Falling Leaves
Oct. 19th, 2005 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurBefore I forget, this deserves a diary entry...
Last week had an undercurrent of tension as we all watched the weather reports -- the predictions for Saturday kept see-sawing between "cloudy with occasional showers" and "Doom! Doom, I tell you! Doom!". I managed to provoke an email conversation about what the *heck* we were going to do if this kept up; fortunately, that got headed off by the autocrat managing to arrange the indoor site, neatly circumventing the Doom.
That said, it was still pretty damned wet. I got to the site about 11:30 with a ton of stuff; one of the Feldings escorted me around to the back entrance to the hall. (Did you know there was a back entrance to Alumnae Hall? Turns out that there is -- you just have to drive halfway around campus to get there. Past Tower Court, around Lake House, through the back parking lot, down the foot trail, past the mountain goats and *la voila*! -- a little tiny parking lot.) I waited about half an hour for the rain to let up before bringing in my stuff, and then finally gave up and got a number of people to do a fast sprint through the rain with one box each.
The rain having washed out essentially all of the afternoon plans, the first part of the day officially became "Indoor Gaming", so I was kept busy. I taught a couple dozen people a variety of games, and was gratified that most of them seemed to enjoy it. Taught Ashtepada for the first time (I need to learn this well enough to teach it more concisely) and taught Tarocchi to a group of Feldings who had enough fun that they then taught it to some others.
One notable addition to the afternoon was a large delegation from Quintavia. They came in force, bringing a welcome table aimed at the newcomers, snacks for the afternoon, and gifts for His Excellency in Court. Not sure of precisely what brought all that on, but it was a lovely boost to the day.
Court was reasonably brief. Notable business included![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dsrtao formally stepping up as Golden Gryphon, Hunter being inducted into the Perseus, and me taking GunDormr as an apprentice. He specifically wanted an indenture, so I composed some text (not really period, but loosely based on some 18th century examples) and tpau kindly calligraphed it up pretty. Ciana carried my banner in (just for once, I actually remembered the thing) and ladysprite held the book; I like to get all of the "family" present involved. (keshwyn, we'll need to find a chance to introduce you to GunDormr, if you haven't already.) The scroll went off well (Fu got the timing of the reading just right, so the audience got both of the jokes nestled in there). We cut the scroll in half with GunDormr's knife (of course), and he presented the Baron with a 16th century coin as payment for witnessing the ceremony.
The I Sebastiani performance was, IMO, quite good -- above average for the troupe, solid from start to finish. I would agree with what seems to be the consensus that the "puppeteering" scene with Rhonwyn andpamelina was a show-stealer, the funniest piece of physical comedy that I've seen from I Seb in years.
Dinner -- well, okay, I rolled a failure there. I had intended to make the Potage from Meat from Cariadoc's Miscellany; my audacious plan was to do most of the cooking on-site in a crockpot. In the end, the result just didn't come out right; my best guess is that the crockpot simply didn't get it hot enough to cook the eggs properly. That being the case, I decided that not only was it not appealing, I wasn't entirely certain that it was safe, so all ten quarts got thrown out. Le sigh. Adding to that the fact that I had forgotten to bring the loaves of bread that were supposed to go with it, and I had precious little to contribute to the potluck, so I waited until the end of the line to take what was left. Fortunately, the potluck table was groaning this year, and there was still plenty left over at the end.
And of course, the dancing went well, as it almost always does at this event. I occasionally have to remind myself that I'm lucky to live in a group where the dance floor gets the better part of a hundred people at a non-dance-centric event, and even when we're down to just the diehards at 10:30 we still have 20 people up. Does my heart good to see so many of the novices up and dancing; hopefully we can get some of them to come to dance practice.
And thence packing and home. Fortunately, the rain let up by evening, and things began to dry off quickly as the wind picked up, making loading much easier than unloading had been...
Last week had an undercurrent of tension as we all watched the weather reports -- the predictions for Saturday kept see-sawing between "cloudy with occasional showers" and "Doom! Doom, I tell you! Doom!". I managed to provoke an email conversation about what the *heck* we were going to do if this kept up; fortunately, that got headed off by the autocrat managing to arrange the indoor site, neatly circumventing the Doom.
That said, it was still pretty damned wet. I got to the site about 11:30 with a ton of stuff; one of the Feldings escorted me around to the back entrance to the hall. (Did you know there was a back entrance to Alumnae Hall? Turns out that there is -- you just have to drive halfway around campus to get there. Past Tower Court, around Lake House, through the back parking lot, down the foot trail, past the mountain goats and *la voila*! -- a little tiny parking lot.) I waited about half an hour for the rain to let up before bringing in my stuff, and then finally gave up and got a number of people to do a fast sprint through the rain with one box each.
The rain having washed out essentially all of the afternoon plans, the first part of the day officially became "Indoor Gaming", so I was kept busy. I taught a couple dozen people a variety of games, and was gratified that most of them seemed to enjoy it. Taught Ashtepada for the first time (I need to learn this well enough to teach it more concisely) and taught Tarocchi to a group of Feldings who had enough fun that they then taught it to some others.
One notable addition to the afternoon was a large delegation from Quintavia. They came in force, bringing a welcome table aimed at the newcomers, snacks for the afternoon, and gifts for His Excellency in Court. Not sure of precisely what brought all that on, but it was a lovely boost to the day.
Court was reasonably brief. Notable business included
dsrtao formally stepping up as Golden Gryphon, Hunter being inducted into the Perseus, and me taking GunDormr as an apprentice. He specifically wanted an indenture, so I composed some text (not really period, but loosely based on some 18th century examples) and tpau kindly calligraphed it up pretty. Ciana carried my banner in (just for once, I actually remembered the thing) and ladysprite held the book; I like to get all of the "family" present involved. (keshwyn, we'll need to find a chance to introduce you to GunDormr, if you haven't already.) The scroll went off well (Fu got the timing of the reading just right, so the audience got both of the jokes nestled in there). We cut the scroll in half with GunDormr's knife (of course), and he presented the Baron with a 16th century coin as payment for witnessing the ceremony.The I Sebastiani performance was, IMO, quite good -- above average for the troupe, solid from start to finish. I would agree with what seems to be the consensus that the "puppeteering" scene with Rhonwyn and
pamelina was a show-stealer, the funniest piece of physical comedy that I've seen from I Seb in years.Dinner -- well, okay, I rolled a failure there. I had intended to make the Potage from Meat from Cariadoc's Miscellany; my audacious plan was to do most of the cooking on-site in a crockpot. In the end, the result just didn't come out right; my best guess is that the crockpot simply didn't get it hot enough to cook the eggs properly. That being the case, I decided that not only was it not appealing, I wasn't entirely certain that it was safe, so all ten quarts got thrown out. Le sigh. Adding to that the fact that I had forgotten to bring the loaves of bread that were supposed to go with it, and I had precious little to contribute to the potluck, so I waited until the end of the line to take what was left. Fortunately, the potluck table was groaning this year, and there was still plenty left over at the end.
And of course, the dancing went well, as it almost always does at this event. I occasionally have to remind myself that I'm lucky to live in a group where the dance floor gets the better part of a hundred people at a non-dance-centric event, and even when we're down to just the diehards at 10:30 we still have 20 people up. Does my heart good to see so many of the novices up and dancing; hopefully we can get some of them to come to dance practice.
And thence packing and home. Fortunately, the rain let up by evening, and things began to dry off quickly as the wind picked up, making loading much easier than unloading had been...