From the Frontlines: Banner War

This weekend was Banner War.

It. Rocked.

I'd planned to arrive friday evening, but had to stay 2 hours late at work. So I went up Saturday morning instead. After waking up far earlier than I prefer on a weekend, I packed up the car and arrived to find that the mundane site gate wasn't open yet (Google's directions said the trip would take about twice as long as it did).

Finally on site, I checked in with the household that had recruited me (in advance!) - Methelstede - and pitched camp. I processed into court with the house. Only three houses were competing this year: Methelstede, Ravenstream, and the inevitable Red Plague. Redstone and Gremlin were both fighting for Methelstede, so the odds were rather heavy against Ravenstream and horrifyingly bad against Red Plague (though that never seems to bother them).

Rapier followed court, with three battles. A round robin (point to Ravenstream, not surprising since they outnumbered us 3 to 1 and had all the white scarves and cadets in attendance), a duel (rubber band guns at eight paces, finished with swords if necessary) which we managed to win on kills, and a "tavern brawl." The latter deserves some attention - we started by entering the tavern, which included a table and several empty 2-liter plastic bottles. These were ruled to be glass, and could be used as bludgeons or broken to be used to stab. After some warm-up trash talking lay on was called and much violence ensued. Now outnumbered only 7:3, we scored one point for best use of terrain, but failed to defeat Ravenstream. Final rapier war points were 4:3 Ravenstream:Methelstede - not bad for how badly outnumbered we were! The rubber band guns used in the duel were my own brand-new pair of matched pistols.

I spent a little time on the thrown weapons range learning a bizarre but functional method for throwning spears.

Then came Court, where to my shock I was called up and entered into the Order of the Silver Dolphin! This is the bottom level Baronial service award; specific mention was made of my helping out with Ursulmas. The Silver Dolphin comes with a scroll and my first SCA medallion.

Then came Bardic. Bardic was amazing, with six truly impressive entrants (including myself). There was a couple from the Kingdom of Trimaris who'd just moved here, one of whom is a Bardic Laurel. There was another couple which is the Baronial Bardic Champion and the Baronial Herald (won Judge's Choice for the Heraldry-themed catagory). There was a knight, who did a belly dance imitation as part of one of his entries and was the overall winner (well deserved, though I don't envy the judges trying to pick a winner from that field!). Two pieces were required, one on the theme of war and one on the theme of heraldry. I opened the competition with a non-judged piece that the Baroness had ordered me to create, about my death in the Sable Rose tourney at Midhaven's Championship.

(TTTO "Danny Boy"), words by Roger Gridley:
Oh Roger boy, the Sable Rose is calling,
To fight with skill, and die with artistry.
And though you'll fight inspired by your fair lady;
You'll mostly die, so better make it good.
Ten times upon the field of honor you will stand,
Five times you'll win, defeating your proud foe,
Five times you'll die, upon their swords or daggers,
Oh Roger boy, oh Roger boy, how will you die?
(Spoken)
A touch! A touch! I do confess it!
'Tis not as broad as the heart of a Pelican,
Nor as deep as the documentation of a Laurel,
Nor yet as fierce as the blow from a belted Knight,
But 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
(Fall over dead).

My competition pieces were my own Ballad of King Rorik, and a filk about making a heraldic submission in the SCA to the tune of Officer Krumpke (from West Side Story). The Ballad of King Rorik got Judge's Choice for best war-themed entry. The war point went to Methelstede.

The Bardic competition and inevitable follow-up bardic circle lasted three hours.

Sunday morning I awoke and entered into the dance contest, doing a war brawl (yes, that's not how it is spelled, but it is how it is pronounced) and an english country dance (along with many others from all three competing households). War point to Methelstede. I danced with only short breaks for several hours.

Methelsted won the War by a noteworthy margin, although Ravenstream gave quite a fight, splitting the points in mang catagories, and Red Plague almost certainly got the highest points-to-people ratio. From a personal stand point although I didn't score any points directly for Methelstede, at least one point went to them in every catagory I competed in. :-)

Before closing court I helped do the Town Cry announcing court - which I think may be the first time I've done a real town cry.

One other minor thing of note. The parking at Banner War is a ways from the event site itself. On my way to park after pitching camp I picked up someone who was hiking up to get to his car. Later when I was heading up to drop my fencing gear at my car I was offered (and accepted) a ride from a different person. Both of them were complete strangers to me. Karma can be a good thing.

I was completely wiped out and my legs are still aching this morning, but between my Dolphin, bardic, fencing, and everything else this was a wonderful event for me.

SuperBot!

Faster than a speeding Mars Rover, more powerful than a Roomba, able to leap chain-link fences in a single bound, its...

Precision Urban Hopper!!

http://sliceofmit.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/explosive-pogo-stick-robot-leaps-over-25-foot-obstacles/

OK, so the name isn't very exciting.

Dog Show

Saturday I went to a dog show for the first time.

Amusement: it was held in a venue that had a sign at the main gate clearly noting "No dogs allowed (except service animals)."

There is a really amazing variety of dogs in the world. Tiny little puppies you can pick up with one hand, huge things that look more like a small horse, fluffy, short-haired, smart looking, dumb looking...

I spent some quality time with a pair of american eskimo dogs named Cora and Gandalf. I got a very good vibe about the eski breed.

A somewhat desparate keeshound owner roped me in to show one of her dogs - she had two and the handler she'd planned to have show the other one was delayed. So at my first dog show with no clue what I was doing I led the dog around the ring. Luckily the judges are looking at the dog not the handler - the dog got a ribbon. :-)

I am planning to get a dog before the end of the year. Mostly for companionship, and partly as a watchdog (not a guard dog - I just want an alarm system).

Things just keep getting better!

I just got my first-ever traffic ticket - expired tabs on my license plate. I honestly didn't know they were expired (yes, I know it is my responsibility to know), and thought the state sent a reminder when they were getting close (they certainly did last time).

So instead of going out to lunch today with a friend, I'm going to the local emissions testing station.

Instead of relaxing this weekend and looking forward to a dog show tomorrow, I get to write a check for $124.

Dream - NOT my usual type

I've spent a lot of time wondering if I should post this at all, but somehow I feel compelled to.

WARNING: this is probably about a hard PG-13 rating at least and includes descriptions of disturbing events of a sexual nature. It was NOT a happy dream.

I had a dream the night before last. I was an employee (male) in a brothel. About a dozen of us were in a room with two rows of beds - I was on a bed in one corner. Clients arrived, and the one who came to me was highly upset to find that I was a guy (I think everyone else in the room was a female and that's what he had been expecting). A bouncer came in when the guy started yelling and the client grabbed him - I persuaded the client to let him go, that he could have first pick of the girls next round.

The girl next to me - to my right - was new, and very nervous. She seemed reluctant and scared, but willing or at least accepting; I'm not sure why. Her client was also a little unsure - I got the impression that he hadn't done this before (paid for sex at least, had sex at all...?). She undressed on the bed, clearly trying to follow some sort of guidelines on how to behave, but not sure about the details. Part way through I held her hand (the beds were very close together), which seemed to help her get through it, though it made her undressing even more awkward. I felt very sorry for her, and wished I could do more. The client, ah, lay down with her (the dream was somewhat graphic), and she kept holding my hand; I could feel her squeezing it. She was in some pain, but I could tell that holding my hand made it a little easier for her. After a while of this the clients' time was up, and they left. I asked her something - I can't remember the exact question now, but I was gently asking her if she was OK, if it would help her to talk to me about it. I felt that she had been raped, even though she hadn't objected.

The scene shifted - I was still a brothel employee (same place), but now I was on duty greeting clients and matching them up with employees. It seems less important that I describe this part in detail. Suffice to say that it seemed I was a junior and relatively powerless employee trying to do the best I could do avoid trouble and make life a little better for the other employees. They, in turn, liked and appreciated me, despite being somewhat under my orders and in a much worse situation than I was. The place I was in (the name was repeated in the dream, but I can't remember it now) was considered a high quality brothel, and often catered to very rich and/or powerful clients, one of whom brought several bodyguards with him and wasn't above threatening my life.

Well, that's what I feel I needed to say. I don't know why I felt so strongly compelled to write about this and publish it - this is NOT the sort of thing I'd consider putting up on any blog in normal circumstances.

In most of my dreams I'm somewhat powerless - unable to speak, walk, etc. Most of the time I don't remember them in any detail - nothing close to the detail I wrote here, which in turn is only the outline of what I remembered of this dream. I've had several 'erotic' dreams in the past, but none of them were ANYTHING like this.

To anyone who's made it this far, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts, no matter what they may be.

Big Headlines Today!

The Good:

1st Rocky extrasolar planet discovered!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32876479/ns/technology_and_science-space/

OK, perhaps "lava" or "molten" might be better than "rocky", but the thing is solid. At 3,600 degrees F, but solid (WAY too close to its star).

The Bad:

PBHO's administration supports extending several provisions of the "Patriot Act".

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/15/obama-supports-extending-provisions-patriot-act/?test=latestnews

So much for "change".

1,000 Days

Today is my 1,000th day of paid work for Boeing. That includes 43 days when I came in on a weekend or holiday to work.

I have also racked up 121 days of paid time off: 49 holidays, 39 days of vacation, and 33 days of sick leave.

I have worked 1,352 hours of overtime - noticably more than my 968 hours of paid time off.

In other work-related news, for a few years now I've kept a dish of mint patties (Pearson's) at my desk for general consumption. I buy the big boxes of them at Costco as my personnal contribution to keeping everyone's breath nice and minty. This morning I came in to find that someone had left one of these boxes on my desk - I'm guessing as a token of appreciation. Well, I appreciate it, and the mints will keep coming. :-)

Blah

I hate being one of the blind men trying to describe the elephant. Especially when I konw what the elephant actually looks like.

Where were you?

Where were you, eight years ago, when you heard about the 9/11 attacks?

I was at Carnegie Mellon. I checked my morning news feeds and saw one of the early notices of the 1st plane crashing into the WTC. I forwarded it to several of the campus electronic bboards (several people later told me that message was the first word they had of the attacks). I was watching the news in the Old Student Center when the second tower fell. I spent much of the day in Roselawn 6 with APhiO brothers watching the news - I remember the heart-stopping moment when we heard a plane overhead, and everyone in Roselawn slowly went outside to stare up at the sky.

For my parent's generation, it was the Kennedy Assasination; everyone remembers where they were when they first heard the President had been shot. For ours, it is 9/11.

Where were you?

Waldo & Magic Inc?

Robert Heinlein wrote a novella many years ago on the premis that wireless electrical power had become commonplace. Among other things there turned out to be problematic health effects from the amount of energy being accidently absorbed by the human body.

I hope some of the people testing this:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/02/wireless.electricity/index.html

are up on their Heinlein. High levels of RF energy - of just about any radiation, in fact - are very bad for the human body. Magnetic fields can be a problem too, though I expect most of the problems there would be due to modern personal electronics being minimally shielded. Trying to power your brand-new wireless powered phone and... ZZT! You just killed your old-school battery powered PDA.

One week

It has been a week, and it still hurts. I still catch myself looking down on walking into a room at home to make sure I'm not about to step on the cat. I still expect him to jump up on the bed at night.

I was at college when my father died - although the disruption to my life was great, my day-to-day existance after the funeral was much as it had been before I got the news. This time the disruption is smaller, but far closer to home.