Arontius of Bygelswade

.....Oy! It's Friday! Huzzah! I desperately need a scaled back weekend to do a little recharging as my brain has just about turned to mush. :-)

.....I was tired all week, and had to spend parts of Wednesday and Thursday fighting off a migraine, but things were actually going pretty good. Accomplishments were made. Meetings were had. Plans were formed. From that standpoint, it really was not a bad week.

.....Tuesday was our New Comers Night, Post June Faire. We probably should have sucked it up and had this happen the previous week, directly after June Faire when the sights of June Faire were fresh in people's minds. But things conspired against it, especially the moving of the Business Meeting. As it was, we still had a good turn-out of people, both modern and member. People were friendly and engaging, on both sides. Something that might not have been so much in evidence the week prior, so it might have been a trade off.

.....I shook hands with fifteen new people who came to the VFW Hall. I chatted with them all for a little. Some I took over to introduce to the needlework and sewing people. Some were interested in heraldry, and since Ian was unable to be present that night, I showed off my heraldry books and explained a little about the complexities of heraldry, as well as the added layers of complexity associated with SCA heraldry. :-)

.....Some people wanted nothing to do with sedentary arts, so they were taken outside to watch the fighting and gain a little insight on what it took to join the martiallate, including some archery and thrown weapons. It was fun to see as their faces lit up with excitement and a light gleam from their eyes as they pictured themselves in armor. It was very easy to read their thoughts at that point. :-) I've been there, so I recognize those dreaming half smiles of conquest. :-)

.....We had a potluck for the evening, a relaxed gathering of 'not in garb'. I wondered how that would work out, and it seemed to work out great. Being in garb tends to 'separate' the members from the modern attendees. So being in normal garb seemed to make us a little more approachable. That Albrecht is a smart Chatelaine.

.....Not being a people person by nature though, I was wrung out after a couple of hours of being 'on', and woke up the next morning being very tired. This was Wednesday, the day of the Regional Pelican Meeting. Thankfully, Master Ralg volunteered to drive to Tacoma, for which I was grateful. I had many printed copies of the Agenda, a roster for attendees, and added notes for candidates that people had specifically requested.

.....The meeting was at the Round Table just off of I-5. I had the large meeting room reserved for us, which worked out pretty good. I had some salad and a personal pizza and we launched into the meeting. There were twelve of us present that night, which is actually a good turn-out. I was interested in the mix though. Of the twelve present, there were three long time players, and the remainder were from my generation or later. Evolution in progress. You can see the shift in consciousness happening, which I find exceedingly interesting to witness.

.....Lots of good conversation. But after two hours the natives were getting restless. :-) Cedric was starting to pace. Master Ralg was standing off in the corner and several were starting to push the agenda. So I walked through the remainder as fast as I could and we did manage to keep it at the two hour mark, and go through every name on the list even if only a single read through.

.....We're trying to see if we can find an alternate method to include a wider audience of Western Regional Pelicans. We've tried an online meeting and it did not go well as the conversation could not be controlled at all. People walked over each other constantly. We could impose some rules to try and get that manageable, but I'm not a fan as some who are technologically twisted might be left out. So we're seeing if we can get a phone bridge line set up for one of the next meetings. That would be a little easier to control and the only technology needed is the ability to dial a phone. If you have a speaker phone, even better. :-)

.....Last night was the September Crown meeting. I had a great turn out, at least sixteen people in attendance. I also was in full migraine by that point, so I was a little loopy but still mostly coherent. We accomplished much though and had great conversation! Lots of go-dos, but I felt a little better about a number of things.

.....We had a solid game plan for organizing the martiallate activities. Althaia was there and we nailed down even more who was doing what and when actions had to be done. We talked Heavy, Rapier, and Youth and talked about what support would be needed, including lists and water-bearing. Althaia is going to work with Master Cedric to work out a lot of these details. Including the acquisition of more Eric poles and ropes. She is going to touch base with Madrone. I already have a call out to Aquaterra asking for help in this area, and will be following up shortly.

.....Renart has a plan for working the schedule to the point where we have something, at least tentative, to give to Their Majesties when They step up at July Coronation. He is going to start behind the scenes to talk to the Kingdom Officers and Guild Leaders to start adding their meetings to the schedule. We'd like to start spamming the e-lists, but I'm not big on interfering with July Coronation too much if we can help it. Renart will make it happen.

.....We talked over ideas about land management and ways to squeeze the most out of what we have. We moved a couple of activities to potentially open up more camping and parking space. Barnet is making arrangements to gravel and level road parts, and clear sections of the land of brush. Elisabeth is gridding out areas already dedicated to camping. As more sections as declared for camping, she'll grid them out and start putting reservations on them. We'll have to play tetris to some degree to get everyone comfortably on site. But we have experience with that.

.....We talked about parking and RVs, brainstorming ideas on how to enlarge what we have. This is when Arion suggested moving the archery to give us another section of land for potential camping and / or parking. We need to look over this area during out walk-through on the 24th and see just how usable it is.

.....Equestrian is going to lead to a few anxiety moments. Tsuruko is working on getting Ivan, Duchess Miranda and herself on to site to walk the area dedicated to Equestrian activities. The land itself looks rather nice. What isn't so nice is the road down to it as it is a little twisty in sections. Also what isn't so nice is the water supply, which will either have to be trucked in, or run down on a half-mile long hose. Barnet has a lead on renting a water truck for the weekend, which might work the best. We'll have to pay for the site's metered water anyway, so depending on how much renting the truck will be, it might be the best way to go.

.....Angharad is working on copy and the site hand-out. Already collecting information. She and I are going to get together on expanded copy this month. We need to have a short version for The Crier. But I plan on doing a very much expanded version that she can chop down for use as needed. We have about a week to make this happen.

.....Ian is all over maps, signs and the T-Shirts. He was actually painless for the most part at the meeting. Under control for the most part. For which I was grateful. With a migraine, it wouldn't have taken much for me to throw him out of the house. Maybe he picked up on that early? :-)

.....All in all, a good meeting. I have to put together the notes and action items and send them out. Which I'm hoping to get done this weekend. But other than notes, I plan on sleeping in both days, hanging out with TBT and maybe a friend or two, and catching up on cleaning the house and Lobelia. I worked a little on the house on Monday, TBT spent some good time on it yesterday. But it still needs some help. And if we can get Lobelia put back into her storage unit in Poulsbo, I think the neighbors would be happier. :-)

.....A relaxing weekend. Finally!

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....And it is a drive through as well. Which is rather surprising as when I was here last year the nearest Starbucks was much closer to Indianapolis itself. They'll need a lot more though if they are going to balance out the number of Wal-Marts here. I must have passed one every five miles or so on the way here. :-)

.....It's cloudy here in Bloomington, with periodic bouts of rain. But the temperature is very warm. So the mugginess if very intense today. Going to take a little to get used to it. But Indiana itself doesn't seem to have changed a whole lot over the past year. It feels like one giant manicured park to me. And the infrastructure is just as torn up this year as last. I had to do several detours around road construction just to make it into Bloomington.

.....Still getting stories from Honey War. I think that being there benefitted Dragon's Laire in ways that may resonate for a long while. There is a certain amount of excitement in how many people turned out for activities, as well as the diversity of the activities in which we participated. We may have to consider a War of our own sometime soon. But I'm going to leave that percolating in my brain for a while. Although His Excellency Cedric mentioned to me today that something along these lines was actually discussed at Honey War this year. :-)

.....The flight seemed a little longer than normal. Maybe it was the three hour layover in Dallas - Fort Worth. We were in a terminal that felt really closed in and dark, rather oppresive. Then we ended up waiting an extra hour to board the flight. Seems that when they shut down the plane last night, someone forgot to switch on the flow of air conditioned air from the terminal and the temperature was reading over a hundred degrees when they opened her up for the days. It took them about fourty-five minutes to cool it down to manageable levels to allow passengers to board.

.....I finally made it to the hotel around 3PM Bloomington time. I unloaded my stuff and sat on the bed, and found myself waking up from a nap about two hours later. :-) I've felt groggy ever since. Need to go to bed soon as it is an hour's drive from Bloomington to Crane. I think I'll go through the drive in Starbucks in the morning. :-)

.....Loving my Nook though. I tore three three Anne McCaffrey novels since hitting SeaTac yesterday. Working on another Tom Corbett novel tonight and have a couple of Egyptian Tomb findings that Mom sent me for reading. I think there are a couple of others past that as well, so I think I'll have enough to see me through the week. If not it might be a good time to figure out what I'm doing wrong with Gutenburg Update. It is still hit-or-miss whether or not a download from Gutenburg will be readable on the Nook or not.

.....Good timing (NOT!) for Indiana though. Newcomers Night tomorrow night at Fight Practice. I had been toying with the idea of a little dancing, or to pull out the gemshorn. But instead I get to miss it all together. At least they'll get some inspirational speaking from TBT. She always has good things to say. Madrun had wanted me to bring out a few circlets for display. I forgot to pull them out on Sunday, but TBT knows which bin they are located. I hope they don't need polishing...

.....Now I'm falling asleep at the computer. Oh, well, it's time to go to bed anyway. I called home, but TBT was out on an errand. Rhys was in a good mood, so that bodes well. I did call though. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.