Tavelorn's Journal

And on Saturday, a Garage Sale

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:52:44 GMT

[Cross-posted from a reply to my wife's blog, because I thought that some of my friends might get a kick out of it...]

For the last four or five years, I've wanted to participate in the Riverside Neighborhood Garage Sale and get rid out some of our collected crap. The attic is full of old camping equipment, electronics and other stuff we've (read that as "I've") collected over the years and refused to throw or give away.

So the week has been spent dragging a lot of stuff out of the attic, especially old computers. Anyone want the first computer I bought myself? It was a great, state of the art, 286 that I built in 1989. Or how about a Sparq drive? Anyone? Anyone?

How about a 9" portable b/w TV (with a picture tube, not a flat screen) that I had when I was a teenager? It only needs 8 D-cells to run. Or a metric shit-ton of happy meal toys and the like from Becca's room?

Somehow I expect there will be a donation trip to a thrift store in my future . . .

Viking Days!

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:32:29 GMT

This will be us on Sunday!

http://nordicmuseum.org/index.php?t=events&c=full&e=477

New Internet, TV and phones

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:24:07 GMT

Last week, I got convinced to switch from Verizon (for internet and phone) and Dish Network (for TV) to Comcast cable for all three. The big thing that convinced me was the price (we should save $80/month) but also because of poor service. The dish signal was erratic, especially for HD and DSL would also cut in and out once a month or so.

This morning we started with the following stats, courtesy of SpeedTest.net:
Ping: 50 ms
Download: 2.8 Mb/sec
Upload: 0.51 Mb/sec

Right now, I have:

Ping: 13 ms
Download: 29.64 Mb/sec
Upload: 8.19 Mb/sec

I am very pleased!

The VoIP seems to work as we got a telephone solicitation call. The TV is a bit disappointing. The channel selecting menu is primitive compared to the DISH interface. The remote isn't full featured. I think it will still be OK, but we'll see.

Summer plans, down the drain

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:21:32 GMT

We had some pretty intricate summer plans. One of them was Becca's -- that she would go to summer school. That took up a big chunk of time and had big repercussions on the rest of us, but we figured out how to make it work.

Until summer school was canceled. We found out on Monday that they had only 7 kids signed up for the fast-start science class.

So Becca needs to find things to do with herself over the summer. It was a surprise, so maybe we just need some time for the situation to settle in and to come up with other ideas. We'll really need something to do next week though....

Not to say that the week wasn't bad. Becca and I have had a lot of fun, and she actually made four characters for the Ellis game today. We went for a nice drive on Monday, and then I did yard work yesterday while she played Sims 3. Ok, I played Sims 3 too...

Buffy vs. Edward

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:18:07 GMT

Posted for sims2freak, seen posted by aylinn

I'm so proud!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:27:00 GMT

So my daughter graduated from 8th grade tonight. We went to the ceremony at the High School auditorium and were quite surprised to find her nominated not just for the Citizenship award, but for Student of the Year.

Student of the Year!

She didn't win, but this is certainly one of those times when it is a huge honor just to be nominated.

She is at the post-graduation party/dance right now. She got a bunch of compliments on her dress and went out after school with some friends to do hair and apply makeup.

I tried to take pictures of her getting the diploma, but they didn't turn out.

Crap, Crap Crap, Crap

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:06:00 GMT

I drove into work early today to do a favor for the boss. I took our SUV so that I could bring in the tall ladder (to replace some pigeon deterrent). As I arrived at the store, parallel parking, I hit the curb and tore a huge gash in the side of the front passenger tire.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

This is the second time I've done this (in the same parking spot!) so I should really know that the SUV is wider than my little compact.

The really shitty part of this is that because of the active power distribution (or whatever its official name is) if I change one tire I have to change all four. Last time it was $500.

Grrrrrr.

Well I've already go the spare on. I don't know what it says about me that I am able to change the tire in less than 15 minutes. I guess I've done way too often.

So as soon as I'm off work I'll head to the tire place and get the bad news. Conveniently though, they can usually do a full tire replacement like that in less than an hour. Plus, it's only a few blocks from home, so I don't even have to sit in the waiting room.

I'm not old enough to have a daughter like this...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:46:17 GMT

Becca is graduating from 8th grade tomorrow. After graduation there's a dance. A late-night, off-campus dance.

Now I had the brilliant idea to have a friend of mine make her a dress. That way Becca would get exactly what she wanted. Lizzie would get some extra money instead of an over-priced mall store and everyone would be happy.

Everyone but me, that is. Why? Because she looks like this:

I'm joking. I really am happy. I'm happy that she looks great. I'm happy that she's thinks she looks great. I'm really proud.

I just might have to poke out some teenage boys' eyes with a red-hot poker.

Ellis Update

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:37:53 GMT

I ran a game down at the store on Saturday and it went very well. The game was fun and everyone enjoyed it. Two new players, one his first time playing any RPG.

I realized some small changes that I wanted to make, mostly having to do with damage numbers as compared to armor number.

I had lunch with raffenshiv and Victoria today. We talked about the game for about 3 hours. They had a bunch of good ideas that I really don't want to incorporate/change, but I think I need to. I want to move forward, but when it isn't quite right or could be made plainer, it has to be done.

So I'm going to re-write combat. I'm going to see how much I can finish tonight, so that I can work on saints tomorrow.

I've been on a little break from the game design since January, and it feels really good to be back!

This week

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:02:02 GMT

It's been a fairly crazy week.

The weekend was good. I had a huge to-do list that I just never seemed to get control of, though I did get everything on it that _needed_ to done, finished.

We went garage saleing a bit and got a fabulous collection of gears and clocksprings and such that will be great for steampunking. Becca has claimed them which is a bit annoying, but if she actually does something with them that will be great.

I got Father's Day and birthday shopping done for my father (who, like me, is impossible to shop for. We also got Becca's graduation dress fitted for the final time. I should be able to pick it up tonight.

The week has been spent running errands, cooking (it seems like that's all I did on Monday), editing the +3 System rulebook and working on the RPG session I'm running on Saturday. The editing is going slowly (very slowly), but I'm very happy with what's there.

In what little spare time I had I've played a little Sims 3. Like most Sims games, it's funner than it looks. But there is nothing really new here, it's the same game as Sims 1 but with tweaks and much better graphics. The Build-a-Sim might actually be worse, at least in the facial designs, as I was very frustrated that I couldn't get much difference between faces, even by playing with all of the sliders.

Yesterday, I got carried away and spent way too much time playing with the new Ellis wiki that chromiuml set up. It was much fun and I see this as being a huge time-sink in the future as well.

Mmmmm ... vodka ... mmmmm ... bacon

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:29:29 GMT

I found this this morning and I am definitely intrigued. I think I want to try some.

From their website:

Bakon Vodka is a superior quality potato vodka with a savory bacon flavor. It’s clean, crisp, and delicious. This is the only vodka you’ll ever want to use to make a Bloody Mary, and it's a complementary element of both sweet and savory drinks.

Bakon Vodka is also a great Bar-B-Q companion. Use it in a marinade or sip it chilled with a steak. Check out our recipes section for more ideas.
The Meat and Potatoes… Premium quality, no joke.

We start with superior quality Idaho potatoes instead of the random mixed grains that make up most vodkas. Our vodka is column-distilled using a single heating process that doesn’t “bruise” the alcohol like the multiple heating cycles needed to make a typical pot-still vodka.

No tinge or burn on the tongue, no obnoxious smoky or chemical flavors, just a clean refreshing potato vodka with delicious savory bacon flavor.

Pure. Refreshing. Bacon.

Gunsmithing

Thu, 28 May 2009 13:44:09 GMT

One of the things that the guys at Zombie Buddy Productions (the folks that put on the excellent zombie apocalypse LARP at MisCon) did was sell modified and painted Nerf Guns. Becca didn't buy one of those, but she was intrigued by the idea.

So last night she came down with one of her Mavericks and asked me how to take it apart. So we did. No, I take that back -- I told her where to find the proper size screwdriver and she took it apart. She dove right in and pieces were quickly laying on the coffee table. I only helped take out one screw that was in there really tight.

Once she got the pieces out she found some sandpaper and started filing off some of the names and warning labels. I did help some with that and we had a good time.

She's going to bring it to the painting party on Sunday and paint it. I'm not sure what color yet, we'll see what she wants.

Otherwise, my day went well. I finally figured out how to get my spreadsheet to work. We went to Becca's last conference at Middle School. It was nice to hear her teachers really encouraging her and telling her that she has a lot of potential.

While at MisCon I also came up with a plan for Ellis, but that really deserves a long post of its own, so let's just say I have a plan and I have been taking small steps toward it. I also have a new plan for Sabledrake Enterprises, and along those lines I have been trying to figure out how eBooks work from the publishing side. So not much completed work to show for the week, but some good research and good progress made.

I hate bookkeeping

Wed, 27 May 2009 19:19:01 GMT

Errg!

I realized yesterday that my Sabledrake Enterprises Excel layout for managing our out-of-house authors is fatally flawed. It worked early on, but as pay-in and outs got more complicated, it dropped the ball.

I worked on it yesterday with litlle headway, although what I did get done was then lost in a blue-screen-of-death.

I've been working on it now for the last three hours and am close . . . It's going to be much clearer and more accurate, not that I thing it was very far off.

I'm going to take a break and come back to it after lunch.

A weekend in Montana

Wed, 27 May 2009 03:14:02 GMT

So the illness I was feeling last week was definitely allergies. Friday morning the allergy pills I took got rid of the symptoms beautifully and they returned exactly five and a half hours later.

We left Everett at 6:20 am and arrived at 4:30 pm (losing an hour when we crossed into Mountain Time). We stopped in Coeur d'Alene for lunch at Sonic (a treat for us, since we don't have any). The trip was very pretty -- snow in the mountains, corn growing in the fields, and fast running mountain rivers.

Miscon itself was a lot of fun. We had a dealer's tables and I did my best to sell books. I wasn't very optimistic, but the tables were so cheap, I couldn't turn down the opportunity. In the end, we sold more than enough to pay for the table, which surprised me quite a bit.

Christine wound up being allergic to something out there and spent much of the con either miserable or asleep. I didn't see much of the con, being stuck behind the table, but it was very well organized and very attendee friendly.

The hotel is one of the best things about the con. Excellent free breakfast, friendly, helpfull staff, and a creek flowing along the backside of the hotel.

What wound up being the highlight of the con was some guys from Pittsburg who travel around the country to conventions and host zombie-themed LARP sessions for pay. Becca tried one out an Saturday and was immediately hooked. She is now in hawk for many future allowances and extra chores around the house, both for sessions and for some of their merchandise -- a I (brain) Zombies hoodie and a bio-hazard denim purse.

They were short one player for a Sunday night game, so they invited me to join them for free. It was surprisingly fun and intense. With a full group it would have been well worth $14 for a 90 minute game.

I got into a long conversation with Mike Stackpole and a few others about ebooks and the Kindle and have decided to give it a try. So that's my project for the next few weeks.

The drive home was non eventful and we got in late on Monday. A very nice weekend!

WANT!

Thu, 21 May 2009 14:17:55 GMT

http://raisingtheroof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/knights-templar-castle-for-sale-in-france/

Onward to MisCon

Thu, 21 May 2009 13:57:21 GMT

It's a short work week for me, as I am taking Friday off to go to MisCon in Missoula, Montana. I'm not particularly looking forward to the drive, but once we get there it will be a blast. Last year was our first time going; small con, lots of face time with the guests, great hotel with a creek running through it, good people.

I've been fighting off a cold all week and it still has yet to fully take me over. I keep telling myself I'm too busy to catch a cold and taking Vitamin C.

My wife has started a new guild for City of Heroes and so on Tuesday when I tried to work on Ellis and after two hours had gotten nowhere (not quite that bad, but it was rather irksome) I decided to write some fiction about my character for it. That went well and I was happy.

I have four half-written posts for my other blog that I have to tame and get posted. Maybe I can do that at MisCon.

I'm also back on my diet and have already seen some of my vacation pounds vanish. Yeah!

My parents got me hooked on The Mentalist while I was on vacation and I managed to watch the first 7 episodes this week. Very fun show.

Back from Vacation

Thu, 14 May 2009 13:33:55 GMT

I’m back and happy to be in the cloudy, rainy Northwest. Not the the weather was bad while I was in the Midwest -- I actually couldn’t have asked for better. But it’s nice not to have to wonder if it’s going to thundershower today or hit 80 or both. It’s nice not to have to change shirts halfway through the day to deal with the humidity.

After getting home late Monday night, I slept in on Tuesday. Practically the first thing I did was call my doctor. I don’t think I mentioned it in may daily blogs (but maybe I did) but I went into the trip with a slight pain in my left elbow. I didn’t think much of it -- I have a lot of little aches and pains these days. But I did my best to baby it and let it heal.

Needless to say, hauling suitcases around, throwing them into overhead racks, dragging them around on subways and playing golf with my Dad was hardly “babying” it. It got feeling worse and worse as the trip went on and even the relatively slow (at least on my arm) time of the Medieval Congress didn’t make it feel any better.

So, much to my wife’s surprise, I made an appointment with the doc. An hour and a $25 co-pay later, he told me that it was Tennis Elbow and to take it easy on the arm and to take ibuprophen. Gee, thanks doc, like I hadn’t guessed that much on my own. He also wants be to ice it, which has actually done the most to make it feel better. But at least now I know it’s not something worse and I have a letter from my doc to give my boss, so that I’m on light duty.

The rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday have been spent catching up on chores -- laundry, weeding the garden, tending to our apricot wine, shopping, paying bills, synching computers, posting to blogs, etc.

Becca had her first instance of the computer eating a project. She’d written a 17 page short story for a school writing assignment. She printed it out and gave it to us to edit, but when she went back in to make the changes, it was garbled to hell an unreadable. After a mild panic attack we went through and determined that it was truly unrecoverable, but since we had the printout we could scan and OCR it. It took us an hour last night to do it and went in surprisingly clean. I think it definitely helped that it was in 12 point Times.

I feel definitely recharged after this trip. I really want to do a hard push on Ellis and get it to a final draft state so that I can move on to the hard part -- getting it published. I think I will try to work on it this weekend (and may also drive up to Mt. Vernon to buy some honey), but next weekend is MisCon which is going to be a fun, but exhausting con (an 8-hour drive will do that . . . ).

That’s it for now,

--Tim

Vacation Day 10, Kalamazoo Day 6 -- Monday, May 11th -- Afternoon and Evening

Wed, 13 May 2009 15:41:45 GMT

I met my aunt, or I should say she met me) at Union Station and we jumped in a cab and went deeper downtown. She took me to a Cajun restaurant, Heaven on Seven, and we had a wonderful meal of Jambalaya and Gumbo.

The next stop on the grand tour was Millenium Park. We walked around the park, seeing the giant reflective bean (officially called the Cloud Gate), the Crown Fountain (two giant glass block “skyscrapers” that they project pictures of people’s face on, then have them spit water out of their mouths) and walked over a winding pedestrian bridge to a lakeside park.

(The links above go to other people’s pictures, since I locked my luggage in a locker at the train station and forgot my camera there.)

Our next stop was the Chicago Cultural Center, the former downtown library and an absolutely gorgeous building. Tiffany glass domes, mosaic tilework everywhere, elaborate coffered ceilings . . . it was beautiful. The artwork it displayed was nothing special.

A quick cab ride back to the train station and I said goodbye to Nancy. I got my luggage and caught the L to the airport. I got through security with no trouble this time and had nearly four hours to wait.

I got a horribly overpriced glass of wine and a greasy hamburger at the Fox Sports bar. My phone was about to run out of juice, so I found a plug and read for a while. Another man was doing the same thing and I got to hear all about his trip to Rome.

The plane was on time and I had a window seat, so I got some really nice views of the countryside as we chased the sun westward. I finished _The Carolingian Economy_ and will post about it later. I napped for about a half of an hour and we got in at 10:30 pm.

Chris and Becca were both there to meet me and it was very good to see them. We were home an hour later and I was beat, so I went straight to bed.

Pictures from Kalamazoo

Wed, 13 May 2009 13:26:58 GMT

Here are the pictures I took from the medieval conference:

Outside of the dorm building I stayed in, Valley III.

The inside of a dorm room, after just stepping in the door

Inside the dorm room at the end of the hall so you can see the whole room.

This is now standing against the windows, shooting back toward the door.

Here is the bed, made poorly, with the tiny blanket stretched out across it.

The is the bathroom and the open door of my neighbor's room

The scene through the woods coming down for the Bernhard, Schneider, Fetzer and Henry buildings.

More woods.

From the path looking up toward my dorm building.

The bridge over the pond and some geese and ducks.

More of the pond.

A turtle in the pond, right near the bridge

The Powell's Books room.

The amber booth.

A seller of medieval musical instruments. I have their website address around here somewhere...

The front of the main room.

More Main Room.

More Main Room.

More Main Room.

A piece of wool cloth made on the loom.

The loom weights that keep everything taught.

Here's the operator using a wand to tighten up the newly shuttled string.

A Templar knight running down a fleeing Saracen knight. Part of the presenter's thesis was that although the Saracen's head is largely damaged, she sees a crown on his head. With that bit of info, she interprets this scene as a symbolic West conquering East.

The Bishop.

St. Michael.

St. Michael and the Bishop with the windows in between.

St. George slaying the Dragon. Again, she identifies the maiden as The West and the dragon as The East.

Charlemagne

A poor quality picture of St. George and Charlemagne and the window.

Vacation Day 10, Kalamazoo Day 6 -- Monday, May 11th -- Morning

Tue, 12 May 2009 17:15:34 GMT

The morning was quiet. I had unsettling dreams, the first one about trying to rebuild my beloved Saturn SW2 and the other one I can barely remember, something about the economy and job insecurity. By the time I was out of the shower though, I was feeling quite optimistic and had several ideas about how to pull myself out the career funk I’ve been in for the last few weeks/months.

I collected up my clothes, re-folding them as tightly as I could and carefully packed them in my suitcase. I needed space for everything I brought, plus 6 books and presents for Becca. It was an extremely tight fit and I think I broke the zipper on one of the side pockets of the case.

I sat down with a warm soda and wrote Saturday’s blog post, while listening to Death Cab for Cutie. Thanks to my sister Kathy and my daughter, I’ve been hooked on _Plans_ for entire trip (once I got Becca’s Skull Mountain song out of my head). I should give that CD that raffenshiv gave me last summer another try.

I tried calling a cab several times to set up a pickup time, but kept getting sent to voice mail. Since they never called be back, I figured I’d better try something else. I wandered out to the front of the building to try and hail one of the dozens of cabs that had been just waiting out there in the previous days, but it was empty.

A friendly pair of German-speakers (one was from Frankfurt and the other from Vienna) invited me to share their taxi and we had a nice chat. I admitted that I was a game designer and they were quite interested in that. Our cab driver was quite the character and his questions about the conference at least showed an interest in learning . . .

I am now on the train to Chicago, where I will meet with my Aunt Nancy and spend a few hours with her before navigating the L back to O’Hare. My plane gets into Seattle at 10:05 pm, which is 1:05 am my time, so it’s going to be a long day.

And remember that heavy computer bag that I complained about on the trip out here? The one I said must weigh 15 pounds? I weighed it while I was with my parents. 23 pounds. I’ll blame the Illuminati for my back ache . . .

Vacation Day 9, Kalamazoo Day 5 -- Sunday, May 10th

Tue, 12 May 2009 17:15:28 GMT

I wound up not sleeping late. I woke up on my own right at 6:00 am. I blogged and got coffee and made it up the hill to my 8:30 session, “Dress and Textiles III: Heroes, Ladies and Fools”. I never posted about it, but after the first session, the one about French romance, I started keeping track of the male-to-female ratio at the sessions. That first one was 5:15, which was pretty noticeable and why I started paying attention. This one on clothes and fashion, was even more extreme -- 5:44. Men or women though, that was a fabulous turnout for a Sunday morning session.

The first paper was about descriptions of clothing the in the Dietrich Cycle. It was very surprising that there are very few descriptions of clothing in that work. That contracted quite spectacularly with Jean Renart’s _Roman de la Rose_ where gowns and linings,dying, embroidery, furs and slippers are all described in loving detail.

The last paper of that session was an examination of a small ivory chest, perhaps the size to hold a knight’s spurs, that had scenes of dressing and undressing from Chretien de Ttroyes’ _Perceval_. I really hope that my photos of the powerpoint turned out for that one.

The final session of the Congress was on Urban Culture in Medieval France and consisted of two really interesting papers about the emergence of towns. For whatever reason, both of these lectures inspired questions in me that I spoke up with and had answers given to me.

The first one looked at royal charters to towns (communes) by Louis VI & VII in the 12th Century. There were a lot of details given about the kings’ and the communes’ financial situation. For example, the estimate of the Louis VII’s entire royal budget was 60,000 pounds (Parisien) per year. So when the king was able to squeeze another £100-200/yr out of a town, it was fairly significant. And he either granted or confirmed 18-20 charters during his reign.

The other paper was about the emergence of Paris as the capital of France, both as the administrative center, but also as the cultural center in the eyes of French authors and poets. It’s earliest self-identity seems to be as an educational hub, with the University of Paris called “The Daughter of France”. The discussion to follow was quite lively and really brought into focus the late adoption of a “nation-wide” acceptance of Paris’ centrality.

That brought the Congress to an end. I got lunch and a nap, then spent the rest of the afternoon writing (on my secret novel project) and reading. Near 6:00 I walked back over to my pub and had dinner there again, while continuing to make my way through one of the books I had bought the day before, _Carolingian Economy_. I had two tall glasses of Strongbow Cider which was very good.

I came home very relaxed and found it impossible to concentrate on reading or writing. I really wanted to veg in front of the television, but I didn’t have one, and while I had internet, it was slow and intermittent. So I called home, surfed wikipedia and lol-ed until 10:00 pm when I turned out the lights.

Vacation Day 8, Kalamazoo Day 4 -- Saturday, May 9th

Mon, 11 May 2009 12:13:06 GMT

Saturday started off with some blogging, but I didn’t have any sessions until 10:00. That gave me a two hour window to go through the Dealer’s Room. Where to start . . . ?

Let me start with the seal guy. He was a little old hunched grey-haired man with a thick German accent and a joyful face. He collected medieval seals, made molds of them and recast them. They were beautiful and he had at least a hundred of them. He loved to talk and once I got going with him he explained that he was in the middle of a nasty breakup with his business partner, so the seals he had with him were only the German ones. So he had more -- English, French, monastic, Russian, Italian and more -- just not with him.

As we talked more he pulled out a ring he had. He said (and I believe him) that it was one of many ring that Richard III gave out to his followers on the eve of the battle of Bosworth Field. I tried to take a picture of it, but the camera was acting up and they all came out very blurry. I bought one of his seals, a small one as they were pretty expensive, made of pure beeswax with an additive to increase the melting point of the wax up to 185 degrees.

There were many booksellers. I bought too many. Some of them, intelligently enough, only brought one copy of each of their books and then shipped them to you at home for free. Great idea! I think I bought three this way: translations of two medieval cook books, a book about conceptions of manhood throughout the Middle Ages and another one I don’t remember. I also bought some actual books: The Carolingian Economy, Food & Feast in Medieval England, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages, French Rural History, and From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy. No all I have to do is get them into my suitcase . . .

I took some pictures and will post those when I get back. At 10:00 I had “Medieval Rural Settlement Studies” which turned out to be all archaeology. It was a nice and interesting change from the historians and the literaturists to see slides of digs, pottery shards and skeletons. There were two scheduled presentations, two canceled one and one that had been added at the last minute. Thus far I had had pretty good luck having papers that I wanted to see _not_ get canceled, but I had wanted to see three of these, so there was no way to be completely happy. The one on Eastern European settlements in the Carolingian Age was wonderful and made me glad I’d bought the Carolingian Economy book earlier.

The third lecture was a bit surprising. It was about a village built in Newfoundland by the first Lord Baltimore in the 17th Century. He eventually decided that Newfoundland was too inhospitable and moved south, eventually founding Maryland.

After a short nap, I went to “Famine and Hunger in the North Atlantic in the 14th Century”. By the time I got there the room was packed and I wound up having to sit on the floor to listen to the papers. I’ll post my notes later on, but the middle lecture in particular had a lot of data about crop failures, areas that did well despite widespread famine elsewhere, etc. The third lecture was about Iceland and the presenter did an excellent job of adding a humorous bent to his paper. He focused a lot on contemporary descriptions of famines or of bad weather and got to talk about volcanic eruptions, late sea ice (on one occasion, the ice on the coast did not melt until August!), “horse-killing winters, and ash-buried lands.

The last lecture of the day was on the crusades and the Knights Templar. One paper was by an art historian who showed slides of a very minor Templar holding in France, Cressac. I tried to take pictures of her powerpoint, we’ll have to see if they turned out. The church had images of Charlemagne, St. George, St. Michael, and a bishop, but no Jesus, no crucifixion, no last judgment.

That was the end of academic activities for the day. I went to the Medieval Brewers’ Guild Mead and Ale tasting. I was surprised to see Ken Schramm there, the author of the quite excellent meadmaking book that I just got. The mead was good, if dry, and the ale tasted like I expected it to, awful. But I have no taste for such things.

By then I was hungry, so I wandered off campus to look for food. I found a pub/sports bar and had a really good deep-dish pizza and brownie with ice cream dessert. I made it back in time for a bit of scholarly comedy, where people put together historically-themed comedy sketches or fake papers that tried to prove something silly with spurious logic. The large auditorium was packed and it was much fun.

It got out at 9:30 pm and the dance didn’t start until 10:00 and it was across campus again and I just didn’t have the energy. So I came back here to the room and collapsed. It was actually quiet with everyone away so I decided that I wouldn’t even set my alarm and would let myself sleep through Sunday’s first session.

Vacation Day 7, Kalamazoo Day 3 -- Friday, May 8th

Sun, 10 May 2009 12:03:53 GMT

I just posted my last entry and ran downstairs to get some coffee. I have just shy of an hour more to type before the Dealer’s Room opens and I have another two hour window to shop and take pictures.

But upon getting down there (and being truly amazed by the number of empties) I realized that coffee doesn’t open for another 20 minutes. Oh well.

After having had trouble the first two days making sure I ate two solid meals, I hand wrote into my schedule when, how and where I was going to eat. I bought a ticket for dinner (Beef Stroganoff is one of my favorites and can’t be screwed up too bad, even in a school cafeteria) and decided that while I was at Bernhard for the Plenary Lecture, I would buy a Subway sandwich and carry it around until it was lunch time.

My dinner ticket purchased and some coffee obtained I headed over to the Plenary Lecture, “Fictions of Conduct in Medieval France”. It was held in a large ballroom and the turnout was huge -- 200+ people. The topic was late medieval morality books -- sort of self-help books for lords, ladies and the bourgeois. The thesis was that many of them were self-contradictory and the presenter showed that very well. Much of the lecture was about the works of Antoine de la Sale and especially his _Little John of Saintré_ which is one I may have to go out and read.

She was also able to speak/write quite expertly, making what could have been a very boring subject interesting, and finding a way to use French jargon in a way that included the audience, even if they weren’t initially familiar with her field of speciality. She does, however, lose points for using the word “didactic” 13 times (I started counting after the third in the first 5 minutes) during her talk.

The next Session was “Urban Life and Culture I: Commerce and the Use of Public Space”. The first paper, was about town legislation regulating commerce in Denmark, and had many interesting tidbits of information. I’m not entirely sure what the talk was supposed to be arguing, but it was the first of the day’s papers to go over crime and punishment, and showed the 12th Century Danes to be much more lenient in their thievery laws than the 11th Century Anglo-Saxons. By lenient, I mean that punishment wasn’t capital until the _second_ offense . . .

The second paper was so bad that I’m still not sure what it was even about, even though it came with a handout. The third was interesting and interpreted Chaucer’s _The Merchant’s Tale_ as an allegorical and didactic (hehehe) work directed to the emerging merchant class and the existing nobility.

After a quick lunch at Subway and a hour’s nap, I was off to “Words and Deeds in Anglo-Saxon England”. The first paper was about oaths and pledges and argued that the words “oath” and “pledge”, though they have much the modern meaning even in Old English, once had different meanings in Germanic culture. Although those meanings have been largely lost, “pledge” seems to involve the giving of a physical item or token as a symbol of the oral statement or agreement. He was able to point to linguistic studies that show how when two ideas are ritually or legally linked (as with oath and pledge) their meanings merge or one takes on the meaning of the other.

The second lecture of the day on theft involved the laws of Cnut in 1020 and had a lot of useful information that I didn’t know anything about, though some of it did tie in with some of the thing I had read in Anglo-Saxon Food, by Hagen. I will try to adapt some of this for Ellis before the final edition.

The last lecture talked about the ritual of drinking beer or mead in the poetic works of the Anglo-Saxon world. In these stories, the men accepting the hospitality of Hrothgar or another king are taking part in a ritual where they accept the mead, tie their loyalty to the king and make boasts of fidelity to him and boasts of their own greatness (and by extension Hrothgar’s greatness). Over-drinking leading to loss of memory (so that you can’t remember your boasts), quarrelling, or the making of bad boasts was a breach of etiquette, but the greater breach was to not honor one’s oath made while drunk.

The last set of lectures for the day was “Studies on the Road to Santiago and Galacia in the Middle Ages”. The first lecture was the most interesting and talked about food and food production in the region in the 10-13th Centuries. The second was about various pilgrimage paths through Portugal. That one had many nice pictures but there wasn’t much to take away from them. I skipped out on the last two papers because they were presented in Spanish.

After calling home, I went up to dinner and had a passable meal of Beef Stroganoff (but not nearly as good as my Mother’s). Then I went to the Gaming Neo-medievally demonstration. I was expecting this to be dismissive of video gaming and it’s use of the symbolism of the middle ages without the use of it depth, but I got more than I bargained for.

The primary station in the room was a powerpoint by the session’s organizer. It’s thesis was that all fantasy since the publishing of the Lord of the Rings was Neo-Tolkienain. Neo-Tolkienists could be broken up into two camps, purists and non-purists. Purists tried to emulate Tolkien by creating their own languages (and implied cultures, histories, races etc., but she was really hung up on Tolkien’s languages), but they would always fail because none of them would be philologists and no commercial project could ever spend the lifetime that Tolkien had spent creating those. Non-Purists didn’t even try to create their own languages. She used WoW to illustrate her points.

Another table looked at guilds and tried to show how much time and effort gamer’s put into their MMOs. While the two guys running this table seemed to really enjoy playing WoW, they picked some of the videos that really show gamers at their worse (I’m looking at you Leroy Jenkins!), so it too came off as superior and dismissive (at least of the content if somewhat impressed by the amount of time people put into their games).

A lonely young lady sat at a table playing the music from Civ 4 and had a list of which works appeared in the game, but had nothing more than her list. There was another woman who was equally dismissive of Dark Age of Camelot and it’s use of Celtic imagery, but since I had never played the game I didn’t listen very long. There was another WoW demo going on, but it seemed to be more of a walkthrough of how the game worked and how it was played for the non-gamers of the world.

I went straight from there to the Tolkien Unbound Reader’s Theater. This was a fun event with Tolkienists singing from Tolkien, et al’s _Songs for Philologists_ and then performing a radio play format of _Balgor’s Saga._ John Rateliff was there and got roped into replacing someone in the singing. It was much fun.

The last stop of the night was to swing by the sword and armor demo being put on by the Belle Compagnie, a living history group (the same one that put on the textile display the day before). The program listed the demo as being put on by Robert Charrette. Now that’s a name I have heard before and not in a medievalist context. A Robert Charrette wrote some of my favorite roleplaying games, _Daredevils_, _Aftermath!_, _Bushido_ and _Shadowrun, first edition_. So I went over there and got to shake his hand and tell him how much those games had meant to me.

After that, I went back to my room and collapsed. It was a long day.

Vacation Day 6, Kalamazoo Day 2 -- Thursday, May 7th -- Continued

Sat, 09 May 2009 11:10:37 GMT

As I write this, it is actually Saturday morning with the wind gusting outside, blowing around the trash from the late-running party that took place 20 feet from my window well into the night and morning. I was able to sleep through parts of it only by turning up my iPod and sleeping with my headphones on. And I thought sci-fi cons had loud parties with lots of booze . . .

But anyway, back to Thursday . . .

“The Early Italian Commune” was still in my head and quickly percolating into a board game design as I wandered over to a demonstration on Medieval Dress and Textiles. At first, I was disappointed as I was expecting it to be something that it was not. When I read the word “dress” I was expecting clothing and costuming, but there was none of that.

Instead, it concentrated on the textiles. There were exhibits on embroidery and weaving, and I was so taken by the weaving demo that I don’t remember what else was there. The woman had a working hand loom, of the sort that village women would have used to make cloth. I took many pictures and even some video of her used the loom. Actually seeing it and seeing how it functioned was fascinating, grounding the complexity of early-modern looms in their more basic ancestors.

It was dinner time at this point so I got a sandwich at Subway in the student union building (Bernhard) and then went to my evening session, “The Irish Sea in the Viking Age”. The first lecture, “Hitting Your Head on an Axe: The Impact of Weapons on Social Discourse” wound up being a discussion of changes in Irish weapon technology from the pre-medieval period through the end of the Viking Age. Although the author had promised in his introduction that these technology changes would bring about cultural changes as well, his paper failed to present those changes.

The two other lectures (one was canceled) were about monasteries, Rushen Abbey on the Isle of Mann and Clonmacnois in Ireland. The Manx one was simply a recounting of the history of the abbey (weak, but interesting since I knew nothing about it) and the other was a detailed analysis of the symbols engraved on stone crosses delineating a semi-public cemetery within the monastery grounds.

On my way back to my room, I passed through two large receptions with open bars. They were crammed with people (I’ve heard that there are 3000 attendees) and very load. I got drinks at each one and tried to find ways to talk to people, but this sort of activity has never been a forté of mine. Combined with that is the feeling that I am an outsider or a poseur. It makes it really difficult to engage with someone . . . So after an hour of trying and failing, I went back to my room and went to bed.

Vacation Day 6, Kalamazoo Day 2 -- Thursday, May 7th

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:25:47 GMT

Wow! What a day. What a wonderful, exhausting day.

My search for coffee was pretty much a failure -- nothing opened until 7:00. The weather was cool and cloudy, so I took the opportunity to wander the campus and orient myself. Once I got tired I found a place to read, and settled in with Hesiod.

At 7:00 I found the refreshment room near registration and hung out there for an hour. I had nice conversations with some folks from Connecticut, Minnesota, and Leiden, Germany. At 8:00 registration opened and people to talk to disappeared, but the dealer’s room opened.

The dealer’s room was a religious experience. Booksellers galore, clubs and organizations, a rare coin dealer, an amber jewelry booth and so much more, all spread out in several rooms taking up nearly the entire ground floor of two of the dorm buildings. So far I’ve only bought two books and one medieval coin (a 12th Century Champagnois denier) but I’m sure I’ll buy more. The books are nearly all from academic presses and so are horrendously expensive, even with 20% - 50% show discounts, but I guess that comes with the territory. It just offends my tightfisted sensibilities. :)

There was one vanity press there trying to dig up authors. They tackled me as I was looking at the books they had on display -- cheap-looking hardbacks with horrible covers and discounts prices of $39.99. They started off by asking me what I was writing. I was taken aback at first, how did they know I was writing something? But I quickly figured out that an academic of my age _must_ be writing something. She seemed incredulous when I told that I ran a small publishing company.

The two hours before my first session flew by, and between not wanting to leave and getting a little lost, I arrived there late. It was titled “The Chanson de Geste and the European Epic” and consisted of the presentation of two papers about The Song of Roland and two about other less well known texts. Three of the papers were written and presented by grad students and you could tell. They were poor publics speakers, the theses and writing were weak and the one I was most interested in hearing turned out to be simply a summary of the plot of Roland pointing out how different characters dealt with their problems in the text with no even small amount of insight.

Needless to say, for my first session, I was highly disappointed. We had a two hour break for lunch and I decided to see if the internet was finally working. It was, so I sent e-mails and blog posts and caught up on some things, then curled up for a nap. It was noisy out so I slept with my headphones on and that worked quite well.

At 1:30 pm I went to “Approaches to Magic in the Northern European World”. That was a very interesting session. The first presenter talked about the magic sword that Beowulf find in Grendel’s Mother’s lair and uses to kill her, and the symbolism of that sword and swords in general throughout the poem. I may use some of her ideas in the novel that I’m going to try and write this fall.

The middle lecturer was best forgotten, but the third speaker was fabulous, talking about the treatment a magicians in the Laxdæla Saga (which, conveniently I had just read). His thesis combined some ideas of Levi-Straus about the conflict between nature and culture, and compared them to how the saga used magic and law.

I was very happy to see that my experience with my first session was not going to be a consistent problem. My next session was in the same building, so I used the 30 minutes between to get a soda and to call home. I had a very nice talk with Chris (I am missing her and Becca quite a bit).

When I got to the next lecture, “The Early Italian Commune”, we were told that two of the three presenters had been unable to attend so it would be short. I had come to that one really for only one of the papers, so I was happy to learn that “Magnate Violence and Strategies for Lordship” was the one who was there. And it was a a fabulous lecture. It was what I’m going to start calling “Hard History” and was actually about collecting and synthesizing data to come up with a picture of an historical event, system, location or person.

The presenter, Carol Lansing, using records from the complicated Florentine legal system, painted a picture of lordly and knightly families in and around Florence, and how their “rights” to violence were constrained by the emerging towns by the guilds and merchant classes. How some continued to prey on the weak and especially on the clergy, enforcing what they saw as their hereditary and traditional rights, especially in the years of poor harvest of circa 1270 and then later in 1338-48.

There was more to the day, but I’m out of writing time for this morning. Hopefully I’ll find time to catch up later.