alaron

A week and 2 days till the wedding. I am very excited, and looking forward to seeing family. The dress is done (which is why I can be excited and not stressed) and preatty much everything else is ready to go. No word yet on the date for the East coast reception...but no worries east coast folks, we ave not forgotten you, and your time to party will come....just sometime in the spring! So West coast plans are tiny ceremony in the morning at a B&B, friend is officiating, Kathy is playing Chello, and Eric's nephew are playing guitar and reading a poem. Then breakfast followed by formal photos. A short breather break and then the West coast reception at a local technical college (with a culinary school) Mostly it looks to be super fun, although possibly also a fairly long day. No fear, pictures will follow, after the 6th, which is when this all goes down.
It is not totally necessary as all events have indoor venues, but a few crossed fingers for the weather gods would not hurt :)

Just a brief up date. For those that missed it, my Dad's plane crashed on takeoff in Wanatchee last wednesday. His passenger will be in a backbrace for the next month or so. He broke his back, and currently does not have sensation or motor control below the waist. Eric and I are back in Seattle. Dad is being transfered to Harborview tomorrow, and Mom is with him in Wanatchee until then. Once there he will be in an intensive rehab program to try to regain whatever he can in his legs, and to learn how to function with whatever is left. It is going to be an up hill slog, but we are all grateful for the many things he can still do. Thanks to all who have sent their love and support. We will let you know if there are things that you can help with.
In the Meantime, Eric's family is coming into town this week, and we are both looking forward to their visit.

On Wednesday my dad's 2 seater aircoup crashed on take off outside of Lake Wanatchee. Both he and his passenger survived the crash. She will be sore for a few months. He fractured a vertebra at T12. The surgery to repair the bone went well, and we are waiting to see how much damage there was to the spinal cord. Mentally he is OK.
Our family is together, and we have been visiting him frequently. He will be transfered to Harborview on Monday for Rehab. Thank you in advance for all of your love and support. If there is anything you can help me with I will let you know. I am grateful that I have all of you to help me with this. I will give you up dates as I can.

Weekend the first of moving, almost complete. Yup, Eric and I are moving in together to a cute little house in Beacon Hill with an awesome porch. The process of moving is likely to take us about 3 months, cause Eric doesn't have to be out till July 1, so we are slowly moving his stuff, and my sister is subleting my current place and using a bunch of my stuff till August some time. So, this weekend was only the begining, but the we are going to be living there in the interum, the house is super cute and you will all have to plan to come for a house warming, or at least come by for dinner to see it, but it might be after August when we get everything moved in. I can try to post pictures, but it will probably take a while. The first night of sleeping in a new house is always a little weird, and I am not feeling quite up to snuff this morning. Oh well, off to do a little work, and then more packing at the old house.

Oh my gosh, a post from me....wow...dont' fall over in shock now. Anyway, I am sure amny of you know what I have been up to, but the basics are, I have been crazy busy with a new boyfriend, some bardic entries and the usual work stuff. The bardic entries are now, at least behind me. I had an awesome time at Kingdom Bardic this weekend. It did, in fact, involve wining the comeptition, but really the best parts of the weekend were seeing the quality of all of the entrants, and getting to geek with other people about bardy and A&Sy stuff. I have to admit, I remember little of it aside from the performances (in my defense there were 4 on saturday and I was more or less totoally wiped after them). Then Sunday it was awesome to get to see what everyone else was doing to. I am happy I won, but I would not have been sad to loose to any of the peformances on sunday, everyone did a great job. Now i am back home, I just gave a lab meeting on my research, andI have officially given myself permission to start "catching fire" a YA book that I have been putting off for the last two months, cause I didn't have the time to be reading. I am super excited about it!!

Thanksgiving - nice and quiet, dinner with friends on Thurs, and Fri, tons of time with my sister. A weekend of more friends, and just a touch of lab to round it out. Not quite as much stare at the wall time as I could have wished, but generally good

Monday - Quiet day in lab, got a fair amount done, but was not too busy

Monday night - went for grandma dinner and found her in bed... turns out she had fallen that morning and couldn't walk. An ambulence and serveral hospital hours later, she has broken her other hip. Get her settled, at 1am realize I am not sure if they have my phone number and call the hospital...not a lot of sleep occurs before or after.

Tuesday - Aunt calls at 7, hospital calls at 7:30. Aurana has the early shift till 10am, then I am there from 10:30 to 7pm when they take her in for surgery. Reading out-loud to her from about 12-6 cause it is how she rests best during the day. Aurana and I go out ot dinner. Surgery goes well, and she is back to her room by 10:30pm. We head home

Wednesday - Go visit her in the morning from 9:30 to 11am, then go to the airport to pick up my parents who are coming back from Turkey. Get to tell them the news. Head to hospital for breif visit. Then take them home. Now I am just putzing around lab before going home myself for a nice hot bath and an early bed time.

Nothing like 24 solid hours of sleep to cure what ails you. Caled in sick yesterday and then slept till about 3:30. Got up, had brunch (or whatever you call it at that hour) and watched movies for the rest of the day (Memento is a very weird movie, and should probably not be watched when in a state of slightly altered conciousness) As a result, today I have sexy husky post plague voice, and less sexy continuing post-plague cough, but I am generally feeling tremendously better. Hopefully this continues :)

Stupid flu, preaty much all of rachel's lab is sick. I was doing ok then I woke up friday with a sore throat...this is not slow me down and I did everythign I was planning to do on friday including go to contra dancing,which was tons of funa nd lots of exercise and I am hoping I did not give everyone I met there the flu, cause by the time I got home from that I was wiped...but I went to bed adn woke up feeling tons better on sat, so I got up and finshed making soup and brought some over for Rachel, and then went to lab for a hour or so and then went to go to the Day of Dance. On the drive up I started to feel a little tired, but was OK till I walked into the event and there were all these people there, and suddenly I just could not imagine putting on my garb and dancing or socializing or really doing anything but sitting in a chair. So after watching a dance or two I went home and went to bed. Then Sunday I got up and helped my sister move from 9 am - 11am, and again went home to bed. Today I came in about 10, but I think I am going home at this point, cause I am not really functional anymore. OH well, hopefully I will be better tomorrow.

Trip out East was good. It was awesome ot see everyone, and having fewer people to visit at Yale ment longer visits with Rennie friends (yeah). I miss all of you guys.
Now it is back to the grind. Work is quiet, but going well. The SCA is slowing down for the winter, so I acctually having some weekends free for a bit. Not that they will stay that way, but for now I am enjoying it.
I debated going to the fight seminar this Sat, but unfortunatly I need to make up a class from 10:30-12:00 on Sat, which means I would miss most of the seminar, and I was kind of looking forward to having some of the rest of the day. I also need to spend some time at work, so I think it is not in the cards. Perhaps the next one will be possible.
Acctually it is kind of funny,I just automatically set up work for this weekend, and for the first time in a while I didn't resent it, I just have stuff to do and tomorrow is a good day to get it done. I am kind of excited about that. :)

OK so quick update....Let's see it has been a super hectic three weeks or so.

1) I have been working on a paper to be published for work. I was hoping to get it submitted in July, well that didn't quite happen and it has sort of been bopping around since then, and I finally got it submitted last thursday YEAH!!! Now all we have to do it wait and see how the reviews look when it come back.

In the meantime, one of the reasons it would have been good to have it done before say August was that my Sept schedule involved

2) A 20min talk in front of my dept.
3) Singing with M&A at Yom Kipur services
4) Organizing the Madrone Baronial Bardic Competition
5) Being suckered into competing in said competition (yes organizing and competing simultaniously, not my best formulated plan)
6) Giving a lab meeting on what I am doing next.

Anyway, it has been a crazy few weeks, but i am happy to report that all 6 of the above are not only complete, but complete with smily faces :)

So, to celebrate I 1) Went to archery fest this weekend (see below) and 2) am taking a trip East leaving on friday and comeing back next wednesday. Now that I have enough time and brain power to think about it I am really excited.

But first Archery Fest...This is an awesome event. On the way over i was contemplating this event over the years and it has always been a great one for me. This was my first event when I moved back here after College (10 years ago?? perhaps 11) It was then that I first met Andras and the (at that time Aquaterra) crowd. In the years since i have started camping it with the Wyewood crowd, but it was also the event where I first camped with Gary 2 years ago, and acctually that first time I went was really the first time I did archery in the SCA.

Enough history...sufice it to say it is an ALL ARCHERY ALL THE TIME event, nothing else goes on and it is as much Archery as your fingers, sholders, knees (walking to get arrows) etc... can take.

So I drove over friday night,got in in time for dinner and some yummy hot choclate, and slept in Dafidd and Wolfwyn's trailer (thank goodness cause it got down ot 19 degrees on Sat night)
Sunday morning the York started scoring at 9am, and practice started at 8:30. We had probably 25 people on the line. It was awesome, and thanks to some yelling on my part it went fairly quikly. We even had Racheal (fiona- and i lerned her SCA name is) who is 10, 11?? not sure, shooting, and with a little coaching she even scored at the 80 Yrd range!!! Then right after the York we had court, and went into Light your Dead, I was out in the ifrts round so instead I went and shot the walkign range and the bracer shoots,and then did a litte wand shooting...about that time my knees started to put me on notice that I was about done, as did my sholders and fingers....but then I looked over and Andras and Co were practiceing for the Clout....well the clout is my FAVORITE, and suddenly I had a lot more energy.

So the clout, there are two clout ranges 185yrs for >30# bows and 145 yrds for <30# bows. So for a number of years I shot a 30# bow and happily shot the "women's clout (see small note below" Then two years ago I got a 35# bow...only I tried everything and i could not get my arrows to go more then about 160 yrds, and so it was agreed that given my stature it was resonable that I should continue to shoot on the "woman's" range, but i have to admit I have never been happy with it... I refuse to let my hieght be a crutch and I HATE speacial dispensation, so every year I have tried again to reach the longer range, and never gotten more then I did the first time. So this year Andras looks over and says - you know if you cut those fletchings down I bet you could get a few more yards - that was all it took and I had the sissors out and was hacking the fletchings off (OK so they were my previous set of arrrows, not the newest preaty ones). To his credit he did not even flintch too much about the butchering job I was doing. So, I shot them and got to about 170, so still quite short, but it made a difference, well I got all excited, and after chatting about it over dinner Andras agreed to take the arrows to his hotel room and put 35 grain tips on them and trim the flethcings down a little more (I think he really was just horribly pained by the hack job I had done).
SO, the next morning he brought them and not only did I shoot the "big boy" clout, I scored with 2-4 arrows every time. I couldn't stop grinning all day :) Really, words fail me at how much this ment to me, most people were bemused at how excited I was, but a few peopel got it...I can't even describe it.

- Side note: Language is a difficult and powerful thing, I think I mgiht have come up with the "big boy clout" designation, and i kind of like it, but unforutnatly that makes the other clout the "woman's clout" or as we called it this year the "preaty preaty princess clout" which i think it really unfair, cause, trust me, if your bow is less then 30# you can be Aethlred and still have trouble getting anywhere near the "big boy" but it has kind of stuck, and despite some brain racking I could not figure out a new designation I liked better, possibly because, deep down, this represents my own predudices about this shoot (see note about excitement above)

- The other thing, I know I am having a good time shooting archery and pushing my skills when I am the only woman on a range....it happened two years ago at a York range, and this weekend ae had about 1/3rd of the archers on that range were women, then a few years back I don't think I was the only woman, but i was one of only a few on the 145 yrd clout, and this year we had probably ten people shoot it wht over half being female. This year I was the only woman to shoot the big boy, so, women archer friends with <35# bows, you can do this!! Next year, come join me, and give the guys a run for thier money :)

Anyway, after clout we shot a BOX tourney (double round robin with 6 of us total) It took me almostthe entire first round to get warmed up and into it, but the second round rocked and I had a bunch of really good fights. By the end of that I was preatty much pooped and everyone was breaking down, so I helped out a little, went to court and then went home. Tired, but triumphant.
Mnay thanks to the many poeple who helped put on this event and a special thanks to Andras for helping to modify my arrows to make the clout possible. And- Andras- if you have a source for those tips, I would like to get some so that we can get even more people out there next year.

That is all for this huge post, East coasters, look for a post about shceduling coming soon.