It's My Life

Washing windows and thinking about honor...

Kingdom first, shire second, household third, Courtesy always. It's for me a balancing act between life in and out of Society and of various chosen responsibilities. I've been charting it out. I have this total spiderweb. Awesome and scary all at once. I want to do this as I best I can with honor, not just for personal glory, cause those are not just silly words to me recited before the marshals let me fight.

How do I acchieve balance? By continuing to work at it, and by being proactive. I have chosen to revisit the Seven Habits, mostly as Stephen Covey has a new, free online community with really nice goal planning and charting success tools. Most of my goals are private ones but I am puttin on select public ones cause I want to. http://www.stephencovey.com/goal/index.php 

So I'm thinking and am washing windows. Cleaning up the mental windows while scrubbing down the physical.

Bruce's Visit to Lilies

 

Bruce was interested in what we do when we gather together like this, so came out to Lilies on Tuesday to visit. I knew he wasn't showing up until 11-11:30 so I toook time to eat a good breakfast, shower, clean my tent up...things I'd been skimping on. It was good. Then I walked down to troll to sit and sew until he arrived. Found a really nice tree with real grass, not that scratchy stuff I'd been sitting on down on the battlefield.

I got him trolled in and we walked the .5 miles back to camp (I measured it later in the week when doing a fresh food run). Some of my camping mates were there and we sat and talked about the event and other things people talk about when they first meet.

[saving this frequently as i've lost the post once already today...grrrr]

Japanese Garb

May come in handy in the next reign.

Japanese Garb. Nihon Zatsuroku An Online Japanese Miscellany = Modes of Address

Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Geeking out here.... watch the teaser!! Do, do!

Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Doctor Horrible Teaser Video

Lillie's fighting

I got one more Lillies post, to talk about Bruce's visit, but it's not fading the way the fighting is in my head. Stay tuned!

I first went down to the battlefield on Monday; I really do not remember the scenarios on Monday. I remember sticking to it as long as the battles went on. It seems that Lillie's battles have two aspects. An initial battle that is shorter but intensive in plot, and then an equally intense rezz battle to finish the day. So that Monday was fun but also a blur. In fact, most of it is all a blur now; I should have written this up days ago, I guess. So let's see what I can do without talking about days.

Someone I want to get to know

This woman's website was sent to me by my mother and she is right - this woman is the sort of person I would find interesting. I'll explore more later, on my own time.
 
Lisa Shea - Origami, Parakeets, Birding.

I am an admirer of truth, the environment, communication, compassion and chivalry. I am a poetess, keyboard player, bonsai grower, dreamer, dancer, candle maker, calligraphyist, origamist, story writer. I promote peace and I enjoy target shooting. I relish slow hikes in the mountains and fast drives in my Mustang. And still there's more.

More Life at Lillies

So I obviously did not get to talk more about the human life at Lillies yesterday. Let's see how that goes today...

It's 6:15 and I got to get ready for work. Drinking coffee. MMMm.

My camping buddies were Karel, Isabelle, Guinivar and Luce. We knew that Giovanna and Padruig's favorite area had been torn up by the addition of volleyball courts, and we do need a fairly large plot of ground for our four tents plus shadefly. Wasn't at all surprised to see that we were across the road; disappointed to not get that elbow-rubbing necessity of camping in and amongst others in our kingdom, but Lucia and Tosten claimed us a really close patch of world to set up in. Right directly across the road. It was flat and slooped just enough to not need trenches. I was happy.

The volleyball courts are not filled in with sand, so they were really just pools of water. Like rice paddies, or skeeter breeding pools, or maybe even mud wrestling pits. No mud wrestling happened though. Nor any gator wrestling.

So Silfren Mere was physically 'Hey you! Across the road!" but I still felt part of Sots camp and spent a lot of time in that area. Had some good conversations about sewing and cooking and fighting and living. Food got shared back and forth - Luce had made a wild rice soup that we added to the mix at Giovanna's roast night. Very tasty food. Potatoes and onions, the meat, the soup, and freshly made bread on the fire. Later, we had s'mores over on our side of the road. It was very cute to see Luce and Guin making setups for people toasting marchmallows, so the chocolate and cracker was ready to go at the right moment.

I have made a commitment to linen. My one linen overdress was sooo comfortable, and whenever I was just hanging in camp, like early morning, tossing on just a layer of linen underdress, was so much better than anything in cotton. Also the hemp combo, being a Norman-length overdress and a too short linen underdress was pretty comfy. (I have the full length underdress but it was hot enough with two layers on...) Huh. Just realized something. I can dye at least one of those white underdresses, now, can't I? Then I'm not running around in my underwear. Anyway, too hot for the double layers. And cotton is definately a Winter fabric for me now.

Shoot. Time for a shower. More later.

Wild Life at Lilies

fyi this is an ongoing post, touched when I have the chance while reports are running.

I got ate up with chiggers - dern things got behind my kneepads and bit me there, enough that by Thursday, it was agony to pull on the pads. Yeah, i started using bug goop but by that time the bites that were there was making armoring up a real pain. Ouch! Other wild life was spiders - only saw one black widow and that was on the road with some other SCAdians were considering a squashing. Then there was a horsefly or two. But also LOVELY dragonflies. I saw three varieties that I knew were different than the others. And small green flies. And something at the Hill camp that was not a praying mantis but like a cousin.

We were able to leave food out on the tables without it being bothered. No way we could do that at any MN campground without it being explored by raccoons, at the least, overnight. So what do they do there to deny small wildlife living space in their county park? That was very odd.

Now party wildlife...that was very normal!

This is a great joyful thing.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) on Vimeo.

14 months in the making, 42 countries, and a cast of thousands. Thanks to everyone who danced with me.

I missed the poppies...

but my nasturiums and roses are going wild. Daisies about to pop open. Raspberries are just now forming fruit. Same with the strawberry plant, the one surviving plant. I did not make time to replant them this spring when I realized most were gone. And the grapevine we thought was gone has sent up a new shoot from the root. Interesting, that. 

I wandered back there with pieces from my new three-legged trestle legs. Found them bring sold at Master Danr's shop by another master whose card is in my bag yet - they are awesome legs and period for my mid 11th century persona. All i need is some good wood to make the table surface, some poly to protect them from wet, and table clothes to make them proper. I can't wait to use them! Might have to have dinner on them in the house <g>

That was one of the joys of Lilie's War, seeing the period things in action. Walking back to see a painted geteld and discussing the wooden pegs used instead of metal stakes, seeing the cooking pots being used on the fire, examining the hand-woven fabric being used to create a hand-sewn and decorated set of clothing for Their Majesties Calontir. Thinking about how to bring more authenticity into my own play. Thinking about choices and options. It's cool, the way the SCA accepts everyone and lets everyone play to their own level. I get to choose, too. Fun!

So one of the A&S challenge things I am doing is to document changes I make to my camp and garb to be more authentic. Not sure I'd want to use them all the time, but the period wooden pegs is interesting. I didn't even ask for this man's resources. His paint job was directly lifted from a manuscript, too, now that I think about it.