Hey, it's about time. Five things make a post.

1. Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of my dear mother's passing. I remember my parents' 25th wedding anniversary -- red roses, silver-colored gifts, firecrackers and Roman candles. There are no such general symbols for a death anniversary. I volunteered to light the chalice during yesterday's Sunday service (on Zoom). It seemed the best way to honor her.

2. Saturday I ventured out to the local town cinema -- first time to a movie theater in almost two years! -- to see the new West Side Story on the wide screen. It was every bit a visual feast as you would expect from the pairing of one of the all-time great director-cinematographer teams, plus the music was exquisite. I have loved this music since I danced to "I Feel Pretty" in my preschool ballet class. No matter what you might think of the plot or the general artificiality of a movie (or staged) musical, you have to admit that the music is some of the most sublime ever written. I'm so sorry this film is now considered a "box-office bomb."

3. I have been spending money like crazy. New eyeglasses (first since the summer of 2013), vet exam and blood/urine tests for Julia (who is now a senior kitty), new muffler and tailpipe for the noisy car. Whew. Hard come, easy go.

4. I am SO. INCREDIBLY. TIRED. of this covid-19 pandemic. None of the organizations to which I belong can meet in person this month because of the omicron surge. Atlantia is "shut down" until January 21; Storvik is taking the entire month of January off. Church is soldiering on with Zoom meetings. Same with Toastmasters. People are fed up with virtual this and online that. My local science writers' group had its second online holiday gala last month and attendance was barely two dozen instead of the usual 150 or so. No wonder people drive like entitled maniacs and treat strangers so poorly when they do manage to leave their hidey-holes. We are all losing social capital.

5. Just now, as I was writing the above, I heard a crash in the condo. The little wooden shelf in the dining room fell off the wall. It's the little wooden shelf I gave Mom for her 75th birthday. Is it a sign??

Over and out....

(Apologies for taking so long to write this up.)

Eventually Baroness Margaret Lad, the Kingdom Chatelaine, came over to Newcomers' Point to relieve me (and cheerfully organize the pile of free garb that people had been pawing through; she does everything cheerfully). That gave me a chance to wander around and greet people and even spend a few moments with Baroness Evelynne in her vigil tent. Clan Cambion, Evelynne's household, was planning a procession into Court for her, but they invited me to join in. Once the procession got to the front of Court, those of us who are not Laurels would simply reverence the Thrones, walk off to one side and go back to our seats. Thus, when the populace was getting ready for afternoon Court, I set up my chair toward the back of the audience so that it would be less obvious that I was getting up to join the lineup for the procession. I ended up sitting next to Master Herveus, who belongs to Clan Cambion, so that I could tell when it was time to leave our seats and line up to follow Evelynne.

As expected, the new Baron and Baroness of Storvik held a court and gave out several baronial awards, and then afternoon Royal Court commenced. Their Majesties gave out a number of grant-level awards, for which it is customary (at least in Atlantia) to call up fellow members of the Order into the Royal Presence to greet their newest member. People who are both Golden Dolphins (service) and Pearls (arts and sciences), like Herveus, had to keep getting up and sitting back down. He joked that it was good exercise.

At some point I started to think, Hey, isn't it almost time for Evelynne's procession? Shouldn't we be lining up? But then I heard the court herald call my name.

My name.

So I stood up and somehow shuffled up to Their Majesties and bowed, probably less deeply than I should have. They told me it would be acceptable if I remained standing instead of kneeling on the padded stools in front of the thrones.

Queen Jane started off by saying something like, "So, you have been baronial herald since 2007," and then I gently corrected Her -- I have not been baronial herald for a few years now, although my actual cutoff date is pretty mushy. So then she started praising me for staying active in heraldry and hospitality. (And I'm thinking, "Huh? I spent a couple of hours at Newcomers' Point, but...") And then the herald commanded members of the Order of the Golden Dolphin.

I bowed to their Majesties again as the populace applauded and various members of the Order approached the thrones. Their Majesties said more nice things about me, asked if there was a medallion, and Dame Emma stepped forward with a shiny Golden Dolphin attached to a lovely necklace of red beads and white pearls. She said it was a legacy medallion in that she had passed it around to many members of the Order before getting it back and giving it to me. She gave me a copy of her statement after she read it.

I was just so overwhelmed. As the crowd cheered and I went to "greet the order," all I could think of was ... Pedro. Pedro, my heraldry teacher, my friend whose wife was so proud of his Golden Dolphin, who should have been a Pelican (the highest-level service award) ... I would have never received this award if he had not taught me so well. I wanted to tell him about it so very much.

My head was spinning so much that I floated back to my chair and didn't join the procession for Evelynne's Laurel ceremony. I enjoyed watching it, though.

* * * * *

Two months later, I am still thankful for the recognition of my service. This past Saturday I wore my Golden Dolphin medallion at an event for the first time (Holiday Faire), and got up into the Royal presence to welcome a new Pod member at afternoon court. It was also the first time I performed in public with the a capella group Laydes Fayre, but that's another story.

And now I need to get back to writing a feature article-for-pay that's due ONE WEEK FROM TODAY. Oy vey.

Over and out.

So much going on despite the pandemic.

TOASTMASTERS: At our last meeting (May 5) it was my turn to lead the Table Topics. Since it was the 60th anniversary of Alan Shepard's historic suborbital flight, I didn't think twice about the theme. I just had to make the questions a bit wordier than "normal" because I wasn't sure how much the members of my audience might know about the Mercury program. Here are my questions:

1. Alan Shepard was born in the small town of Derry, NH. Around the time that he became the first U.S. astronaut in space, some people in Derry wanted to rename the town “Spacetown” to honor Shepard. My question to you is: If you were to change the name of a community where you’ve lived, either now or where you grew up or where you lived sometime in the past, what would you change it to and why?

2. Sometimes Alan Shepard liked to pull off stunts that were not quite allowed, like buzzing the Bay Bridge and Ocean City while stationed at Pax River and hitting two golf balls on the lunar surface. My question to you is: Have you ever done something that you weren’t supposed to do, but you did it anyway and nothing bad happened as a result?

3. NASA carefully managed the public image of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, including Alan Shepard. The astronauts also had an exclusive contract with Life magazine for access to their private lives and home lives, to make them seem like nice, proper All-American heroes. My question is: Should today’s celebrities keep as tight a lid on their private lives as the NASA astronauts did?

4. In the not too distant future, ordinary people might be able to go into space as “space tourists.” Some of these space tourists might be treated to a suborbital ride, something like Alan Shepard’s, that takes people up into space for a few minutes of weightlessness and then splashes down in the ocean. My question is: If money were no object, would you go on a short space trip like that? Why or why not?

CHURCH: I've been recruited to join the board of trustees once again. I served as a trustee back in the 2010-2011 (I think) church year, but that was to fill the last year of an unexpired term after somebody had resigned. Now it looks as if I'm in for a full three-year term. I'm a bit nervous about it, but 22 years after signing the congregational membership book, I really *should* do my part to keep the church running.

SCA: I worked on a linen camicia (Italian underdress) and entered it in the Virtual Highland River Melees competition for Italian undergarments. It wasn't quite finished, but mine was declared one of three winners and I'm getting a small gift in the mail (a goblet cover, I believe). I am also trying to get back into inkle weaving, although my early attempts don't look that polished. I really want to learn Baltic-style weaving, which is more complicated, so I really need to nail the basics before pushing into advanced topics.

HOME LIFE: The boy toy got his second Pfizer shot on May 4th, and after a day of feeling achy all over, he's recovered. To celebrate, we day-tripped to Winterthur on Friday. Lovely place indeed, and the gardens were at Peak Azalea. Before going to the mansion, we had lunch at a place called Johnnie's Dog House and Chicken Shack, which turned out to be right across the (wide and busy) street from the First Unitarian Church of Wilmington. The clouds started to roll in during our trip, but the rain held off until the drive home.

Happy Earth Day Number 51! Honestly, last year's 50th anniversary Earth Day commemoration was shortchanged because the covid-19 pandemic was still so new. Glad to see a bit more awareness of the day this year.

My apologies for not updating for a while. I've made more posts and comments on Facebook lately.

On Tuesday the 20th I got my second Pfizer vaccination at the mass-vax site at Six Flags America. The process seemed to go even faster the second time around (maybe the National Guard shortened the path that takes cars on a grand tour of the parking lot?). After I got home, I took a nap after lunch. By the end of the evening A&S gathering via Zoom, I was feeling a little cranky and headachy and dozed off on the couch in front off the TV. Yesterday my main symptom was a bruise-like pain around the injection site, even though no bruising was visible. Today that arm pain is almost all gone.

Recently there were a couple of major announcements about events scheduled to take place later in 2021. The Worldcon/Discon committee announced that the convention will be held in December at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in DC. (Originally, the Omni Shoreham was supposed to be the "overflow" hotel, secondary to the Marriott Wardman Park one block up the hill, but the Wardman Park closed permanently.) Then the Pennsic War staff announced that Pennsic 49 will be moved from 2021 to 2022 because of the covid plague.

Thoughtful readers may be thinking, "Gee, this is the second year in a row that Pennsic will not be held. That must suck for the people who own the site where Pennsic takes place!" Well, yes, I'm sure it does. That's why Cooper's Lake Campground, our Pennsic hosts, quickly announced a non-SCA "medieval-style" event called Armistice around the same time as Pennsic would have taken place. The idea is to have a medieval-style camping event with merchants and parties but NOTHING sponsored by the SCA. I have no idea how this is supposed to work. Some people seem enthusiastic -- "Yeah! This will be a nice, laid-back event like the Pennsics of old!" Other people are pessimistic -- "Giant superspreader event!" Personally, I would worry that an event without SCA sponsorship would attract certain folks who were kicked out of the SCA for bullying people (or worse) and who would try to take over the event for their own purposes. Or perhaps those rune-loving white supremacists who would have a torchlight parade while screaming their vile slogans

Ugh. Not sure what to do. I'm very much tempted to stay home in July/August and save up my meager funds for War of the Wings in October, which will double as Atlantia's (rescheduled) 40th birthday. Since I was at Atlantia's 30th birthday weekend, it would be nice to go to the 40th as well. Plus, it would give us more time to tamp down the coronavirus, especially as residents of rural areas seem to be less inclined to wear masks and get vaccinated.

Over and out.

So ... what have I been doing with the rest of my life, the part that isn't constantly doomscrolling about politics?

(Doomscrolling ... another word that has entered the language in the past year or so.)

The boy toy and I are still in good health. Although neither of us has been tested for covid-19, I don't think we have it. Certainly we have had no symptoms. I have had a dry morning cough for years, long before the pandemic started, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is an early marker of heart failure, compounded by years of exposure to second-hand smoke. I am my mother's daughter.

(On both sides of my family, I have many more male relatives than female relatives. My mother's only sister drank herself to death at age 60. I'm 61.)

Julia the cat is in good health, too, although I should probably take her for a checkup, as she is getting up there in years.

We still haven't heard whether we will be getting Stove #3, so at some point I'll have to decide whether to pay to have Stove #2 repaired. But we are still eating well around here. On Sunday I baked a tourtiere -- French Canadian meat pie -- from the late Alex Trebek's recipe. I have no shortage of tourtiere recipes in my French Canadian cookbook -- it's one of those things that each family makes slightly differently. But Alex's recipe tasted awesome, and I'll certainly make it again.

On Thursday the 14th, the boy toy and I dared to travel to Delaware for a few hours. It was the first time I'd set foot outside Maryland since the last week of December 2019. We drove on I-95 as far as a certain rest stop so I could take the obligatory tourist photo.



Next, we drove around the University of Delaware campus, which reminded me somewhat of the campuses of the University of Maryland and UMass-Amherst. The opposite thing but the same thing, as one of my past housemates would have said. We ate lunch at a socially distanced Irish pub in Middletown before heading home.

Church is ... church. We have our Zoom-based services every Sunday morning. We are asking the UUA to consider us for a developmental ministry, in which we would spend several years trying to fix our problems.

The SCA is plugging along in virtual space. On the 9th we had Kingdom Twelfth Night; I need to finish writing that up for my "Lady Patricia of Trakai" blog. This coming weekend we have another "needles and fiber" weekend where we challenge each other to get a sewing or fiber-arts project done. Their Majesties will also hold a virtual court, streaming on YouTube.

Toastmasters is ... Toastmasters. Our local club has meetings on the same nights of the week as we did in the Before Times, and most of us have adapted pretty well to the Zoom life, I'd say.

All in all, I feel about as busy as I did before the pandemic. I'm just not burning as much gasoline to get there.

And I am THRILLED that we are down to the last 24 hours of the orange cheeto's administration! It's the Final Countdown!

Over and out.

1. I am still rocking the two-monitor setup on my desk. The fact that it's an older monitor, with an aspect ratio slightly less "widescreen," actually helps with displaying documents. And when I want to bring the laptop into the living room, it's easy enough to unplug the second monitor. More cheap tech goodness: a few days ago, I scored a free 500-GB external hard drive on Freecycle. Its previous owner had reformatted it, so it was completely empty. My other external hard drive is pretty much full, so it's good to have more space to offload stuff.

2. I thought I was done with a particular project for the European marketing company. I wasn't expecting to hear from the marketeers again, for various reasons. But, after not checking my company email account for a few days, I logged in and found that an invoice for 500 euros was waiting for my approval in the system. YEAH!! That's like $550 after the bank takes its wire transfer fee. Yeah, baby, you can drop five C-notes into my account anytime!

3. Yesterday the boy toy and I put up a curtain inside my bedroom/office to hide my racks of SCA belongings. Having a plain curtain behind me in my webcam's field of view looks more professional than a big IKEA set of unfinished wood shelves loaded with large plastic bins and whatnot.

4. Last night I watched the VP debate. It was somewhat less stressful than the presidential shitstorm, but still not ideal. Did I ever mention that Pence looks and acts like Lord Voldemort? Seriously. Pence's boss is starting to sound even more disturbed than usual. Nancy Pelosi's about to start talking 25th Amendment.

5. Virtual Royal Court in Storvik this weekend! Their Majesties are actually traveling up here to meet with the Baron and Baroness in an undisclosed location (really a small theater in downtown Silver Spring). I wonder what will ensue?

Hard to believe it's July 20 again. It's the 51st anniversary of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Last year on this date I drove to far northern Delaware for the 60th birthday party of one of my high school classmates. The temperature was dangerously hot then, and we're in another "heat dome" this week. Ugh.

Now we're moving into October plague cancellations, from Capclave (gone virtual, actually) to the Marine Corps Marathon (canceled outright). Still wondering when the Maryland Renaissance Festival is going to pull the plug, although rumor has it that August 3 is the festival's go/no-go decision date.

To be honest, I haven't attended Capclave since 2004 -- often it conflicts with other events, either SCA or church-related, and I don't find the programming topics enticing. The last time I went, I felt as if I was paying $60 for some stale potato chips in the "con suite," which wasn't a suite, just another windowless conference room.

The SCA keeps on keeping on, with "virtual activities" -- see https://virtual.atlantia.sca.org. This past weekend we had another "Revenge of the Stitch" non-competition, with folks gently encouraging each other to get some sewing and weaving projects done. I made good progress on the sleeves for my German dress, although I didn't finish them. I have a hankering to try my hand at weaving again, but I still have those sleeves to finish, and I'm knitting a mundane cowl for the boy toy (for winter wear).

Today the boy toy and I committed more consumerism. First we went to IKEA College Park, which had been closed for a while. There are metal railings set up outside the main entrance to control lines of people who want to enter the store, but since we were visiting on a weekday, the store wasn't that crowded. (Since we live so close to IKEA, we do our best to avoid going there on weekends, when the place is jammed.) The restaurant on the upper level is closed, but it wasn't mealtime for us anyway. We bought a little three-drawer rack for my SCA stuff, plus a few other items we've been waiting to purchase.

Then we went to the local Amish market for some meats and cheeses. (As at all places we've been, masks are required. The Amish and their employees also offer you a generous squirt of hand sanitizer as you enter the building.) Next, we checked out the going-out-of-business Pier 1 Imports just over the line in the Anne Arundel part of Laurel. I bought a few cloth napkins for SCA purposes, because most of my current ones (which came from Pier 1 way back when) are getting pretty stained. I'm going to miss Pier 1's sense of style, although countless other stores have copied them over the decades.

Finally we ended up at Total Wine to buy some beer for next weekend's holidays. I went to the bathroom and someone in another stall was coughing, so I didn't linger. I hope I didn't come into contact with anything she touched. I'm 60 years old, I'm obese, and I have type A blood. So, yeah, covid-19 risk factors.

At least I don't have anywhere to go this weekend. I'll be puttering around and thinking of new projects.

I wrote a post about Baron Rorik and Master Liam: http://ladypatriciaoftrakai.blogspot.com/2020/05/losses.html.

I'm trying to finish up the last few parts of my extremely boring marketing assignment for a European firm so that I can actually get paid. It's been a slog, but the end is in sight.

I have no idea what's going on with the pandemic. Some people worry that we are opening up the world too early, that all these Black Lives Matter protests -- which are extremely necessary, IMHO -- will lead to a massive spread of the coronavirus and a spike in deaths. Then again, the protests are outdoors and sunshine acts as a disinfectant.

I have no idea what's going to happen with Battle on the Bay, the annual joint Storvik-Lochmere event, currently scheduled for Labor Day weekend. All the SCA events in our Kingdom prior to Labor Day weekend are canceled, except for one in South Carolina in August 22. So, if we hold the first event in a LONG time, there will be a LOT of pent-up demand. Would that lead to a huge spike in covid-19 cases with the attendant bad publicity? OTOH, *somebody* eventually has to hold the first post-pandemic event, and I'm not sure if I want the "first one back" to be a crowded indoor gathering. Decisions, decisions.

To be honest, some days I get into a fatalistic mood and I just want to shrug my shoulders and say, "Hell, most of us are going to come down with the virus one way or another. Might as well get it over with." But I still put on my cloth mask and wash my hands.

I'm just tired of the uncertainty. One thing that has kept me going through the low points of the last decade (i.e., since I was forced out of the full-time work force) has been the anticipation of fun times and friendships and interesting experiences. Now it seems as if everything worth looking forward to during the rest of this year has been canceled, with the exception of the election, which HAD BETTER NOT be canceled.

Yesterday I felt tired and restless. And unfocused. I have focus issues anyway, but it was really bad yesterday. I dozed off in my "office" chair. I wanted to poke around with the couple of computer games that I play instead of actually doing, y'know, work.

This feeling lasted well into the night, until I checked Facebook just before 11 p.m. Apparently I've trained FB's algorithms that any post mentioning death or disease should pop up first. So I started reading Baron Rorik's daughter's update on how her father's surgery went today, and how things went wrong, and thus her father passed away.

Baron Rorik died. I still have trouble wrapping my head around the concept. And this has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic. In one of his last Facebook posts, he said he actually tested *negative* for the coronavirus, which he needed to have his procedure (something to do with his stomach).

I know Baron Rorik has been feeling under the weather from several ailments in the last couple of years. At one point he fell and broke eight ribs all at once. Ow. He also had some problems with slow-healing wounds and a tiny spot of a tumor on his liver. The last few times I saw him at events and asked him how he was doing, he would reply, "Surviving." I think he was 73 years old.

His Excellency was well known throughout our barony and kingdom and fought in SCA battles for many years. Decades, even. He also enjoyed the gentler art of playing cribbage, an ancient card game. He was also a huge science fiction fan. In fact, I remember seeing him for the first time at the Millennium Philcon Worldcon in 2001. He was wearing a Babylon 5 character's costume and had his gray goose, Fred, with him (not a live goose). When I joined the SCA a few years later, I saw him again and thought, "Oh, that's the guy with the goose from the Millennium Philcon."

Baron Rorik was also that guy who looked so much like George R.R. Martin that some Game of Thrones fans actually asked him (Rorik) for his autograph.

He was very happily married to Mistress Janina for 40-plus years and they had a grown daughter and son (who adore him) and many "friends who are like family." My heart grieves with all of them today. I often thought that if I could tell my father (who died in 1982) about the SCA, I would introduce him to Baron Rorik, who could explain all the different parts of armor to my Dad (who was a professional welder) and then they could play cribbage together.

Here's a photo of Baron Rorik from the 2015 Storvik Novice Tourney.



I know I have better photos of him somewhere, especially from the days when he and Janina served as Baron and Baroness of Storvik, but I think they are on my old and finicky computer, so they will have to wait for another day. Like that day when we will be free to gather and raise a glass to his memory.