.....Success was achieved on the garage front today. One more item checked off of my holiday 'to-do' listing. It is relatively cleaned and organized. Looks like, with just a little bit of maneuvering, that we could even get Heather parked in there if we really wanted to do so. A win!

.....Although Heather is stuffed for a trip to the landfill. I managed to get at least a little bit ruthless, although I found out that we've been doing pretty good about reducing our tonnage of 'stuff'. The hard part is keeping everything neat and tidy. Once that is done there is magically a lot more room in which to work.

.....All the lumber was sorted and bundled for the next Camping Season. I find that I'm missing at least four poles to the 12x12 pavilion, and at least two to TBT's round pavilion, as well as one of the pieces to the center pole. I'm making a bet that they are located in the unheated storage unit. I think that one of the 2x4 poles for our day shade is also located there. But I did find all the pins and finials for it, so we're at least part of the way there.

.....The 12x12 is folded up and stored correctly, finally. I'm seriously thinking of experimenting with it. I can pick it up and maneuver it fairly easily myself, so I'm thinking it might be able to go into one of the industrial wash machines at the local laundry facility. If I can get the canvas into it, and put in a really weak bleach solution, could I get it to whiten out cleanly? Get some of the stains off of it? Hmmm, I'm even wondering if maybe a dye process might work as well. Maybe a light, light green or red or blue? Nothing dark as I don't want to fry in the middle of summer. But a light color might be interesting. One step at a time though, into the washer with the bleach and we'll see what happens.

.....Workbenches are cleared and ready for use. All the tooling and materials are put away. All the camping gear is bundled into their own storage bins and stacked neatly away. The uncovered acid did a bit more damage to some of the exposed tooling than I realized at first, but it doesn't look like more than surface rust. So a good cleaning and oiling might fix it all. With the exception of the Harbor Freight drill. It is made of cheap materials and is pretty much starting to fall apart at the seams.

.....All the armor is collected and put away into appropriate piles and bags. I kept it accessible though. I really would like to get it repaired sometime in January. I don't think that Estrella is in the cards this year or next, but Estrella in 2014 might be achievable. At the very least I've got to get into it at least once or twice this year if at all possible.

.....One more trip to the storage unit to drop off some bins of thread and we'll be done with everything there, with the exception of pulling our lumber from the unheated unit. But that will take some effort and it can stay in there safely until we need to get to it, so I'm not too terribly worried.

.....Gotta get the grime off though in time for New Year's celebrations. I'd sure love a nap though. Maybe I can squeeze one in over the next hour? :-)

.....Happy New Year! I'm thinking the Mayans meant 2012 to be a year of renewal myself. So let's celebrate! :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....A little less than two days before the Winter Curtailment period starts. Vacation! For two whole weeks! I cannot wait! Which makes going to work and keeping some measure of focus on the job that much more difficult! :-) But I'm not alone in that regard. Every day this week there are a number of fewer cars in the garage as others start using the remainder of their Must Leave for the year. There are also decidedly fewer people roaming the halls and byways.

.....I put together a preliminary 'to-do' list for the vacation weeks. I've measured each item carefully before adding it to the listing. I'm resisting hard the urge to put the usual overwhelming list of tasks together, fully knowing that such a list is impossible at best to fulfill. Leading to certain disappointment. :-)

.....But there are a number of items that definitely made the cut. Some of them actually fun, some of them things I've wanted to get done for a while now.

.....The garage must get cleared!!! Must!!! Must!!! Must!!! We can barely walk through it. The work bench is a mess, mainly with my armor pieces all over the place. They must be collected and put away until a free weekend comes up to where I can actually make repairs to them.

.....I know I'm going to find some arcane piece of Baronial owned gear that was hurriedly unloaded from the U-Haul after June Faire. It all must go back to the Storage Unit!

.....The camping gear will also be sorted and hard decisions made. We need to finish combining two campsites of equipment into one and get the gear packed away in tubs for storage and for easy event packing. Events will be done with Lobelia next year, but an equal number of events will be done in pavilion as well. Between the armor and camp gear, that should clear at least a quarter of the garage alone.

.....Then it'll be time to tackle the shelving units. There is a lot of miscellaneous, junk, on them. Just clearing the junk alone will net us quite a bit of room I think. Maybe even enough to put the camping gear on shelves. What a thought! :-)

.....Then at least half the rugs will be going away. Some of them I've had for well over a decade. But many of them are falling apart. They need to go. It's time.

.....I'm salivating at the thought of a usable garage again! :-)

.....Movies will be seen! I definitely want to hit The Muppets. Sherlock Holmes is definitely on that list as well. I wonder if we will be able to catch both at the Riddell Theatre? I need to check that out.

.....There will be trips to various places not in Kitsap County.

.....The new silk banner will be done as well. It has been gutta'ed. Need to carefully look it over to make sure all the lines are solid. Then go to town on the dye process. Should be a single day operation. Then I'll see if I can get into TBT's schedule to actually sew them complete. Will not take long, but will make a big different in hanging them on a pole versus duct taping them to a pole.

.....There will be people visited. I know TBT and I both want to go and visit Countess E. Matt and Rycheza are on the list, as are Petr and Kierran for at least a lunch.

.....I know that I have at least one article to write for Rycheza and inclusion into The Flames. It'll be a good run up to the receiving of Letter of Intent for Serjeantry at Candlemas. Which reminds me that I better remember to spam the e-list with that information as well. And get something to Aelianora for inclusion on the web-site.

.....I have some Ceremonials I'd like to write, and some scroll texts to get done and reviewed by the Scribal folks. Caius did a great job of putting together a Master Ceremonial to support us at Last Chance. I'd really like to take it to the next step and personalize it for TBT and myself. Plus, we need to polish off the scroll texts for the new awards given out this year.

.....We need to formalize our Progress for 2012. 2011 was rough in several ways, and there were several instances where we made promises to be somewhere and then ultimately could not fulfill those promises, due primarily to conflicting promises. It's very difficult to be in two places at the same time. This year we have a list of events that we promise to attend, which is decidedly shorter than last year. We MAY attend events beyond that list, but no promises will be made until pretty close to those dates. So hopefully, we'll be able to time manage a little better this year and not wear ourselves out so thoroughly.

.....I'll need to make sure I leave at least a couple of days free to do absolutely nothing. Although a trip to the ocean or something similar sounds really interestingly nice at the moment.

.....Organized 'to-do' list to be completed by Friday. Huzzah!

.....Aaron / Arontius.