s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Lucky ! They’re very civilized with their holidays here — we get off Friday *and* Monday.

Thursday — after dance class was Beth’s birthday celebration — dinner at the Curry Club followed by the uber-decadent desserts at Strawberry Fare. Yum !

Friday — Rain off and on (Yay ! Glorious glorious rain !!!) Stephen and I get soaked through twice, caught up in the paddocks by sudden showers. We body score the ‘paca in the yards by the Gallop/Glen fence, then later on take them yums out to the shelter just in time for another squall. We cleverly had our rain gear on this time, so get to watch the critters figure out, “Hey ! If we stand under here where they put the yums bowls, we don’t get wet !” Then cue the grumbling and jostling as they all try to crowd in under the new roof. Yay !

Late afternoon, we subject Geoff and Beth to Steven Chow’s A Chinese Odyssey and some Sam & Max.

Saturday — Saturday morning/noon was mostly farting around. We took the kitten out on a makeshift leash & harness (on account of she gets spooked and bolts for the nearest hard-to-pry-her-out-of hole, and if I have her on a leash, I’ve got a chance of not having to dive into the pampas or climb up a tree after her), put some iodine on the little wound on Concetta’s face, did some shopping.

Saturday afternoon/evening, we were invited to a traditional Swedish Easter dinner at Maggie and Martins. Herring ! Swedish meatballs ! Caviar in a squeezy tube ! Schnapps ! Very, very cool. After dinner, we trooped out to the Full Moon Drumming at Zebos (it was packed, because it was a weekend, but that also meant it started relatively early, so, yay).

Sunday — puttering, fight practice, chainsawing, showing off ‘paca to neighbor’s guests, then in the evening over to Sybille’s to play Settlers of Catan. Or, rather, Die Siedler von Catan. Luckily, you don’t really need to read German to play.

Monday — we finished putting the walls onto the new stock shelter in the Gallop paddock, and none-too-soon, as the weather is supposed to take a turn for the crap starting tomorrow evening. Today was lovely however. SO lovely, in fact, that Galadriel decided it was just the day to have her baby.

“Hmm,” we say. “She’s visiting the midden a lot,” we say. “And repeatedly sitting down and getting up again like she can’t get comfortable. And wandering off from the herd. And every now and then pausing to stand sort of splayed.”

“This is very ‘I’m going to give birth soon’ symtomatic,” we say. “Let’s go in and check the book and make sure the birthing kit is all put together.” “Stage one should last one to three hours,” says the book, describing the behavior we’ve been observing.

Fifteen minutes later, we troop back out, towels and iodine and assorted sundries in hand, and we see everybody up by the Gallop fence, all looking at something…

This will mean more to the SCAdians who read this, but after 15 years in tighter or looser orbit of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Stephen and I have been given Awards of Arms. That’s the first level, “You’re doing good stuff, keep it up, we’re aware of your existence” sort of award. The funny bit was that they did it at our house, in the middle of the regular weekly Arts & Sciences get-together. No, actually, the King and Queen of Lochac gave us the awards in absentia at Cantebury Faire, which we didn’t attend this year on account of it was the weekend before a big project went live at my workplace, so I couldn’t get time off to go. For various reasons (mostly people missing or people sick) there were a couple of A&S meetings missed after the event, then we had the first-wednesday dancing meeting at our place. Jennifer has been trying to offload heraldic duties onto Richard and me, so there were plans to go over some of the court ceremonies after dance, in part because New Zealand had recently switched kingdoms and so there was some interest in comparing the ceremonies between the old and the new, in addition to getting Richard and I more familiar with them in general.

So after learning some Italian dances that were marginally more interesting than some of the English ones we’d learned previously (in that they used one or two different steps), we trooped upstairs to go over the ceremonies. Sharon and Kerry played the “Royals” and Jennifer pulled our her binder of Stuff What Gets Said, giving tips on who should stand where and what sorts of things to nail down before hand, etc. “As an example, because it’s pretty common”, we decided to run through a standard Award of Arms ceremony. Everybody read through their lines, and Stephen and I were called on to play the awardees. After goofing around and hamming a bit, we were well and truly gobsmacked to have actual promissories handed to us. We are now officially “Lord Kjartan and Lady Kazimira”. Hee hee.