Candlemas

[tjulian]

Long have I heard what fine tourney combat was to be had at Candlemas in Kentucky, and it did not disappoint.  Maybe 800 bouts among the 50-ish fighters, many good ones, and that's a lot of bruises.  Not too many for me, considering.   Finn was right about the calibration standard being higher. ( I stayed with him and Tamara, who will likely be moving to Indianapolis soon.)  So I'm hitting harder, making my way up the 5 rounds of fighting in groups of 6.  This one guy, I leg him early, but not hard enough.  After an extensive exchange, he smacks me in the head, and I die.  As I'm walking out of the list, he wobbles, and goes down one one knee.  'um, yeah, um, i'm feeling that leg shot, now.  let's call that good. and go back to that part of the fight.  um, sorry.'    In another fun incident, Brannos made loud objection from across the room to a guy fighting a darkyarder on his knees.  The guy had dropped his shield to grab the centurion's baskethilt with his ungauntleted off hand, to control his sword.  No, not quite a legal move.  oops.  As I didn't have to fight Brannos early, I made it up to the final 8.  I'll have to see the video of this fight, because I was hitting Edmund with everything I had, and sometimes it just wasn't hard enough for his personal calibration standard.  Sometimes it was, and we had an even number of kills, til the last round.  For most of the event, he was fighting mace and shield.  For me, he switched to mace and madus.  After that didn't work out so well, he switched to sword and madus, then poleaxe.  A wise move, and the poleaxe got me.  Those wily dukes.
Back in Cinci, Tamara has been performing with a local Irish band, Fin-Tan.  I brought a pile of fused glass to show, since Finn has been glassblowing since forever, and may resume after their move.  He suggests selling this glass to stained glass makers.  Why not?  Not that I have time, but developing new manufacturing processes is more fnu than dyslexia.