Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championship, 2008.

.....Well, I'm a little more surprised than I suppose I should be. :-)

.....At Crown Council last weekend, His Highness pointed out that our proposed dates for KAS in 2008 were on Easter Weekend. Talk about a V-8 moment. No one reviewing the bid ever even gave thought to that. I, of all people should have recognized that date as it is NORWESCON weekend. D'OH!!!

.....I didn't panic quite yet as at the time I made the reservation there were still a couple of other late March / early April weekends still available. The problem is that we're getting such a late start at planning for this that it should have come as no surprise that everything in March and April was booked solid at the Silverdale Beach Hotel.

.....Kitsap County IS a little behind the times, especially when compared to the lands across the water. The Silverdale Beach Hotel has the largest meeting space for the best price available. Reservations for meetings and conventions start at least a year in advance. If the Kingdom has viable bids available to them, they should keep this in mind.

.....But, be that as it may, the Catering Manager at SBH combed through his records and came up with a pretty good strategy. The weekend before Easter, March 14-16, had only a few minor groups taking space. He volunteered to move them to either a different venue or a different weekend to make room for us.

.....That was unexpectedly cool. I'm really liking the SBH. They have done absolutely amazing things for us without even seeing any money yet.

.....The only problem with March 14-16 is that it also is the Summits Coronet Tourney. I wasn't sure how The Summits might take our scheduling KAS on top of them. But at this point we really were at a point where we either went for it, or Madrone was asked to step in with their bid. So I put together an e-mail to The Royals asking them to make a decision with the three options at hand: Summits Coronet Weekend, Easter Weekend, or the Madrone bid.

.....This morning I woke up to an e-mail from Her Majesty telling us to go ahead and plan for the Summits Coronet weekend. I was a little surprised, but grateful.

.....So, there you go. The Kingdom of An Tir Arts and Sciences Championship, as autocratted by the Barony of Dragon's Laire (as headed by Team Haggis, HE Brighid Ross and Arontius of Bygelswade :-)), will be on March 14 through 16, 2008, in Silverdale, Washington.

.....We're meeting with the catering manager on November 28th to score room prices and talk turkey on final pricing, so more to follow.

.....But, wow, we're good to go! :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.