Questi sono i miei amici?

Even though I only day-tripped, I don't think I've lately had as much fun at an event than I had this past Saturday at KWAR. For expediency (and to keep me from over-thinking this), I'm going to try Liam-style. It's my first time -- be gentle.

1. I had thought the combination of KWAR and KWCS was odd, but I really enjoyed the mix of people it drew. (You could play a guessing game -- is that person in beautiful late-period kit there for KWCS, or just an Atlantian fencer? :-)) Not only were there a bunch of friends who might not have otherwise made a trip down to a KWAR, but there was also some cross-over in the classes. Liam's "how to teach" class (great, by the way) was about half fencers and half costumers.

2. I enjoyed Baron Lloyd's round-table on mentor/student relationships, particularly since it ended up focusing on the IKA of how such relationships are perceived within a Kingdom, rather than how individual mentors manage students. It's unfortunate that the mix of attendants was heavily weighed in favor of OGRs/Provosts, and that the few other fencers didn't participate. It did, however, make me wonder about running another roundtable specifically *for* OGRs/scarves/rings/Provosts, etc, on how we perceive fencing's relationship to other activities in the Kingdom, and the rapier order's relationship to other martial and non-martial orders.

3. On a lark, I took the back-to-back classes on "how to fall" and Lichtenauer's wrestling techniques. I'm far more sore from those than I am from fencing several hours afterward. They were taught by Jean Michel d' Aix en Provence, a Meridian fencer and companion of their Order of the Blade. We didn't do much actual wrestling, but we did plenty of falling, controlled and otherwise. Luckily, having just taught Caleb how to somersault, I was more prepared than I might have been a year ago. And in the second class, Jean Michel did an excellent job of relating the historical wrestling principles with later rapier techniques, and how those principles can apply to our game. I'd like to get more into historical study, particularly some of the German schools, and this was alot of fun.

4. As many people observe about Birka, the hotel site creates a strange SCA-Con vibe which I think is alot of fun, but shouldn't be the norm. Coronation in a Gothic cathedral is much closer to what we should be about, but I nonetheless enjoyed making a pit stop in the bar between classes. (And fencing on the too-small mezzanine, with the mundanes watching from the balcony, was just a hoot).

5. While I understand the special challenges involved in finding a site for an event like this, KWAR was a *really* expensive day trip, especially given that no dayboard was provided (or even subsided hotel-fare available). There also seemed to be surprisingly few rapier equipment vendors, though maybe I missed them.

6. I'd really like to try traveling to a foreign KWAR in the future. I've only been to two -- this one and KWAR '05 which was just over the border in Atlantia. Being one of the few Easterners in the room would be an interesting change. Problem being I'm still kinda shy, so I'll need some friends -- so who's coming with me?

7. As with any really good event, there were many more people there than I had time to visit with. When can we do this again?

So, our old house has languished on the market for about nine months, with minimal interest. I'd like to give our realtor the boot, drop the price, and try selling it ourselves. Does anyone have experience with a home selling website or service? I'm particularly interested in one that offers MLS listing. Thanks much, folks.

Preserved forever in obscurity, my Pennsic 38 Champions bout, against Duke Palymar of the Middle. Many thanks to anastasiav for filming this. (Another angle can be seen here(my bout starts at 3:28). I have so infrequently seen myself fence, that I decided to analyze the bout in some detail. I'll completely understand y'all skipping the fencerly navel-gazing, but for those interested, I'd appreciate additional thoughts and feedback. (Care to weigh in, nauraki? :-)

( Onward... )
Last thought: Man, that white belt looks weird.

War impressions are still percolating, so I thought I'd start back at the beginning. A few days before we left, we each went through the university listing, adding classes to our war/childcare schedule. An actual conversation:

E: [Looking at the schedule] You're taking up sewing?
A: No, why?
E: Well, you're taking "Introduction to Fabrics"
A: Really? I don't remember that.
E: It's right here on the schedule.
A: And I wrote "Introduction to Fabrics"?
E: Well, you misspelled it F-A-B-R-I-S

Ba dum dump.

P.S. For the non-wire-weenies

A lovely weekend here at Chez Bean. Saturday was spent being productive around the house. I got the front balcony and portico columns painted (all white, to match the trim). Using the power sprayer meant that I got most of me white, too. I still have flecks of paint all over my arms and, annoyingly, my glasses. But everything looks nice. When I was just using a brush, E & C could help out -- we gave them brushes a green food-colored water, and they painted the stonework while I worked on the wood. We make quite a team.

I also finished the expansion of one of the front garden beds abutting the driveway -- which was a necessity because we discovered (the hard way) that the pavers had *paved over* a sprinkler head when they installed the driveway. Uncovering the broken head meant tearing up about two large trash cans worth of asphalt, which I'm trying to figure out what to do with (hopefully we can recycle it). The new garden looks nice, and fixing the sprinkler should be easy now.

Sunday (my actual birthday) we were off to the local martial practice here in Settmour. The weather was too nice for armor, so S. and I took in our bi-annual archery practice. And I got to try an atlatl for the first time. Fun, though a good way to mess up your shoulder. I was able to get about 30 yards with power, but no accuracy. After practice, out to dinner with many friends (and hello to those of you on LJ) for steak and booze. A perfect end to the day.

A question: when viewing a long comment page, is there a way to make ALL comments/threads appear in expanded form. Having to navigate away from the main comment page to read a thread is a PITA.

Thanks!

Evidently, the kids have decided over the past week that sleep is for the weak. And I have firmly established myself among the weak. Ugh. I'm on my second coffee of the morning, and I'm hoping I can get through the day without having to use any words over three syllables.

If you need me, I'll be under my desk, napping.

After spending the weekend wrestling with this, I am convinced that the engineers who didn't do well enough in school to get jobs building bridges, go into backyard playset design. Good lord. And I'm not even half done.

Where to start? Too much went on this weekend to be easily summarized. To say that I got a belt and my lady a shiny new hat hardly does it justice. This is part report, part impressions, and partly to assist my own memory, so proceed at your own risk.

( And maybe you're just tired of reading about peerages... )

One last odd thing about being sent on vigil is that, while you’re the center of attention, you also manage to miss most of the event. So at the risk of sounding (more) self-centered, I'll ask a favor -- if you were at the event (even if you didn't have a chance to stop by the vigil), please leave a note in the comments, with (or without), any recollections you choose. Thanks.

So my "smartphone" can keep track of my several email accounts, and "conveniently" creates a common address book across all accounts. So it wasn't necessarily obvious, as I was composing a work email on the bumpy bus ride home, that I was logged into my SCA account. Which is why, late last night, my boss and several colleagues from other firms, received an email from "Don Antonio Patriquin". One such colleague has been emailing Princess Bride quotes all day.

Sigh. I'm just surprised it hasn't happened sooner. At least I haven't called a judge "Your Majesty", yet.

Since I believe my f-list and my sweetie's completely overlap, I'll assume you've all been following the saga of our imminent move. My project for this evening will be clearing out the SCA equipment closet. Here's your chance to help.

For the Kingdom Crusades four years ago (the one that was flooded out), I built a set of sheet walls for the melee scenarios. These consist of 7' PVC poles (which break down to two halves), PVC portable holes for those poles, and king/queen size bedsheets with grommets installed. Lengths of rope are run through the poles, by which to attach the sheets to the poles. I believe I made enough poles and sheets for 8-10 sections of wall, each section about 8' wide. All the parts fill up a large hard-side golf case (case not included in this offer).

I think I've used the walls once. I'd love for them to go to somewhere where they'll get some use. Heck, I don't mind if you cannibalize the materials. If anyone is interested, please drop me a line. Edit test.

Last night, I posted the message below to sca_east not without some trepidation, since one can never be sure how an issue will play on that list. Still, I figured it was necessary, since youth fencing by its nature is an activity intended to appeal to people outside of Eastern fencing as it currently exists. So posting announcements solely to the fencing lists might not be enough to really get the program going. I'll have a letter in the August Pikestaff, too, but I've always suspected that the e-lists are more widely read.

I've already received a positive reaction -- a boffer marshal who wants to help; a woman whose daughters fence at school, and were disappointed they couldn't fence in the SCA; more people applying for the youth marshallate. And last week, up in Endwerde, two kids actually fenced at an official SCA practice. Woot!

This makes me exceedingly happy. I've been pushing for YF since shortly after I took office (four years ago come October); it's gratifying that Eastern kids have actually picked up blades before I step down. There's even the prospect of Eastern youth fencing at Pennsic -- in tournament, even. So I've got a few more months in my bully pulpit, to make sure the program can stand on its own feet and continue to grow. But it's nice, after all this time, to see it finally get started.

-to sca_east-
Greetings.

I'm pleased to announce that the East has begun a youth fencing program, open to fencers ages 14-17. As of this writing, we have only a few warranted youth rapier marshals, but we're adding more, and youth practices have already begun in certain areas.

For more information on the youth fencing program, including the current rules and requirements for participation, please visit <http://rapier.eastkingdom.org/ekrules_youthrapiernote.php>. If you know of a fencer who would like to take advantage of this program, please write me off list at [EMAIL]. I will try to connect marshal, fencer and practice.

The beginning of youth fencing in the East also means that Eastern youth will be able able to fence at Pennsic (youth practices are held every morning during War week). For more information about youth participation at War, please contact me off list.

Please feel free to forward this to any appropriate lists. Thank you.

In service,

Antonio Patriquin,
EK Marshal of Fence &
Provisional EK Youth Rapier Marshal

We haven't been watching alot of TV lately, both because there's only so much "Bob the Builder" I can take and, in the short time between putting the kids to bed and putting ourselves to bed, my preference is to send some emails, and play City of Heroes. As a result, we had accumulated several hundred hours of TV that we're going to watch "as soon as we get around to it".

So about two weeks ago, as we were watching TV, our TiVo froze up and crashed. It then started an endless cycle of rebooting -- it would almost complete its reboot, then start over. Not good. A night of web forum research pointed to a serious disc error. The tenor of the help posts seemed to be "well, here are a few things you can try, but they probably won't work, and you're probably screwed." I tried them, they didn't work. Not good at all.

The last ditch fix was to unplug the external hard drive I used to increase storage, and "divorce" it from the TiVo. In theory, if the disc error was on the external drive, getting rid of it would take care of the problem. And it did, and now we have a functional TiVo again.

Except, in removing the external drive, we lost 75% of our saved programs. All those shows I was "saving" for "sometime" -- gone.

And you know what? It's liberating. There are afew losses I regret (the last 8 episodes of BSG, the first half of this season of House). But it was starting to get wearing, seeing this enormous list of programs that, in theory, I wanted to see, but couldn't begin to tell you when I'd actually watch. And feeling guilty because I wasn't watching enough TV is ridiculous.

So the TiVo is filling up again, but I haven't replaced the external drive, so the library of stuff remains small -- older programs age off the machine. I thought that would bother me, missing all those shows I (in theory) wanted to watch -- but not so much. And as long as we have a dozen episodes of "bob the Builder" saved, we're ok.

. . . which isn't a big risk these days, but still:

Last week, my office computer forgot how to spell the months of the year. I would type "January" into Wordperfect, and it would get underlined as a misspelled word. Nor would the program accept me manually adding the months to the spell check dictionary. ("Nossir, there's no way "January" is a word, I ain't buyin' it..."). Updating to the latest version of WP didn't solve the problem.

So, mildly distracting but no big deal. Until this week, when my computer, evidently miffed that I was repeatedly ignoring its dire warnings, began randomly deleting months from my documents. It's very strange -- I type "January," and as soon as I hit "space" after the "y", the whole word disappears. Which was mystifying until I actually saw it happen -- I thought I just kept forgetting to type the month, though why I would have just typed "1, 1990" (repeatedly!) was beyond me.

But there's a workaround -- all I have to do is *misspell* the word ("Janary"), then go back and insert the "u", and the computer won't delete the word. Most of the time. Which doesn't interrupt my writing flow at all, of course.

So that's why I'm working on a laptop in our conference room, while our IT person reinstalls WinXP on my machine, which (with all the updates and additional software) only takes two days. Think I'm going to go home early today.

The Beans' first birthday party was this past weekend. It was a nice mix of friends and family. Initially, I had hoped for a larger crowd, but I didn't realize just how much living room space we've lost to all the playpens and baby gates -- we were pretty full up.

Obviously, the kids don't know from birthdays. They DID however, know that they were the center of attention, so it was all good. I continue to be amazed how easy going they are around crowds, but maybe they really are starting to get to know our friends. Certainly, they recognized the grandparents (which thrills the latter to no end).

And of course, we took lots of pictures:

Caleb says "Nom nom nom!"


Gail made the most amazing set of hand puppets. Emma was a little suspicious at first:

So I've finally succumbed to LiveJournal, though I expect that this page will only be used to keep track of my friends. No pithy anecdotes here -- and you'll have to visit my wife for the cute bunny pictures. Now move along.

-Antonio