Arontius of Bygelswade

.....'Spider Pig! Spider Pig! Does whatever a Spider Pig does!'

.....Ever had one of those thoughts that just seems to be on auto-repeat in your brain? All Day Long!!!!??? Of all the thoughts I could have, it was this one it had to be! :-)

.....Taking just a moment to catch my breath as this is the one day this week that is not overly scheduled with things that must be done. It has finally come to the point where TBT and I will have to split forces to meet all the obligations as well. :-) It has absolutely nothing to do with trust as it has more to do with not having all the information directly. I just like soaking it all in myself. But alas, that is not to be tomorrow. I have a meeting out at the September Crown site to meet with Her Grace Miranda to check out the Equestrian area. Which means that TBT is going to head up the Wyvern meeting in Bremerton.

.....I think in some way TBT is looking forward to the meeting. Well, maybe not. We were9 just adamant from the day we stepped up that if it was a Polling Order that was desired that the members should do the required work for it, including actually meeting and polling. We set the pace by requiring a minimum of four meetings a year, once per quarter. And it has worked for the most part. Although we do need to add another award to the stream. Right now we give out Snapdragons by the handful at the lowest level, and then progress to the Wyvern. There either needs to be something in the middle. Or maybe something above the Wyvern and make it the mid level award. Still musing over that one. Although we have certainly added to the rolls of various awards over the past year. Don't want to saturate the market.

.....I hope that Miranda likes the area picked out for the Equestrians. It is a nice field with a lot of nice amphitheatre-like viewing area above and around. The only real sticking points are the water and the road down to the area. The road is going to be fixed by Barnet next month. The water is still a little sticky. The plan is currently to bring the water tank out to site and set it beside the Equestrian area. But that will require approximately 900-feet of hose to reach from the source to the tank. Or else put the tank on the mid level terrace and fill it up with 450-feet of hose and then move that hose from the tank to the Equestrian area. Either way will require a lot of freakin' hose! :-)

.....I regret now being the sluggard I was last weekend. There is a lot to do over the next couple of weeks, but I did enjoy taking things a little slower. Even though Monday was, well, Monday, I still made it through the Serjeantry Testing of games on Monday evening with most of my humor intact. I actually enjoyed most of it, until I started feeling like a zombie around 7PM. It was time to go home at that point.

.....Even though most of the candidates had been at An Tir / West War over the weekend, most of them still managed to drag themselves to the testing and accomplished all of it with no fuss whatsoever. I was impressed. :-) The only two who did not make it had been hit by issues on the road and had made it in late that day. I did not begrudge them missing the testing at all. They'll easily make it up next Monday, which is one of the few free Mondays during the testing period.

.....Tuesday was the regular Social / Fight Practice. We were shown the video of Sargent Alaricus as he performed a demonstration of his Serjeantry Quest of learning to shoot archery from horseback. It was very nicely done. I'm looking forward to hearing the Tale at our Roundtable Court at the August Picnic. I'm also looking forward to speaking of this to the Barony as a nice example of the Serjeantry learning new information and taking on new challenges during their Quests in order to inspire the Populace, bring new learning and new skills to teach the Populace, and to demonstrate to the entire Kingdom what makes Dragon's Laire the great place it is and how it is going to continue to grow ever greater. I need to spend a little time putting together a few words to the Barony extolling the three Quests completed to date.

.....This weekend is going to be busy. There is a gathering at Blackberry Hollow, the usual summer gathering. It is a rather nice and relaxing day to spend with friends. Then we're slated to take off to another gathering in Seattle. Although we'll probably leave it before the real drinking starts. :-)

.....Sunday has a Retinue Meeting scheduled in the morning and then another gathering in the afternoon. Then it is off to the airport later on Sunday. I have my itinerary and reservations all made, except for parking the car in SeaTac. I must remember to call that one in sometime on Saturday.

.....I'm not looking forward to a week in Indiana. I normally love traveling as it is the chance to see people and places I don't normally see. But the timing for this one is not that great. There is so much happening in August and September. I'd rather stay home and keep up with it. But I really want to go to the conference as there is much happening there as well. All the right people will be gathered together in one location. I'll be able to look various managers and engineers in the eye and gain some understanding on what is happening with our batteries. I always come back home with a lot of information that I am grateful to have received.

.....Friday the 20th of July is going to be a long day though. My flight takes off from Indianapolis at 6AM. It is a two hour flight to Chicago and then a four and a half hour flight to Seattle, arrival at 11:30AM. A trip home as quickly as possible and then piling into the car for a run down to Ranier, Washington in time to check into the hotel for July Coronation.

.....Must remember to get the Baronial Pavilion to Albrecht and Magdalena this weekend. I'm grateful for the fact that they've volunteered to be the custodian there and back. But I've also heard nothing from the Autocrat Team on who is going to be on the Erics and who isn't. We might end up not needing to pull the Baronial at all and sharing space with Madrone. I should probably poke at that tonight with an e-mail or two.

.....The 'to-do' list is starting to grow dramatically. I should probably organize that a bit.

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....It was an interesting day of catching up with a few things and contemplating others.

.....I woke up at about 0500 and pulled out the circlets I finished in the workshop yesterday. They went through the final polish and shaping. Then finally into their shipping bags. I do not like to rogue I'm using right now. I miss my fabulustre greatly and need to get at least a tube or two before the next order comes into the e-mail. I wish Alpha would come back on line.

.....I received a flurry of order requests over the past handful of days. Invariably people placed orders without checking in with me first (as the Ingasbo web-site requests) and invariably most of the order requests were for a.) patterns I do not have currently in stock AND b.) they are all wanted BEFORE Christmas. Sigh! I had to do three refunds this morning. Thankfully PayPal doesn't charge me for the refunds. But the people sending me the money ended up paying PayPal $1.50 each for the priviledge of having their funds returned to them. :-) TBT and I are thinking of ways we can beef up the web-site to explain this to better degree.

.....TBT still had a chance to chat and coffee at Starbucks before heading off to Ralph's birthday breakfast at the Airport Diner. The buffet was O.K. It has been better, and worse. I left full and we had a lot of good conversation around the table. Ralph was in a good mood and received a number of nice presents. TBT and I were extremely lame as we forgot to even get a Birthday Card. One of these days we'll join the human race and remember those things. :-)

.....Ran back home before noon where I packaged up circlets for shipment out via Priority Mail at the Post Office kiosk. Most of the orders were for the East Coast. I'm not holding my breath that they'll arrive by Christmas, but that would be nice. One order went out to Wasilla, Alaska. It has a chance to arrive by Thursday, but they were definitely nervous buyers. I received almost daily requests for status updates. They wanted the circlet at least a week ago and I told them it wouldn't be done, and they accepted that. But I should have checked the anxiety meter as they pegged it a few times. :-)

.....Threw boxes in the car and met Gwen as she dropped off Brigget for the day. I was fretting over a Sekrit Santa gift for a recipient who is a Duchess from the West. I google-stalked her a bit and I couldn't come up with any good ideas. As usual Gwen came through with a fantastic looking feast setting, complete with goblet. I think I just need to give in to reality and hire Gwen as the official Baronial Miracle Worker (tm).

.....TBT and I ran out a short time later and went shopping for Mom. She stayed home today, but I didn't harass her at all. She rode the bus by herself yesterday to the Kitsap Mall and walked its length back and forth. I was extremely pleased. The apartment was messy, but showed signs that she was working on it. So I felt that I needed to keep my mouth shut today. :-) I took her shopping list and went to the store for her. TBT found a turkey at a good price at Albertsons and we picked that up as well. We're going to have Mom over for Christmas Eve and do the family thing. Mom was all excited as she picked up a game Rhys wanted. She also picked up her own Mobile Hot Spot that she is all excited about using with her new e-Readers. :-)

.....TBT and I then braved JoAnn's, which wasn't too bad. Then ran to Gwen's for the present, then the Post Office, then a quick lunch before heading home. Picked up Rhys and went out shopping again. Back to JoAnn's with TBT's list of Christmas Wishes. Which kind of takes away the 'mystery' of Christmas, but sure makes shopping a lot easier. :-) Only problem was that JoAnn's had had a number of sales over the weekend and many shelves were bare, especially the Gingher Scissors! Which has become something of a tradition to get at Christmas.

.....Just so we could 'prove' our non-conformity, Rhys and I did the rebellious thing and went to Fred Meyers and bought a few presents that WEREN'T on the approved shopping list. :-)

.....All my Christmas shopping is done and I'm just about ready for the work week. I wish I were really on my vacation, but if I have any luck at all I should be able to get out at mid-day on Wednesday. I'm crossing my fingers hard as I'll still have eleven days of vacation still at that point. There is a large laundry list of things I'd love to complete.

.....The Wyverns have been discussing a project of painted canvas scenes that can be hung at halls like the VFW to give a more period ambiance to the places we use for events. She asked me to upload a bunch of local outdoor scenes, some of them of the Olympic Mountains. One of the pictures was of Hart Lake. It sure looked like a certain Heart Lake I hiked to as a Boy Scout a lot of years ago. Made me want to go out for a hike.

.....If the weather is even half decent maybe next week maybe I could sneak in a day hike to Olympic Hot Springs. I've never been there this late in the year, so I bet the trailhead is back a few miles from where I usually start. I may have to check on that.

.....Hmmm, need to check in with Sir Richard as well. I was going to see about hanging out with him for a day. Will have to see what sort of trouble we can get into. :-)

.....And it is after 2100. Time for bed. 0400 comes way too early....Zzzzzz.

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....It's Thursday and it is a wonderful day, no matter what really happens. :-) The Crier is DONE and shipped off to the printer in Idaho. Man alive, I've never had as many problems putting together a Crier as I had with this issue. Anything that could go wrong, did. the calendar had to be rebuilt. Autocrats were especially bad this month at missing information. My Crier file corrupted and had to be rebuilt. But it's over! My 24th issue. Only 12 more left to go!

.....As it turns out, there was a silver lining to The Crier being late. There is an event next month that Their Majesties want to attend. But an EIF was not on file and no copy was submitted to The Crier. There were some frantic phone calls and e-mail traffic (and IM'ing) last night, but everything was wrapped up and I slid in their copy about ten minutes before I uploaded the page to the Idaho Falls facility. Wow! Talk about last minute! They lucked out! Kharma is definitely on their side. I think that I want to go to their event now and buy some lottery tickets on the way. :-)

.....Working The Crier last night of course meant I had to miss Fight Practice. I wasn't sure about starting up again on the night of the final Duramen Tourney in any case. But I got some abuse from several others for not being there, good excuse not withstanding. There will not be any excuses to hide behind next Wednesday, so I expect to get the crap beat out of me. Sigh! Better put in some extra padding sometime between now and then. I'm going to need it. :-)

.....Tonight is the Wyvern Meeting in Poulsbo. The Wyvern's are the Dragon's Laire 'Order' of Service in the Barony. We meet on an infrequent basis to discuss membership into the order. How to get organized so that someone is actually tracking candidates. Setting up for ceremonies at upcoming events (which ensures that we have medallions ready and speakers for the 'candidates'). The last meeting was excruciating. It was on a Monday after a long day of work and I had to concentrate just on not falling asleep. But because of that I didn't speak my own mind on several issue. I may see about getting out of work an hour or so early today so I can go home and take a nap before the meeting. Hey, it's a good excuse.

.....Looking forward to the weekend. Laurellen is coming over for movies. 'Lord of the Rings' is in the queue. I'll have the popcorn ready! Laurellen says that I cannot hiss at the screen when Liv Tyler comes onto it. :-) But maybe we'll negotiate so that I can throw popcorn at the TV instead. It doesn't make any noise so it should be allowable, right? :-)

.....Next week will be devoted to clearing the queue of circlet orders (three each) and getting myself squared away with Scroll-work for Their Excellencies. I will go on out to the Baronial Scribe and grab a bunch of scrolls to pass out (and mail, we have painters in Spokane not. We're EXPANDING! :-)). Mariette has at least one new charter done. I hope to twist THL Conchobar's arm enough to come up with a new charter as well (he tentatively agreed earlier, but has been waffling, so I'll have to work on him).

.....I have some ideas penciled for new Ceremonies as well. Was looking for a reference in one of the Icelandic Sagas and found a way cool description of a sea battle that will lend itself well (with some local embellishment) to a ceremony. It is rather on the longish side. So I'll write a long version and this time will immediately write out a shortened version. It's on the agenda though. Alongside the next volley of the Sonnet War. I've been itching ot sit down and get that written for a little while now.

.....Gotta get Lobelia ready to go for September Crown as well. I'm taking that Friday off (I put in a leave chit for it last year :-)). So I think that I'll take off early and make a day of it doing a leisurely drive of Whidbey Island. Deception Pass is really cool.

.....Well, time to start the day, I can hear something coming my way now. See you all later.

.....Aaron / Arontius.