mystery”, and most of one of my favourite movies, “Local Hero”. It’s one of those movies I feel the urge to watch about once a year (“Dead Again” being another); the humour is subtle and pervasive, and I always catch new things. But I’ve seen it enough that I don’t have to be looking at the screen the whole time, which was the whole point of putting it on while I was painting.

I confess I don’t remember much more of Friday beyond that. While I was ironing the fabric paint, I did cut out the lining of my Turkish coat (with no illusions about finishing it for the event, of course!). I know we watched some TV. We had to have eaten a few times in there somewhere. I had that low-grade headache the entire time. That’s about it.

Ah, no, I remember now! In early evening we went out to the garage and filled a big box with things to donate to the auction at the event. Ken cleaned out a big plastic tub of his SCA stuff that he hadn’t looked at in years (kept some of it, but got rid of a good chunk of it) and I weeded out some garb, but mostly other things (jewelry, etc.).

We got to bed slightly later than planned, because I remembered we wanted to make hard-boiled eggs for the event. So we watched a season 2 ep of “Angel” whilst they boiled. Nice to get back to that series again.

Saturday we of course got up later than planned, me with my painful head, and eventually got ourselves fed and cleaned and the car packed, and headed off to CP Prize Tourney. It’s an event dedicated to raising money for the Kingdom newsletter, and is one of the reasons why I’d like to try my hand at being Kingdom Chronicler here. The enthusiasm and dedication to the newsletter is just amazing. Such a change from Drachenwald, where I managed to hold one mildly successful fundraiser, but could never find people in other regions to host other ones. Here I’d have a staff of people, wouldn’t have to handle post-production at all, and would have the money to do a gorgeous newsletter. It really is one of the best in the SCA, although I’d hesitate to say _the_ best, as there are some other really nice ones.

But I digress.

I helped out pre-Court, putting award cords on awards, and then served Her Majesty during Court. Immediately after Court ended, I grabbed Ken and whimpered, “Four Advil. Diet Pepsi. You are a god.” I downed that lovely cocktail, then asked someone to work on my neck, which she did. Ow ow ow. I don’t know whether it helped or not, because I never did lose the headache. We had a Court meeting a few minutes later, and I noticed my shoulders kept tensing/rising because of the pain, and I’d have to consciously push them back down. Ah well.

I scarfed lunch, then perused the two auctions. Bought tickets for both. I watched Ken fence a couple rounds, then went back to work, trotting after Her Majesty carrying her new parasol. She’s a trip; I like her a lot. I traded off with another lady-in-waiting after a while, and wandered off to find my beloved again. I didn’t win anything in one auction, but we sat through the other one and we both acquired a few things, including a book on mask making that has been on our list (along with a big thing of plaster) and an etched suncatcher of a Caidan cross that I was thrilled to get.

I served Her Majesty during Closing Court as well, because I got handed all the prizes for the various lists and contests, and rather than trying to explain them all to someone else, I just handled it. I was starving, though, and for some reason Red Vines were all over the event and there were some behind the thrones, so I kept ducking behind the throne to eat. Red Vines are disgusting, you know that? They taste like wax with bad flavouring.

Ken and I grabbed dinner at an El Torito on the way home, because he was also starving. When did El Torito go from a reasonable Mexican-American restaurant to a trendy place? The food is still good, the prices are still reasonable, but it was just…odd.

The day had been hot hot hot and more hot, so when we got home, I went for a quick swim (even though it was no longer hot—_I_ still was), and after that we went to bed fairly quickly.

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Sunday, I woke to the same damn headache. It had never gone away (hence the first paragraph from the beginning of this entry). I had planned to go with Ken to the Kingdom heraldry meeting, but I just had no interest in getting out of bed yet. When I finally did get out of bed, I was surprisingly productive, paying bills and otherwise getting things straightened and organised.

When Ken got home, we regrouped and headed up to the Valley for a gaming party at Gillian’s. Donna was back in town for a visit, so of course we had to see her (and continue the trend of seeing her more now that she lives on the East Coast than when she lived here). It was great to see them both again, as well as Darla and Jen, and meet some of Gillian’s other industry friends (at least, I’m pretty sure some of them were industry. Not that it mattered. Cool, fun, intelligent people—that’s all that counted.) We played Fluxx, Trivial Pursuit (with everyone picking their own version for questions—I didn’t do nearly as well with the 80s edition as I expected, largely because when I was in high school and college, I was oblivious about politics and sports), and Kill Dr. Lucky—which we played twice, because Gillian hadn’t played the first time but heard about it so much that she insisted. At midnight. We didn’t get home until nearly 3 a.m., but it was worth it.

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And that brings us to today. We ran errands this morning, and now are well-stocked with food and contact solution and deodorant and cat litter—the necessities. Oh, and stamps for writing subs and the GP. Tomorrow we’ll go to Costco and stock up on bulk items, and then we can relax for a bit, shopping-wise.

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Wahoo! The flights are officially booked, so now I can talk about it: We’re going to the UK in a couple of weeks!

(Eek—a couple of weeks! Mad scrambling ensues.)

Ken has to do a couple days’ work in Newport, and of course he isn’t going w/o me, and we planned to schedule time for some travelling as well. Turns out we have extra time, because of how the flights worked out. We’d originally talked about 9–10 days, but now we’ll be gone for 14 days total (count 3 as travel days, since it’s an overnight flight out).

Don’t anyone get too excited yet—we have yet to sit down and actually plot out the days. The main plan is Snowdonia, because it’s where my SCA persona is from and yet I spent barely any time there when we lived there. I want a day to go up Snowdon, dammit. And see Valle Crucis Abbey, which I’ve only seen pictures of (and it’s gorgeous). And and and… Must haul out guidebooks and begin plotting. Mwahaha!

Mynydd Gwyn folks: any A&S or other meetings planned between about 22 Jul – 1 Aug? Lucrezia and any other Thamesreach folks: meetings, workshops, gaming nights in that time period? Again, no promises—we just want info so we can maximize our time there. :-)

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Went to the Pewter Guild meeting tonight to discuss making site tokens for Harvest Tournament in October; I now know more about pewtering than I expected for the first time, but hey, it’ll be fun.

Then we came home, watched some TV, chatted with Cat, discussed more Britain plans, and now we’re off to bed. Which is how I often end these entries. How dull of me. Ah well, can’t be helped. G’night!