That Was The Weekend That Was
Friday -- I took it off as a vacation day. First, we went to visit my mother in the nursing home. The staff recognized us right away. Either they're very alert about their patients, or that place receives few visitors. I'm afraid it might be the latter. Mother is doing well, we brought her more supplies as well as some of her plants from home. She no longer has a room mate. After a lengthy visit, we stopped at the reservation to gas up and headed for home where I dropped Karen off and packed the car for the Eighth Annual NoGorsedd Bardic Roundtable. (NoGorsedd is a mid-realm bardic group) It didn't take too much work as I was already semi-packed from an event last weekend. An un-eventful drive brought me to the site where I was greeted before I could get out of the car. My original plan had been for Jack the Giant Killer to troll me in. But I had to get people to leave me alone for a minute. I finally told them I wanted to stretch my legs after driving five hours and I would be up in a minute. They left me alone and I unpacked my ninja garb and Jack and he trolled me in. They loved it!
Friday night was an open-bar with an instrumental jam session. During pauses we played a Book Challenge. Draw a book title from a hat and give the first paragraph to make everyone want to read the book. These are books that do not exist, but should (more or less! :) ) My first draw was "The Krumhorn Sounds at Midnight!" One lady got "101 Recipes for Dead Rat" and after describing how to make rat stew, I quipped "Darn, I was hoping for a recipe for Ratatouille!" The groans brought down the house! :)
Saturday -- A very busy day with both classes and challenges. Challenges included "Ladies choice", where the ladies choose a participant, the medium, the mood and props for an impromptu performance. "A picture's worth a thousand words" Fingerpaints and crayons are used to create child-like pictures and bards must tell the story that the picture inspired. It gets fun when the bard has to guess what something in the picture is. "Mr. Know-it-all" Three bards seated in a row can answer any question, but only speak one word per turn. Classes included "Period Sources", "Copyright, copyleft and Fair Use", "Bardic Next Step Roundtable" (what makes a good Bardic 200 level class), How to Jam and Norman Haiku.
Before dinner, we played Bardic Kubb. Kubb is a Viking lawn game. However, in this version, everytime you score, you draw a card from a deck and perform the action on it. After finally scoring, I drew a card that read "Make an Advertisement for a Used Yurt Salesman" I read the card aloud the players and while I was thinking of a reply, Brendan quipped "King Richard's Camping Equipment Store: Now is the winter of our discount tents!". I threw the card at him. There was no way to follow that one!
After dinner, it was raining, so the bardic 'campfire' was a number of chimney lamp grouped together under Monstro, the huge tent where all classes were. I enjoyed myself immensely and learned many new songs. I briefly hit a groove where I could do no wrong, my silly songs had them laughing, serious pieces had them crying, and a dramatic poem stunned them into silence. Bards live for these moments! We finally broke up in the wee hours of the morning.
Sunday -- Camp take down. I was NOT the last person to leave, but close to it. I helped take down all three of the camp pavillions before packing my own gear. Breakfast was mostly leftovers grabbed between takedowns and the hosts gave food away to take home as not to throw it out. A leisurely uneventful drive home.
Monday -- An Indian holiday so I had the day off from work. I had originally planned that I was going to knock items off the honey-dew list, but that didn't quite happen. I slept in which was not surprising as I got about 9-10 hours sleep all weekend, unpacked the car and discovered I was stiff as a board. Apparently, I can't sleep on the ground like I used to. Long nap in a chair while watching TV. A quite night, an early retiring.
Friday night was an open-bar with an instrumental jam session. During pauses we played a Book Challenge. Draw a book title from a hat and give the first paragraph to make everyone want to read the book. These are books that do not exist, but should (more or less! :) ) My first draw was "The Krumhorn Sounds at Midnight!" One lady got "101 Recipes for Dead Rat" and after describing how to make rat stew, I quipped "Darn, I was hoping for a recipe for Ratatouille!" The groans brought down the house! :)
Saturday -- A very busy day with both classes and challenges. Challenges included "Ladies choice", where the ladies choose a participant, the medium, the mood and props for an impromptu performance. "A picture's worth a thousand words" Fingerpaints and crayons are used to create child-like pictures and bards must tell the story that the picture inspired. It gets fun when the bard has to guess what something in the picture is. "Mr. Know-it-all" Three bards seated in a row can answer any question, but only speak one word per turn. Classes included "Period Sources", "Copyright, copyleft and Fair Use", "Bardic Next Step Roundtable" (what makes a good Bardic 200 level class), How to Jam and Norman Haiku.
Before dinner, we played Bardic Kubb. Kubb is a Viking lawn game. However, in this version, everytime you score, you draw a card from a deck and perform the action on it. After finally scoring, I drew a card that read "Make an Advertisement for a Used Yurt Salesman" I read the card aloud the players and while I was thinking of a reply, Brendan quipped "King Richard's Camping Equipment Store: Now is the winter of our discount tents!". I threw the card at him. There was no way to follow that one!
After dinner, it was raining, so the bardic 'campfire' was a number of chimney lamp grouped together under Monstro, the huge tent where all classes were. I enjoyed myself immensely and learned many new songs. I briefly hit a groove where I could do no wrong, my silly songs had them laughing, serious pieces had them crying, and a dramatic poem stunned them into silence. Bards live for these moments! We finally broke up in the wee hours of the morning.
Sunday -- Camp take down. I was NOT the last person to leave, but close to it. I helped take down all three of the camp pavillions before packing my own gear. Breakfast was mostly leftovers grabbed between takedowns and the hosts gave food away to take home as not to throw it out. A leisurely uneventful drive home.
Monday -- An Indian holiday so I had the day off from work. I had originally planned that I was going to knock items off the honey-dew list, but that didn't quite happen. I slept in which was not surprising as I got about 9-10 hours sleep all weekend, unpacked the car and discovered I was stiff as a board. Apparently, I can't sleep on the ground like I used to. Long nap in a chair while watching TV. A quite night, an early retiring.