Dwarf Planet in Purple

In late March, I wrote but never posted:

Now that my latest feature article is done, what do I do next?

As I had been promising myself, I started practicing the ukulele. Since I've taken up several musical instruments over my ever-lengthening life, I know that the beginning is the steepest part of the learning curve. My left-hand fingertips felt tender, but I can say I know three chords now: C, F, and A minor. All three involve only one or two fingers. I really want to learn G major, but that involves three fingers, which is a bit more cumbersome for my non-dominant hand and brain. Still, I want to learn, even if I learn at a slower pace than a youngster.

I am still singing with Laydes Fayre, Mistress Arianna's group, but I had to skip the March 22 practice session because I had to attend a church trustees' meeting about candidates for our next developmental minister. That's about all I can say because of confidentiality rules.

Then this weekend came about, and I am

I was probably going to write, "I am so tired I can barely write..." *grin* Fast forward to late April.

The weekend of March 22-23 was a double-event weekend in my SCA world. On Saturday I went to Defending the Gate, at which one of my friends got her Laurel (highest award for arts and sciences) and also stepped up as Baroness of Stierbach (with her husband as the new Baron). On Sunday my own barony, Storvik, had an informal "spring thing" at the Cheverly community center, an indoor space that we have only recently started using (but that works well for activities).

On March 26 the Key Bridge collapsed, which was huge news in Maryland, as you can imagine. I think I'd driven over it only a couple of times in the decades I've lived in Maryland. Usually I take the tunnels or I travel up the west side of the Baltimore Beltway.

On April 6 I was driving nowhere near Baltimore -- I was heading up to Erie, PA, for a rendezvous with the path of the total solar eclipse. I stayed at my friend Amanda's house -- how lucky for me that she had a guest room! Of course, the big question hanging over the weekend was: would the sky be cloudy? After all, in July 1991, I received a great demonstration of what totality looks like when the sky is overcast. Fortunately, while the morning of April 8 was disappointingly gray, patches of blue sky began to appear on the western horizon, and the crowd (at Mercyhurst University) and I were treated to an awesome sight.

This past weekend (April 13-14) I spent Saturday at Storvik Novice Tournament and Sunday at the Japanese street festival in DC. Storvik had to hold Novice Tourney really early this year because that was the only weekend we could rent the usual site. (This close to DC, sites that allow us to set up all our SCA stuff and have fighting and horses are few indeed.)

At the SCA event, I was excited to be called into court twice: first by Their Majesties, because I won the drawing for a "quest prize," which I will have to explain at another time, and second by Their Excellencies Storvik, who presented me with the Baron's Award of Excellence, which left me truly gobsmacked.

At the festival, the boy toy and I had various types of snacky Asian foods and I bought myself a couple of parasols for use at future SCA events.

I meant to include this in the previous post, but...

My church has sold its property -- the buildings and grounds. Closing date was January 26th (the day after my last post). There was one document that all of us trustees had to sign, but the board chair handled the rest of the paperwork for us. We now have a nice chunk of change that will go into a separate account; a group of Ethiopian Muslims have a new religious home; and we'll find out in a few weeks, during our annual pledge drive, how many of our members have taken a permanent hike.

The Ukrainian-themed SCA event was awesome! My breads were one of seven entries, and even though I didn't win, I got lots of compliments. Many of the activities and classes also had Slavic themes. My friend did a great job organizing the event!

Unfortunately, this past Tuesday I started feeling sick, exactly like the last time I had a virus back in August 2019. Well, that couldn't have been covid, right?? Finally I got around to swabbing my nose today, because I need to decide whether I'm going to dance practice tomorrow night, and ... dammit!! I have the damned covid!! I hope I didn't give it to anyone else at last Monday's dance practice before I felt sick.

In the waning hours of 2023 I wrote a post on my Lady Patricia of Trakai blog: https://ladypatriciaoftrakai.blogspot.com/2023/12/wrapping-up-calendar-year.html. I probably should write another post about more SCA stuff.

I hope everyone had a good New Year's holiday. I did things a little differently: after the Rose Parade (gotta watch that on TV per family-of-origin tradition), I went to a banner-painting session here in Storvik. We painted a couple of silk "Inspiration" banners for our current Queen to bestow upon people who inspire her in her service. (The artist, Dame Emma, had already drawn the outlines of the artwork on the silk, so it was like a giant group coloring project.) It was tons of fun.

In a way, the activity served to commemorate my personal milestone as of yesterday: the 20th anniversary of my first SCA event ever. Last night I also gave a Toastmasters talk on my late heraldry teacher, Pedro, who was one of the people I met that momentous day.

This past Saturday, I went to the Lochmere event known as Night Under a Fae Moon. (Lochmere is one of the neighboring SCA baronies.) It was relaxing and productive at the same time. I didn't have any tasks to do, other than perform four carols/songs/motets/whatever with Laydes Fayre, an a-cappella women's group. And performing with them is fun, rather than a choir.

Every year (well, except for the plague years), this event has a component called "Lochmart," which is basically a flea market for SCA stuff. I brought a bagful of items and managed to sell three of them, netting me a total of $15. My friend Teleri sold her lightly used Panther hunter's tent for $400, half of its original price. A good deal all around.

I also got my new-to-me archery bow inspected by a marshal. This is a fiberglass recurve bow I bought at a yard sale for $10 last summer. (The sellers were people who had played in the SCA back in the 1980s and 1990s but are no longer active.) The bow is sound, but the metal nock thing on the string is in the wrong place. I will bring it to an archery practice session one of these days and see what can be done about it. I'm happy the bow is safe, because even a used fiberglass bow costs upward of $100 at Pennsic.

The boy toy and I had a quiet Easter. Instead of cooking up a huge ham, we just had some barbecued meats from Mission BBQ, plus a couple of homemade sides.

Today I took Julia the cat to the vet for another round of blood and urine tests. We shall see what the results will be.

(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 ... 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.

So, still chugging along. Still plugging along on the boring assignment for the European marketing firm. It's having a "team meeting" via Zoom tomorrow morning (that's mid-afternoon in Stockholm). Maybe I will get some brownie points for it.

At some point last week I had to push aside the boring assignment to get my information together for teaching a Virtual University of Atlantia class. After a hiatus of several years due to general laziness, I decided to teach "Medieval Lithuania" again, especially since I could do a screen-share on Zoom and use slides. In a physical classroom (or classroom tent as at Pennsic) I feel weird about doing the PowerPoint-and-projector thing, because it's such modern technology. But since we are unabashedly using high-tech teleconferencing stuff anyway, why not use it to full advantage?

Because I'd registered for other classes earlier in the day, I didn't have time to practice the talk, but my students seemed to enjoy it. I had students from at least six different SCA Kingdoms, including two from Lochac (Melbourne, Australia)! zhelana was one of the students too, from the Kingdom of Meridies. It was great to hear voices of people I know only online, even if it was just for a moment. (Yes, Mistress Sigrid did a lot of the student talking....) Today, several *other* people posted on Facebook that they'd like to hear the class, and Mistress Teleri wants me to teach it again at one of the Storvik A&S gatherings ... so I think I'm starting something here....

In terms of weather, today was absolutely gorgeous. Gorgeous! I had to spend a lot of time on Zoom, though, because it was our church's annual meeting, and we had to have it virtually because of the pandemic. I was especially interested to hear what people thought about the proposed budget, because I've been on the budget team, but then I zoned out during a procedural discussion. Toward the end I ate some leftover pasta for lunch, and later I took a mid-afternoon walk around the local lake.

Last weekend the boy toy and I did some reorganizing of the small storage unit behind my condo (basically, it's an extra, non-climate-controlled closet). That involved opening a bunch of boxes of fragile items that had been sealed since I packed them after Mom's death in 1997. I did a good job back then -- absolutely nothing had broken over the years! And there were some things that I'd totally forgotten I had, like a couple of salt and pepper shakers made of blue and white china. They look like nesting chickens. I think my mother acquired them during her "blue and yellow kitchen" period in the 1970s. Boy toy and I added some of the items to the corner cabinet in the dining room and repacked others with less padding so that they would fit into fewer boxes.

I'm amazed at the amount of stuff my parents had. And the boy toy's grandmother too (who was about my mother's age, and who was close to the boy toy, so he inherited her china). I think it was their generation's culture -- they were the ones who didn't have much money in the Depression, and thus not many material possessions, so once they became young adults with their own homes, they wanted to "catch up." Plus, a lot of the modern kitchen gadgets we take for granted hadn't been invented yet, and add to that the social conventions that everybody wanted to entertain and that brides and grooms needed to receive gifts. No wonder, then, everybody had collections of china and covered candy dishes and aluminum-and-glass fruit "baskets" and pretty vases and hors-d'oeuvres trays and punch bowls and ... well, you get the picture.

I suppose I could try to sell this stuff, but I have no idea if it's worth anything. There's probably already too much of it on the market and not enough buyers. Ah, well. I will keep on enjoying these pieces, and maybe someday people will use them to pay for my funeral.

Tomorrow I'm driving out to the Eastern Shore for another "Revenge of the Stitch" SCA event -- a "garb wars" kind of competition in which six-person teams have 24 hours to sew up a whole medieval outfit from scratch. Should be fun, and I will continue to learn hand-sewing techniques.

I should end on a light note: you've got to see these briefs. Warning: you can't *unsee* them! :-D

Packing for Massachusetts tonight! I haven't been "home" since 2015. About time....

I updated my "Lady Patricia" blog with my two batches of Lithuanian cookies: http://ladypatriciaoftrakai.blogspot.com/2018/12/cookies-or.html. The entire second batch was consumed at Tina's party last night.

Between cookies and Washington Revels and parties, I'm finally feeling a bit festive in my personal life. Of course, politics in Our Nation's Capital sucks ROCKS. 2019 is going to be an economically tough year, I fear.

Back to packing. Happy Holidays, everyone.

On Saturday I attended the neighboring Barony of Dun Carraig's Silver Jubilee -- the 25th anniversary of its change from a shire to a barony. (In the SCA, larger groups can have a Baron and Baroness who are the local representatives of the King and Queen, as well as a full slate of officers. Shires are smaller branches that have only the slate of officers.) Since I missed Fall Crown Tourney due to mundane politics, I thought it would be nice to hang out with SCAdian peeps, probably for the last time in 2018. Also, it's been a few years since I've been to a Dun Carraig event that was NOT either the University of Atlantia or Unevent (the Kingdom's annual business meeting).

Despite the cold air and brisk wind, I had a good time. First I circled the around the outdoor activities and said hello to Her Excellency Storvik and other friends. I chatted with Baroness Genevieve, Lady Kunigunde and Lady Seraphina at the MoL (Minister of the Lists) table, and I *thought* I had taken a photo of the three of them, but I can't find it. Ah, well.

Then I decided to go indoors, where the A&S activities were happening in a nice warm downstairs church hall, hung with painted banners. I met a Dun Carraig woman named Mary who let me play a couple of her instruments: kantele and hurdy-gurdy. Joy! The kantele is very much like the Lithuanian kanklės, so near and dear to my persona, and thanks to Mary's explanation of her tuning, I was able to strum it and pluck out a melody too (not at the same time). Same with the Kelischek medieval-style hurdy-gurdy -- well, I didn't strum it, but I did pick out a cantiga tune with my left hand, not such an easy feat for a rightie like me.

I also had a chat with Lady Thea, who tried very hard to recruit me for scribal work and even gave me a copy of her handbook for new and aspiring scribes. If only I didn't feel like a curse on teachers of calligraphy and illumination. Mistress Nuala tried to teach me calligraphy ... and died of cancer. Alexandria/Heather had a scriptorium ... and her cancer came roaring back. Then Syr Richard, one of our local scribes of note, died of diabetes complications. Dare I take up the pen again?

Anyhow, I had more interesting conversations and sat through Royal and baronial courts. After court I presented Her Majesty Lynette with the medallion cords I've been working on for the past year. I didn't get on board for feast, so I drove home and had the boy toy's home cooking instead.

All in all, a pleasant day with friends and another chance to contemplate what to do next in terms of A&S....