From the Frontlines: Ursulmas

This last weekend was Ursulmas XXIX, which I helped run.

It was insane, and it was a lot of fun.

Friday was pretty much all about setup (I spent the whole day in mundane clothes), which opened by finding out the site had put down the dirt wrong (off by 10 feet on one side, which we had them fix). This caused a noticable slide in our schedule, which somewhat upset the merchants. On the plus side once the dirt was where we had said we wanted it, layout and setup went fairly smoothly. My layout worked! I did four hours at gate during which I signed in all of 18 people. I was on-site from about 9AM to 7PM.

Saturday started early (I was on site by 7:30AM). I did a shift at the games table (during which I learned to play 7, 9, and 12-Man Morris), did a very small amount of busking (Bards were encouraged to compete for plastic gold coins given to the attendees), collected and counted the day's busking results, helped out at court for the first time (staging awards to be handed out), and participated in a three-hour Bardic circle which included combative poetry (two bards are given a topic, and must improvise a poetic (no ryhme or meter required) piece upon the topic). Technically I didn't leave site until Sunday morning.

Sunday started only a hair later than Saturday, and I did a shift as a greeter/door warden. I once more got in a tiny amount of busking, including doing a piece at the request of one of the merchants. :-) I then collected and counted more busking coins, and announced the winner (Master Niall Dolphin) in closing court. I was challenged to (and won) a game of chess. Teardown was the usual mix of scramble and wait. I left site around 7:30PM, leaving just a few of the staff still there (my personnal estimate is that they had less than half an hour to go).

Four people got AoAs (Awards of Arms) during the courts I saw, and I knew all four of them! I don't know any of their mundane names. I think this is a sign that I'm really starting to get integrated into the SCA. I recieved a glass mug as a thank-you from the Autocrat for helping with the event, 16 coins for busking (the winner got 132+) and a kiss on the cheek from Baroness Rosamund for singing for her. :-)