Ahoy!
So, apparently I'm continuing my trend of posting large globs of stuff infrequently rather than small bites as they happen.
Unsure that I like this trend since it makes it easy to put off posts to 'add them to another one later', but considering how I keep managing to fill up my regular time, posting more regularly is a little tricky on the schedule.
I'll see what I can do to find a happy medium, but in the meantime, updates! Disclaimer: As usual this is being written in bits and pieces over several hours, sorry if it reads a bit disjointedly.
There's really been two major pieces up update since my last post, and really, two big pieces of news in a month? That's actually not a half bad ratio I'd say!
Major News
Great Southern Gathering
So, this was actually on the weekend after my last update. Big.. well, bigger than monthly bash, SCA weekend event. This one was mostly classes on the Saturday (everything from forging and knife making to rapier and heavy fighting advice and such) and then a tournament and the Rapier prize fights on the Sunday. I attended a few Heavy classes on things like advanced power generation and footwork, which I think will be helpful, but I won't go into detail on since I don't think most of my readers are heavy fighters :)
Laura went for and succeeded at getting her Free Scholar prize in Rapier, which is the first "rank" you can achieve.
She was quite obviously nervous, but acquitted herself quite well. Would have been nice to see more offense from her examiners, but it was fun to see her get fed up with someone's defense and just swoop in, trap their sword out of the way and stab them a few times.
Oh yes, and she did it wearing this. This is the favour that I made for her under Janet's tutelage. It's watercolour painted silk, and the yellow background is the silk sash Laura got for winning her prize:
I'm planning on getting Janet to give me some more lessons on silk painting, and getting my own gear to start doing this at home. Silk painting is *fun!*, and for pretty much the first time in my life I can look at something artistic that I've created and honestly say that I did a good job, which is a kind of awesome feeling. Definitely something I want to do more of :)
Around the Bay in a Day
Myself and a bunch of others took part in the 50km leg of Around the Bay in a Day last weekend. Our team name was "Cyclists of Penzance", so most of us were either dressed as pirates or had pirate hats attached to our helmets (though I can't help but notice the one person NOT in costume of some kind is the person who named our team...)
Was quite amusing actually, the guy doing announcing and general chatter over a microphone at the start line said that it "it's a proper race without pirates", and we hat large numbers of people commenting throughough the race (including a couple of "Aaarrrrrr!"s from the police helping direct traffic near the start.
I think the furthest I've ridden in a day before this was about 30, 35ks, but at the pace we went I had no issue with the 50ks.
We took it nice and easy because, well, one member of our team was still on the tail end of a bout of gastro, one had the flu, and one had stomach cramps. Yay riding wounded!
We got through it all, those of us in front paused to regroup before riding over the finish line together (to a rather thunderous round of "Arrrrrr!!" from all the people on the sidelines), so all in all it was a fun day.
... except for my arms getting quite badly sunburned.
It was perfectly logical, I figured we'd be done by 12:30ish, meaning I'd get some sun but would avoid the UV danger time of the day, and should get some sun without burning. But due to our pace and taking a nice long lunch break we left lunch at 1ish, meaning the return leg was done in full blazing sun, and I didn't think to apply sunscreen at lunch.
Yay for lobster coloured arms ><. Slowly getting better at least.
I also ended up with an increadibly sore rear end by the end of the ride since I just had my standard non-padded bike seat. Definitely need to get myself a padded seat cover.
Incidentally, riding over the Westgate Bridge was an interesting experience, though the way back we had a big tail wind so it was vastly easier (heck, part of the ride back on the flat there was enough wind for me to just freewheel without pedaling and still keep up with everyone).
Here's a picture of us :) (yes, my hat made an absurd windsail, felt like I was going to get blown over)
Health Stuff
On the good side of things, my back is pretty well back to normal nowadays. Occasional twinge when I have a violent sneeze or similar, but that's about it. Huzzah for working spine!
On the bad side of things I got gastro last weekend. On the same day as Laura's birthday picnic. I still went along (I just thought I had food poisoning until mid afternoon).
I won't go into the details but suffice to say I wasn't back at work until Thursday and I had the worst stomach pain I've had in my life.
The silver lining was a reminder about how awesome my friends are. Lara brought me medication so I could still go to the picnic Sunday, Hespa & Laura dropped by Monday morning with DVDs and juice and broth and such, and Hespa hung around for most of the day to make sure I was ok.
Huge thanks guys, I was really touched :)
Roleplaying
I've finally started my new roleplaying game that I'm running, in the Mistborn world (books by Brandon Sanderson). The first session ended with the players each being handed an encoded poem, and having to decode the hidden message to advance the plot.
Two have now completed this (though one cheated, but she's forgiven since she found typos in my code), so next session we can advance.
It's been quite some time since I got into player's heads like this. Great fun :D
Hrm.. I think that's about it really for this entry. Another one should be forthcoming soon(tm) with the gender topic I mentioned last post. If it's not up in the next few days, someone poke me.
So, apparently I'm continuing my trend of posting large globs of stuff infrequently rather than small bites as they happen.
Unsure that I like this trend since it makes it easy to put off posts to 'add them to another one later', but considering how I keep managing to fill up my regular time, posting more regularly is a little tricky on the schedule.
I'll see what I can do to find a happy medium, but in the meantime, updates! Disclaimer: As usual this is being written in bits and pieces over several hours, sorry if it reads a bit disjointedly.
There's really been two major pieces up update since my last post, and really, two big pieces of news in a month? That's actually not a half bad ratio I'd say!
Major News
Great Southern Gathering
So, this was actually on the weekend after my last update. Big.. well, bigger than monthly bash, SCA weekend event. This one was mostly classes on the Saturday (everything from forging and knife making to rapier and heavy fighting advice and such) and then a tournament and the Rapier prize fights on the Sunday. I attended a few Heavy classes on things like advanced power generation and footwork, which I think will be helpful, but I won't go into detail on since I don't think most of my readers are heavy fighters :)
Laura went for and succeeded at getting her Free Scholar prize in Rapier, which is the first "rank" you can achieve.
She was quite obviously nervous, but acquitted herself quite well. Would have been nice to see more offense from her examiners, but it was fun to see her get fed up with someone's defense and just swoop in, trap their sword out of the way and stab them a few times.
Oh yes, and she did it wearing this. This is the favour that I made for her under Janet's tutelage. It's watercolour painted silk, and the yellow background is the silk sash Laura got for winning her prize:
Around the Bay in a Day
Myself and a bunch of others took part in the 50km leg of Around the Bay in a Day last weekend. Our team name was "Cyclists of Penzance", so most of us were either dressed as pirates or had pirate hats attached to our helmets (though I can't help but notice the one person NOT in costume of some kind is the person who named our team...)
Was quite amusing actually, the guy doing announcing and general chatter over a microphone at the start line said that it "it's a proper race without pirates", and we hat large numbers of people commenting throughough the race (including a couple of "Aaarrrrrr!"s from the police helping direct traffic near the start.
I think the furthest I've ridden in a day before this was about 30, 35ks, but at the pace we went I had no issue with the 50ks.
We took it nice and easy because, well, one member of our team was still on the tail end of a bout of gastro, one had the flu, and one had stomach cramps. Yay riding wounded!
We got through it all, those of us in front paused to regroup before riding over the finish line together (to a rather thunderous round of "Arrrrrr!!" from all the people on the sidelines), so all in all it was a fun day.
... except for my arms getting quite badly sunburned.
It was perfectly logical, I figured we'd be done by 12:30ish, meaning I'd get some sun but would avoid the UV danger time of the day, and should get some sun without burning. But due to our pace and taking a nice long lunch break we left lunch at 1ish, meaning the return leg was done in full blazing sun, and I didn't think to apply sunscreen at lunch.
Yay for lobster coloured arms ><. Slowly getting better at least.
I also ended up with an increadibly sore rear end by the end of the ride since I just had my standard non-padded bike seat. Definitely need to get myself a padded seat cover.
Incidentally, riding over the Westgate Bridge was an interesting experience, though the way back we had a big tail wind so it was vastly easier (heck, part of the ride back on the flat there was enough wind for me to just freewheel without pedaling and still keep up with everyone).
Here's a picture of us :) (yes, my hat made an absurd windsail, felt like I was going to get blown over)
Health Stuff
On the good side of things, my back is pretty well back to normal nowadays. Occasional twinge when I have a violent sneeze or similar, but that's about it. Huzzah for working spine!
On the bad side of things I got gastro last weekend. On the same day as Laura's birthday picnic. I still went along (I just thought I had food poisoning until mid afternoon).
I won't go into the details but suffice to say I wasn't back at work until Thursday and I had the worst stomach pain I've had in my life.
The silver lining was a reminder about how awesome my friends are. Lara brought me medication so I could still go to the picnic Sunday, Hespa & Laura dropped by Monday morning with DVDs and juice and broth and such, and Hespa hung around for most of the day to make sure I was ok.
Huge thanks guys, I was really touched :)
Roleplaying
I've finally started my new roleplaying game that I'm running, in the Mistborn world (books by Brandon Sanderson). The first session ended with the players each being handed an encoded poem, and having to decode the hidden message to advance the plot.
Two have now completed this (though one cheated, but she's forgiven since she found typos in my code), so next session we can advance.
It's been quite some time since I got into player's heads like this. Great fun :D
Hrm.. I think that's about it really for this entry. Another one should be forthcoming soon(tm) with the gender topic I mentioned last post. If it's not up in the next few days, someone poke me.
