Aaaaahhhhh....
Jul. 25th, 2005 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luciabQuite the pleasant weekend. The drive to the event didn't take us as long as we feared. (Now there's a surprse, given all that I've written about how I drive. *smirk*) And I didn't know Livia had problems with motion sickness till she mentioned how much taking a Dramamine had helped it. Oops! The good news is that all the mountain stuff happened after it had kicked in. I admit I had me some fun driving through the mountains, even though I now have a Toyota sedan instead of the little Mazda sporty car. I thought others were being wussy when they talked about it being nerve-wracking, till they mentioned it was after dark. Okay, that makes a difference. It was still light when we got in.
As Livia noted, the look of shock on Idonea's face made the whole trip worth while. Those who were close enough to see said that she cried. Awwww. I'm so.... something or other, that I hardly ever cry. Which made it all the more memorable when I kept having trouble speaking for her during the ceremony. I've never been asked to speak before. I was nervous, and felt like I really didn't have a good idea of what I was supposed to say, so I made notes beforehand. Then when I actually spoke, I didn't look at the notes but once-- just writing it down made it almost unneccesary, though I did forget one thing I was going to say and added something else. I'm told it sounded okay, though, and Idonea had tears in her eyes the whole time. Talk about warm fuzzies. And the scroll! Wow, did I get plenty of good strokes on the scroll. Guess the gold leaf looked okay. *laughing at my-A-R-self grin*
I forgot to scan the scroll, BTW, so I can't post it here. Sigh. I'll have to get Idonea to bring it over some night (whee! Girls' night!) so I can scan it.
After the fighting, we repaired to the hotel to shower and relax. Livia and I shared a room with Tracy and Jerry (Terasia and Alixandre) and that was a hoot. Tracy and Jerry are starting to scribe, so we wound up talking for an hour or so just about scribing and getting them started. I need to send her some info on books we were talking about.I wound up taking a brief nap, which made a huge difference in my energy level, so could enjoy dinner and the post-event-hang-out later on. One of the things I like best about those things is that there's always someone you've never really had a chance to hang out with and you get to know them a little better. I enjoy the hell out of that.
The second-best thing that happened this weekend was that I didn't get a migraine during the event. I figured it was a sure thing what with all the bright sun, but nope. Down side is that it hit when I got home last night. I actually had to take a full dose of my meds to knock it back and I can still feel it lurking. Grrr. I wonder how that'll work at Pennsic?
The only thing that approached a "worst" was the site, with all the modern campers. And I kept getting sand in my shoes, which was somewhere between annoying and painful. For some reason it never occurred to me to pack any closed-toeo shoes.
In other news, I'd been worrying about something I expected to be a problem for a few weeks, but had been so focused on the scroll I hadn't had a chance to actually check it out. Today I did, and I think it's less of a problem than I had feared. See, the pavilion we bought has slant walls so that the footprint is bigger than the roof. The footprint is, in fact, big enough for two people, one of them a fighter with all that fighting gear. Since there's now only one of me, and I don't carry the fighting gear around, it's way more than I need. ANYway, I figured I'd just "take in" the gussets on the corners and voila! A straight-wall tent! Then something got me thinking.... hmm, the hypoteneuse of a right-triangle (read, slant wall) is longer than the vertical side (read, pole height.) Crap. Well, I thought, even if I have to buy new poles it'll be cheaper than buying two spaces. But I needed to know how long the poles should be. So I did the math.... 6' high, 2' angle.... etc, etc. It seemed that I was going to need the poles to be about 4" longer than they are. Several people suggested that there was surely a way to gain the extra 4" without having to buy new poles. For weeks, I mulled this, trying to think of ways to achieve this end. Today I finally pulled out the wall and measured the height, and compared it to the height of the poles. WTF? The poles are 6', and the walls are 5'8". Okay, I officially Don't Get It. How come the walls are shorter than the poles, especially with the whole hypoteneuse thing? But then I noticed something else. The gussets only add 1' at each corner, not 2'. Huh? All these years we've been saying the footprint was 16' x 16', and here it has been 14' x 14' all along. And when I did the math on THAT, it only made a 1" difference in the theoretical pole height, which I figure will be no problem. Especially since the walls are shorter than the poles anyway. Which I still don't understand, BTW. The good news out of all that is that the tent pole problem has now left the building and I can get on with sewing-- taking out gussets, making tunics and bog dresses galore. (Yeah, right.) Oh, and I'm not cutting out the extra fabric from the pavilion, just sewing it. It won't be all pretty inside, but what the hey.
In other matters of cosmic importance, I think I need classes in how to eat a tossed salad without looking like an idiot. Or is that possible? I admit, I don't recall seeing elegant salad eaters even in movies, but even in the real-people world, no one else looks as goofy as I feel. First off, the lettuce is always in big pieces- bigger than will gracefully fit into my mouth. Then you have to spear some stuff (lettuce, tomatoes) while piling other stuff on top of your fork (carrots, croutons) so as far as I can tell, it's not really possible to get a variety of things in one bite. Boring. Or should I just try for excitement elsewhere and let the salad-eating experience be boring as it need be? There, I knew that'd give you something to lay awake nights worrying about. Heh.
As Livia noted, the look of shock on Idonea's face made the whole trip worth while. Those who were close enough to see said that she cried. Awwww. I'm so.... something or other, that I hardly ever cry. Which made it all the more memorable when I kept having trouble speaking for her during the ceremony. I've never been asked to speak before. I was nervous, and felt like I really didn't have a good idea of what I was supposed to say, so I made notes beforehand. Then when I actually spoke, I didn't look at the notes but once-- just writing it down made it almost unneccesary, though I did forget one thing I was going to say and added something else. I'm told it sounded okay, though, and Idonea had tears in her eyes the whole time. Talk about warm fuzzies. And the scroll! Wow, did I get plenty of good strokes on the scroll. Guess the gold leaf looked okay. *laughing at my-A-R-self grin*
I forgot to scan the scroll, BTW, so I can't post it here. Sigh. I'll have to get Idonea to bring it over some night (whee! Girls' night!) so I can scan it.
After the fighting, we repaired to the hotel to shower and relax. Livia and I shared a room with Tracy and Jerry (Terasia and Alixandre) and that was a hoot. Tracy and Jerry are starting to scribe, so we wound up talking for an hour or so just about scribing and getting them started. I need to send her some info on books we were talking about.I wound up taking a brief nap, which made a huge difference in my energy level, so could enjoy dinner and the post-event-hang-out later on. One of the things I like best about those things is that there's always someone you've never really had a chance to hang out with and you get to know them a little better. I enjoy the hell out of that.
The second-best thing that happened this weekend was that I didn't get a migraine during the event. I figured it was a sure thing what with all the bright sun, but nope. Down side is that it hit when I got home last night. I actually had to take a full dose of my meds to knock it back and I can still feel it lurking. Grrr. I wonder how that'll work at Pennsic?
The only thing that approached a "worst" was the site, with all the modern campers. And I kept getting sand in my shoes, which was somewhere between annoying and painful. For some reason it never occurred to me to pack any closed-toeo shoes.
In other news, I'd been worrying about something I expected to be a problem for a few weeks, but had been so focused on the scroll I hadn't had a chance to actually check it out. Today I did, and I think it's less of a problem than I had feared. See, the pavilion we bought has slant walls so that the footprint is bigger than the roof. The footprint is, in fact, big enough for two people, one of them a fighter with all that fighting gear. Since there's now only one of me, and I don't carry the fighting gear around, it's way more than I need. ANYway, I figured I'd just "take in" the gussets on the corners and voila! A straight-wall tent! Then something got me thinking.... hmm, the hypoteneuse of a right-triangle (read, slant wall) is longer than the vertical side (read, pole height.) Crap. Well, I thought, even if I have to buy new poles it'll be cheaper than buying two spaces. But I needed to know how long the poles should be. So I did the math.... 6' high, 2' angle.... etc, etc. It seemed that I was going to need the poles to be about 4" longer than they are. Several people suggested that there was surely a way to gain the extra 4" without having to buy new poles. For weeks, I mulled this, trying to think of ways to achieve this end. Today I finally pulled out the wall and measured the height, and compared it to the height of the poles. WTF? The poles are 6', and the walls are 5'8". Okay, I officially Don't Get It. How come the walls are shorter than the poles, especially with the whole hypoteneuse thing? But then I noticed something else. The gussets only add 1' at each corner, not 2'. Huh? All these years we've been saying the footprint was 16' x 16', and here it has been 14' x 14' all along. And when I did the math on THAT, it only made a 1" difference in the theoretical pole height, which I figure will be no problem. Especially since the walls are shorter than the poles anyway. Which I still don't understand, BTW. The good news out of all that is that the tent pole problem has now left the building and I can get on with sewing-- taking out gussets, making tunics and bog dresses galore. (Yeah, right.) Oh, and I'm not cutting out the extra fabric from the pavilion, just sewing it. It won't be all pretty inside, but what the hey.
In other matters of cosmic importance, I think I need classes in how to eat a tossed salad without looking like an idiot. Or is that possible? I admit, I don't recall seeing elegant salad eaters even in movies, but even in the real-people world, no one else looks as goofy as I feel. First off, the lettuce is always in big pieces- bigger than will gracefully fit into my mouth. Then you have to spear some stuff (lettuce, tomatoes) while piling other stuff on top of your fork (carrots, croutons) so as far as I can tell, it's not really possible to get a variety of things in one bite. Boring. Or should I just try for excitement elsewhere and let the salad-eating experience be boring as it need be? There, I knew that'd give you something to lay awake nights worrying about. Heh.
