We brought Garbo over to Gaston & Rosalind’s to play with Bogart & Fozzy. Once the dogs got exhausted, we decided to go to a movie. Gaston recommended 9 and we watched the trailer:
 and agreed it sounded interesting. We looked and it was playing at the dollar theater. We go, get drinks and popcorn, watch the coming attractions, and then the movie starts. And what we see is this:
Not a movie I even heard of, but one I am very glad I saw. I highly recommend it. Oh, and be Italian!
Some more pics added recently…
New Orleans trip this past October.
This past Halloween.
Garbo in her Halloween costume.
Garbo on my lap.
Isbetta will love this…
There is a Sheetz just off I-40 in Mebane (exit 154) that we stop at when we are headed west. Its about 35 minutes from the house, gas is about 10 cents per gallon cheaper then by the house, and and its a good place to use the bathroom, get a drink or breakfast, etc. We also usually stop there on our way home as well, as its a good place to gas up and not leave the car on empty when we pull into the drive way. This past weekend, we did enough traveling that, though our My Sheetz Card, we got two free drinks and discount gas twice.
A’s mom was in for a visit, and we took her to War of the Wings. This was her first SCA event and A wanted to make her a dress, so he made her a gorgeous Italian Ren. Unfortunately, the camera batteries were dead so I didn’t get a picture. *sigh* (Oddly just as I typed that I got a low battery warning on my laptop… weird timing.)
A & I agree that this was the best WoW we have been to. It seemed to us to have run smoother then previous years. I still think Sacred Stone is suffering from a lack of experienced autocrats, especially for the big events, but they are just breaking their stride on running a really large event.
Roan rode with us. Given what happened last year, this is a bit brave of her. (OK, so neither she not I blogged about last year… odd… so here is the story…) Last year, Roan had just moved to the area, and WoW was her first event in kingdom. She had been coming to K’Berg meetings for a while and was just getting to know the Kappellenberg crowd, but had not really met many people from the barony. After the three hour marathon court from hell, we headed to dinner. Girard & Guenievre had riden with Lukas and I, and I believe Witsric & Sunneva were in the caravan as well. Roan was in a car by herself and only had Guenievre’s cell number. I missed the turn off to head to I-40 and the GPS started us on an alternate route. That turned into a neighborhood. That turned into some country roads. That turned into a very narrow dirt road. That ended at an abandoned shell of a farm house. Roan says she was thinking ‘they seem like nice people – I dont think they lured me out here to kill me.’ Anyway, we turned around and headed back the way we came and finally made it to I-40. Fortunately, this year did not include such an adventure.
So, on Saturday we hit the Mebane Sheetz twice – once going to WoW and once on the way home. (You remember Sheetz, right? This is, after all, a post about Sheetz…)
Our original plan had been to stop for dinner on the way home, but thanks to Marion we were stuffed with roast beef and pork (ok, every one but I was stuffed with the pork…) so instead we stopped at a Chilis for desert. We were going to stop at Red Robin, but we didn’t find it until after we left Chilis as we had given up trying to find it before due to signage fail, if you consider a lack of signs to be fail. I do.
On Sunday, we headed to Ikea. They don’t have any in Kansas City (the closest one is in Dallas…) so A’s mom had never been to one and really wanted to go. So, we took the Santa Fe as Roan again ride along and wanted to get a book case. We again hit Sheetz both coming and going. And, of course, we spent more at Sheetz then we planned on. The only thing big we bought this time were two Idbyn bar stools (which are not on their web site…) We did buy some kitchen towels, new cutting boards, and other small stuff. Its a good thing there is not an Ikea in Raleigh or we would be much poorer.
Garbo, in the mean time, has a great weekend, thanks to Letia and especially Rohesia she got to spend both Saturday and Sunday wrestling with Jeffrey. She slept all of Monday.
I was going to post something similar to what I posted on the one year anniversary… that I was not going to let the terrorists win and that i was going to remember the other things about the day. But you can read that here.
Instead… this morning on the ride in, at 8:46am, NPR aired this story. Go read it, or better yet, listen to the audio. It stopped my train of thought in its tracks. I knew I needed to share this.
True heroes.
Received word that a friend from An Tir passed. No one people around here would have known. Some might remember her husband, though. Very sudden and has taken me off guard.
Lets see… on Saturday, A & I had the day off together, which NEVER happens. We slept in a little, too Garbo for a nice long walk, cleaned out the fridge including washing it down inside, stopped by The G’s to try out their Wii Fit, then ran a bunch of errands, which included buying a Wii Fit. For the record, this may be the first video game console I have owned since the Atari 2600. (Consider yourself either old or geeky if you didn’t need to click the link to know what I was talking about.) That evening we engaged in the next step of the Cock Ale.
A few notes on the cock ale …First, for those who don’t do period brewing, or even any brewing, the cock ale recipe is kind of legendary. Everyone talks about it in a chiding sort of way, but I dont know anyone who has actually done it – few internet accounts show that people dont read as they have used raw chicken. Fools.
Secondly, if you take out the chicken the recipe sounds really good – ale with raisins, dates, nutmeg, mace, and sherry. Yum. This leads to my plan. I have done a very very basic ale for the base – I didn’t even add hops, but have used oak chips for my bittering agent, which is a first for me. I have siphoned off maybe a half gallon of that for comparative purposes. Then I have about a gallon with cock in it – well its a gallon jug with the adjunct ingredients and topped with the ale. The remainder is the recipe without the cock as that actually sounds quite drinkable.
Now the dimea… I really wanted to have it for Rapier Academy but couldn’t get my act together to get it done. Now my choice is to either bring it to Golden Rose and offer it up as a side highlight, or save it for Pennsic and bring it to the A&S display in the barn (do they let you display alcohol? I dont even know…). I would really like to make it more of an A&S thing then a curiosity thing, but it means either I only brew one beer for the baronial parties as I only have two kegs – and I despise bottling. Plus I have to store and transport it and space going to Pennsic is always at a premium.
Anyway, back to the weekend… Saturday night we went to the Bavarian Brathaus in Cary. A had heard ads for them on the radio, and we quickly convined a small crowd to join us (The Gs, Wystric & Sunnevia, and Duncan). Awesome food, awesome waiter, and good times. Afterwards we went home and played with the Wii for a little while.
Sunday… A worked, and I ran errands, took Garbo to the dog park, did laundry, and cleaned the house. Thank heavens for Brigida. Without her the house would not have been half as clean for the party. That evening, we got a call from Maddellena begging us to come help her eat a turke. She had fortuitous timing as we both realiezed we were hungry and without a dinner plan. We finished what we were in the middle of, grabbed showers and headed over for a very fun evening. Then back home, a few more tasks, and then more Wii.
Monday, A did a few last minute things around the house, and headed off to work. I took Garbo for a long walk, and looking at the weather and forecast called the Gs asking them to bring their pavillion over. I got back home and realized that there was nothing more to be done I watched a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory as I did random bits that came to me.
At just before three the sky opened up and I became convinced that we would not have anyone for the party. Silly me. By my count we had 43 people come by. And I am sure I missed one or two in the counting. That makes this the biggest cookout we have done so far. Thanks to everyone who came, who helped out, and who helped clean up. And special thanks to Dreya for making the beds look like someone actually tends to them.
All told a really good weekend.
In case you have not seen Susan Boyle’s performance, it is here.
The Guardian has a very good article discussing the reactions to her:
Is Susan Boyle ugly? Or are we? On Saturday night she stood on the stage in Britain’s Got Talent; small and rather chubby, with a squashed face, unruly teeth and unkempt hair. She wore a gold lace dress, which made her look like a piece of pork sitting on a doily. Interviewed by Ant and Dec beforehand, she told them that she is unemployed, single, lives with a cat called Pebbles and has never been kissed. Susan then walked out to chatter, giggling, and a long and unpleasant wolf whistle.
Why are we so shocked when “ugly” women can do things, rather than sitting at home weeping and wishing they were somebody else? Men are allowed to be ugly and talented. Alan Sugar looks like a burst bag of flour. Gordon Ramsay has a dried-up riverbed for a face. Justin Lee Collins looks like Cousin It from The Addams Family. Graham Norton is a baboon in mascara. I could go on. But a woman has to have the bright, empty beauty of a toy – or get off the screen. We don’t want to look at you. Except on the news, where you can weep because some awful personal tragedy has befallen you.
Simon Cowell, now buffed to the sheen of an ornamental pebble, asked this strange creature, this alien, how old she was. “I’m nearly 47,” she said. Simon rolled his eyes until they threatened to roll out of his head, down the aisle and out into street. “But that’s only one side of me,” Susan added, and wiggled her hips. The camera cut to the other male judge, Piers Morgan, who winced. Didn’t Susan know she was not supposed to be sexual? The audience’s reaction was equally disgusting. They giggled with embarrassment, and when Susan said she wanted to be a professional singer, the camera spun to a young girl, who seemed to be at least half mascara.
She gave an “As if!” squeak and smirked. Amanda Holden, the female judge, a woman with improbably raised eyebrows and snail trails of Botox over her perfectly smooth face, chose neutrality. And then Susan sang. She stood with her feet apart, like a Scottish Edith Piaf, and very slowly began to sing Les Miserables’ I Dreamed A Dream. It was wonderful.
The judges were astonished. They gasped, they gaped, they clapped. They looked almost ashamed. I was briefly worried that Simon might stab himself with a pencil, and mutter, “Et tu, Piers, for we have wronged Susan in thinking that because she is a munter, she is entirely useless.” How could they have misjudged her, they gesticulated. But how could they not? No makeup? Bad teeth? Funny hair? Is she insane, this sad little Scottish spinster, beloved only of Pebbles the Cat?
When Susan had finished singing, and Piers had finished gasping, he said this. It was a comment of incredible spite. “When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said, ‘I want to be like Elaine Paige’, everyone was laughing at you. No one is laughing now.” And it was over to Amanda Holden, a woman most notable for playing a psychotic hairdresser in the Manchester hair-extensions saga Cutting It. “I am so thrilled,” said Amanda, “because I know that everybody was against you.” “Everybody was against you,” she said, as if Susan might have been hanged for her presumption. Why? Can’t “ugly” people dream, you flat-packed, hair-ironed, over-plucked monstrous fool?
I know what you will say. You will say that Paul Potts, the fat opera singer with the equally squashed face who won Britain’s Got Talent in 2007, had just as hard a time at his first audition. I looked it up on YouTube. He did not. “I wasn’t expecting that,” said Simon to Paul. “Neither was I,” said Amanda. “You have an incredible voice,” said Piers. And that was it. No laughter, or invitations to paranoia, or mocking wolf-whistles, or smirking, or derision.
We see this all the time in popular culture. Do you ever stare at the TV and wonder where the next generation of Judi Denchs and Juliet Stevensons have gone? Have they fallen down a Rada wormhole? Yes. They’re not there, because they aren’t pretty enough to get airtime. This lust for homogeneity in female beauty means that when someone who doesn’t resemble a diagram in a plastic surgeon’s office steps up to the microphone, people fall about and treat us to despicable sub-John Gielgud gestures of amazement.
Susan will probably win Britain’s Got Talent. She will be the little munter that could sing, served up for the British public every Saturday night. Look! It’s “ugly”! It sings! And I know that we think that this will make us better people. But Susan Boyle will be the freakish exception that makes the rule. By raising this Susan up, we will forgive ourselves for grinding every other Susan into the dust. It will be a very partial and poisoned redemption. Because Britain’s Got Malice. Sing, Susan, sing – to an ugly crowd that doesn’t deserve you.
I have come to a conclusion recently, that has well, depressed me. I have realized that one of the things I hate the most about the SCA is also one of the things I love about the SCA.
I have been saying for a while that we make it impossible for people to serve. Someone steps up to do something, or goes ahead and does something, they get hiot with a ton of questions and second guessing and criticism:
‘You should have used blue.’
‘Thats not obvious…’
‘Did you involve Xingrot? He has experience with that.’
‘Hey, you pissed on my corn flakes….’
etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. To the point where the person quits, or never volunteers to do anything again. I have certainly been both the recipeint and the obstruction, and if you dont think that you have, well, you are lieing to yourself.
You know what I love about the SCA? We want everyone to be included. We want people to feel some ownership and like they can contribute.
So, how do we balance these things? Conventional wisdom is to always start off with a compliment. Reality says that the listener hears everything after the word but.
For example, what you say is “Its fantastic that you used a period recipe, but did you really have to make beer with chicken in it?”
What they hear is “You made beer with chicken? What are you some sort of crack smoking sheba monkey? Thats disgusting!”
What they are thinking is “Fuck off, I didn’t have to make beer and bring it for everyone to drink.” And chances are they wont brew beer to bring to a gathering again.
For beer, substitute an event they autocratted, garb they made, a web site, an officers hand book, etc. etc. etc.
The problem is who ever did the thing is sitting there, proud of their accomplishment, and no matter how hard we try, criticism is going to come across as, well, critical. And that is going to be a blow to the ego.
No answers here, just frustrations.
Not sure if this will come through on LJ… courtesy of Wired’s Tech Layoff Tracker
