Friday, T minus 16 hours and counting

Well here it is again. We moved gamming to Saturday night again this week for a good reason. Out of the blue a friend of mine showed up to SCA on Tuesday. / Were having a party on Friday, I want you all to come./ Karen is such a sweetheart, how could I say no because of gamming? She thought I had moved out of town. Well no, I have not even moved in town. I live 2 blocks from her and her husband Howie and have not really seen them in 10 years much. My own fault as much as anyones.



Athens is getting ready for /Invasion of the Beer Guzzling Idiots/ , also known as Halloween. For the next two days our little town will turn from a simple semi-quite place to live to Mardi Gras on Acid! They take over the center of town, a whole 2 blocks from here, and drink and yell till the wee hours. Well, at least when you do get to sleep it is dead quiet. Now you may thinking that like 500 or so people show up. Wrong, big time. We are talking THOUSANDS of people. It will be nuts to the nth degree. Imagine a standard 2-lane city street. Make it 5 blocks long. Now fill every square foot of it with people. I'm not kidding it is that packed. Now add in hundreds of private parties and maybe you have a vague idea of what we are facing. Wish us luck.



I will port a little about the party later on this weekend or next week.



Till next time, faithful readers. Be mindful and awake and happy Samhain





PS - Before I forget some good news. Seems someone out there reads my writings for our local SCA newsletter. I won the William Blackfox Awards for AS XXXVII - Best Continual Feature. Tres Cool, no? :) This is a competition with all the newsletters, now get this part, in the WORLD! Not too shabby for the kid who always failed English.



You can check out the webpage at http://www.sca.org/officers/chronicler/blackfox-awards.html

Hey an update!!!!!!!!

Long time between updates again, I know.



I could make a lot of excuses, but I will not this time. It has just been life in general. Quite a bit has gone on of late so I will head into the short version. I was sick, now I am not. Judis Grandmother died, then we made a flying trip to Tennessee for the funeral and we came back. We did not actually fly, but I found I do enjoy driving at 70 miles per hour, the legal speed limit in Tennessee. After driving like that 55 seems like walking for some reason.



Now for a few more details and observations from the past few days; all right, 2 weeks.



Part of me misses living down south. Part of me does not. I still love the cooking and the general demeanor of people down there. People in general seem nicer and more polite. For example, I do not think the entire time we were down there Judi ever got to open a door. If it was not myself, someone else opened it for her. Heck, at one point a little 8 or so year old kid ran past the two of us quite carefully so he could hold the door for her. He was quite proud of the fact he could hold the door for a lady. I wish I had a picture of his smile when I passed and said /Thank you, sir./ Manners deserve manners.

I asked the lady at the desk for directions to Ruby Falls. She had that thick Deep South accent and answered with a smile /Why, it is just a left, a right, and a left/ I mentally added / Your actually gonna go there, bless you pea picking little heart / She did clarify for me, and it was exactly as she said left right left Bless her pea picking little heart



One bad side effect of me going down south is my accent has returned somewhat. On Friday when we got back I was nearly incomprehensible to the locals here. Needless to say, Judi just loves it and is surprised that my accent was thicker then hers. I am starting to return to a semi normal speech pattern again.



We stopped by Ruby Falls, a natural cave and falls located inside Lookout Mountain. I was in awe to say the least. I cannot even begin to describe the wonders of this place. If you ever get the chance to go, spend the hour and a half and you will be glad you did.



Other than the heavy-duty drive both ways the trip was somewhat uneventful. That is a good thing I would say. I passed thru Kentucky twice without incident. Therefore the area of taint must be localized to La Grange, KY. Take heed of my words and avoid La Grange. There is something evil there. Ask me in person some time and I will tell you about what happened. I will never go there again, ever.



On to other things: Of late I have noticed my interest peaking in the areas of mountain man technology, even before the trip to the mountains. Still waiting for a new book on their gear to arrive. This is why I have been on the flint and steel kick. Made a few other things last weekend at Robbins. I also perfected a tinder match. It is much better than charcloth.



Well, that is it for now, more news as it happens.



HEY BLOGGER! FIX THE PUNTUATION PROBLEMS THIS STINKS!!!

Mission Sucessful!

Well, after a multistate effort, the Fish and his wife Heather have now moved into new quarters. Again, the Amazon Moving Company(tm) did an outstanding job with nothing broken in the move that we know of. The quote for the move was /I keep waiting for the little car to show up full of people with red noses and big shoes!/ Yea, it was a circus, but we are professionals and got thru the whole thing with only a few pulled muscles and no blood. All in all, I give it a 9 out of 10 for our efforts. Ask me sometime about the giant gophers and the evil mole people, this one is a hoot to say the least, but needs to be told.



I made a great achievement this weekend. Now some of you will laugh when you read this, but wait till the end.



I made fire.



Yea, I know lots of people make fire, but I did it with flint and steel. I made the striker, chipped the flint, made some awesome char cloth and it all worked. There is something that is satisfied deep within a person when they can make fire with just a spark and tinder. You may not understand all this, but once you do it, you get to understand the magical fascination with fire. It is an almost religious experience. I read on a web page that someone felt it was truly a magical experience since you brought the fire into being with a few simple elements. I can see that.



I am mostly over that uncommon cold that has been plaguing me for the past week or so. Needless to say it has hampered my writing a bit.



Oh, new link to pass on from my favorite FrootLoop to her blog: http:\\slupine.diaryland.com

Recovery from the weekend

Oh man. I hate the uncommon cold. This past weekend was the (In)famous Paul Bunyan Festival in Nelsonville, Ohio. The amount of testosterone in one place can be staggering. What is Bunyan you ask? Well, simply put it is /the/ expo for loggers and logging equipment in the US. Now, I bet your wondering why I was there. Good question. I ask myself the same thing every year. It is held at the campus of Hocking College, where Robbins Crossing is located. If you do not know what RC is, it is an 1840 village I spend my weekends at running the blacksmith shop. Fire...metal...good.



Anyway, while I did make a little cash, I suffered for it. I had a cold all weekend. Still do today. Perhaps I pushed a little too hard this weekend, but all in all the food for the soul it creates makes all the hassle worth it. We made many peoples day with our showing off, stories, jokes and trinkets we gave to the kiddies. I know if I heard / My was a blacksmith.../ Okay, sure. Thanks for coming. Seriously, seems everyone who came by had a relation to a blacksmith and somehow that made him or her more knowledgeable than the average schmuck. There seems also to be some sort of inverse correlation between the closeness of the relative and the lack of donations they leave. Direct relative the leave zip, zero, and zilch. One generation away, well change maybe. 2 or more generations, folding money. Heck, we do not care, it all adds up.



So, here I am on Monday, still sick, but now my hands and wrists are swollen to go with it. Talk about feeling puffy. Its like typing with boxing gloves. Overall I am not too bad off, just stiffer than a corpse who ODed on Viagra. The body just does not want to move very well. This has nothing to due with age or lack of physical conditioning; just we spent close to 22 hours working in the shop over 2 days. Imagine going to the gym for 22 hours of working out in two days and how would you feel when the day after rolled around? Yea, you get the picture.



Now to add into all the normal weirdness of Robbins, add the Bunyan show to it. Okay, now here is where the exponent of weirdness was added: About 50 feet from the shop a group of Ecuadorians set up two stalls. Not too strange, I got some awesome llama wool serapes for Judi and I. Tent number 2 is where the weird began to flow. For two solid days we were forge working to the native sounds of Ecuador. Yep, flutes and everything. It was like National Geographic on acid. All these flannelled loggers running around an 1840s village to the tunes of a group of native people from South America. Check please, table 2!!!



I have started relaxing a little more now that Judi has become more mobile, but I most likely will not mellow all the way back out till she is sans-cane and back to fencing. I know, shes a big girl and can take care of herself, but hey, what can I say, I care a lot.

Why so long between updates?

Well, I sit writing this in a hospital waiting room as Judi is in surgery. She is getting arthroscopy on her knee. To say I have been a little uptight and reclusive of late is an understatement. I would say to an extent my sense of humor has gone to hell and my temper has become so short that I have avoided talking with people. I back off when I know I am having one of those times when little things like people saying /Where have you disappeared to?/ piss me off to no end. I go from Bryian to asshole in 2.2 seconds. This is a protective measure I think so I do not say things I would later regret. If you feel slighted by my not being around perhaps this will help put things in perspective. With the past two weeks being loaded with trips to the doctor, work, our normal schedule, MRIs, x-rays and a wedding all thrown in you can begin to see how things can get away from me. No fault here, just the way things are. I sometimes am a little too protective of Judi, especially when she is in pain. I know I have to reign that in now and then. I have had too many good things in my life go to hell in a hand basket in a very short time to ignore her, at least in my own mind. I will not let any inattentiveness cause us problems. As such, my hobbies such as writing, chatting online, games and such have kind of been thrown to the wayside. I understand why and agree the reason is well worth it, but this is my choice. I get what relaxation I can when I can. I try to fence with the team to help and online mindless games seem to help a little. Still there are a lot of things that while innocent in their intention push me over the edge. To know thy self is to know thy enemy. I know I can be a belligerent ass; therefore I try to control it. I also have almost no sympathy for anyone. I can look someone strait in the eye after a heart-rending story that would evoke compassionate responses from even Attila The Hun and calmly say /So?/



Hopefully this puts things in perspective a little for people. A few words of advice do not push me right now. I may react in a way I will regret later. Please, be kind and give me my own time about things and I promise I will return to being me.