Arontius of Bygelswade

.....The past five days have been interesting in a variety of ways. The impending step-up is creating a lot of emotion. Not negatively. It's just when so much energy is generated and concentrated on a specific event, it tends to make people really edgy.

.....Last Friday was the first day back to work. I had over (500) e-mails in the inbox and I could hear the William Tell running continuously through my mind for most of the day as I did my best to catch back up with everything I'd missed. Of course, several crises events happened while I was away. Although I dealt with most of it over the phone, there was still the clean up left to do.

.....Even though it was a busy day, it was not bad. When you are away for a while people are reminded of what you actually do for them. And if you are even half-way competent, they realize what they are missing when you are not there quietly making things happen behind the scenes. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who specifically came up to me to say thanks for helping them as much as I do. It was an ego boost that is always appreciated. :-)

.....Even from the Project Manager. I personally like him, but he tends to be a gruff person on ocassion. But in this case he was glad to see me back as he needed an official letter written as quickly as possible. And I do official 'government speak' rather well. :-) Another ego boost.

.....Wrapped up the Baronial Ceremony on Saturday, at least the major writing portions. Nearly all of my purely Anglo-Saxon passages were basically cut from the final. I certainly understand why. They made the whole thing LONG, difficult to read, and difficult to be understood. People's attention span is only a certain length of time, and we don't want them to become bored to death.

.....After all of the emotions that will be generated with saying good-bye to Their Excellencies Cedric and Brighid, I'm now doubly glad we took to our portion with a minimalist approach. By the time the Coronets are actually placed on our heads people will be just about DONE and want a DRINK! I know I will.

.....I did not delete all of my original volumous passages though. I think I'll use bits and pieces of it for future scrolls and ceremonies.

.....Came up with actual texts for two scrolls also on Saturday. I felt a little inspired to do so. They are written in a Chaucerian format. Ran them through the herald and a small group of people and they met generally favorable reviews. The herald said that he would like to read them. A couple of others gave me good feed-back. Even TBT put her official approval to them. I just need to shuffle them off to the Scribal Coordinator. Two more down, only ten million left to go. :-)

.....I was worried that they would sound like Dr. Suess, especially as I used modern english. But when spoken and intonated with the correct emphasis, the Dr. Suess-ism can be avoided. We'll work on that. Madrun thought I should be less timid on using Middle English in the scroll text. You don't want to use so much that the meaning is lost, but adding a few unfamiliar words will add to the flavor of the piece and the atmosphere that needs to be generated. It was good advice and I'm going to work more on that with the next texts.

.....Another pleasant surprise over the weekend was THL Godith. I was getting ready to turn over all the accounts of The Crier to the Kingdom Exchequerate and she asked me to stay on board as she liked working with me. I was flattered. Another ego boost to the weekend. Now that I have it streamlined to my own system, it really is easy to keep. THL Elonda has to approve the set-up, but we'll see. I need to be careful as well. Wearing that Coronet is a rather tough job, especially as I don't have the easy Charisma that Cedric does. Things will be a little harder for me. But I think it will work itself out fine.

.....I'm a little nervous about the weekend, but mostly excited to see things play themselves out. And it will definitely be nice to scale back the excitement level a little and work on other things. It's looking like half the Knowne World is showing up for Saturday, so I'm trying my best not to let that make me nervous. If I can keep from tripping as I climb the stairs, I'll be happy. :-)

.....Lots to do for the foreseeable future. I'm glad that the winter break is on the horizon. Two and a half weeks of must leave to use! I think that I'll spend the first week doing nothing but sleeping in every day! :-) The 'to-do' list is quite extensive though, so the sleeping in may not happen. But we'll see. :-)

.....Talon let me know that the government is again allowing us to access our personal e-mail at work. I went into Comcast a short time ago and it let me in. Fantastic! I'll have to be careful to make sure to only access during lunch, but that's fine by me. I'm just glad I'm not as cut off from the rest of the world as I was.

.....Aaron / Arontius.