Arontius of Bygelswade

.....TBT, Rhys and I went to dinner last night with some friends to the new BBQ place in Silverdale. We were sitting there chatting when all of a sudden two hands place themselves over my eyes, a pair of lips gives me a kiss on the cheek and a sultry voices say, 'Hi Arontius'. I did a half turn and was surprised to see Ellainyia there. I was happy to see Ellainyia out and about and was saying my hellos when I turned back to TBT, who said something along the lines of 'Who is the strange woman who is kissing you in public?' *I*? am caught dumbfounded and immediately start stuttering and turning five hundred shades of red, until I noticed that I'm being teased unmercifully by TBT. Not fair! :-)

.....TBT is working on a new web-site for Ingasbo. She showed me some preliminary looks for the front page of it last night. OMG! It looks absolutely fantastic. Of course, we all know that TBT is a creative genius, but it is amazing the innovative and beautiful stuff she designs. I'm just in awe. Just as an example, she took my Ingasbo logo of the stylized Norse ship, changed its color, added some waves and text and now it just POPS out at you. Some realatively simple concepts that improved it a thousand fold.

.....And you should see the concepts for the rest of that first page! She's got this cool picture of a Norse ironing board that will expand to fit selections. It has the dual Norse beast heads on top. It's going to look fantastic when it is all done.

.....And, of course, I feel guilty. :-) She has her own workload, she should be stuck building my web-site. And I'm always wondering if there is an implication on my part in any way that she's obligated to do it because she is at home during the day and I go to work. I find that implication rather appalling. It also implies a sense of ownership as well. I find THAT concept absolutely abhorrent! Sigh! This angsty moment brought to you this day by the letter 'I'.

.....Damn! I'll admit it. I have OCD. I've been packing the van for J.C. for a handful of days now. I've been obsessing over what to bring and what I'm leaving behind. I'm actually glad that I'm carpooling with Ronan as it physically limits that amount of STUFF that I can put into the van. I've packed and re-packed a number of bins three or four times now because I keep finding myself throwing stuff in there that I KNOW I'll never use over the course of the weekend. Definitely learning lots that I hope I can apply to the 100-item challenge.

.....Bet you didn't know I was so high maintenance, did you? :-)

.....Ronan and I are planning on taking off tomorrow at 7AM. I want to be on site as soon as it opens. We did not make a camping reservation for the Barony until the last minute (last weekend). I was told by the autocrat (and RIGHTLY so) that it was too late to tetris us into her map. But she did tell me to be there early to claim some space. I threw the invite out to the Barony to gather measurements. Not a whole lot of people are going from Dragon's Laire though. I don't know if it is the gas issue? I, myself, am still recovering a little from the trauma of June Faire, so if that is part of the attitude, I can understand.

.....The plan is to go over Snoqualamie and south through Yakima. But someone told me that it might be faster to go south, then east to Kennewick. Anyone have thoughts on that?

.....Aaron / Arontius.