lenora_rose (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lenora_rose) wrote2007-08-09 08:37 pm
lenora_rose) wrote2007-08-09 08:37 pm
Entry tags:
On another subject
Visiting in Edmonton (and up to Plamondon) was indeed fabulous. IN Edmonton we hung out much, mostly with Dad and my step-mom, though we also paid a ngiht's visit to Colin's Best Man and fiancee. (She tried to foist the last Harry potter on me, as we'll be back in October for the Wedding, and she wouldn't be reading it again anytime soon, in her own words.)
We did some shopping on Whyte Ave. and environs - far less than most years, but the Wee Book Inn once again proved its supremacy as my favourite used book store. (After I had blithely said, "well, they don't have the Jo Walton i was looking for *this* time", I realised they had more hardcovers on the very topmost shelf of the wall, and ended up standing there gaping too hard to actually vocalize a SQUEEEE. Er, yes, that is a broken book resolution.)
We also went to the museum, which is good for its size, but slightly better if you are more naturalist-inclined, as I am, and less jaded about modest-sized collections, as Colin is. I think the Manitoba Museum does a better job in how it arranges the human-historic bits; Alberta's is focused exclusively on the First Nations, from origin to present, and is almost certainly a better overall collection, but... it felt like certain elements were missing in bringing the past portions to life, even as the newer segments had their own power, commemorating the present struggles. (Manitoba's is about First Nations and Immigrants alike, and focused on things before the 20th century, or in the earliest decades thereof, and makes you feel the time period more.)
For a completely different bit of culture, we also went to the World Waterpark, almost the only part of the Mall we paid any attention to. much fun, as ever.
We also drove up to Plamondon (Thus Emma Bull's Tarritory getting occasionally overwhelmed by the Athabasca Valley), to my aunt & Uncle's farm (had we planned another day or a longer visit, we might have ended up at their lakeside cabin), where we were fed fresh fish, pickled fish, venison sausage, millions of peas and raspberries -- and mango, which, along with dad's (home-made, but of grocery store beef) hamburgers, was one of the few things not right off the land.
Saw Grandma Dorothy, and also saw a huge pile of photographs of her parents, her relatives, aunts and cousins, Grandpa Wayne, and a very different time and place. I found myself most fascinated by my great grandfather, because the two pictures of him I was first shown didn't look alike at all, until a third picture showed up which was exactly halfway between the other two sets of facial features. Clearly very mobile in spite of the fact that most of the photographs being posed, he was meant to be holding the same mostly-solemn look.
Got rather overwhelmed by my cousins' children on that same visit. (R's boy lives with my aunt right now, and A was over with her 3) Each one individually is a sweetheart, but there were 4 of them between 2 and 4 in the vicinity.
Both dad and the farm have more raspberries than you could possibly shake a stick at, and I *still* forgot to pick myself a container's worth to take with us to the next event!
Quad Wars was a disappointment after the sheer delight of Hidden Treasures. (For those who were thinking about going to Quad Wars, which is far closer of the two, don't let this discourage you: the Viscountess who was Autocrat for Hidden Treasures will be Autocrat for Quad Wars next year, and she was already talking about things she wanted to do better.)
True, there were more merchants, but not much I felt inclined to buy (The lovely lantern was from a merchant who went to both places. And also comes to the Icelandic Festival here.) Rather the Elizabethan was gorgeous, and fit but for really minor alterations, but stood well out of my budget range (Legitimately; there was some scary hand-sewing in it.), and the used Italian Ren was well within budget, and built for the right rough weight of woman, but with entirely the wrong proportions. Pout.
And the people were just as friendly, the ones we knew and the ones we just met (And we got to camp with Thunderbunny and other Northshielders!)
Th castle looked impressive, and we did get to watch one attack upon it, though we missed most of the heavy fighting.
Archery was the main disappointment. Friday, they didn't get the targets up in place in time for the Royal Rounds, then didn't do an evening shoot. Saturday they did the Champion Shoot, where the Prince/Princess and Tanist/Tanista (Heirs) choose themselves teams of champions. The Viscountess asked Colin specifically to join her on the Heirs' side, so he got to particpate, while I partly watched and cheered, and partly wandered off.
The Populace shoot was fun... but all of two official rounds long. The second of which was a clout - only 80 yards off, but a circle more like 8-10' diameter, not 20. We also got to shoot at the targets again whenever nobody else was about doing the populace shoot.
However, rather than limit the Populace shoot to certain hours, the entire rest of the time was taken up by it, because the point was that *every* member of the populace who wished could shoot it at some point, and the scoring method meant non-scoring arrows on the range would confuse the issue. (They had a *pile* of loaner equipment, mostly provided by Montegarde/Calgary.) Which was all very well, but meant that, by the time we left, they still hadn't managed to add in another shoot or even switch the targets for Royal Rounds (They already had butts up at 20-30-40 yard increments, it shouldn't have been that hard...) We did get a few rounds of for-fun practice in at the long distances, which is good, but then other people would come for the populace shoot, and we'd be done again.
There was almost no music before we crashed on Friday (The Viscountess was disappointed mainly that there was no drummer, as she does a middle-eastern persona and middle-eastern dance, so she usually gets to play around at the tavern.)
Saturday, they closed out the evening by the tavern with something called Wench Wars, where women (And one man trying far too hard to be girly) had to out-sexy each other. Cute, probably horribly sexist, but it was won by the woman whose song has the chorus that starts "I'm really not that pretty, and I'm really rather fat..." (Ed.: Actually, the latter was true, The former patently wasn't.) Which song, by the way, I meant to get the lyrics for, I even got her permission, then I didn't get the lyrics themselves. Arggh! It'd be better to get them before I forget the tune to the verses.
Then they ahd a Bardic competition, run by a slightly nervous 16-year-old - a capable enough singer, just uneasy at running something, and a mite disorganized. They'd split it into four categories; beginner (Where Colin did a rather credible rendition of Rite of Passage -- which is a heck of an ambitious way to introduce yourself as a singer.), Intermediate (Where I got a Wow - but didn't win - for a song part in Finnish and part in English), Expert (Won hands down by the woman with the very cheerful song about murdering her ex-lovers.). The quality of these first three had me greatly looking forward to the free circle afterwards, and more singing.
Then we had the fourth category, "Adult", which is where the whole thing derailed. Up to then, we'd had a (mostly) good mix of music and stories. Adult mostly ended up being bawdy jokes, and bad filks based around an incident described in one of the earlier segments, about an actual out-house that caught on fire at an event. The original story was funny. Some of the responses were funny; a couple were hysterical, or would be if they'd been, say, placed in a contrasting setting, instead of buried in the midst. However, once the contest was done, (and partly encouraged by the bawdy segment's willingness to suspend taste), they would not get off the subject of the burning biffy. A bit of a disadvantage to anyone who wanted an actual, you know, Bardic circle? (several people who disappeared within the first 15 minutes, and several of us who lingered on in hope and occasionally made wistful remarks thereon). We gave up after almost an hour (found out later that they were still on the topic in some form at 4 AM, and became glad we left when we did.)
(Simultaneous with this was a toga party at the Grotto, a low point in the noisy part of the camp. Reports suggested this was not my type of revel, being much drunk and "just a mite" debauched, but those who went had a blast.)
Sunday morning I took a class on hand-building pottery (I'd rather regretted not signing up for any of the Saturday classes, but I'd presumed I would be doing more archery than I did). I only produced one work, and I won't get that back for a while, so I won't be able to show it for ages, but it was a little bird. Much fun.
However, we were packing up that afternoon, and on the road by about 2:00. We'd discussed staying longer (To the point where I'd signed up for an evening class.), but decided not to. (This also meant we missed court, which was Sunday, not Saturday, evening. Something I thought made far more sense for the local groups, at least, as that way the contests could all be completed in time...)
We also learned on our way out, that the next night there would be *two* bardic circles, because at least one person had decided he wanted all the new burning biffy songs and jokes polished and made into a new contest, and the other, supported by the 16 year old again, to be a usual non-competitive circle, and 100% Burning-biffy-free. That might have been fun.
Food also turned out to be an issue through the weekend, though not the fault of the event; we had packed the cooler with an assumption there would be more by way of food vendors than there were, so while we were far from going hungry, we could have used more variety. (We actually had a supper Saturday night of quite acceptable Chinese food at the tiny cafe in Marsden. Bad fried rice, mediocre ginger beef, good everything else.)
Anyhow, we drove on Sunday Afternoon, which meant we were back in Winnipeg by Monday evening.
_______________________________
My book resolution was broken by 2 books; Jo Walton's The King's Name in hardcover (the fact that I wanted it in hardback to match the first half was the whole reason I hadn't snagged it yet) and the Diaries of Alan Clark, which I was assigned by TNH at Viable Paradise to read, and hadn't found in bookstore or library until now. Guess people in North America now aren't as interested in Thatcherite politicians.* Colin also bought me books 3 and 5 of The Smith/Trowbridge Exordium series (I know *exactly* where to get book 4 in Winnipeg, so he's also pushing me to break my resolution further).
I didn't by the severely battered copy of Martha Wells' The Element of Fire, even though it's on the list, because A) Severely battered, and B) She's re-released a nice new edition herself, with some re-editing.
havign also grabbed a cd when I oughtn't to have, this has caused me to revamp my list of the only books/CDs I may buy until January. Items in bold, I bought. Items struck out, are, well....
CDs:
Richard Thompson - Sweet Warrior,1000 Years of Popular Music.
Heather Alexander - Life's Flame,Midsummer, Arms of the Sea, Ever After.
Maddy Prior and the Girls - Under the Covers
Maddy Prior - Ballads and Candles
Emmylou Harris - Portraits.
Oysterband - Northern Light, Meet You There
Books:
Sherwood Smith - Senrid, the Fox
Elizabeth Bear - New Amsterdam, Whiskey and Water
Emma Bull - Territory
Sarah Monette - The Mirador
Diana Wynne Jones - The Pinhoe Egg
Martha Wells - The Element of Fire
Jo Walton - Ha'Penny
Robin McKinley - Dragonhaven
* Anyone who has to ask who Maggie Thatcher was gets a kick. Even though I'll forever associate her with Yuppie Demons in the Hellblazer comic book first, and with her actual political decisions later.
We did some shopping on Whyte Ave. and environs - far less than most years, but the Wee Book Inn once again proved its supremacy as my favourite used book store. (After I had blithely said, "well, they don't have the Jo Walton i was looking for *this* time", I realised they had more hardcovers on the very topmost shelf of the wall, and ended up standing there gaping too hard to actually vocalize a SQUEEEE. Er, yes, that is a broken book resolution.)
We also went to the museum, which is good for its size, but slightly better if you are more naturalist-inclined, as I am, and less jaded about modest-sized collections, as Colin is. I think the Manitoba Museum does a better job in how it arranges the human-historic bits; Alberta's is focused exclusively on the First Nations, from origin to present, and is almost certainly a better overall collection, but... it felt like certain elements were missing in bringing the past portions to life, even as the newer segments had their own power, commemorating the present struggles. (Manitoba's is about First Nations and Immigrants alike, and focused on things before the 20th century, or in the earliest decades thereof, and makes you feel the time period more.)
For a completely different bit of culture, we also went to the World Waterpark, almost the only part of the Mall we paid any attention to. much fun, as ever.
We also drove up to Plamondon (Thus Emma Bull's Tarritory getting occasionally overwhelmed by the Athabasca Valley), to my aunt & Uncle's farm (had we planned another day or a longer visit, we might have ended up at their lakeside cabin), where we were fed fresh fish, pickled fish, venison sausage, millions of peas and raspberries -- and mango, which, along with dad's (home-made, but of grocery store beef) hamburgers, was one of the few things not right off the land.
Saw Grandma Dorothy, and also saw a huge pile of photographs of her parents, her relatives, aunts and cousins, Grandpa Wayne, and a very different time and place. I found myself most fascinated by my great grandfather, because the two pictures of him I was first shown didn't look alike at all, until a third picture showed up which was exactly halfway between the other two sets of facial features. Clearly very mobile in spite of the fact that most of the photographs being posed, he was meant to be holding the same mostly-solemn look.
Got rather overwhelmed by my cousins' children on that same visit. (R's boy lives with my aunt right now, and A was over with her 3) Each one individually is a sweetheart, but there were 4 of them between 2 and 4 in the vicinity.
Both dad and the farm have more raspberries than you could possibly shake a stick at, and I *still* forgot to pick myself a container's worth to take with us to the next event!
Quad Wars was a disappointment after the sheer delight of Hidden Treasures. (For those who were thinking about going to Quad Wars, which is far closer of the two, don't let this discourage you: the Viscountess who was Autocrat for Hidden Treasures will be Autocrat for Quad Wars next year, and she was already talking about things she wanted to do better.)
True, there were more merchants, but not much I felt inclined to buy (The lovely lantern was from a merchant who went to both places. And also comes to the Icelandic Festival here.) Rather the Elizabethan was gorgeous, and fit but for really minor alterations, but stood well out of my budget range (Legitimately; there was some scary hand-sewing in it.), and the used Italian Ren was well within budget, and built for the right rough weight of woman, but with entirely the wrong proportions. Pout.
And the people were just as friendly, the ones we knew and the ones we just met (And we got to camp with Thunderbunny and other Northshielders!)
Th castle looked impressive, and we did get to watch one attack upon it, though we missed most of the heavy fighting.
Archery was the main disappointment. Friday, they didn't get the targets up in place in time for the Royal Rounds, then didn't do an evening shoot. Saturday they did the Champion Shoot, where the Prince/Princess and Tanist/Tanista (Heirs) choose themselves teams of champions. The Viscountess asked Colin specifically to join her on the Heirs' side, so he got to particpate, while I partly watched and cheered, and partly wandered off.
The Populace shoot was fun... but all of two official rounds long. The second of which was a clout - only 80 yards off, but a circle more like 8-10' diameter, not 20. We also got to shoot at the targets again whenever nobody else was about doing the populace shoot.
However, rather than limit the Populace shoot to certain hours, the entire rest of the time was taken up by it, because the point was that *every* member of the populace who wished could shoot it at some point, and the scoring method meant non-scoring arrows on the range would confuse the issue. (They had a *pile* of loaner equipment, mostly provided by Montegarde/Calgary.) Which was all very well, but meant that, by the time we left, they still hadn't managed to add in another shoot or even switch the targets for Royal Rounds (They already had butts up at 20-30-40 yard increments, it shouldn't have been that hard...) We did get a few rounds of for-fun practice in at the long distances, which is good, but then other people would come for the populace shoot, and we'd be done again.
There was almost no music before we crashed on Friday (The Viscountess was disappointed mainly that there was no drummer, as she does a middle-eastern persona and middle-eastern dance, so she usually gets to play around at the tavern.)
Saturday, they closed out the evening by the tavern with something called Wench Wars, where women (And one man trying far too hard to be girly) had to out-sexy each other. Cute, probably horribly sexist, but it was won by the woman whose song has the chorus that starts "I'm really not that pretty, and I'm really rather fat..." (Ed.: Actually, the latter was true, The former patently wasn't.) Which song, by the way, I meant to get the lyrics for, I even got her permission, then I didn't get the lyrics themselves. Arggh! It'd be better to get them before I forget the tune to the verses.
Then they ahd a Bardic competition, run by a slightly nervous 16-year-old - a capable enough singer, just uneasy at running something, and a mite disorganized. They'd split it into four categories; beginner (Where Colin did a rather credible rendition of Rite of Passage -- which is a heck of an ambitious way to introduce yourself as a singer.), Intermediate (Where I got a Wow - but didn't win - for a song part in Finnish and part in English), Expert (Won hands down by the woman with the very cheerful song about murdering her ex-lovers.). The quality of these first three had me greatly looking forward to the free circle afterwards, and more singing.
Then we had the fourth category, "Adult", which is where the whole thing derailed. Up to then, we'd had a (mostly) good mix of music and stories. Adult mostly ended up being bawdy jokes, and bad filks based around an incident described in one of the earlier segments, about an actual out-house that caught on fire at an event. The original story was funny. Some of the responses were funny; a couple were hysterical, or would be if they'd been, say, placed in a contrasting setting, instead of buried in the midst. However, once the contest was done, (and partly encouraged by the bawdy segment's willingness to suspend taste), they would not get off the subject of the burning biffy. A bit of a disadvantage to anyone who wanted an actual, you know, Bardic circle? (several people who disappeared within the first 15 minutes, and several of us who lingered on in hope and occasionally made wistful remarks thereon). We gave up after almost an hour (found out later that they were still on the topic in some form at 4 AM, and became glad we left when we did.)
(Simultaneous with this was a toga party at the Grotto, a low point in the noisy part of the camp. Reports suggested this was not my type of revel, being much drunk and "just a mite" debauched, but those who went had a blast.)
Sunday morning I took a class on hand-building pottery (I'd rather regretted not signing up for any of the Saturday classes, but I'd presumed I would be doing more archery than I did). I only produced one work, and I won't get that back for a while, so I won't be able to show it for ages, but it was a little bird. Much fun.
However, we were packing up that afternoon, and on the road by about 2:00. We'd discussed staying longer (To the point where I'd signed up for an evening class.), but decided not to. (This also meant we missed court, which was Sunday, not Saturday, evening. Something I thought made far more sense for the local groups, at least, as that way the contests could all be completed in time...)
We also learned on our way out, that the next night there would be *two* bardic circles, because at least one person had decided he wanted all the new burning biffy songs and jokes polished and made into a new contest, and the other, supported by the 16 year old again, to be a usual non-competitive circle, and 100% Burning-biffy-free. That might have been fun.
Food also turned out to be an issue through the weekend, though not the fault of the event; we had packed the cooler with an assumption there would be more by way of food vendors than there were, so while we were far from going hungry, we could have used more variety. (We actually had a supper Saturday night of quite acceptable Chinese food at the tiny cafe in Marsden. Bad fried rice, mediocre ginger beef, good everything else.)
Anyhow, we drove on Sunday Afternoon, which meant we were back in Winnipeg by Monday evening.
_______________________________
My book resolution was broken by 2 books; Jo Walton's The King's Name in hardcover (the fact that I wanted it in hardback to match the first half was the whole reason I hadn't snagged it yet) and the Diaries of Alan Clark, which I was assigned by TNH at Viable Paradise to read, and hadn't found in bookstore or library until now. Guess people in North America now aren't as interested in Thatcherite politicians.* Colin also bought me books 3 and 5 of The Smith/Trowbridge Exordium series (I know *exactly* where to get book 4 in Winnipeg, so he's also pushing me to break my resolution further).
I didn't by the severely battered copy of Martha Wells' The Element of Fire, even though it's on the list, because A) Severely battered, and B) She's re-released a nice new edition herself, with some re-editing.
havign also grabbed a cd when I oughtn't to have, this has caused me to revamp my list of the only books/CDs I may buy until January. Items in bold, I bought. Items struck out, are, well....
CDs:
Richard Thompson - Sweet Warrior,
Heather Alexander - Life's Flame,
Maddy Prior and the Girls - Under the Covers
Maddy Prior - Ballads and Candles
Emmylou Harris - Portraits.
Oysterband - Northern Light, Meet You There
Books:
Sherwood Smith - Senrid, the Fox
Emma Bull - Territory
Sarah Monette - The Mirador
Martha Wells - The Element of Fire
Robin McKinley - Dragonhaven
* Anyone who has to ask who Maggie Thatcher was gets a kick. Even though I'll forever associate her with Yuppie Demons in the Hellblazer comic book first, and with her actual political decisions later.