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

What we’ve been up to…

Tuesday was the end-of-term hafla for Beverley’s class. Evidence that Stephen and I have switched brains: I sat off to one side chatting quietly with Briar and other various folks, while Stephen kicked off his shoes, borrowed a jingle belt off B and boogied. My excuse: I was fighting off a cold.

Wednesday & today I spent recuperating from said cold. Bleah. Caught up with Linda at Willowbank & talked about the conference (which she missed – she went to the Field Days* instead.) Stephen rented “Bad Taste” & we watched that. Despite the title, and a lot of gore, “Meet the Feebles” was in far poorer taste. “Bad Taste” did, however, feature a startlingly young and spry Peter Jackson. I don’t think I’ll ever look at powder blue oxford button downs quite the same way again.

*Note, there are multiple Field Days throughout the country and throughout the year, at which vendors of various Stuff Farmers Use have stalls displaying their wares & occasionally selling them at a discount. Field Days are distinct from A&P (Agricultural and Pastoral) shows, at which the farmers – livestock and otherwise – show off *their* produce. There’s crossover between the two, though. However, when people put “the” in front of “Field Days”, they are referring to the ones at Mystery Creek**, the largest in the country, largest in the Southern Hemishere, and 3rd largest in the world. 180 acres of Shopping. For Farmers.

**Further note: Mystery Creek, incidentally, got its name from an unsolved armed robbery and assumed-to-be-related murder.

I like parties. They seem to result in beautiful women dancing in my living room, people making music, singing, talking. Carey (whose name I have almost certainly just misspelled) and I went out and attacked some of the local cypresses with loppers and hung it up around the house. We tried for some ivy, but the stuff taking over the front corner is of a kind that bruises easily and goes all slimy and wilty when you pull it up. We found some *fantastic* flowers in the back — some kind of leucadenron. Robin graciously shared her birthday (and food for an army) with us. Sharon came even though she had a ton of work to do — she parked in the conservatory with her laptop and the whale mug full of Turkish apple tea. Oskar — a Rhode Island ex-pat — brought the makings of the new Darton arbalest. Steve and Oskar and Richard (and Stephen, of course) actually went out to fight, while the rest of us mostly did crafty-things (sewing, cardweaving) or decorated. Alan made me an origami dragon out of the pretty blue iris rice-paper that I’ve been saving bits of ever since Holly gave me something wrapped in it way way back at Bryn Mawr ! Sylvia came wearing garlands of jasmine — how bad can Winter be, really, if the jasmine is blooming ? — and Liz found narcissus *somewhere* and it smells divine. Speaking of jasmine — Melanie identified the bit of vine we clipped off one of the cabbage trees out front as native jasmine — how cool is that !

The bonfire, as Stephen describes, did not burninate. Two days straight of soaking rain made it doubtful to start with. It started raining lightly just as we were heading out at dusk, but most folks gamely trooped out through the pasture to give it a go anyway — even Julian made it up and over the muddy tracks on crutches ! Now that’s keen. Stephen and Carey did their best, but it really started hosing down & we all trooped back, completely soaked. We set up the drying rack over the stove & did people’s jackets & sweaters in turn.

The fire in the stove was raging cheerily, though. Beverley came dressed in fire colors, and bringing fire and light (in the form of a warm red patchouly pillar candle). And there was mulled wine to warm us (between the wine and the tea and the hot chocolate, I think I washed every mug in the house at least three times…). Helene wore a nifty gown I think she made herself & I got to show off the old impala skin and the new goat skin we got at Greta Point on the trip with my Mom. Carey and Susan showed me how to play knucklebones with the ones Keri got me way back. It’s sort of like jacks. I need to find another one, ’cause you’re supposed to have five (my set has four, for fortune telling). Liz played violin, and Joy and Ross played dumbek & they made Sybille shimmy for, like, three minutes straight. Hee. And Jennifer and Carey and Melanie and Sybille and Hillary and I sang Christmas/Solstice carols out of the Revels songbook — Sybille sang a few in German, some of which we knew English versions of. Various mobs joined in singing various ones they knew. Susan made these *neat* cookies with colored candy windows in them ! And holes to hang them by, except that we ate them all, and didn’t leave any to hang. Speaking of colored hanging things, Sybille does these things that are sort of like gigantic un-shrunk Shrinky-Dinks(tm) & we got a classic peg-legged, parrot-bedecked pirate — ARRR !! He’s hanging from the antlers. Hee. And there was a lot of talking. It was only after most everyone had gone that I remembered that we own a dryer, so Richard and Geoff got toasty dry jackets to wear home.

Whew.

I know I’m forgetting stuff, but if I don’t spew it all out, I’ll forget more.

This weekend was an entertainment whirlwind. On Saturday we hosted the Two Sisters Cast&Crew party. We had no idea how many people would show up, guessing 10-40, so we got enough food for about 20. In total 15 people showed up… BUT they brought enough food for another 20-25 people. After stuffing ourselves silly we still ended up with a fridge full of food. Today I do creative repacking in the fridge and freezer, but I know that sausages are going to be a dinnertime staple for some weeks to come.

In the “The World is THIS SMALL” department: that evening we were listening to Broadside Electric as nice background music. Liz commented how the music remindered her of another American Folk band, one whose lead singer had been visitng them just a few months ago. But you know, we had probably never heard of (wait for it!) Einsteins Little Homonculus. (For those of you how don’t know, Broadside and ELH are friends with other, and have played together in Boston/Philadelpia crossover tours. Tam went to college with many of the orginal members of BE. Go 10,000 km, and be only 2-degrees of separation away from Club Passim! Weird world.

So, Sunday was our first “SCA-Day-O-Fun” with fighting, archery, and other stuff planned. The weather made fighting less than palatable, so we bagged it. Illness and real-world commitments also cut down the expected number of participats (and those that did come were force fed leftover food from Saturday). In all we had 7 people, and a great time was had. We gave the new archery target a go, and I got to use (for the first time) my new Yumi “Hubris Bow”. I found that I can pull a 78# bow more easily than when I got it 8 months ago, demonstrating the conditioning power of farm work. But after 24 shots my fingers and shoulders were complaining. I did discover that 25 meters is too short a range, as it was damaging the target (blowing chunks out of the target vinyl where the 50# bow was just punching nice little holes). At 45 meters it was an easy nice shoot. And from 80 m it was still following a nice flat tragectory. I want to give it a go at 150-200 meters, as I have never had a chance to target-shoot at that range- and that was the whole reason I got such an overkill bow! Plus an 80# bow is about an average “war bow” from midaevel times, so it is interesting to get a feel for what such weapons were like.

Tam and Jennifer spent much of the day working on Heraldry-things, gently proding me along towards getting a name and device registered.

So this past weekend was the big annual hoo-hah of the Middle Eastern Dance Association of New Zealand, held right here in Wellington this year, yay !

I took four classes in all:

- Milaya lef – “how to flirt with your wrap”, sort of. “Oops, my wrap seems to have slipped off my shoulder; let me adjust it. Oh my, let me refold that — did you peek ? Oh dear, there it goes again…” Imagine loose, cheap women going down to the Alexandria dockside to flirt with the sailors. Now imagine cheeky, but actually chaste young women imitating and exaggerating the mannerisms of the loose dockside women in a flirty teenage kind of tease dance. Not “sexy”, per se, but very cheeky and flirty. Now imagine that exaggerated again, stylized, and put on stage. With lots of sequins. In high-heeled mules and a ruffled minidress in the loudest colors you can find (the wrap itself is always black, except for the sequins). And a see-through net face-veil. While chewing gum.

- Khaleegy – “see the pretty, pretty, very *expensive* embroidered and beaded front panel on my thobe (long wide dress like a big sack, with big sacks for sleeves) ? Check it out. Take a look at my jewelry, too, while you’re at it. And my gorgeous long hair.” Fun dance. The dresses themselves, apart from the embroidery, are often quite transparent, and we’re told the “traditional” underclothing for a proper Saudi oil baron’s wife is a nice Chanel, or maybe a Prada.

- Pilates – wanted to see what the hype was about. The hype is apparently about spicing up your sex life by toning your “pelvic floor”. Useful stuff for dancers, too.

- Floor work – involving the actual floor (and no grunting !). How to get onto and off it gracefully, even in a tight skirt. Things Not To Do. Things That Look Cool. Fun class ! And I remembered to bring a towel, so it didn’t trash my knees !

The big show Saturday night featured dancers from all over NZ (and a few from Oz as well). Stephen, Sylvia & I did front of house. There were some good bits. I find I enjoy watching friends, even if they’re mediocre, to watching dancers I don’t know, unless the dancers I don’t know happen to be very very good, and/or are doing something really unusual.

Sunday was the hafla at Istanbul. There were I guess 40 or 50 of us there, so quite a shindig, supplemented later in the evening by significant subsets of the ME population of Wellington, who’d undoubtedly Gotten The Word, as it were. Good food ! (None of that chicken-flavored toothpaste stuff from the place in Courtenay Place — everything was yummy yummy.)

My bellydance teacher just spent THREE DAYS in F-ING PRISON in Honolulu, because of the new “tighter” (read: irrational) US rules about visa paperwork (which they apparently didn’t bother to tell anyone checking her paperwork on *this* end). So instead of going to a dance workshop with one of her idols, she got stuck in a holding cell until the next plane back.

Ooh, that just makes me want to SPIT.

Some pics from the show. I’d inundate you, but… well, we’ll see how long it takes to upload these. That’s the new door for the ger, behind the Evil King (in his Evil Hat) and his Zombie Minions.

We survived the show ! It went really well. Sold out (or nearly) for the first two, and about half-house for the third. Nobody screwed up ! And no psycho-drama ! Go us ! We even got in the local paper (the Wellington equivalent of the City Paper).

I can’t wait to see the video.

Two things I learned (or re-learned) this weekend:

– When you put my makeup foundation on Stephen, he looks like an animated corpse. While Sybille’s quite sure that an undead King is not quite the effect we’re going for in this production, we’ll have to keep it in mind, should for some reason we ever *want* to make Stephen look three days dead.

– The Agincourt Carol can be sung to the tune of “Day-O”. Try it:

De-o ! De-e-e-o !
Deo gracias Anglia !

De-o ! De-e-e-o !
Redde pro victoria !

Owre kynge went forth to Normandy
(Deo gracias Anglia)
With grace and myght of chyvalry
(Deo gracias Anglia)
Ther God for hym wrought mervelusly
(Deo gracias Anglia)
Wherfore Englonde may calle and cry
(Deo gracias Anglia)

–chorus–

In two weeks the bellydance-fairytale, The Two Sisters, goes down. Which means the final frenzy is now commencing. For the last 10 days Tam has been working like mad to get the promotional artwork done. This became a case of “what can go wrong, will”. Case in point was Saturday, all she had to do was burn the data onto a CD. She sticks in a blank CD, and the drive breaks. It had been working perfectly the day before, but now it is kaput. Many hours of repair efforts failed, and we discovered Sony does not do service advice if you are outside the US (gee- thanks!). In the end we shuffled drives around between machines and got stuff working. This is only one of many incidents that has plauged the process. We are both hoping the latest version is the final one, so we can simply focus on practicing our dances a few million times before the show.

We are also trying to get as many around the house and farm projects done as possible. My parents arrive in 3 weeks, and that is a great incentive to not have half-done stuff lying around. At the end of last week I finished digging-in pipes and making connections so that the house is now getting its water directy from the new water tank. Hopefully we can get the new drainage field for the septic system finished now that it has stopped raining continuously. (Note- no rain for 4 consecutive days! It’s a miracle!).

Yesterday afternoon, after rehersal, we drove around Wellington harbor all the way to Eastbourne. That is far as the road goes around the east side of the harbor, before becoming a private dirt road that only connects to remote farms and lighthouses. It was fun walking along the pebble beach and looking west across the harbor to the city. When we get our bikes repaired we will have to come back and cycle down the road to the lighthouse at the end. It is supposed to be a 7-hour hike, which would be a great bike ride. And since it is a coast road, it is nice and flat! I would not want to cycle in many parts of this fine country, as the frequent vertical changes require thighs of steel.

Just a general update: We’ve had two whole nice days in a row ! Which means we managed to chuck Stephen up on the roof to seal the leaks around the skylight and conservatory, and that the sealant has actually had some time to set and dry before the rain comes again this weekend.

Huzzah for State Insurance. Apparently, they used to have a bad reputation & everybody said they sucked. But near as I can tell, someone up the food chain there decided to do something about that, as they’ve been terrific for us. We had nearly everything we lost replaced or paid for within three days of making the claim. The only hold-out was the washing machine, which had to be taken away by a specialist, and we got that back Tuesday (our $400 second-hand washing machine apparently cost them $700 to repair — but now we have a near-new completely refurbished washer). And not a moment too soon, as the mountain of dirty clothes on the bedroom floor was growing alarming.

Sunday (which was also fine weather) we had a rehearsal in our studio (wacky !) — that was cool. The show is really shaping up — every dance has such a completely individual flavor, and it’s really cool getting in troupes from all over the region each doing their own thing, but tied all together by the storyline. But the best, of course, is that I did manage to scrape together rough drafts of both a choreography and some promotional artwork in time for the rehearsal. Which is the point at which I must fervently declare that Stephen is a saint. In part for helping me with the choreography — the hardest part of which was simply getting the music I picked sussed, as I managed to find something with the most obnoxious irregular phrasing — but mostly for simply not throwing me out of the house altogether, as I was a complete stress-monkey all last week. Anyone looking for a new patron saint of patience and forbearance should get a little statuette of Stephen to add to their household gods.

Monday we got the hard drive out of the now-defunct Pavilion working in Stephen’s Len PC. Tuesday we got the modem working in mine, so we’re back online at home (yay !) and Stephen can stop climbing the walls (amazing how addictive net access can get — thought to be fair he *does* need it for work). Plus the caulking. Plus we picked up a proper guest bed for people staying with us to sleep on, so they won’t have to use the futon-couch (not that there’s anything wrong with our futon couch).

And last night we had a SCAdian Movie Nite at our place, and Stephen finally got to show Alexander Nevsky (we were going to do this last week, but the TV was busted, so we all sat around by candlelight and chatted). SCA New Zealand has officially incorporated, so there was some discussion of electing council representatives, and other procedural stuff. Plus there’s planning for a local event coming up. Someone noticed that although they’d made Stephen Chatelaine, they hadn’t managed to saddle me with an office yet (yikes). I can feel the little red laser sight on my forehead even now.