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2001-10-22 - 3:31 p.m. A Pilgrim's Tale The event rocked. All the hard work paid off and if you didn't come, well, you missed a really, really good party. It was one of the smaller, more intimate events, with perfect weather and something to amuse everyone. My cursory glance showed 150 people through troll, though I just didn't think that many people were on site. Once we broke even, I stopped worrying about it. We'll do the money fu later this week. My Shire doesn't believe events should be geared to make money. Have a fundraiser but don't pad your event fees. Scarlett and Jake Thursday at lunch I met Tbone in a Goddard parking lot. Took Jake, my Tahoe, to meet Tbone's truck and grab table, benches and gear. [Most people don't realize my Tahoe's name is Jake. I named him before I knew Muireann's nickname so when I use the phrase, 'We can take Jake,' people got so confused I mostly stopped using it.] Poor Jake is full to the overflowing with the canvas and poles for the huge Tbone pavilion. Then, I take him to Costco and buy more of the feast supplies. Finding somewhere to safely put 22 dozen eggs around the pavilion poles was quite a challenge. After Failenn and Eoghan finished the trebuchet repair, Roland and I went to A&G's to borrow Gen's Explorer, Scarlett. Bless the Gen, she had already filled Scarlett with all the canvas for the three pavilions we were borrowing from them, so after we put in the poles we were done. Thus begins the great truck shuffle. Roland get's Scarlett in exchange for Gen getting his Altima, which she has named Pepe. Proceed directly to Harry's for drinks and dinner followed by bed. Big Red lasts right through it Friday morning required a quick trip to Home Depot and the grocery store. Padraiga, Kyneburh and Genevieve de Loire (my event cook) were staying with me Friday night and I needed to find something resembling breakfast food. Pork , vegetables, and salad in a bag were very cheap, so there was chicken salad for lunch and pork roast for dinner. Again, packing purchases around the tent poles was very interesting. Late morning while I'm prepping the lunch and dinner food, my phone is ringing off the hook with last minute event questions. When Failenn was phone call number six in fifteen minutes, I was slightly grumpy but she forgave me. How often can you answer the phone while you're stuff a roast before you get cranky? There was such much pork roast I told Gen, phone call number 3, to bring herself, Corbie and Thjora over for dinner. Kyna was bored. She's been banned from the office by her manager on Fridays to combat her overwork/stress at the office so she brought Big Red, her F-350 (Ah says Mikhail the Emasculator) to haul bales and gear for Friday setup. I fed her lunch and we threw more gear in Bed Red and departed with a three truck caravan heading to site. Tahoe, F-350, Ford Explorer heading up 650/New Hampshire until it morphed into 108 and took us deeper into Damascus. Perfect fall weather in Maryland horse country. Beautiful site, just turned leaves, gorgeous day. We make site about 1 pm and start laying out the Royalty pavilion (Kevin's - thanks sweetie, oh, and yay for the measuring wheel) and the general shade/gathering pavilion (Tbone's - yay Tbone!) Proving how quickly you can do things with an experienced pavilion crew, Kymber, Roland, Badouin and I had Tbone's top up in about twenty minutes. Badouin was just the best. He worked his tail off on this event. Hours of site setup and cleanup and the incredible hall d�cor was mostly his idea. I had a start of a few borrowed banners and painted walls, but Badouin met me the night of the tornado and came up with a vision for the hall that just worked out beautifully. And he worked and worked on field scenarios, great ideas, and was my MiC. Daffyd arrives about 2 pm and just quietly set up his tournament fence while the rest of us work on pavilions. We send Roland and Kyna with Big Red to obtain the straw bales. As they leave, Failenn, Hassan, Devon and Istvan arrive. Failenn get her pavilion laid out for the tavern. Then up goes the MoL pavilion. We head up the hall where we put up the Market at the Mills rummage sale pavilion (Badouin's) and the changing tent (the 16'x16' with Gen's lovely dividing walls). Porta-a-castle guy final arrives at 3:30 pm, which was interesting considering I was given a 1 - 3 pm delivery window, but we were still there anyway. Big Red arrives with the bales and we head back down to the field to bag and arrange the bales. Big Red was our hero because the hauling would've been a HUGE pain for the Shire without the volume of the big red 350. Gregge or Badouin would've had to haul trailers out of storage to get the bales moved, or Helena would've done three trips with her SUV. Let me explain about the bale bags, one of our most ambitious projects - Failenn has the idea for painting sheets of 'castle walls' to use on the field to represent town walls. We thought it'd be neat, but we couldn't afford the lumber for structure and we knew we could afford the bales. Sheets over haybales wouldn't last three minutes, so we left the idea alone with a sigh of beyond our event budget. The next meeting, Badouin went over the fighting scenarios - they involved rearranging the bales as the fighting scenarios evolved and moving bales as part of the scenario objective. But he pointed out the last time we'd tried similar scenarios the fighters loved them but we had major problems with busted bales and asked if we could wrap or bag them somehow - canvas or something. Then Failenn suggested painted castle wall fabric. She and Kitten and Baduoin talk and talk, leaving the rest of us in the dust and *poof* a plan for a bale bag emerges. It's essentially a duffle bag that, once the bale is in it and the top tied closed, looks like a section of castle wall. There were a lot of work, cutting the materials into pieces and serging them, painting the pieces like castle wall (tape off the mortar lines, base coat then shades of sponge), assembling the painted pieces, adding the ties and webbing support and handles. Twenty-four darn bale bags. Once the bale wall was assembled it looked beyond insanely cool. Badouin almost kicked me because I kept repeating how insanely cool it looked. But he did admit he didn't want to use the 'naked' bales (We bought a few extra straw bales, more than we made bags for.) because they looked so inferior. I expressed the thought to Kyna how cool the Pennsic haybales would look with castle bags... and was roundly told I wasn't allowed to think about something that crazy. I'm afraid what Cuan will want if he sees them. Everything went up, gear stowed in pavilions and we were done by 5ish. The site looked fantastic, pennons flying on the tavern, tourney fence enclosing castle wall. We break. Kyna takes Big Red to BWI to rescue Padraiga from the airport. I stay home and cook the prepped dinner. Roland drives down to Virginia to collect our Genevieve, our cook. Roland and Genevieve make it back. We have her survey the cooking gear and check what of the HUGE Lochmere stash of cooking supplies actually needs to go to site. I dish up dinner. Corbie, Thjora, Gen and Max! the puppy dog arrive just minutes before Padraiga and Kymber. Thjora: If she's autocratting tomorrow, why is she cooking us dinner? Gen: Dude, I don't know. She's on crack. It'll probably distract or relax her or something and when have I ever said no to Wendy food? Excellent food, wild conversation. I have no idea how everyone found cider to drink since I'd moved it all out of the various usual places to make room for feast food, but Gen is a good scrounge. No dessert was served till the assembled company helped me load the feast gear. Yeah, I'm only so nice. Corbie and Thjora were subjected to excited Sluggy Freelance fans while we pawed through the books on the coffee table. I also unearthed the box of old SCA pictures which made Padraiga flip. Unfortunately, no one could find the one of Cuan during his longish permed hair incarnation. Max discovered the house was laid out in a circle and she could chase Corbie from hall to kitchen to dining room to living room to hall. Happy puppy. My poor cat spotted Max and ballooned to three times normal size before disappearing for the night. I kicked Corbie, Thjora and Gen out about 11 and went to bed, leaving Kymber and Padraiga chatting away. Ask me about the pallets that weren't supposed to be there Saturday morning I was up at insane hours so we could load the feast food into cooler and trucks then get the cook and feast gear to the site by 8 am setup. Gregge, our archer marshal, is an Isaac Walton League member and it's only through him we get to use this site. Gregge made tons of phone calls asking them to ensure the kitchen was unlocked, the gas and water were on, etc... because we'd had problems the last time we used the site. No luck. On the good side, Gregge did have the keys and we got the hall open on time. The setup crew showed up bright and early and brought way too much caffeine and donuts. They start hauling gear. On the bad side. No gas. The fridges were padlocked - nowhere to put feast food. And the atrium, which was troll/staging area for event information was completely blocked with piles of chairs and pallets full of new chairs just delivered. I had nowhere to put troll and no way to clear the royalty room. Gregge gets out his cell phone and starts making more calls. The caretaker manages to get the gas on - three different arcane switches hidden inside and outside the hall. Then we find out the ovens don't work - so he shows us the downstairs ovens. More phone calls later we find out about more switches needs to get the oven gas as opposed to the burners lit. However, we are just screwed on the pallets of chairs blocking our atrium. Ceiling hooks and the never ending ball of twine Meanwhile, Badouin, Mikhail, Devon, Chon, Eoghan, and Brighid are working on decorating the hall, an elaborate setup of tying back curtains, hanging painted castle wall posters, fabric behind high table with the painted scene banner on top of it. The key to the entire thing was not, as you might expect, duct tape. They make these office friendly plant hangers, little white hooks made to fit around the metal tracks in office ceiling and other halls. This lets you put hooks where you need them that the hall doesn't have them. Add in one never ending ball of haybale twine and two ladders and *poof* hall d�cor. The blue box of holding Mistress Francesca la Curiosa, bless her generous heart, lent me her huge blue box of banners to solve the turkey issue. Turkey issue, you ask? I had asked for her freestanding banner poles to hang walls around this stuffed turkey in the atrium. It's huge, it's hideous, we're not allowed to move it or put anything on the case, so we thought we'd use the banners stands and Francesca's blue walls to build a veil around the turkey. Francesca gave me all her stands, which Badouin the woodworking Laurel likes so much he'll probably copy, and this blue box containing her blue walls and a dozen of other Towerhearth banners. Boy, did that box save us. If we had something to hide, we just rummaged in the blue box of holding. We even found chandeliers in the bottom and hung them over high table. Thanks to Mikhail, the ladders, Badouin, the extra wire and Badouin's tent poles, the blue box of holding also solves the pallet issue. With wire and twine, they built a virtual closet to hide the pallet and extra chairs. Chon, crazy Mongol that he is, restacked 200+ chairs to make a place to move the tables out of the royalty alcove and into the new virtual closet. Chon hangs more banners in the royalty alcove, because it was painted this institutional green color than made me queasy. We move troll outside because the lobby is completely packed and the weather is great and Chon brought extra tables. The cook has fridges and gas to all the appliances (finally!) and she is now calm and happy. Troll is a little confused because with the pallet problem we open troll just as site opens so things didn't go smoothly as we planned. It was all fine, but we made more work for ourselves counting numbers later by being less organized up front. Badges, badges, how can we get more of those badges? All that casting paid off handsomely. The entire event included a pilgrim's badge game. Participation in any activity was rewarded with a badge. You know what? Bribes worked. At least one person entered the A&S contest just to get a badge. Duke Gyrth, Duchess Catariona and Lord Istvan donned on the cross and crescent favors marking them as saints and sufis and went forth with piles of badges to give out either for correct answers to trivia questions or for anything really nifty. Gyrth drove us all nuts by coming up with the most amazing trivia questions off the top of his head. ("What are the three steps to sainthood?" "What are the seven sacraments of the catholic church?") The saints would give a certain amount of hints, and someone hit upon the idea of asking Saint Kitten for hints/answers to Saint Gyrth's questions, which made for a new dynamic of the trivia game. Everyone had a great time trying to answer questions as the saints milled about the pavilions and it was one more way to get everyone involved and talking. Our Sufi's trivia was very hard - we're just not educated enough in the middle eastern history. The littlest castle Failenn assembled her small castle near the children's activities, and the assorted kids had a blast playing in it all afternoon. At 2 pm, she got out small siege engines and crossbows and let each child take a shot at the target arranged inside the castle. Cutest darn thing I've ever seen, little kids, tiny crossbow, shooting at the castle. They even let the autocrat cut line and use the tiny crossbow. At the sign of the Cross and Crescent The tavern at the field, the Cross and Crescent, served up a yummy lunch of apple onion soup, bread, cheese, and fruit. Heck, the leftover setup donuts even made it the sideboard. The tavern tables were filled with games. Istvan even provided one al-Hafla style seating table (floor seating) with rugs. I found Orendil and some of the kids curled around that table dozing/playing chess. Helena did a splendid job as tavernkeeper, putting out tons and tons of food and beverages. Alric, our CiC, recruited the Lochmere waterbearers guild to work on watering the crowd and fighters. Yay God! Somewhere during a break in the afternoon fighting, the ladies of the realm decide to encourage the fighters by doing a half-time show. If I have the description straight, Aryanna, Meng, Gen, and Lucia troop out on the field and deliver cries of "That's alright, that's okay, you're all heathens anyway." "Go Allah! " "Dulci volt! Dulci volt! Dulci volt! Yay God!" (I have no clue how to really spell that Latin -Gyrth told them what to say.) I'm very sorry I missed this bit. Padraiga intended to help, but just couldn't bring herself to act like a cheerleader. There's a polar bear in the woods? Shelby and I went in search of the 'woods shoot' in the early afternoon, which must be why I missed the halftime show. Gregge had set up a wide variety of animal targets in the woods for people to shoot. The *best* was the life-sized polar bear at the end of the roving range, about seven feet tall and holding a diet coke bottle. I have so got to start shooting archery again. And the trebuchet went 'twang' Eoghan and Failenn brought a small trebuchet, and played with firing tennis balls across the field after all the fighters were done. They let all interested parties give it a shot, since it was under experimental marshallate supervision and folks had a blast. Belephoebe will own a siege weapon soon or die of frustration. How did you get Galmr to wear a turban? Bribed him with dancing girls. Okay, that's a total fib. TRM Galmr and Aryanna made a lot of effort to fit in with the theme of the event. I made some 'millrinds' (Shire badge of two crossed millrinds) trim for Aryanna. They look like Crusader crosses. Genevieve put the trim on a lovely Eleanor d'Aquitaine like overtunic for HRM. Aryanna made a gorgeous purple underdress and the entire effect was stunning. Her ladies in waiting, Alisandra and Genevieve, made themselves similar 12th century outfits. She recruited Havordh to lead her Crusaders on the field and Jaudin lent him Crusader tabards so he was all set. HRM Galmr led the Saracen side and worked with Aidan, Violante and Mikahil to acquire Saracen garb, complete with turban under the crown, for court, and He looked awesome. Because of recent world events, we did far less with our Crusader versus Saracen theme than we'd originally planned, but it all worked out great. Kitten the amazing made a Crusader and a Saracen banner for each side to advance/capture/move about the field as part of the scenarios. Snacks for court First served was a mezze platter, deviled eggs and dips and olives, which was a snack tray that the kitchen sent out *before* court started. This was a wildly popular innovations - munchies during court. Sneaky monarchs gave me a Herring for autocratting because They appreciated the extra effort to detail that really made this a cool event. The staff came up and gave out the prize badges and I announced the winners in the badge game. (Each pilgrim's badge was worth an undisclosed amount of points and the highest points value among those who chose to have their badges counted got pick at our table of eight prizes. Padraiga and Genevieve tied for first, but worked out a quick arrangement for who wanted what. Padraiga won a really nice prize for Cuan, but no one tell him about it because it will be delivered to him later.) Failenn was given a Silver Natulius for all her A&S work, especially being crazy enough to make four types of pilgrim's badges as a beginning caster. Chon got his AoA, which we all thought he had, the little sneak, but we caught the omission in time to give a recommendation. Roland got his Pearl! which was mostly a surprise, by Alisandra moved into camera position before they even called him, so he deduced something was up. Ask to see the scroll Violante and Failenn made him. It has an armored dressed in purple and gold and a tiger sleeping on the vine work. Bring on the dancing girl Violante worked very hard on a performance piece for evening entertainment. We usually have an entire troop of good middle eastern dancers, except last weekend was the biggest belly dancing convention on the East coast, so it was just our Violante. She made a great belly dancing outfit based on a 12th century ivory of an Egyptian dancer. Except everyone couldn't understand why that outfit was associated with Middle Eastern dancing because it was actually period and *not* a belly-bunny outfit. Poor Violante got so tired of explaining. Between removes, she did a performance piece. She briefly explained the basis of her garb and dance movements., the did a lovely three movement performance to about seven and a half minutes of period Andulsian music. Padraiga and Kymber tie one on Dinner was great. The first remove meat pies were excellent, but I think the period omlette won as my favorite. Genevieve gets major props from me for actually doing all those period egg based recipes that are a cross between sweet omlettes and funnel cakes. Practically no one serves those at feasts because it doesn't fit our preconception of medieval food. Between removes, Padraiga and Kymber tied their hoods together and began ameobaing around the hall. At some point, they tied Roland's hood into the knot and managed to tie me into the middle of their circle. I escaped after Rebekkah helped me get free (great Jewish mother bit). They wandered about the hall as a triple meance. My tablemates asked what they were doing and I replied I don't know, but this is what they're like sober, and they're all going back to my house tonight. It was one of those lovely evenings. Food came out quickly, but not so fast you were still stuffed. There was room to socialize. Low drumming started after dessert (you can make some awesome sweet pancake pastries with the 40 egg whites left over from the first remove's omelettes) and little Sarah started dancing along, much to Eorann's amusement. I'm sorry! I'm trying to drive a truck I don't own. Eventually, we started bits of cleanup around the crowd lingering over dinner. Little four year old Sawyer was dragging folded chairs one at a time to the storage area. Dishes washed, gear packed. Again, Big Red is our hero because it's so easy to put more stuff in his truck bed. Padraiga, who is working like a madwoman carrying gear, asks me where to put things next since Big Red is full. I hunt the keys for Scarlett and go to pop the back. Let me explain, my 'pop the rear' automatic entry button is the same place as Scarlett's 'PANIC' button. Lights flashing, car alarm screaming, and me with no idea how to stop it. The crowd in the parking lot laughing at me. So I yell back, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm trying to drive a truck I don't own. Padraiga, with the best rejoinder of the event, says Isn't that the point of car alarms? To stop people from driving things they don't own? I push lots more buttons and eventually Scarlett stops whining. All the gear gets loaded and I am seriously beat. My back is making major complaints from being overworked, so I leave Alric and Gregge mopping the last section and drive homeward. I find Padraiga and Kyna in their jammies sitting in my upstairs hallway because while I may have comfy furniture, the upstairs hallway had a bookshelf they were interested in. Celebrex, Vitamin I, strong Scotch and a hot shower. Ahhh�. Crazy Roland unloads Jake and Scarlett because we need them for tomorrow morning cleanup. But then we decide we want Big Red to move the bales off the field, so we hit upon the plan of loaning Kyna Gen's Scarlett to drive Padraiga to BWI for her noon flight, while Roland and I take Jake and Big Red to site for cleanup and gear removal. Easier to destroy than create Ragnarr calls Kymber Sunday morning. Hey, sweetie, where are you? Driving Gen's truck to BWI. Why do you have Gen's truck? Because Roland has Big Red. I so don't understand. Site cleanup started at 10 am. I was late because I was stuck behind a horse trailer which was stuck behind a bike tour on the one lane part of 650. We had such a big cleanup crew than it took a smidge over an hour to strike the pavilions and tables, remove the bales, and take out the trash. Very tired, very happy Shire. Very, very tired, very happy autocrat. Took Big Red and Jake to Gen's to offload her portion of the gear. Called Kyna who was back at my house having seen Padraiga to the plane, watching Brother Cadafel videos and she brought Gen's Scarlett over. Gear was offloaded, truck were reunited with their rightful owners, and we took Pepe (Sorry, Roland, I think the Altima is stuck with that name) for a lovely late lunch. Post lunch involved bonded to Gen's comfy furniture until it was time for Kevin's birthday party. We went over to D&B for good company. I just got dessert, having had a huge late lunch, and went home before the games because I was such a tired autocrat. Envy me because I have Roland. Now you will all have to live through a couple paragraphs on my amazing husband. Because I do well at organizing, my efforts are more visible, but Roland is my sanity. Without him, well, I'd would've been nowhere on this event. I started the casting project/ideas but he made them happen. He spent many nights pouring metal and researching badges. His schedule for the past few months has been Monday practice, Tuesday practice, Wednesday and Thursday work on event stuff, Friday go to an event, Saturday event/work at event, Sunday clean up the gear. He's been just amazing. Kitten said she was impressed at how serene I was through the entire autocratting thing. Really, it's because of Roland. Whenever I had a small, petty thing I was frustrated about, Roland would let me vent at him. He never let me do anything stupid. Whenever my organization/leadership skills were taxed to the limit with twenty people asking me questions at once, I could look at Roland and say 'Go make X happen. Just make it happen, don't ask me anything,' and he'd kiss me goodbye and come back when it was done perfectly. Do you all realize how rare that it? How kind and patient and hardworking he's been, week after week of helping others cast/paint signs and banners/repair armor/haul gear. He never lost his temper and he got everything done he promised to do. And that's the end of the tale... Are you all still reading this incredibly long epistle of my event? Well, I had a great time and all our guests seemed to have a fantastic day too. I cannot thank my Shire enough for the way everyone worked their tale off on this event and really pitched in. Having a fifteen person cleanup crew show up early on Sunday morning is very impressive. While I was out of the room, the Shire decided I should autocrat a June Spanish Armada event or, alternatively, Spring Crown. Yeah, that's a nice idea for them � back off. � � � 
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