Gentle Readers,

I was going to write a bit about fencing but I'm still recovering from yesterday. Yesterday I was supposed to be looking at the C++ client and why it couldn't connnect over SSL. Instead, I got to spend the whole day dealing with the issues of a special snowflake of a customer would not talk to our support people or enter a ticket because his problems were so very important. In fact, he would only talk to me over Skype so he could clearly and repeatedly explain why his problems were so very important and I should feel lucky that he is willing to let me work on them instead of his preferred contacts.

I did the best I could and answered his questions and tried to figure out some of his problems but it's really clear to me that Customer Support is NOT where I want to spend any significant portion of my life. I mean, talking on the phone stresses me out at the best of times. Then there's the shared view of his problem machines where he kept grabbing control of the mouse to, I guess, show us the things he believed we were unaware of. I think that not telling him to fuck off and let us do our job was the very model of professional restraint on my part. Not ranting about him on facebook/twitter where I post under my real and fairly unique name shows some foresight on my part as well.

Cortejo ended up coming to get me, at my request, because I was just completely wiped out. I picked up a little bit but I was still in bed and asleep by 8:30 and mostly slept for about 12 hours. I'm still very tired.

Anyway, so the fencing will move to another post. For now I'm just recovering. I'd really like to go and see the local event today. I'm hoping that I will have enough spoons to be up for it.

I'll bring sewing. I'm sure it will be fine.

Gentle Readers,

I finally made it back to Aikido today. What with Pennsic and preparations for the same I haven't been for about a month. Imagine my surprise when Sensei R calls me up for the first sequence. Then the further surprise when he tells me to get on my hands and knees perpendicular to him. Anyway, we were practicing forward rolls off someone's back. I was actually pretty pleased with mine. I exhaled at the right point and managed not too put too much weight on the kneeling person as well as not slamming too hard into the mats.

This changed with some of the later ukemi but overall I feel like I had a pretty good class. It was really positive reinforcement for coming back and I'm looking forward to Friday.

Tonight We've got a birthday party to attend for someone we haven't seen in a few years. It will be lovely to visit I think, but I'm still not sure what to bring.

In other news, I'm really enjoying all of the In Detail posts that people are making. Perhaps I'll try it later, but right now, I'm just trying to get back into posting regularly. Speaking of daily posting, I forgot to mention that we finally managed to have Kira-Lynn over for dinner (for Lydia's birthday to boot). It's always so good to hang out with her.

Tomorrow: more martial arts.
Friday: time with clinkerfiacio.
Saturday: more Birthday Parties.
Sunday: possibly some sewing. I've promised Lydia some clothes for her and a doll of her choice. She picked one of her barbies. They are getting some Early-Mid 15th century Italian clothing I think. I'll have to double check with her.

Full week, no?

Gentle Readers,

So I'm all set to finish off the patterns for the Landsknecht Hose and so I figure I will check out my patterns of fashion to see how the pluderhose were patterened. Can't find it. Did I lend it to you? I know i've lent out my Tudor Tailor (I think to xiphia) so I can't look at the hose pattern there either. My Medival Tailor's Assistant has been gone for years.

Perhaps I need to stop loaning out my books.

Gentle Readers,

Why is there suffering? Teach the controversy

And for something completely different, After finishing off my first week of back at work, I picked up Shyska and headed off to Pickering for Saturday's crown tourney. We had a great time, although I missed those left behind. Still, it was a fantastic event. Ealdormere has a 19 year old prince. He'll be king at Pennsic but not be old enough to drink while there. The quarter finals started the nail biter as 3 quarters of the potential royalty were from my barony.

I got to chat with all kinds of people and hopefully set in motion some devilish plans which I hope to soon see come to fruition. As well the feast was so fantastic I was forced to lament the bounty we recieved as I was not able to eat enough of it.

Flushed from the success of my halloween costume for Lydia (pictures tomorrow), I've decided to offer some garb to his highness as he needs something better than black and silver early scadian. Her highness has expressed interest in getting him into landsknecht (which I think will suit him fine) so I am going to have to get some advice from landsknecht-po on how to go forward with it. If he likes it, it might be worth getting her highness into some too...

I also discovered that not only is Don Giovanni teaching at Kingdom A&S, he will also be fighting us as part of our prize. I'll have to fight 40 bouts, 10 against each of others. Thank goodness I've been working on my stamina. I need to win 1/3 of them (so I think 13 or 14 depending on how they round it). It will be glorious!

Gentle Readers,

It's been a busy week. As some of you know, we've restarted our renovations and have decided to get the basement done as the dampness of the summer made for a damp basement which turned to mold which led to "we need to do something about this right quick". And so we have. Our basement is now bereft of everything that was there, bare down to the concrete. It's interesting but not terribly liveable.

In support of this work, I've been clearing crap out of our basement. This is aided by the giant dumpster that is currently living in our driveway. My workshop is emptied out and a goodly proportion of what we need to remove from the basement is gone. We're going to be turning the former workshop into the new laundry room which will, I think, also do double duty as a sewing room if we can make it comfortable enough. It is really too bad that Laundry chutes are bad things as I know that that would make cortejo very happy.

Thursday I had a great talk with M and S and with luck I'll hear from them this week. I have also arranged things with J should that go forward. I'm practing by being cryptic.

In other news, I found out about facebook lite which makes facebook bearable.

Friday night i went to see Inséparable. It was great fun but sparsely attended. I suspect this has more to do with the lack of promotion (even my theater friends knew nothing about it) than any flaws with the play itself. The dialog was witty and well constructed. The acting was fun. I hope their attendance picks up. It's encouraging me to look more into the lives of Wolfe and Montcalm so I can see if there were any jokes that I missed.

Saturday was more of the previously mentioned basement prep work. It looks so empty down there. I'm really looking forward to it looking like a modern room instead of a 70's basement. I'm very much in favour of a bright comfortable living space.

Today I'm not able to go to fencing as Cortejo has a job interview off in the east end so there's no time.

le very big sigh.

Instead I'll finish off the workshop and maybe hack a bit more at the remains in the big basement room.

Speaking of finishing things, I finished off the undertunic save for the hem. It was experimental in that I tried finishing the pieces before I put them together. t made for a nice looking garment but I'm not sure I'm happy about the time it takes to whip-stitch everything together. I'm going to try a slightly modified method with the overtunic (made with the leftovers of Lydia's Jedi Robe!) so we'll see how that works.