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Aug. 20th, 2010 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseI did say I'd post about my trip. I'm trying to keep to the cool/interesting bits, and skip the family stuff which was riveting to me and Colin, but not so exciting for everyone else.
The first major thing in the trip was meant to be the SCA event in Calgary, AB. So logically, we started by flying to Abbotsford, BC.
Things began with a bit of a hitch as my father-in-law's car started leaking from the engine's cooling system at the airport, so we had to get a lift out of there while my F-i-L waited for CAA. As if that wasn't complicated enough: when they'd left the house, my M-i-L specifically said she wasn't bringing her purse, and was he sure he had his wallet? Turns out, the lump he felt in his back pocket wasn't his wallet.... so they had to use Colin's CAA membership.
But we got to their place OK, bunked up in the RV (because they have two Chinese students staying with them, taking up their usual guest rooms, that was the most efficient sleeping arrangement. Also, my M-I-L wanted to be sure we'd tested the bed before we left, in case we decided we had to use both bunks). Next day we talked, showered, transferred things out of bulky suitcases and bowcases and into smaller portable forms, and drove their RV over the mountains towards Calgary.
The RV in question is a converted van, not really much longer than a normal van - by which i mean Ford Econoline type van, not minivan, but nonetheless smaller than most RVs. The bathroom is a joke for size even by RV standards. It's taller than a van, though, what with the second bunk - used by us as storage - over the driver's seat. This ended up a relevant fact.
Yes, the mountains are gorgeous. Even the first drive, to Golden, which is all lower ranges than the Rockies (There were two mountains in the stretch we drove the first day that actually had bare rock-and-ice peaks, and one of those was Revelstoke). It was still diffled with mini-falls, rivers full of smooth round pebbles, and interesting formation details. Sad to say, my brain was taking significant notes for Soldier of the Road, as much as it was doing anything.
However, on the first night, 22 kilometres from our destination, the RV suddenly just seemed to lose power. Colin looked at the engine a bit, and discovered the freshly filled oil was pretty much empty. he refilled it, commenting that his dad had said he just did that, and it shouldn't need it through the trip.
The next day's drive, into Alberta through the national parks, was much more jagged, but I'm not sure it was prettier so much as simply more dramatic about it. Prairie girl as I am, I was still staring at everything both days, and craning. (Didn't hurt that our first pull-over resulted in me ending up about fifteen feet from a mountain sheep, staring up at it). And Idiscovered a legend forming in my brain for why the mountain range in a particular area in Soldier of the Road is shaped the way it is. (I was particularly struck by Mt. Rundle at the time. The Endless Range, however, which we saw on the drive back after Calgary and Edmonton, cemented the idea)
Anyhow, we made it to the event (Dragonslayer / Hidden Treasures, featuring the Dragonblinder tourney. Too many names!)![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bow_bitch has a summary of her part here. For my part, i was pleased with how I shot; I didn't do anything spectacular, but I did what i felt was noticeably better than I had two years ago. Colin shot decently but not fantastically, which means he tied for second on the prize side of the Dragonblinder shoot (They have a separate track for their Baronial Archery Champion, which goes on a few rounds extra for the finalists) I was much happier with my woods walk (I believe I had a total of 28; my impression is that breaking 30 is quite respectable.)
Colin stopped halfway due to overheating, but already had 16 points in the first 11 of the 23 targets.
There was also a tonne of singing, a great deal of it bawdy (I was more murderous than bawdy), most of it SCA or period, but they're far from strict on that if it's funny or rude, so I got to sing Welcome to Our House again once the Periodicity stopped mattering Friday night. I only played one song for audience with the mandolin (Crazy Man Michael), but it went okay. I also sang The Grey Goose Wing on Saturday night, a song about Agincourt that I'd heard the first time two days after folk fest (it being one by Ray Cooper), so not even two weeks before Dragonslayer. I'd decided I wanted to learn it on Thursday as we drove, and started actually trying to listen to and memorize it on Friday. Yipes! At least the song I force-memorized for Keycon I didn't actually sign until Folk Fest...
Anyhow, from there I got to pause in Red Deer to visittaleisin, who'd been at the Calgary folk fest while we were at Dragonslayer. She lives in Lacombe, but had stayed overnight at a friend's place after the festival, and said friend was exceedingly understanding and let us use her shower. We met that friend, L, and another one, K, talked books and music and events (and Colin talked a bit about our trip to Italy for our honeymoon while I was showering). Again, taleisin has a pretty good summary of her version of events here. She says hi to everyone from Winnipeg; that'd include Cristina (Who doesn't read LJ but whom I've talked to twice already, so taleisin, she says hi back),zandoria, Brannie_Bird, Iulianna, and anyone else who cares. She does seem well and happy, in spite of the interesting gift her cats left in her apartment to show their displeasure at her absence (The only time I've been glad my cats *only* leave extreme quantities of hairballs). she also gave me my Christmas present - a copy of Corambis I'd known was coming, and a gift card to make up for the book she tried to order 3 times and never received.
Then it was on to Edmonton to see dad and Lolly - and as we drove into Edmonton (Through a splendid thunderstorm that reminded me how Albertan thunderstorms are not the same at all as Winnipeg ones), that same thing happened, where the RV started acting like there was no power. The oil read as full, though, but Colin added more, and that, combined with the break and cool-down, seemed to get it started again. We arrived late enough that while dad came out to say hi as we were shutting the curtains, we just went straight to sleep where we were.
We emerged in the morning, and actually talked to them and started to get settled in properly. We were going to be joined two days later by Jeff, who was flying in at a stupidly early hour. Dad and Lolly have one spare room these days, and while the hide-a-bed was bigger than the RV bed, it was also, as I recalled, not that comfortable. We could have done what's been done in the past, and made that one the double bed, and used the Giant Couch Cushions (Which are Giant) for another Single bed, But I was okay with continuing to sleep in the RV, now that we could do a pile of laundry including sheets, and switch out the pillows a bit.
Lolly threatened to call my stepbrother just to paint the RV in hippie colours. I admitted that the barefoot woman in the long skirts running in and out of it probably didn't help. Especially the couple of times I hauled out the mandolin for practice.
Anyhow, we visited with them, and had a one day visit by my Grandma and my Aunt S, cousin A and her 3 kids (4/5, 6, & 7 in age). After a visit to the playground, the 4/5-year-old seemed to kind of glomp onto me; I was the one whose hand she held, and whose lap she sat in. Probably because Jeff and I were the ones who helped them twirl on the merry-go-round and all those spinny things, and I was the one who fell off one of them onto my arse with the child landing safely mostly on top of me.
Anyhow, we also shopped in the used book stores on Whyte avenue, and I used up the Chapters gift card taleisin gave me (Megan Whelan Turner's a Conspiracy of Kings and Jim C. Hines' Red Hood's Revenge). I think the best overall score was Shaun Tan's the Arrival, which I "read" (It's a wordless graphic novel) about four times, and merely studied certain pages a few times besides, though the Turner was devoured when I got home (After a reread of the first three, where I discovered how much I'd forgotten of them).
And while we were there, Colin had the RV checked by a mechanic, who said the problem wasn't the oil; it was that there was a leak in the coolant system - which meant that sometimes the oil was being used as a coolant form, which was bad for engine and oil alike. Anyhow, he suggested a temporary fix. Plus prayer.
More family visiting, and then we were off back towards Abbotsford through the Icefields parkway. We paused to look at Maligne Canyon, and the Athabasca Falls (The Serpent Prince climax includes someone jumping down a waterfall. These two combined in my brain to give a very good idea exactly how potentially suicidal *that* really is, though it also provided me with an idea how to keep him from breaking every bone in his body).
We also drove up the brand new road to the top of Mount Edith Cavell, where a couple of different walking paths lead you to views of the three great glaciers up there. OMG is that road narrow... Actually, it's probably no more narrow than any usual two-lane not intended for large vehicles (Vehicles over 5 metres are flat banned, and large RVs are discouraged), but it's full of switchbacks, blind turns, and it has NO shoulder. There's always a one-foot or longer drop of the edge fo the lane, even in the places where it's up against the cliffside (This is so there's a ditch for water drainage for the dozens of tiny falls) Rather more alarming if the view past that drop is the even bigger drop down. Beautiful beautiful views, but I do swear we were inches from the edge a few times, and I had to start blocking the view *down* where I could.
Worse, the parking lot at the top was FULL. And then some. And so, in oen of the few areas where there was a bit of a shoulder, the cars had lined it well past the point where they were supposed to. We circled a few times, got forced to turn back, then tried again, and eventually found a spo6t - at lunch, then walked out to look.
I think it was worth it. There's one glacier caught in the crook of the mountain with spread wings (Called the Angel glacier). Waterfalls tumble from its base, and into the pool mostly formed by the other large glacier, hunkering in the valley. A third glacier, much smaller, clings to the side of the mountain near the peak, looking as if it's defying gravity.
Another path led out of the glacier area and up to a meadow supposedly full of all the flowers missing on this scraped glacier hollow, but we opted not to.
We actually spent hardly any time at the Columbia Icefields, which are considerably larger and more famous, opting against the more costly tours. A worthwhile sight, yes, but... We were running low on time.
We drove on, pausing for particularly vivid views of mountains, and once for a herd of bighorn sheep just wandering about at the rest stop.
However, at one of the mountain view stops, as we pulled in, the side of the engine started spewing antifreeze. The rubber tube had burst. Fortunately, it did so close enough to the end that Colin and a helpful guy at the stop could cut the split piece off and reattach it. But it meant we did have to pour a LOT of water back in to replace it in the coolant system.
Eek.
For a variety of reasons not worth getting into, we ended up having to drive past Lake Louise to Banff, even though it was out of our way back to Golden. This proved much worse than it ought.
Because we'd got so used to thinking of ourselves as smaller than every other RV we'd seen that, without thinking about it, we tried to turn into a parkade. I was actually pretty much saying, "Seven and a half foot limit? I guess we're probably-" CRUNCH.
We broke three lights on the front, cracked the vent top, and it looked like we'd completely totalled the air conditioner set into the roof. (We found out later that while we'd broken the plastic casing beyond saving, which we say, and dented some tin, the working parts were fine).
So we paused to eat supper and de-stress, and headed for Golden - only to end up driving in the dark, in a thunderstorm. Through construction, which meant the road was mostly either unmarked or incorrectly marked. That quickly got more hair-raising than Mount Edith Cavell and its shoulder-less hairpins - says the girl who likes thunderstorms. Well, we only crashed in the sense that when we reached the lot in Golden where we were sleeping, we hit the bed as soon as we could.
The last day of driving, to Abbotsford, was mostly just tiring at that point, and we wanted nought but showers and supper and rest. And the engine did its no-power-left trick one more time, though again, the oil was full and past, yet adding mroe seemed to be good.
When we arrived, my M-i-L pretty much had supper on the table. So unwashed and dead-tired is how we properly met their two Chinese students, J and C, and their friend R, who, being from Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island), was actually crashing with them for about 3 days.
We spent the next several days visiting various friends and family, which was good but not necessarily of interest to anyone else. Then packed up to fly to Calgary for our last stop,vilashna's wedding.
Which flight was cancelled. They said it was for fog, but I said to Colin later, they probably had a problem with the coolant system.
We made it the next morning, andbow_bitch took us in happily, and plied us with tea, and good conversation, until it was time for us to get ready for the wedding. (She wasn't actually going to it, but she knew enough people who were that she managed to arrange a ride for us, too. Lovely woman. Adn the guy who gave us a ride was a very fine person, too.)
The wedding went well. Vilashna herself has a brief point form version here.
It started late, due to dress emergency (Colin and I snuggled a bit while waiting, to the point where the officiant actually told us that if we weren't married, we really needed her card. We promised we were married. Even to each other!). But once it started, it went well.vilashna, in red gown of medieval cut (Not sure if it's perfectly period, but she could wear it to events, which I think was the point), and the groom in a matching red coat, both looked very fine (Although, as well as the problem with the ties to the sleeves not showing up, after the ceremony, she discovered it had been finished so recently there was still a needle attached to the dress by a length of thread...). The dinner was indifferent, but the dinner entertainment included a magic show and an opera singer, the cake was good, the music played during the ceremony and just after by the DJ was mostly familiar and good stuff (Great Big Sea cropped up a lot, but the last song I recall hearing, as the dance floor started, was the Last Saskatchewan Pirate). Plus they gave up mad libs to play with in the meantime, and random trivia. And we had enough friends from the Calgary SCAdian group to chat with.
We ended up leaving just as the dancing started, which I would normally regret, but being up as early as I was (5:45 Calgary time, 4:45 in Abbotsford), I was okay with crashing.
We got to speak to and say our farewells tobow_bitch and her SO in the morning, though they had to go to work well before we had to go to the airport. We crashed again after, and caught up on sleep, so that when we got to Winnipeg, we were even up to calling Jeff and inviting him over to join us playing board games. Abacchus and the cats were all well, and glad to see us, abacchus had cleaned the house rather well (Except for the kitchen, which he credited to mom). Although he told me that the spot in my study doorway with the hairball had almost never been hairball free the whole time I was gone. Every time he cleaned it up, they'd come in and re-mark it. it had been like that after folk fest, too.
It's been clean since I cleaned that last one up. Clearly, the cats like me to stay home, dammit.
_________________
And for those who read this far, I have a job interview tomorrow at noon. Wish me luck!
The first major thing in the trip was meant to be the SCA event in Calgary, AB. So logically, we started by flying to Abbotsford, BC.
Things began with a bit of a hitch as my father-in-law's car started leaking from the engine's cooling system at the airport, so we had to get a lift out of there while my F-i-L waited for CAA. As if that wasn't complicated enough: when they'd left the house, my M-i-L specifically said she wasn't bringing her purse, and was he sure he had his wallet? Turns out, the lump he felt in his back pocket wasn't his wallet.... so they had to use Colin's CAA membership.
But we got to their place OK, bunked up in the RV (because they have two Chinese students staying with them, taking up their usual guest rooms, that was the most efficient sleeping arrangement. Also, my M-I-L wanted to be sure we'd tested the bed before we left, in case we decided we had to use both bunks). Next day we talked, showered, transferred things out of bulky suitcases and bowcases and into smaller portable forms, and drove their RV over the mountains towards Calgary.
The RV in question is a converted van, not really much longer than a normal van - by which i mean Ford Econoline type van, not minivan, but nonetheless smaller than most RVs. The bathroom is a joke for size even by RV standards. It's taller than a van, though, what with the second bunk - used by us as storage - over the driver's seat. This ended up a relevant fact.
Yes, the mountains are gorgeous. Even the first drive, to Golden, which is all lower ranges than the Rockies (There were two mountains in the stretch we drove the first day that actually had bare rock-and-ice peaks, and one of those was Revelstoke). It was still diffled with mini-falls, rivers full of smooth round pebbles, and interesting formation details. Sad to say, my brain was taking significant notes for Soldier of the Road, as much as it was doing anything.
However, on the first night, 22 kilometres from our destination, the RV suddenly just seemed to lose power. Colin looked at the engine a bit, and discovered the freshly filled oil was pretty much empty. he refilled it, commenting that his dad had said he just did that, and it shouldn't need it through the trip.
The next day's drive, into Alberta through the national parks, was much more jagged, but I'm not sure it was prettier so much as simply more dramatic about it. Prairie girl as I am, I was still staring at everything both days, and craning. (Didn't hurt that our first pull-over resulted in me ending up about fifteen feet from a mountain sheep, staring up at it). And Idiscovered a legend forming in my brain for why the mountain range in a particular area in Soldier of the Road is shaped the way it is. (I was particularly struck by Mt. Rundle at the time. The Endless Range, however, which we saw on the drive back after Calgary and Edmonton, cemented the idea)
Anyhow, we made it to the event (Dragonslayer / Hidden Treasures, featuring the Dragonblinder tourney. Too many names!)
bow_bitch has a summary of her part here. For my part, i was pleased with how I shot; I didn't do anything spectacular, but I did what i felt was noticeably better than I had two years ago. Colin shot decently but not fantastically, which means he tied for second on the prize side of the Dragonblinder shoot (They have a separate track for their Baronial Archery Champion, which goes on a few rounds extra for the finalists) I was much happier with my woods walk (I believe I had a total of 28; my impression is that breaking 30 is quite respectable.)Colin stopped halfway due to overheating, but already had 16 points in the first 11 of the 23 targets.
There was also a tonne of singing, a great deal of it bawdy (I was more murderous than bawdy), most of it SCA or period, but they're far from strict on that if it's funny or rude, so I got to sing Welcome to Our House again once the Periodicity stopped mattering Friday night. I only played one song for audience with the mandolin (Crazy Man Michael), but it went okay. I also sang The Grey Goose Wing on Saturday night, a song about Agincourt that I'd heard the first time two days after folk fest (it being one by Ray Cooper), so not even two weeks before Dragonslayer. I'd decided I wanted to learn it on Thursday as we drove, and started actually trying to listen to and memorize it on Friday. Yipes! At least the song I force-memorized for Keycon I didn't actually sign until Folk Fest...
Anyhow, from there I got to pause in Red Deer to visit
taleisin, who'd been at the Calgary folk fest while we were at Dragonslayer. She lives in Lacombe, but had stayed overnight at a friend's place after the festival, and said friend was exceedingly understanding and let us use her shower. We met that friend, L, and another one, K, talked books and music and events (and Colin talked a bit about our trip to Italy for our honeymoon while I was showering). Again, taleisin has a pretty good summary of her version of events here. She says hi to everyone from Winnipeg; that'd include Cristina (Who doesn't read LJ but whom I've talked to twice already, so taleisin, she says hi back),zandoria, Brannie_Bird, Iulianna, and anyone else who cares. She does seem well and happy, in spite of the interesting gift her cats left in her apartment to show their displeasure at her absence (The only time I've been glad my cats *only* leave extreme quantities of hairballs). she also gave me my Christmas present - a copy of Corambis I'd known was coming, and a gift card to make up for the book she tried to order 3 times and never received.Then it was on to Edmonton to see dad and Lolly - and as we drove into Edmonton (Through a splendid thunderstorm that reminded me how Albertan thunderstorms are not the same at all as Winnipeg ones), that same thing happened, where the RV started acting like there was no power. The oil read as full, though, but Colin added more, and that, combined with the break and cool-down, seemed to get it started again. We arrived late enough that while dad came out to say hi as we were shutting the curtains, we just went straight to sleep where we were.
We emerged in the morning, and actually talked to them and started to get settled in properly. We were going to be joined two days later by Jeff, who was flying in at a stupidly early hour. Dad and Lolly have one spare room these days, and while the hide-a-bed was bigger than the RV bed, it was also, as I recalled, not that comfortable. We could have done what's been done in the past, and made that one the double bed, and used the Giant Couch Cushions (Which are Giant) for another Single bed, But I was okay with continuing to sleep in the RV, now that we could do a pile of laundry including sheets, and switch out the pillows a bit.
Lolly threatened to call my stepbrother just to paint the RV in hippie colours. I admitted that the barefoot woman in the long skirts running in and out of it probably didn't help. Especially the couple of times I hauled out the mandolin for practice.
Anyhow, we visited with them, and had a one day visit by my Grandma and my Aunt S, cousin A and her 3 kids (4/5, 6, & 7 in age). After a visit to the playground, the 4/5-year-old seemed to kind of glomp onto me; I was the one whose hand she held, and whose lap she sat in. Probably because Jeff and I were the ones who helped them twirl on the merry-go-round and all those spinny things, and I was the one who fell off one of them onto my arse with the child landing safely mostly on top of me.
Anyhow, we also shopped in the used book stores on Whyte avenue, and I used up the Chapters gift card taleisin gave me (Megan Whelan Turner's a Conspiracy of Kings and Jim C. Hines' Red Hood's Revenge). I think the best overall score was Shaun Tan's the Arrival, which I "read" (It's a wordless graphic novel) about four times, and merely studied certain pages a few times besides, though the Turner was devoured when I got home (After a reread of the first three, where I discovered how much I'd forgotten of them).
And while we were there, Colin had the RV checked by a mechanic, who said the problem wasn't the oil; it was that there was a leak in the coolant system - which meant that sometimes the oil was being used as a coolant form, which was bad for engine and oil alike. Anyhow, he suggested a temporary fix. Plus prayer.
More family visiting, and then we were off back towards Abbotsford through the Icefields parkway. We paused to look at Maligne Canyon, and the Athabasca Falls (The Serpent Prince climax includes someone jumping down a waterfall. These two combined in my brain to give a very good idea exactly how potentially suicidal *that* really is, though it also provided me with an idea how to keep him from breaking every bone in his body).
We also drove up the brand new road to the top of Mount Edith Cavell, where a couple of different walking paths lead you to views of the three great glaciers up there. OMG is that road narrow... Actually, it's probably no more narrow than any usual two-lane not intended for large vehicles (Vehicles over 5 metres are flat banned, and large RVs are discouraged), but it's full of switchbacks, blind turns, and it has NO shoulder. There's always a one-foot or longer drop of the edge fo the lane, even in the places where it's up against the cliffside (This is so there's a ditch for water drainage for the dozens of tiny falls) Rather more alarming if the view past that drop is the even bigger drop down. Beautiful beautiful views, but I do swear we were inches from the edge a few times, and I had to start blocking the view *down* where I could.
Worse, the parking lot at the top was FULL. And then some. And so, in oen of the few areas where there was a bit of a shoulder, the cars had lined it well past the point where they were supposed to. We circled a few times, got forced to turn back, then tried again, and eventually found a spo6t - at lunch, then walked out to look.
I think it was worth it. There's one glacier caught in the crook of the mountain with spread wings (Called the Angel glacier). Waterfalls tumble from its base, and into the pool mostly formed by the other large glacier, hunkering in the valley. A third glacier, much smaller, clings to the side of the mountain near the peak, looking as if it's defying gravity.
Another path led out of the glacier area and up to a meadow supposedly full of all the flowers missing on this scraped glacier hollow, but we opted not to.
We actually spent hardly any time at the Columbia Icefields, which are considerably larger and more famous, opting against the more costly tours. A worthwhile sight, yes, but... We were running low on time.
We drove on, pausing for particularly vivid views of mountains, and once for a herd of bighorn sheep just wandering about at the rest stop.
However, at one of the mountain view stops, as we pulled in, the side of the engine started spewing antifreeze. The rubber tube had burst. Fortunately, it did so close enough to the end that Colin and a helpful guy at the stop could cut the split piece off and reattach it. But it meant we did have to pour a LOT of water back in to replace it in the coolant system.
Eek.
For a variety of reasons not worth getting into, we ended up having to drive past Lake Louise to Banff, even though it was out of our way back to Golden. This proved much worse than it ought.
Because we'd got so used to thinking of ourselves as smaller than every other RV we'd seen that, without thinking about it, we tried to turn into a parkade. I was actually pretty much saying, "Seven and a half foot limit? I guess we're probably-" CRUNCH.
We broke three lights on the front, cracked the vent top, and it looked like we'd completely totalled the air conditioner set into the roof. (We found out later that while we'd broken the plastic casing beyond saving, which we say, and dented some tin, the working parts were fine).
So we paused to eat supper and de-stress, and headed for Golden - only to end up driving in the dark, in a thunderstorm. Through construction, which meant the road was mostly either unmarked or incorrectly marked. That quickly got more hair-raising than Mount Edith Cavell and its shoulder-less hairpins - says the girl who likes thunderstorms. Well, we only crashed in the sense that when we reached the lot in Golden where we were sleeping, we hit the bed as soon as we could.
The last day of driving, to Abbotsford, was mostly just tiring at that point, and we wanted nought but showers and supper and rest. And the engine did its no-power-left trick one more time, though again, the oil was full and past, yet adding mroe seemed to be good.
When we arrived, my M-i-L pretty much had supper on the table. So unwashed and dead-tired is how we properly met their two Chinese students, J and C, and their friend R, who, being from Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island), was actually crashing with them for about 3 days.
We spent the next several days visiting various friends and family, which was good but not necessarily of interest to anyone else. Then packed up to fly to Calgary for our last stop,
vilashna's wedding.Which flight was cancelled. They said it was for fog, but I said to Colin later, they probably had a problem with the coolant system.
We made it the next morning, and
bow_bitch took us in happily, and plied us with tea, and good conversation, until it was time for us to get ready for the wedding. (She wasn't actually going to it, but she knew enough people who were that she managed to arrange a ride for us, too. Lovely woman. Adn the guy who gave us a ride was a very fine person, too.)The wedding went well. Vilashna herself has a brief point form version here.
It started late, due to dress emergency (Colin and I snuggled a bit while waiting, to the point where the officiant actually told us that if we weren't married, we really needed her card. We promised we were married. Even to each other!). But once it started, it went well.
vilashna, in red gown of medieval cut (Not sure if it's perfectly period, but she could wear it to events, which I think was the point), and the groom in a matching red coat, both looked very fine (Although, as well as the problem with the ties to the sleeves not showing up, after the ceremony, she discovered it had been finished so recently there was still a needle attached to the dress by a length of thread...). The dinner was indifferent, but the dinner entertainment included a magic show and an opera singer, the cake was good, the music played during the ceremony and just after by the DJ was mostly familiar and good stuff (Great Big Sea cropped up a lot, but the last song I recall hearing, as the dance floor started, was the Last Saskatchewan Pirate). Plus they gave up mad libs to play with in the meantime, and random trivia. And we had enough friends from the Calgary SCAdian group to chat with.We ended up leaving just as the dancing started, which I would normally regret, but being up as early as I was (5:45 Calgary time, 4:45 in Abbotsford), I was okay with crashing.
We got to speak to and say our farewells to
bow_bitch and her SO in the morning, though they had to go to work well before we had to go to the airport. We crashed again after, and caught up on sleep, so that when we got to Winnipeg, we were even up to calling Jeff and inviting him over to join us playing board games. Abacchus and the cats were all well, and glad to see us, abacchus had cleaned the house rather well (Except for the kitchen, which he credited to mom). Although he told me that the spot in my study doorway with the hairball had almost never been hairball free the whole time I was gone. Every time he cleaned it up, they'd come in and re-mark it. it had been like that after folk fest, too.It's been clean since I cleaned that last one up. Clearly, the cats like me to stay home, dammit.
_________________
And for those who read this far, I have a job interview tomorrow at noon. Wish me luck!
