Weekend Update
Friday night I picked up ravena_kade at the train station and we headed to the 99 restaurant for dinner. While I love the food and prices at the 99, their ambiance always leaves a little to be desired. They’ve cut back on the “sports bar” feel and the TVs in the dining room are gone. But half of their booths are now “barstool” height. Who wants to have to climb up into a booth and then sit with their feet dangling while they eat? I always wonder who designs things for giants and expects we wee munchkins to enjoy it?
On the way home we hit Hannford’s to pick up some muffins for breakfast, because I hadn’t gotten my act together to get any baking done (I blame Lord Peter, who is currently wooing Harriet Vane….).
Every time Casino Royale (2006) comes up in conversation and Jennifer says she hasn’t seen it, I say “We’ll have to watch it the next time you come up to visit.” Well, we finally got around to doing that. When we got home from dinner I pulled out the DVD and introduced her to Vesper Lynd. Then we hit the hay, because we were going to make an early morning of it. Because we were getting up early, of course I had a horrible time getting to sleep. =P
But thankfully I didn’t have any trouble getting up on time. We were up, dressed, fed, and on the road in plenty of time to beat the Disney on Ice crowd to the parking garage. I love how the attendants always say, “Drive straight ahead” and point you towards the outer reaches when there’s always parking right to the left when you pull in. *bangs a sharp left and parks right next to the door*
We found allgudallthetim (or I should say, she found us) before we even got to the Troll. She waited in line with us while we paid our entrance fee and got our site tokens. They’ve stopped doing the pewter castings and moved to just little wooden discs this year. I still have a collection of previous year’s tokens, but I don’t think I’ll be saving this one. Then we walked out of Troll we bumped right into guy_todd, so the four of us who usually hang out together at Birka had no trouble finding each other.
Because I’ve been out of work so long and money is starting to get tight, I set myself a strict budget for the day. And I managed to completely blow it before I even got in the door of the vendor area. One of the women working the pre-registration check-in table had a Savonarola chair with a For Sale sign on it next to the table. The price was excellent (less than half of what they go for new), as was the condition of the chair. I’ve been wanting a second chair so I can have a pair of them in the living room, and I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t buy it. So, plastic was exchanged and Mike helped me tote my new chair down to the car.
We dove into the vendor’s hall and tracked down fionaniconnor for hugs at the table she was working at. And we all had to admire her new garb. Very nice! Then we wandered around, window shopping, greeting friends, and people watching. We were really bad about losing track of each other. Someone was always wandering off to see a friend or lingering too long over a vendor’s wares and two or three of us would end up looking for the missing person(s). Finally I said, “We should just plan to meet at the stairs at noon, then we don’t have to worry about keeping track of each other!”
Because we managed to miss it completely last year, I wanted to make sure to get down to the Armory before lunch and watch the heavy list fighting. We got there before it started this year, they were still holding court down at one end of the big hall and there was a lot of cheering and yelling (making war plans I suppose). But it was only a few minutes before they finished and the warriors poured into the bear pit down in the ballroom and started whacking away at each other. We hung over the rail and tried to see if we recognized any of the fighters (I only spotted Angus this year, Nikki was marshalling, but I saw Dennis and Cat later in the day, after the fighting was over). We admired the heraldry (the “bird dog” and a Cthulhu-esk squid were popular) and checked out the various armored bits (Roman, Mongol, and everything from basinets to close helms, to morions for helmets). There was the roman centurion who fought wearing a cape, and the gladiator with the shiny copper greaves, and a couple of samurai, and as always just a mishmash of period armor styles, hockey pads, and homemade gear.
We ran into John and Rae in the Armory, and I invited them to tag along with us when we went out for lunch. After watching the fighters for maybe 45 minutes we headed back to the stairs and met up with the others. Seven of us walked down to Piccolo's for lunch like we have the past several years. It’s a big pricey, but it’s only a block from the hotel, it’s always empty and able to seat a crowd, and Mike can find something vegan on the menu. I had the chicken picatta and brought half of it home in a doggy bag. So that somewhat makes up for the price.
As we were waiting for the light to change so we could cross the street you could see the folks in the sports bar on the corner turning around to gawk at us costumed freaks out the window. Me, with my big bulge cap, and Gottfried with his enormous erect codpiece. Seriously, one guy could have caught flies with his mouth hanging open like that. Then a Manchester FD fire truck drove past and gave us a big honk on the horn. “That’s for you!” I said to John and we all laughed because we knew it was true.
We had lively conversation over lunch and got caught up on all the gossip about each other’s lives. John works for a public utilities company, so of course we talked about what’s going on in Flint, Michigan right now. The thing that kills me is that this whole thing could have been prevented for $100 a day. And Barbara asked for advice on a family thing that’s happening right now. Lunch was lovely but leisurely, I can’t say the wait staff at Piccolo's is what I’d call speedy. But then again, at this point, Birka isn’t really so much about shopping for me as it is checking in with friends and talking and laughing and having a good time. So a two hour lunch isn’t a big thing.
As always, the people watching at Birka was excellent. There were a couple of really lovely Roman ladies, one with an attempt at one of those crazy front loaded hairstyles, and another with a really lovely sheer embroidered shawl. There was the fellow with the gold Tudor trunk hose and sleeves! He looked positively smashing. There were several lovely German gowns, and another really good German Stuchlein. Yay mushroom cap peeps! And one woman with a big red and gold embroidered, feathered platter hat that was so lovely I wanted to lure her into a dark corner and mug her for her hat.
As usual, I saw tons of friends that I pretty much only see at Birka. I had a good chat with my evil twin Skippy (beard5). I ran into Eric, but never did see his spouse alphafemale1. I’ve been wanting to say hello to Astrida for years, but since I met her in mufti at a workshop, I had no idea how to recognize her in her SCA weeds. Luckily she spotted me this year and waved me over and I got to admire her goffered veil and the 92 dags on her hubby’s new houppelande. When we got back from lunch we ran into Stephen and Alena and Percy (who kept getting mistaken for a girl in his baby waffenrock. But then again, it started out as one of Lily’s dresses, so I guess that’s understandable.) I said hello to Matt, a German reenactor from way up Maine, and spotted his lady Petra taking stats down in the bear pit for the fighters. I saw Clint and Dede off in the distance, but didn’t get a chance to say hello. I did bump into Kirk, and busted his chops about not showing up for Guild stuff (he’d disappeared on us a couple of years back). And I saw Marion (chalkhorsegirl) and Robert (thatpotteryguy) and Alison and a ton of other people that I’m sure I’m forgetting.
I did break down and end up buying two books, both heavily illustrated. One is a heavily illustrated book with selections from the Medieval Health Handbook. Flipping through it I knew that I had a ton of images from it already pinned on Pinterest, so I knew I wanted a copy of it for my research library. The other is the museum guide from the Crime Museum/Justice Center/Torture Museum in Rothenburg, Bavaria. Sadly the fellow who had them on his table had already sold out of the English copies, so I had to buy it in German. But it was just too cool to pass up. And now I have a little bit more incentive to work on my German so that I can read the darn thing. And then I picked up a couple of very cheap prints, again of images that I’ve had pinned on Pinterest. And that was pretty much all I bought all day.
At that point I knew that I needed to get out of the vendor’s hall if I wanted to stop spending money. Plus, my feet were hurting (I’d worn my new pair of Landsknecht shoes, but only lasted an hour before I had to run out to the car for my Birkenstocks. They need a good stretching with the shoe stretchers.). We went looking for somewhere to sit and people watch and ended up sitting on a wall and having a good long chat with kaige_of_ct. I feel like it’s been yoinks since we’ve done more than just wave at each other in passing. Was the last time we had a good chat really at her wedding back in 2013?
Finally Erin had to toddle off, and Barbara said she was beat and we decided to make our final rounds and say goodbye and call it a day. We lost Mike in the Dealer’s Room when he ran into Nancy. But caught up again with him later because when we got down to the garage, Disney on Ice was just getting out and the traffic was horrible. So we stood around for about 15 - 20 minutes gabbing in the parking garage, and ran into Rae and John and Mike as they all headed home. Moar hugs and finally we all got in our cars and headed out.
Usually we go out to dinner with Barbara after Birka, but we were all still full from lunch, so we skipped dinner this year. When we got home, Jennifer and I watched more movies on DVD (Robin Hood, the one with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchette, and the Three Musketeers, the the steampunk version that came out a couple of years back with Mila Jovovich, Orlando Bloom, Mads Mikkelson, and Christoph Waltz) and split a Newman’s Own Garlic Chicken pizza.
Sunday morning I got up and made waffles. Mmmmm. Then we watched CBS Sunday Morning, because that’s how I really like to spend my Sunday mornings.
Then we packed up and headed out to the movie theater to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We got there at 11:00 for what I thought was the 11:30 show. Turns out it was the 11:45 show. So, forty-five minutes early, and the main part of the theater was already sold out. WTF? My local movie theater renovated at the end of last year and changed from stadium seating to these huge recliners. It’s now a “cinema de lux” with a “premium large format experience” and “fully reclining reserved seats.” Well la dee da! The downside is that there are now only about 100 seats in each theater, which I guess means you pretty much have to plan on reserving online if you want to get a damned seat at the movies (and paying the extra dollar for the priviledge). It’s ridiculous. As early as we were, our choices for seats were three single seats in the main part of the theater or the two front rows. We picked two aisle seats in front of each other, G1 and H1.
When we got into the theater, of course, it was completely empty except for three people. We went down and tried the seats in the front row, and as expected, they were too close to the screen, complete neck-craners. But the second row was far enough back from the screen to be acceptable. Good to know for future reference. We sat next to each other and hung out and talked until someone showed up and said, “That’s our seat.” And I was laughing to myself over the middle aged couple in the row behind me who brought a blanket into the theater and were kicked back, snuggling up together like they were in their own living room.
The first time I saw The Force Awakens I pretty much was crying the entire time, or suffering from feels and trying not to cry. I managed to avoid that on my second viewing, although I did mist up a couple of times. After I saw it the first time I’d read a bunch of articles, so I had all sorts of things to watch for this time. I didn’t spot any new plot holes. And I didn’t see anything to contradict my favorite conspiracy theory about Ray’s parentage. Or about Finn’s parentage for that matter.
After lunch I bought gas, for $1.81 a gallon. Sheesh gas prices have been dropping. I think the last time I filled up I was still waiting for it to drop below $2 a gallon. Then we grabbed lunch to go from Panera and I dropped Jennifer off at the train station. It was very warm out on Sunday, it hit 57 degrees at Frogholm.
I headed home, where I discovered that Panera gave me an apple instead of bread with my soup. *grumbles* I ended up farting around the rest of the day. And discovered that I’d missed the SAG awards again. BUGGER. When did they move it from Sunday to Saturday night?!?!
Now I’m just hunkering down and hoping that I didn’t hug a plague carrier and catch anything at Birka again this year. Stephen has already posted on FB that he’s running a fever. Argh!
On the way home we hit Hannford’s to pick up some muffins for breakfast, because I hadn’t gotten my act together to get any baking done (I blame Lord Peter, who is currently wooing Harriet Vane….).
Every time Casino Royale (2006) comes up in conversation and Jennifer says she hasn’t seen it, I say “We’ll have to watch it the next time you come up to visit.” Well, we finally got around to doing that. When we got home from dinner I pulled out the DVD and introduced her to Vesper Lynd. Then we hit the hay, because we were going to make an early morning of it. Because we were getting up early, of course I had a horrible time getting to sleep. =P
But thankfully I didn’t have any trouble getting up on time. We were up, dressed, fed, and on the road in plenty of time to beat the Disney on Ice crowd to the parking garage. I love how the attendants always say, “Drive straight ahead” and point you towards the outer reaches when there’s always parking right to the left when you pull in. *bangs a sharp left and parks right next to the door*
We found allgudallthetim (or I should say, she found us) before we even got to the Troll. She waited in line with us while we paid our entrance fee and got our site tokens. They’ve stopped doing the pewter castings and moved to just little wooden discs this year. I still have a collection of previous year’s tokens, but I don’t think I’ll be saving this one. Then we walked out of Troll we bumped right into guy_todd, so the four of us who usually hang out together at Birka had no trouble finding each other.
Because I’ve been out of work so long and money is starting to get tight, I set myself a strict budget for the day. And I managed to completely blow it before I even got in the door of the vendor area. One of the women working the pre-registration check-in table had a Savonarola chair with a For Sale sign on it next to the table. The price was excellent (less than half of what they go for new), as was the condition of the chair. I’ve been wanting a second chair so I can have a pair of them in the living room, and I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t buy it. So, plastic was exchanged and Mike helped me tote my new chair down to the car.
We dove into the vendor’s hall and tracked down fionaniconnor for hugs at the table she was working at. And we all had to admire her new garb. Very nice! Then we wandered around, window shopping, greeting friends, and people watching. We were really bad about losing track of each other. Someone was always wandering off to see a friend or lingering too long over a vendor’s wares and two or three of us would end up looking for the missing person(s). Finally I said, “We should just plan to meet at the stairs at noon, then we don’t have to worry about keeping track of each other!”
Because we managed to miss it completely last year, I wanted to make sure to get down to the Armory before lunch and watch the heavy list fighting. We got there before it started this year, they were still holding court down at one end of the big hall and there was a lot of cheering and yelling (making war plans I suppose). But it was only a few minutes before they finished and the warriors poured into the bear pit down in the ballroom and started whacking away at each other. We hung over the rail and tried to see if we recognized any of the fighters (I only spotted Angus this year, Nikki was marshalling, but I saw Dennis and Cat later in the day, after the fighting was over). We admired the heraldry (the “bird dog” and a Cthulhu-esk squid were popular) and checked out the various armored bits (Roman, Mongol, and everything from basinets to close helms, to morions for helmets). There was the roman centurion who fought wearing a cape, and the gladiator with the shiny copper greaves, and a couple of samurai, and as always just a mishmash of period armor styles, hockey pads, and homemade gear.
We ran into John and Rae in the Armory, and I invited them to tag along with us when we went out for lunch. After watching the fighters for maybe 45 minutes we headed back to the stairs and met up with the others. Seven of us walked down to Piccolo's for lunch like we have the past several years. It’s a big pricey, but it’s only a block from the hotel, it’s always empty and able to seat a crowd, and Mike can find something vegan on the menu. I had the chicken picatta and brought half of it home in a doggy bag. So that somewhat makes up for the price.
As we were waiting for the light to change so we could cross the street you could see the folks in the sports bar on the corner turning around to gawk at us costumed freaks out the window. Me, with my big bulge cap, and Gottfried with his enormous erect codpiece. Seriously, one guy could have caught flies with his mouth hanging open like that. Then a Manchester FD fire truck drove past and gave us a big honk on the horn. “That’s for you!” I said to John and we all laughed because we knew it was true.
We had lively conversation over lunch and got caught up on all the gossip about each other’s lives. John works for a public utilities company, so of course we talked about what’s going on in Flint, Michigan right now. The thing that kills me is that this whole thing could have been prevented for $100 a day. And Barbara asked for advice on a family thing that’s happening right now. Lunch was lovely but leisurely, I can’t say the wait staff at Piccolo's is what I’d call speedy. But then again, at this point, Birka isn’t really so much about shopping for me as it is checking in with friends and talking and laughing and having a good time. So a two hour lunch isn’t a big thing.
As always, the people watching at Birka was excellent. There were a couple of really lovely Roman ladies, one with an attempt at one of those crazy front loaded hairstyles, and another with a really lovely sheer embroidered shawl. There was the fellow with the gold Tudor trunk hose and sleeves! He looked positively smashing. There were several lovely German gowns, and another really good German Stuchlein. Yay mushroom cap peeps! And one woman with a big red and gold embroidered, feathered platter hat that was so lovely I wanted to lure her into a dark corner and mug her for her hat.
As usual, I saw tons of friends that I pretty much only see at Birka. I had a good chat with my evil twin Skippy (beard5). I ran into Eric, but never did see his spouse alphafemale1. I’ve been wanting to say hello to Astrida for years, but since I met her in mufti at a workshop, I had no idea how to recognize her in her SCA weeds. Luckily she spotted me this year and waved me over and I got to admire her goffered veil and the 92 dags on her hubby’s new houppelande. When we got back from lunch we ran into Stephen and Alena and Percy (who kept getting mistaken for a girl in his baby waffenrock. But then again, it started out as one of Lily’s dresses, so I guess that’s understandable.) I said hello to Matt, a German reenactor from way up Maine, and spotted his lady Petra taking stats down in the bear pit for the fighters. I saw Clint and Dede off in the distance, but didn’t get a chance to say hello. I did bump into Kirk, and busted his chops about not showing up for Guild stuff (he’d disappeared on us a couple of years back). And I saw Marion (chalkhorsegirl) and Robert (thatpotteryguy) and Alison and a ton of other people that I’m sure I’m forgetting.
I did break down and end up buying two books, both heavily illustrated. One is a heavily illustrated book with selections from the Medieval Health Handbook. Flipping through it I knew that I had a ton of images from it already pinned on Pinterest, so I knew I wanted a copy of it for my research library. The other is the museum guide from the Crime Museum/Justice Center/Torture Museum in Rothenburg, Bavaria. Sadly the fellow who had them on his table had already sold out of the English copies, so I had to buy it in German. But it was just too cool to pass up. And now I have a little bit more incentive to work on my German so that I can read the darn thing. And then I picked up a couple of very cheap prints, again of images that I’ve had pinned on Pinterest. And that was pretty much all I bought all day.
At that point I knew that I needed to get out of the vendor’s hall if I wanted to stop spending money. Plus, my feet were hurting (I’d worn my new pair of Landsknecht shoes, but only lasted an hour before I had to run out to the car for my Birkenstocks. They need a good stretching with the shoe stretchers.). We went looking for somewhere to sit and people watch and ended up sitting on a wall and having a good long chat with kaige_of_ct. I feel like it’s been yoinks since we’ve done more than just wave at each other in passing. Was the last time we had a good chat really at her wedding back in 2013?
Finally Erin had to toddle off, and Barbara said she was beat and we decided to make our final rounds and say goodbye and call it a day. We lost Mike in the Dealer’s Room when he ran into Nancy. But caught up again with him later because when we got down to the garage, Disney on Ice was just getting out and the traffic was horrible. So we stood around for about 15 - 20 minutes gabbing in the parking garage, and ran into Rae and John and Mike as they all headed home. Moar hugs and finally we all got in our cars and headed out.
Usually we go out to dinner with Barbara after Birka, but we were all still full from lunch, so we skipped dinner this year. When we got home, Jennifer and I watched more movies on DVD (Robin Hood, the one with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchette, and the Three Musketeers, the the steampunk version that came out a couple of years back with Mila Jovovich, Orlando Bloom, Mads Mikkelson, and Christoph Waltz) and split a Newman’s Own Garlic Chicken pizza.
Sunday morning I got up and made waffles. Mmmmm. Then we watched CBS Sunday Morning, because that’s how I really like to spend my Sunday mornings.
Then we packed up and headed out to the movie theater to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We got there at 11:00 for what I thought was the 11:30 show. Turns out it was the 11:45 show. So, forty-five minutes early, and the main part of the theater was already sold out. WTF? My local movie theater renovated at the end of last year and changed from stadium seating to these huge recliners. It’s now a “cinema de lux” with a “premium large format experience” and “fully reclining reserved seats.” Well la dee da! The downside is that there are now only about 100 seats in each theater, which I guess means you pretty much have to plan on reserving online if you want to get a damned seat at the movies (and paying the extra dollar for the priviledge). It’s ridiculous. As early as we were, our choices for seats were three single seats in the main part of the theater or the two front rows. We picked two aisle seats in front of each other, G1 and H1.
When we got into the theater, of course, it was completely empty except for three people. We went down and tried the seats in the front row, and as expected, they were too close to the screen, complete neck-craners. But the second row was far enough back from the screen to be acceptable. Good to know for future reference. We sat next to each other and hung out and talked until someone showed up and said, “That’s our seat.” And I was laughing to myself over the middle aged couple in the row behind me who brought a blanket into the theater and were kicked back, snuggling up together like they were in their own living room.
The first time I saw The Force Awakens I pretty much was crying the entire time, or suffering from feels and trying not to cry. I managed to avoid that on my second viewing, although I did mist up a couple of times. After I saw it the first time I’d read a bunch of articles, so I had all sorts of things to watch for this time. I didn’t spot any new plot holes. And I didn’t see anything to contradict my favorite conspiracy theory about Ray’s parentage. Or about Finn’s parentage for that matter.
After lunch I bought gas, for $1.81 a gallon. Sheesh gas prices have been dropping. I think the last time I filled up I was still waiting for it to drop below $2 a gallon. Then we grabbed lunch to go from Panera and I dropped Jennifer off at the train station. It was very warm out on Sunday, it hit 57 degrees at Frogholm.
I headed home, where I discovered that Panera gave me an apple instead of bread with my soup. *grumbles* I ended up farting around the rest of the day. And discovered that I’d missed the SAG awards again. BUGGER. When did they move it from Sunday to Saturday night?!?!
Now I’m just hunkering down and hoping that I didn’t hug a plague carrier and catch anything at Birka again this year. Stephen has already posted on FB that he’s running a fever. Argh!