Blah · Diddy · Blah · Blah · Blah

Wednesday, I booked it out of work as fast as possible so that Nick and Chris could pick me up and we could head out to Chatham for the Gregor's Crossing Medieval Faire. But first, we had to make a quick stop in Cambridge so that Chris could do stand up. Cool.

Got to the hotel, checked in with no problems and had fun exploring the room for a bit. I must state that I haven't had a going out of town overnight type vacation in six years. The closest I have had is a)visiting people in Toronto and sleeping on various couches, b)camping overnight at a ren faire after a party. I actually got to stay in a HOTEL! And the only non-smoking rooms they had had king size beds. Awesome. Also, there was a fridge! And the TV was in a cupboard.

Yes, I am easily amused.

Got up bright and early on Thursday to head to the morning meeting. We only had time to grab some fruit on the way through the lobby, since call was at 8:30. Eeeeeeewwww...

The meeting was quick, though, so there was time to run through the faire and say hello to all the folks. There were the Faires in Time folk- Ravens Hoard and Merchant's Wife and Kai Nyra and Wire to Weave- and there were the Knights of Valour folk- Stitches in Time and Elysium Merchant (although Katherine wasn't there)- and booths that are more independant like the one that sells the wraps and I can't remember the name (they brought their new baby and her name is Rainy Sky and she's ADORABLE!). There were also some reenactors. I have a love/hate relationship with reenactors. There's the ones that know their stuff, but are okay with playing around with the history for the sake of having a bit of fun. Those ones are cool, and that's the kind that was at Chatham. Yay! But then you get the ones who are ONLY about the history and ignore the need for entertainment. Ick. Also, they let me store stuff in their tent and decided they would keep me. Yay! Oh, and this only really refers to the SCA reenactors. There were also Viking reenactors, but they scared me! Many swords and fires and things. Eep!

I eventually headed out to the front gate with Nick and Chris. They went to sleep, and I encouraged small children to go and tickle them. Hooray! It wasn't long before busload after busload of kids started to arrive. I had fun asking the kids if they wanted to be my friends, and when they said yes I would squeal with delight and dance about so my bells jingled. The kids would then push their friends forward, saying "He/she wants to be your friend, too!" I would then squeal and jingle some more.

A little girl in a pink princess dress asked me if I took baths. "Well," I says to myself, "It's education day! Let's be educational!"

"Well, on special occasions, yes. But I mostly get by with a good washing."

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW! I take baths every day!"

"Gasp! You'll catch your death of cold!"

Giggle giggle giggle. "Do you brush your teeth?"

"With what?"

"With a TOOTHBRUSH!"

"Well, I clean my teeth. With a pointed stick or a bit of rag."

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!! That's so bad for your teeth!"

"Well, do you have all your teeth?"

"Samantha does!" Samantha gave me a big grin, showing off all her teeth.

"Very nice."

At this point, the queen came out and I kissed the dirt. It was at this point I discovered that the socks my sister knitted me aren't quite long enough for such maneuvers, as my medeival dress comes up above my knees when I do a face dive. The girl in pink poked my bare knee.

"Do you shave your legs?"

"Why would I? Normally, no one sees them."

"Beth shaves her legs!" Beth stuck her leg out to show me. Now this was just getting AWKWARD. Luckily, it was then time to go in.

Later in the day I decided to do the counting bit- point at the sky, yell out "ONE! ONE! ONE!" until someone comes over and sees what I'm doing, then yell "TWO! TWO! TWO!" I will actually tell people what I'm doing when they ask "What are you counting?" Not "what are you looking at?" "There's nothing there!" etc. What I am doing is counting the number of people I can get to stare at nothing.

I got a crowd of six little girls around me, heard the magic question, told them that I was counting them, then ran.

The only problem was that they followed. Eventually they caught me and asked why I ran.

"Because I TRICKED you! It was a little bit naughty."

"Did we scare you?"

"A little bit. You were chasing me!"

The girls then went and told their classmates that I was scared of people chasing me. The boys of the class decided that they were going to try their hardest to chase me, and the original six girls took it upon themselves to protect me by blowing kisses at the boys, who would run away in turn. They followed me everywhere! I had to go and hide in the first aid booth so they would lose the trail!

When they got lost, they looked for me to guide them back to their friends. One of them climbed to the top of the jousting bleachers that I was leaning against and gave me a back massage. They guided me around, always on the lookout for the boys from their class, never wanting to stay in one spot in case the boys found us.

Very cute, but aaaaaaaaargh!

Also, I got to meet Pester the Jester and Captain Jack, a couple of performers from the States. They are quite the cool dudes and are going to be at Morrisburg as well. Woo!

After the faire, Nick, Chris and I stopped by the $5 pizza place across from our hotel, grabbed some dinner, then went back to the hotel to eat said dinner, watch "Don't Forget the Lyrics" and have a nap. The plan was to then head back to the faire grounds for a rememberance party (I don't have a better word for it) for Frank, a vendor who was killed in a car accident this past year. I didn't really know Frank all that well, but I would still have liked to have been there.

Unfortunately, I woke up from my half hour nap some four hours later. Whoops. I just ended up sleeping on until morning.

Friday is kind of a blur. I did get to see Kathrine's sketches for my fairy fest costume, as well as the skirt and bodice fabrics (I'm going to be SO PRETTY!!!!!) and we chatted a bit about my pirate fest character. I have full permission to roll about in the dirt and mess up the costume. YAAAAAAAY!!!! This is going to be so much fun!

However, the reason why the rest of the day was a blur happened just before the second joust. I was walking along, balancing my mug on my head, when a medium sized kid stopped me. The kid was short enough I had to look down to talk to her, but she was tall enough that she could reach my head. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

She was being as annoying as possible- Why are you wearing that on your head? What's your name? What's your REAL name? You call THAT a toy? You're so stupid, blah blah blah.

Now, when people ask why I carry the mug on my head, I usually tell them it's so I don't have to carry it in my hand. This isn't just a funny bit of patter, it's true. The mug is VERY HEAVY. When looking down at a child, I can't wear the mug because it would fall off. The conversation with the bratty child was going on for so long that I put the mug down. I eventually got real bored of the whole thing and tried to leave. Kid grabbed my mug and said the immortal words "I want to put it on your head!"

KLUNK! The kid whacked me right on the top of the head with my very heavy mug. Spontaneous tears, half of pain, half of absolute blinding RAGE. I very nearly hit the kid back. I growled at her to give me back the mug, grabbed it, and ran across the site to the first aid booth.

I wasn't concussed, but I did have a rather swell... uh... swelling. The very nice first aid lady had me keep ice on it, and kept me with her during the joust just in case. The kid was found, her bus driver was paged and she was evicted from the park. She had to wait in the bus until her parents came and got her from London.

Now, that last part is all hearsay- I was still a bit dazed at this point and everyone was asking me questions and giving me bits of info all at the same time, and there was one woman who would NOT STOP telling me over and over again how she got hit in the head the day before and it hurt sooooooo much. By the time I was allowed to go on my way again, I was ready to hit her in the head! ARGH!

However, it IS very heartwarming to contemplate. Stupid kids.

Friday night was a party, sort of like the Court's Keg back at ORF or RAF- except we had to pay for our own booze. I wasn't drinking of course, though I sort of wanted to. I figure head injury+alcohol=bad idea.

Over the past two days, Nick and Kerba had mastered a new balance as taught to them by Kobbler Jay. Basically, Nick ends up standing on Kerba's shoulders. Kerba has his hands on Nick's ankles, and that's it. It's freakin' awesome.

Anyway, with all the balancing going on between Kerba and Jay, they decided to have a balance off, with Nick as the MC. Jay won by one point, but he also stabbed himself in the chin with a claymore, so Chris came out ahead.

That's two and a half days. It's taken me two days to write. I will post what I have and continue tomorrow with the adventures of the actual weekend.

THRILL as I get in a tickling fight with a jester!
GASP as the court of Queen Catherine of Aragon acts like a bunch of wenches!
SIGH as you witness the nicest wedding I've been to all weekend!
SQUIRM UNCOMFORTABLY as Kerba wears really unfortunate costumes!

And that's just Saturday, folks! STAY TUNED!