I'm baaaaaack!
May. 8th, 2006 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rjlonaOh, I had such a wonderful lovely time in Kalamazoo!
On Wednesday I had dinner with Zaynab and got my BigBurrito fix. At K College's dance practice, which was fairly well attended, I was formally accepted by Maestro![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lyev as his first ever dance student. This is not quite a Master / Apprentice relationship, though that may come along in the future. I'm still rather excited about it. Many thanks, Maestro!
On Thursday I attended three sessions at the Congress. The first one, which was on medieval Poland and which I attended with an eye to picking up info forflinx, was interesting but a bit difficult to understand, since all the presenters had heavy Polish accents. The second session was about Costume in Chaucer and had lots of interesting information that is not terribly useful to me. The third session was about Edward III and his children. This one was fascinating, as this is one period of English history that I am actually quite familiar with. It also tied in nicely to one of the sessions I attended on Saturday (which I'll get to in a moment).
On Thursday evening I went to the airport with Zaynab to pick up her friendgarrity, who I have met briefly before. She was also staying with Zaynab and Logan, and we all had much fun hanging out together. She is also good friends with amnachaidh, sapphireone and fritz_et_al.
On Friday Zaynab and I went to the same sessions. The first was on Arthurian Cinema, and was highly entertaining. On of the papers presented was about "The Wickerman," which I now need to see. Another was about "A Knight's Tale" and had everybody laughing at the Robbie Williams video that went with the movie. Zaynab and I skipped a mid-day session to go to her office (WMU's costume shop) for a much-needed sewing lesson. I finally know how to set triangular gores into the front and back of my tunics using a sewing machine! Yay! Then we headed to a DISTAFF session about weaving and spinning, in which one woman presented her research on flax-spinning techniques, including a live demonstration. This was only the second presentation in the history of DISTAFF to actually include a distaff!
On Friday night we all went to a Cinco de Mayo party at Failenn and Devon's house. Lyev bravely wore his Aethelmarc jersey to a party filled with the major staff members for Their Majesties of the Middle Kingdom. He didn't actually encounter much heckling, but I got some later from Logan on the ride home. Failenn put out quite a spread of incredibly yummy food and her margaritas were very popular (not that I had one - ick!). The party included SCAdians from all over, some of whom were attending the Congress incognito, and we had fun finding connections and playing the "It's a Small Knowne World After All" game.
On Saturday I attended a great DISTAFF session about clothing in renaissance Venice, where I learned much and made some contacts with people who have come across Hungarian and Polish resources in their research. Yay networking! Then Lyev and I went to what was definitely the most entertaining session of the entire congress. One of the papers of the session about Richard II (Edward III's grandson and successor - there's the tie-in to Thursday's sessions) was presented by none other than Terry Jones! Yes, Terry Jones from Monty Python. He was a highly entertaining speaker (big surprise) who read many of his quotes in silly voices. I was able to purchase one of his books and get it autographed for my mom as a birthday present (shhhh... her birthday's next week so she doesn't know this yet).
After that Lyev and I went back to Zaynab and Logan's house for a dinner of spaghetti with homemade sauce with ground buffalo. Yummy. Then he and I went all dance-geeky in the basement and worked on some dances that I wanted to review. Some of our other dance-geekiness included looking at a scan of the Brussels Manuscript online and trying to decipher the hand-written notations in medieval French. Neither of us speaks modern French, but we were actually pretty successful (especially aftergarrity helped us with the translations). Later we watched the first part of HBO's miniseries about Elizabeth I starring Helen Mirren, mainly because Zaynab wanted me to see some of the dancing scenes. She felt that anything that looked that silly must be period, and I admit that the galliarding did look fairly accurate to me.
Zaynab and I got up way too early on Sunday to attend sessions on using internet resources to research historical clothing. Despite beginning at 8:30 AM, these were probably the most useful sessions we attended. Then we went home and napped.
Later on Sunday afternoon I left Kalamazoo (sigh, now I'm homesick again) and headed for Brian's place, where I napped some more. We then went over toamnachaidh and sapphireone's house, where they were hosting a graduation/birthday party for fritz_et_al. It was a fun party, and I got to see people I haven't seen much in recent years, including the host and hostess and parslaanna. After the party I decided I was too tired to drive the rest of the way home, so I stayed the night with my sweetie.
So now I'm home again, rather tired still and bursting with ideas and enthusiasm and way too many things I need to work on.
I think I'll take another nap.
On Wednesday I had dinner with Zaynab and got my BigBurrito fix. At K College's dance practice, which was fairly well attended, I was formally accepted by Maestro
lyev as his first ever dance student. This is not quite a Master / Apprentice relationship, though that may come along in the future. I'm still rather excited about it. Many thanks, Maestro!On Thursday I attended three sessions at the Congress. The first one, which was on medieval Poland and which I attended with an eye to picking up info for
flinx, was interesting but a bit difficult to understand, since all the presenters had heavy Polish accents. The second session was about Costume in Chaucer and had lots of interesting information that is not terribly useful to me. The third session was about Edward III and his children. This one was fascinating, as this is one period of English history that I am actually quite familiar with. It also tied in nicely to one of the sessions I attended on Saturday (which I'll get to in a moment).On Thursday evening I went to the airport with Zaynab to pick up her friend
garrity, who I have met briefly before. She was also staying with Zaynab and Logan, and we all had much fun hanging out together. She is also good friends with amnachaidh, sapphireone and fritz_et_al.On Friday Zaynab and I went to the same sessions. The first was on Arthurian Cinema, and was highly entertaining. On of the papers presented was about "The Wickerman," which I now need to see. Another was about "A Knight's Tale" and had everybody laughing at the Robbie Williams video that went with the movie. Zaynab and I skipped a mid-day session to go to her office (WMU's costume shop) for a much-needed sewing lesson. I finally know how to set triangular gores into the front and back of my tunics using a sewing machine! Yay! Then we headed to a DISTAFF session about weaving and spinning, in which one woman presented her research on flax-spinning techniques, including a live demonstration. This was only the second presentation in the history of DISTAFF to actually include a distaff!
On Friday night we all went to a Cinco de Mayo party at Failenn and Devon's house. Lyev bravely wore his Aethelmarc jersey to a party filled with the major staff members for Their Majesties of the Middle Kingdom. He didn't actually encounter much heckling, but I got some later from Logan on the ride home. Failenn put out quite a spread of incredibly yummy food and her margaritas were very popular (not that I had one - ick!). The party included SCAdians from all over, some of whom were attending the Congress incognito, and we had fun finding connections and playing the "It's a Small Knowne World After All" game.
On Saturday I attended a great DISTAFF session about clothing in renaissance Venice, where I learned much and made some contacts with people who have come across Hungarian and Polish resources in their research. Yay networking! Then Lyev and I went to what was definitely the most entertaining session of the entire congress. One of the papers of the session about Richard II (Edward III's grandson and successor - there's the tie-in to Thursday's sessions) was presented by none other than Terry Jones! Yes, Terry Jones from Monty Python. He was a highly entertaining speaker (big surprise) who read many of his quotes in silly voices. I was able to purchase one of his books and get it autographed for my mom as a birthday present (shhhh... her birthday's next week so she doesn't know this yet).
After that Lyev and I went back to Zaynab and Logan's house for a dinner of spaghetti with homemade sauce with ground buffalo. Yummy. Then he and I went all dance-geeky in the basement and worked on some dances that I wanted to review. Some of our other dance-geekiness included looking at a scan of the Brussels Manuscript online and trying to decipher the hand-written notations in medieval French. Neither of us speaks modern French, but we were actually pretty successful (especially after
garrity helped us with the translations). Later we watched the first part of HBO's miniseries about Elizabeth I starring Helen Mirren, mainly because Zaynab wanted me to see some of the dancing scenes. She felt that anything that looked that silly must be period, and I admit that the galliarding did look fairly accurate to me.Zaynab and I got up way too early on Sunday to attend sessions on using internet resources to research historical clothing. Despite beginning at 8:30 AM, these were probably the most useful sessions we attended. Then we went home and napped.
Later on Sunday afternoon I left Kalamazoo (sigh, now I'm homesick again) and headed for Brian's place, where I napped some more. We then went over to
amnachaidh and sapphireone's house, where they were hosting a graduation/birthday party for fritz_et_al. It was a fun party, and I got to see people I haven't seen much in recent years, including the host and hostess and parslaanna. After the party I decided I was too tired to drive the rest of the way home, so I stayed the night with my sweetie.So now I'm home again, rather tired still and bursting with ideas and enthusiasm and way too many things I need to work on.
I think I'll take another nap.
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Date: 2006-05-08 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-05-09 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 10:55 pm (UTC)YAY!
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Date: 2006-05-09 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 01:33 am (UTC)*hugs*
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Date: 2006-05-09 12:20 pm (UTC)'Tis my privelege as well, fair student!
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Date: 2006-05-10 12:06 pm (UTC)