Guess what, John-Boy! I�m about to talk to you on the phone!

No, wait... I guess I was wrong. :(

At any rate, I called you! Really I did! And I asked for you in a strange Gaelic accent, I know not where it came from, I swear. Really. I promise.

*cue big cheesy grin*

Wow, that was a fun week. I just got back from war. I didn�t get any proposals of marriage, but on the other hand I was only a waterbearer for about an hour, and I�m underage anyhow.

But it was fun.

It all started on Thursday morning. Cassie came and got me at about 2 in the afternoon, but hell, I was still packing and carrying stuff downstairs until about fifteen minutes after she got here, so it works, right?

Then we went over to Melina�s to get all her crap, and then over to Justin�s, to get his. The four of us were all going to go up together, see.

Anyway, we got to Justin, Jay and Bella�s, and loaded up all Justin�s stuff, what he had packed of it. *rolls her eyes* Not very much. I think we loaded the tents and that was probably about it.

So that evening, I stayed over there again, and it was kinda boring for a while. Eventually everybody headed for bed, and Justin and I went into his room to talk.

I guess you could say I got my hopes _and_ my fears confirmed. If you know what I�m talking about, feel free to ask me about it, and if you�re one of the two or three people I�ve actually told about it, I�ll probably tell you happily, since I�m probably planning to do that anyway. :D

So then on Friday morning we loaded up the rest of everything into the truck and the trailer (The War Trailer, we called it, seeing as how it was a nice solid matte black and after all, we _were_ headed for war) and went on our way.

Eventually.

I mean, we were supposed to leave at 11 and it was 12, but oh well.

The ride up was fairly uneventful. We listened to the radio, listened to Cassie bitch about her pre-war sunburn, watched Cassie and Justin smoke a whole lot of cigarettes... you know, basically uneventful.

We actually made it to site by 3:30. Which is amazing, since site opened at 3 and we took the long way around Kansas City and we were an hour late anyway. Well, maybe amazing is too strong... strange, anyway, right?

We set up camp. We ended up down the hill from where we wanted, since that spot was already taken.

Half an hour after site opened, all the camping sites on the roads were taken, unless we wanted to take a spot on the Oh My God This Is A Long Way Away Point. Which we didn�t, see.

So we were in Lost Forest instead. That�s okay though.

Friday night, not much happens. We went out for Chinese food. We also discovered that the state decided not to pay Caelin�s company this week, which wasn�t very nice of them, and meant that Justin was up there penniless. Not a good thing, really. However, since Cassie�d gotten her bonus, she was able to float him for the week until this past Friday.

When we got back, we started getting water and suchlike for camp, and some guy wearing tie-dye fighter pants driving a truck leans over toward Justin and says �Hey! Somebody�s lookin� for you!�

Turns out the guy is Ace, also known as Magnus, and he�s from Tribe, an Ansteorran household that�s sort of a brother-household to the Reivers. So that was kinda nifty. They were camped rather far away from us, on Outlands Point which is between the battlefield and the archery range. Not a bad spot to camp, actually, but it�s further away from the showerhouse than we were. :D

I learned something here. Cassie doesn�t like Tribe. In fact, there are many people Cassie doesn�t like, and if she doesn�t like them she�ll get ticked off at you if you hang around them too much.

I say this because she decided she didn�t want to move our camp, and she�s one of the First Ladies of the household, meaning that there are two people who outrank her and one more on a level with her. None of them were there, either. And were they to show up and say �Hey! Let�s move camp over near Tribe!� she made up her mind that she�d say �Fuck you! No!�

I will say this in agreement (sort of) with her. Tribe seems to be very open about bodily functions. Especially those that occur between hopefully consenting adults. >.<

So we stuck around there until Cassie decided she�d heard Ace talk enough for one night, so she, Melina, and I all went over to the beach. We decided _not_ to swim, as it was a mite bit chilly. But it was traditional to get at least a little bit into the water on the first night, and breaking with tradition is bad, right? ;)

Then we went to bed.

Saturday morning dawned. Not a damn thing planned. So we all went to Kansas City, which was nice because it�s been a very long time since I�ve been there.

Lizabet, sorry we didn�t come visit you?

We went to a Border�s. I picked up �Sandman: Book of Dreams�, a collection of Sandman short stories edited by NG. It was a very good book.

Justin got a nifty little bitty pack of Tiny Tarot cards. Really. They weren�t more than an inch long. They were very cute. :D

Then he pulled a Jekyll and Hyde and turned into Heruthgare.

I�m still pissed off about that.

To compartmentalize: He turned into an utter rat bastard, did not give me my backrub despite promising me one after either Viking Mardi Gras or Tor Party; he got drunk as close to off his ass as he could every night, which broke a promise he made to his brother-in-law; he started running around with this girl named Constanza (I think), who was something like five years older than he...

He also didn�t take me shopping, despite promising to do that, too. He didn�t do any of his camp chores after probably Monday night. I barely saw him after Tor, actually, which was on Tuesday.

On Thursday night, at four in the morning, he borrowed my cloak to walk Constanza back to her tent, which was with Tribe. He was going to come back and stick my cloak on my chair and tap on my tent so I knew he was alright, since I was the only other person still awake and he was very drunk, so I was slightly worried about him.

He didn�t come back to our camp until Saturday afternoon, so far as I know. At any rate, I ended up going to Tribe on Saturday morning at about ten to get my cloak, which sure enough was still there.

He was told several times on Saturday, whilst he was still sober, that we were going to be getting up and packing camp starting at six in the morning on Sunday, and we would be leaving at seven. (This is not actually how things turned out, but it was the plan at any rate.) He swore up and down till he was blue in the face that he would be in camp before six, he would start packing everything by six-twenty at the very latest.

We did not manage to leave camp until eight-thirty. He hadn�t shown up at all, which is why it took so long.

Why? Because he had Caelin�s tents. And we like Caelin. And we didn�t want to leave his tents to be stolen. So we packed them up.

Actually, I packed them up. Cassie and Melina were busy taking down the shade pavilion and their tents, both of which take longer to take down than mine did.

The eventual decision, at eight-thirty, an hour and a half after we were supposed to have left, was �Screw this. We�re leaving. He was all sure he could get a ride home if we left him, so we�re going to leave him and see if he was right about this. And we�ll take his stuff, since they aren�t his tents, but we�re not going to take them by his house. And we�ll tell Caelin what we�ve done, but also tell him that we�re going to leave the message around Tribe that he needs to go back to camp and pick his shit up.�

Call me vengeful and bitter about the whole thing, but I was laughing. I hope he panics. Why? Because, as I said, he was an utter rat bastard and he broke way too many promises.

Hell, if we had Big Hrothgar over there, the Rev. Mike Martin, we could have done an Oathbreaker ceremony on him.

Well, maybe not quite that drastic. But I hope he�s well and truly worried.

However, despite him, I had a fabulous time at Lilies War. It was great, it was grand, it was like candy in the hand... oh crap, I�m giving away where I spent half the week.

No, not in the candy tent. *rolls eyes* Think about it. Read that line aloud.

On Monday morning, there was a Norse Mythology class. I thought that sounded nifty, so I took it. And indeed, it was very nifty.

On Monday at noon, there was a Basic Beginning Drumming class. I thought that also sounded nifty, so I took it, too. About halfway through, somebody actually handed me a drum, too, so that was really nifty.

There was a guy in both classes whose name was Jacob, although I didn�t discover this at this point.

Monday night was Viking Mardi Gras. It was� strange. It was too big of a party for me to effectively meet anybody, if that makes any sense. So I stuck around for the fire-breathing, which was really cool, and then I went to the firepit and attempted to sing a few songs.

Mind you, they were Kingston Trio songs, so they weren�t exactly period pieces or SCA-appropriate, but they were well receive nonetheless, so that was cool. And I saw Dougan again, whom I�d met on Sunday night, who�s had some terrible luck when it comes to identifying royalty. The quote he gave me went suchlike:

Him: �Come back here, you cowardly medieval scumwaffle!�

Bystander: �Hey, look at the funny guy, chasing the king on his knees!�

Him: �I�m sorry about the �cowardly� remark, Your Majesty!�

*block* *block* *DIE!!!!!!!!!!*

Now, just imagine a big Scotsman doing that, and it�s funnier. :D

Later, I went back to the firepit having gone to camp to check in, and everybody had left. So I went to the Singing Pavilion, where a bunch of Grimfellons and Drx and the like were singing nifty songs, like �A Grazing Mace�.

I ended up picking two drunk guys away from Tribe, for which Justin said he needed to buy me something on Friday as a thank-you of sorts (if I remember rightly). Guess what else he didn�t do?

They kept following me around, taking the chivalry bit just a little bit too far for my tastes. I mean, you have to remember, I�m Scots-Viking. There�s only so many �miladys� I can take before I have to want to hit somebody.

I also ended up picking up Orion from Tribe, who Cassie actually has no problems with, and a Master Corwin from outKingdom who was only slightly inebriated.

I ended up having four guys wandering about site with me on Monday night. I also got some Mardi Gras beads from John, the really really drunk guy, despite him knowing I�m underage and my not flashing him anything at all, not even my ankles.

I dropped them off back at VMG because I was tired of the miladys, like I said, and I still had a Master At Arms and Orion, who�s a squire to the Bear. So they walked me back to my camp, although only Orion actually went so far as into my camp with me. On the other hand, I guess he wanted to talk to Cassie or something.

He even gave me a footrub that night. He�s really cool.

He�s an absolute manwhore, and if he didn�t actually have a woman at the moment, he�d be giving you a run for your money, John-Boy.

;)

Tuesday was also interesting. I went to the Basic Drumming class again.

That�s not quite accurate.

I went to the Basic Bellydancing class at 11. A man named Nakano was there as well, with a couple drums, and as the class was starting he asked who was there for the drumming class. I said what the hell to myself, and volunteered me.

I ended up playing the doumbek for three hours straight, more or less, including an hour of playing the Balady.

That�s a whole hell of a lot of Balady, in case you didn�t realize that. There�s only so long you can play �Doum doum tek ka tek ka doum tek ka tek� without going into a trance of some sort.

At the end of the three hours, the third of which was the actual class with lots of people in it and everything, Nakano turned to me and said �_You_ need to get a drum.�

Had I the money, I would have, you know.

That was Tuesday afternoon. After all my drumming, I went shopping and didn�t buy anything much.

That�s a lie, Tuesday is when I bought my necklace. It�s a nifty variation on a Thor�s hammer, only it�s got a sort of a wolf�s head biting the cord to hold it on. It�s very spiffy.

I also helped make nine dozen pure beeswax candles. They smell good. I got to keep seven of them.

Tuesday night came hell _and_ high water. We had a huge storm. It tried to wash away pretty much everything. By the time we got the truck and all of us in it and dropped Melina off at Troll to see what was going on and took Heruthgare down to Tribe to help them with all their yurts and made it back up to Troll to pick up Melina, the worst had passed. >.< So we stayed soaked for a little while at Tribe, and then when it dried out a bit we went over to the Tor party.

It was interesting.

I heard some kickass drumming. One guy had two drums of different tones and was just going off on them. It was fabulous.

There was also all sorts of nifty foods. Also a ton of different drinks, although I only had one taste of I think it was the Kiss of Death, although it may have been Panthera�s Kiss instead. I dunno if it matters. It was very cinnamon-y, so I think it was the Kiss of Death since Constanza drank some and then kissed a guy by accident (or at any rate without thinking about it) who�s allergic to cinnamon...

I met a man named Paco. Okay, so that isn�t really his SCA name, but a herald called him that a year ago, and it�s stuck. The strange thing is that both Heruthgare and I recognized his name. Although it could just be because, well, Paco... but still.

He commented that my eyes look very pretty by firelight.

I got flirted with a lot this war. War after next, when I�m eighteen, apparently the flirting is going to jump through the roof...

I started talking to Jacob on Tuesday night. He�s the guy who was in my drumming classes and my Norse Mythology class, if you recall. So I started talking and flirting with him. :D

It was odd. He�s sort of a cross between Chris and Lenny in speaking. His speech patterns are much like those of Chris, but the subject matter kept making me think of Lenny, which is probably a scary thing.

On the other hand, I like Jacob more than I like either of the other two at least at the moment. :)

At about one-thirty, I decided that Tor was getting boring since I was one of the few people not drunk (Okay, so Jacob was probably the other half), so since I had to be in camp by 2 anyway I might as well go now.

So he walked me back.

Only nobody was there.

And Cassie�s tent was still partially collapsed from the storm.

So Jacob walked me over to Tribe, since I figured Cassie�d still be over there.

As indeed she was.

So we drove back to our camp and dumped Heruthgare at the top of the hill to get drunker at Tor, the dumb fuck. (Pardon my Klatchian.)

We ran into Big Hrothgar too, and talked to him for a while. Quote from that:

�I don�t get hangovers, no. But I hit people in the head who do.�

After talking to him for a while, Cassie and I went back to camp to bed. Sleep is good.

Wednesday started it all, really. Once again, I was at my Drumming class, although I liked Tuesday�s better. I sat next to Jacob because he was pretty much the only person I sort of knew there, so that was okay.

At the end of all the drumming and wandering around shopping and all that, it was nearly 4 when we passed by the RUSH tent. RUSH, for those who don�t know, stands for the Royal University of Scir Hafoc (pronounced Sheer Havoc :D). Jacob got somewhat excited at something written on the board, and insistently dragged me over to the Bardic tent for a Firewalking class.

This does not mean that we went to learn how to walk on or in fire.

Rather, how to walk from one fire to another. All evening. Singing songs and telling stories, relating news if we had any, and bumming food and drink from the people we entertained.

Indeed, we were learning one of the prime functions of bards. :D

I learned that a good walking staff and three or four different pieces are all that a bard needs to begin with. I made a semi-unconscious decision to get me a good walking staff stet.

Wednesday night was Moonlight Madness on Merchant Row. In other words, the merchants were all open late (until midnight, fascinatingly enough) with discounts available at many booths.

We�d been told during the Firewalking class that Moonlight Madness is a very good time to go firewalking in Merchant Row, because they�re out there all night with nothing to do so they get kinda bored. And if you�re good and you like the merchant, you can stand outside their booth and/or tent and draw a crowd.

Jacob and I met up outside the Heralds tent around probably 8, just when Moonlight Madness was set to begin. We figured what the hell, we�ll hang out together, go firewalking with a partner which is always more fun anyway.

However, we both needed staffs, and I needed to get food or my tankard or something from back at camp. So he started looking in the treeline for anything that�d be useable while I did that.

He ended up with practically a twig for himself and something he thought might work for me, but he couldn�t quite break it loose. So he showed it to me, and I thought it would work very well, so I pulled out my knife and hacked and chopped at it for a little bit, and then said �screw this� picked it up and carried it over to Master Edward�s.

Master Edward is a woodworker/metalworker of some regard, and I happened to know that his shop was all of fifty feet away.

Well, maybe seventy, but even so.

So since my protostaff was loose, it just had bits that needed to be chopped off and my knife wasn�t going to cut it (if you�ll pardon the pun :D), I carried it over to him and in an unbearably cute stance asked him if he could help me.

You know, I�m sure it�s horribly evil and cruel of me to play on being a weak helpless female when I�m nothing of the sort, but hell, it gets me free help. So that�s a good thing.

Anyway, he chopped off the bits on either end that needed it and told me to come back on Thursday to clean it up if I wanted to. So Jacob and I stood outside Master Edward�s for a bit while he sang a few songs and I gave him some backup help. Three or four songs was all, but hey, I liked my new big stick. :)

So we started wandering about Merchant�s Row, and then we saw Uncle Master Michael, he who had taught the Firewalking class to begin with and is Dean of the Bardic College of Calontir anyway. So we asked if he�d mind some company, and he said �No, not at all.� And we all started wandering about together.

We headed towards Howdy To Your Face, a clothing merchant with some very pretty garb. Now, they were at the BFE end of Merchant�s Row, so not all that many people were stopping by, and we decided that since they were such a nifty place we�d help them out a little bit.

Starting with drinking songs. *evil grin*

So I learned the choruses to several drinking songs, including Johnny Jump Up and MacIntyre/Old Dun Cow, depending on which you�ve learned it as.

�Never, no never, no never again / If I live to be a hundred or a hundred and ten / I fell to the ground and I couldn�t get up / After drinking a quart of that Johnny Jump Up�

�Aaaaaaaaaand there was Brown, upside down / Mopping up the whiskey from the floor / �Booze, booze!� the firemen cried / As they came knocking on the door (clap clap) / Don�t let them in till it�s all drunk up / Somebody shouted �MacIntyre!� (MACINTYRE!!!) / And we all got blue-blind paralytic drunk / When the Old Dun Cow caught fire��

I sang �Charlie on the MTA� and was later told that that song has indeed already been filked. I was very scared.

All in all, we were having fun. Round about 11, we stopped at Cornucopia (The K-Mart of Lilies War, apparently... they�ve got everything, to be sure) and Uncle Master Michael begged out. Then, too, he�s been sick, so we�ll forgive him that.

A little while later we ran into Black Corwin, who�d tagged along to our Firewalking class just for the hell of it (seeing as how he�s been a bard for quite some time, and presumably already knew how to firewalk). We were all kinda hungry, and there was a guy just north of Odyssey Coffee who Jacob had bought a drum from and had told Jacob to come by sometime for some free food. So we three headed over that way.

While we were there (mind you, it�s nearly midnight by this point) we saw Paco again, with a few of his friends. He actually turned to a woman whom I assume was his girlfriend or s.o. in some fashion or another, and said �See, this is Nichola, that girl I was telling you about with the really pretty eyes.�

I thought that was interesting.

Mind you, I�m paraphrasing slightly, because I don�t think he included my name, but even so.

While we were hanging around at the guy�s food booth, Corwin told us Pavel stories. Several of them. As well as other Calontir classic tales, such as �Calontir: We Deliver.�

I�ll tell ya that one.

You see, Pavel had a great invention from a Pennsic war: the Calontir shield wall. A shield wall has three rows: those poor buggers actually holding the shields with little short swords, who get to keep their heads down as far as they can and bat away the people who get close enough to try to kill them; those in the middle row with the spears and long swords who get to kill everybody trying to come close; and those who get to stand around in full armor in the hot sun, melt, and wait around just in case somebody actually does break through the shield wall, in which case they get to plug the hole.

Now, one year, one of the guys in the third row was getting hot, hungry, thirsty, and very bored. So he said �Aw fuck it� and went to the resurrection point, took off his gauntlets and helmets and such, and told them he was going to take a break. And he disappeared for about ten minutes.

Then he came back, rearmored, and went back out on the field. When they asked him what that was all about, he just grinned at them.

About half an hour later, the marshals started yelling �HOLD!� So the battle paused, and the Domino�s Delivery Man was escorted onto the field by armed guard, to behind the Calontir shield wall, with ten pizzas in tow. He delivered them, was paid and presumably well tipped, escorted back off, and the marshals cried �Lay on!�

The East Kingdom�s side was not happy about this. :D

So you�ve got the poor buggers holding the shields, with pizza crammed into their helmets when the fighting wasn�t too close. The guys in the middle row were taking breaks and eating pizza. And the guys in the third row went so far as to take off their helmets and wave at EK as they enjoyed their meal.

Now, it turned out that even a full Calontir shield wall can�t eat ten extra large pizzas when in the middle of a battle; fighting doesn�t make you hungry until it�s all over, so they only ate nine.

Meaning that there was a full pizza, unopened, left behind.

So one of the Calontir fighters who was not in armor, or at least not in full armor, took that last pizza, in its box. And he _ran_ to the East Kingdom royal pavilion.

�Pizza, your Majesty?� Placed it at the King�s feet, and _ran_ the hell out of there.

The next year, at Pennsic, the entire Calontir Army showed up wearing �Calontir: We Deliver� t-shirts.

The East Kingdom doesn�t really like Calontir. Well, sort of. I mean, it�s just a good thing that Calontir fights with the Middle Kingdom during Pennsic, because we sure as hell couldn�t fight with the East. :D

The fact that the year Pavel�s plastic knee blew, while they were waiting for the titanium knee to arrive, and he was carried around all over the place by his squires on his scutum, and accidentally ran over the King of the East... well...

After hearing all these stories, we went to see if we might help out with Music for Monkeys, the accompaniment for the midnight skinny-dippers. I met a man from Drachenwald, who I might have mentioned earlier. He had a very sexy British accent.

By the way, Bumbi, if you read this, you might possibly be interested to know that there�s a very large Barony based out of Gothenburg. Meaning you have no excuse not to join the SCA on that matter.

Besides, Ankh is joining! Don�t you want the chance to torment her in person?!?

*cue maniacal laughter: mwahahaha*

Oh, that�s amusing. Microsoft Word suggests changing �mwahahaha� to �maharajah�.

I guess it�s sort of close, right?

Anyway.

We stood around there for a while talking. Saw Thorfin again. Thorfin is either one of Master Edward�s apprentices or just a friend of his, but either way, he�s camped with ME. Now, Thorfin was down there with a bottle of Hennessy, and offered drinks to the three of us. Actually, the four of us, because by then Corwin�s fianc�, whose SCA name I can�t recall sadly, had joined us.

Now, the two of them might have taken a drink. Jacob was very tired, and so he declined. And then Thorfin offered me a drink.

You should be proud of me! I said no. :D On the other hand, Corwin by then knew that I was underage, as did Jacob, so it�s not like I had a choice anyway. But still, I said no.

Then Corwin announced that I was underage, so Thorfin rescinded his offer. But he said that when I am twenty-one, I should come see him, and he�ll give me my own bottle. (Thursday night he changed his offer to a bottle of mead, which is probably what I�d take anyway.)

Then it was time for all of God�s good children (actually, I don�t care which God, so you can take your pick, as long as you figure that if you�re underage and/or drunk and/or tired you should go to bed by 2) to go to bed. As we were walking back in that general direction, we started talking about being Bards.

Corwin, at this point, announced to me that I have no choice in that matter, I have to come out of the closet.

I have to admit that I�m a bard.

I found this to be tremendously amusing. And I used that line with great effect many times between then and now.

I think I may have slightly scared my parents. It�s sad to realize that they can deal with me having been a Closet Bard much better than being a closet lesbian or bisexual.

I know this because my mother said as much, said that she couldn�t deal as well if I admitted to being gay.

On the other hand, I like men too much to be gay, or even probably bi.

If you remember what I said on that particular thread at MothersMagic, you�ll know what I mean, right?

That�s not the point of this storytelling, now is it.

Thursday was kinda boring again, I guess. At any rate nothing terribly exciting happened. I worked on my staff at Master Edward�s for quite a while, and turned it very pretty. I went over to Bran the Dark�s, the candlemaker/chandler, and begged his help in fixing my staff where it had a crack/hole/bad spot. So he was very kind, and with the help of one of his students who wraps things a lot anyway, we wrapped the bad spot with some pure linen twine and poured beeswax over it to seal it.

It�s a very nifty staff, you know. :D

As the line �A Wizard�s Staff has a Knob on the End� starts running through my head... again... >.<

I went to the Advanced Drumming class Nakano taught, whenever that was, I can�t remember. It was either Wednesday or Thursday. On Thursday night, I was going to go firewalking with Corwin and Jacob again, but I never found them. I mean, I looked around quite a bit, and we ended up at the same three places, just all at different times.

So I went to Madoc�s party. Madoc had a very extensive liquor cabinet, and it was possible he was going to be shipped out to Germany. Now, the US Army apparently will not ship alcohol to keep its soldiers happy, so since Madoc didn�t want to store it and had enough so that he didn�t have enough friends to give it to, he held a party to get rid of it all.

I guess Lilies is as good a time for such a party as any else.

So I got to go and drum with a hammered dulcimer and dancers for quite some time. I borrowed Jerek�s drum.

Jerek is the UberThrall amongst the Bardic encampment at the moment. Which, while UberThrall does mix languages, he was captured in Germany supposedly, so it makes a sort of sense, considering that he�s higher up in the hierarchy than any of the other thralls. Next year he�s going to buy himself free in a Karling ceremony, but since he�s so well trained and worth so much, it�s really going to cost him. He has to wine and dine the entire Bardic encampment with homemade food and drink (probably mead). And then he still has to pay his buying price.

It amuses me.

Anyway, he wanted to dance instead of drum, so I drummed along with a couple other people, and he tried to teach some ladies who wanted to learn how to bellydance. However, male bellydancing and female bellydancing are not the same, and he gets it lucky. He�s had martial arts training, so he gets to borrow from that and it looks really cool.

At one point Medium Ruaridhe (he spells his name fucked up something like that, but it�s pronounced Rory) showed us how well Calontir fighting adapts to bellydancing.

It was terribly amusing. I only wish I�d paid better attention, and/or was a fighter, so that I could show it to people, but it was great.

I went back to camp rather late and got yelled at a little bit because of it, and then Heruthgare and Constanza showed up from the same party, although a different part of it. Around four-thirty Heruthgare borrowed my cloak to walk Constanza back to camp, like I said, and I didn�t get the damn thing back till Saturday. Hell, for that matter, I didn�t see him until Saturday after that. *scowls again*

Friday was fun, though. I think I spent most of the day at Bardic, although I did get dressed up in my pretty gold dress to go to Court.

Just before Court, Cassie asked me if I was going to be in the Bardic Champion Competition. I replied with a very intelligent �Huh? What competition?� Corwin replied likewise, but urged me to go ahead and enter since I�d never done anything like that before.

So I did. I was going to tell the tale of Smiling Jack, but when it came time for me to perform, it just didn�t fit the mood of the evening at the time, so I sang �Danny Boy� instead. Which, while it is horribly oversung, hadn�t been sung at all that war, so it was okay. And I did a very good job of it. And I was very happy with myself because I actually remembered the whole song in the right order and everything. Yay.

Then Uncle Master Michael led us all on a secret raid. We planted twenty inflatable pink flamingos around the Royal Pavilion. We were disguised as pirates. We all had eyepatches and plastic cutlasses.

It was great.

Two of them managed to land on the thrones in the �gynecological� position. I don�t know what the official reaction of the Crown was, but unofficially, the King was seen spanking one of them Saturday morning, and Saturday evening�s Closing Court had all the Royal Guards carrying them around.

It was great. :D

We went back to Bardic and hid all the evidence, too. Then we went back to storytelling, and I told the tale of Smiling Jack after all.

That reminds me, I never did say who won Champion. It was Jerek, actually. :)

The response to Smiling Jack was laughter, groans, and Asbjorn walking up to me and telling me to hold out my hand. Which scared me slightly, but eventually I did, and he slapped it and told me �Bad Bard! No biscuit!�

Saturday I pretty much just spent the whole day at Bardic, after going over to Tribe to retrieve my cloak so that it could sit in the sun and dry out and destink a bit. On the way over there, I ran into Big Hrothgar and he said if I had any trouble, I should come back and get him so that he could beat up on little Heruthgare. I said if I needed to, I�d gratefully take him up on his offer, but sadly I didn�t need to.

I should have anyway, but that�s beside the point.

The rest of our household, mostly, managed to make it up for Saturday, which was cool.

See, I�d gone and bought me a new belt, one that�s very pretty and I like a lot and is much longer than my old belt. And I had a chunk cut off the end that I wanted to make into a tankard holder, since I didn�t have one yet. So while I was wandering over to the period merchants� camp to look for Green Mountain Leatherworking, I saw blue and silver tunics. A very specific shade of blue and silver. And went �Huh?!? They�re here??� Wolfie and Aayla, Caelin and Andrew all made it up, doubling our count of Reivers at Lilies.

Admittedly, I didn�t see or talk to them much at all, but it was cool anyway.

Saturday afternoon at 4 there was supposed to be a Concert in the Park at the Battlefield, but you had to sign up for it first. Well, Vortemir Firetender, the head of the Bardic Viking Household, is handicapped, and it was hot, and all the rest of that, so I offered to go up to Troll to sign up whoever. I was even given a ride up there; I just had to walk back, so it wasn�t so terrible as all that anyway.

I decided, what the hell, I�ll go by the battlefield to see what�s going on anyway. Ran into Melina, so I followed her, and got to see Wolfie and Caelin and the Bear and Magnus and Orion and Bianca beat the crap out of their opponents. It was a beautiful thing.

I did just a little bit of waterbearing, just one run really; I shoved water and Gatorade at our fighters for a bit, then did one run along the side and back and watered some of the marshals, like Big Hrothgar and Little Rory. And some guy named Jack I didn�t know. :)

After all that I went to the Concert in the Park and skipped Court (naughty me, I know) and chatted with a guy from North Carolina (I can�t remember which Kingdom that is) who I�d been drumming with on Thursday. Actually, it was his wife who had the dulcimer. They performed during the concert, which is why they were around to talk to.

He said that he had a blast during Lilies, and they were definitely going to come back. He said it reminded him of Pennsic as it used to be, before it got so huge that you couldn�t do everything. Something like that, anyway.

We also got to pack stuff up. I packed up some of my stuff and some of Bardic�s stuff.

I also loaded up what I could of my stuff into the trailer again so that it wouldn�t take us as long Sunday morning.

Then I went back to Bardic for the night. Well, eventually. First I went back to the guy selling Middle Eastern food north of Odyssey Coffee for some free food. And then stopped by Tribe to say goodbye to people. And ran by the Three Rivers party to see if I could get any of the whole roast pig or the mutton that they�d tried for.

Sadly, I wasn�t as much in the mood for pork when I heard they had mutton, and very sadly the mutton didn�t work out. :(

Then I went to Bardic, earned my place on the Bardic Bullet Train to Nifelheim on a permanent basis, and discovered that I get to be the target for jokes next year and forever afterwards. But that�s okay, because I�m only the main target next year, and then it�ll be somebody else.

Asbjorn took me to find Uncle Master Michael so that I could ask him if I could officially be a Bardic Student/ member of the Collegium.

He said sure, I just need to make a purple baldric not more than three inches in width and wear it as though I was going to put a sword in it; in other words, right shoulder, left hip.

So that was nifty.

Sunday morning I got woken up at too damn early in the morning to pack up the rest of everything else. I was also probably the first one done with all my stuff, despite the fact that I left my air mattress filled and a bunch of stuff in my tent and everything.

Which means that when I was finished, I got to take down Caelin�s tents that Heruthgare had borrowed, and move the woodpile into the treeline.

Why, you ask? Because Heruthgare, utter rat bastard he turned into, despite swearing up and down until he was blue in the face, never showed up.

Hell, I told you this at the beginning of these nearly thirty pages in Word. Admittedly, it is at 16 point and in Bradley Hand, but that�s because it keeps me from going mad by looking at that much Times New Roman. And since this is a new computer, I don�t have a better spot to put it than on a little tiny table in the snug, so I�m sitting on the floor a little bit further away than I normally sit at a computer, so I had to have it a bit bigger so that I could read it without a headache. See? It all makes sense, really.

And this is only the bottom of the 28th page. But still.

So we got me home at about 2, and I was very happy.

True, I would also have been happy to have spent another week up at Lilies, but that wouldn�t have happened and I didn�t have the money for it anyway. But it would have been nice.

We got me home, and I got to play with setting up my new computer, and figuring out where to put it and all the rest of that. Like I said, it�s in the snug, which is sort of a family room / sitting room / parlor, only cool. And such a room in the English countryside is called a snug, and since Mom�s friend Chris moved to England, she told Mom about that and this room got called that.

And I got to start checking my emails. I don�t know how many I have now, but I know I didn�t get close to finishing them and I had almost 300 by the time I got online after a week and a half.

..........

You know, I guess the only thing that really pissed me off this week, other than Heruthgare�s Jekyll and Hyde, is the fact that I didn�t get a backrub.

Or at least, not a fitting one.

When I complained about it to Cassie on I think Wednesday, she gave me a two-minute one that kept grating on my sunburn, so it didn�t get me any less tense, so I refuse to count it.

See, Justin promised me a backrub after Viking Mardi Gras on Monday (which, I suppose, would have made more sense were it on Tuesday, but Tor is Tuesday) or Tor on Tuesday, and didn�t give me a backrub at any point in time.

The Bear is a professional masseuse or chiropractor or something like that. Were I around him much, I�m sure I could have figured out how to get a backrub from him with little difficulty. However, since he was with Tribe the whole time, that didn�t happen, now did it? No. It didn�t.

Jacob offered to give me a backrub. I thought that was very nice of him, considering I was actually being very subtle about it. :D But since I had to be back at camp by midnight Friday lest I be turned into a pumpkin, and he was offering at about twenty till, I determined it would be best for the backrub to be back at my camp. So he walked me back to my camp, and I tapped on Cassie�s tent to let her know it was midnight and I was back, and she told me to go to bed. >.<

Which means I essentially said �Dammit, oh well, good night, I�ll see you tomorrow and you can give me one then, right?� And he agreed with me.

And then when I saw him at 10 Saturday morning, he told me that he�d discovered he had less money than he thought, and believed that the last check he�d written may have bounced by a few dollars, and so he needed to go home pretty much right away so that he could deposit his paycheck before people started cashing his checks.

So I didn�t get a backrub from him, either. However, if we both manage to make it to Horse and Falcon in a month-ish, he�s going to give me a backrub then. Yay. :)

Okay, this makes it the end of thirty pages, and so I need to stop _now_.