Month: October 2004

We have a new guy at work. His name is Mike. He’s a real eager beaver. He’s been hired to do shelving mostly and he’s VERY enthusiastic. I think we’ve got him off to the right start. I just hope he doesn’t burn himself out. He’s one of those people who needs LOTS of positive reinforcement. It’s a refreshing change from some of our slackers, but I don’t know if I can deal with one more needy guy in my life right now. *sigh* Some times it sucks being so friendly and approachable. I feel like I’m everybody’s mom. I guess I can blame being slightly irked about this on “Aunt Flo”. (Or is that TMI *wink* *wink*) But sometimes I wish I was a dignified, frosty goth ice queen and could keep everyone at a distance. (But deep down I love it. I’d feel like I was missing out on things if people didn’t want to talk to me.)

Ho hum. Busy week working. I’m trying to get in some overtime to work on a weeding project this week. Then we’re off to Academie of the Rapier this weekend. A whole weekend of cooking and swishy pokey *hooray*!

Got my mid-year eval. today (yeah, I know it’s almost November). Doing pretty well. The boss seems happy with everything and it looks like he’s going to work out a weekend rotation schedule for next year. Things are looking up!

We had a nice time at the Ren. Fest (and Artisan’s Marketplace *sigh*). I asked Rasheedah from work to join us and she said she had a lot of fun. So it was us, Rasheedah, Brett and Pam. We all fit in one car. The event is quite big. There are about eight stages and shows run on heavy rotation so you can catch them throughout the day.

The good parts: The fest looked nice. The crowds were very civil and laughed at the right places. It was nice to see families and friends all out enjoying the day. The weather stayed cool and dry. It was overcast, but nice for walking around.

The not-so-good parts: Commercialism and historical innaccuracy. Maybe I’m spoiled by my thinking back to the days of my youth and the PA Ren. Faire, but there is no attempt to do anything historical. There is a generic King Edward who seems amiable enough, but everyone is a mishmash of styles, countries and accents. I miss Shakespeare and Raleigh and Queen Bess (I guess we should go to Roanoke for real history). It seems like the whole thing is about shops and begging. Some of the performers went so far as to work the begging right into the show, no longer just a pass the hat at the end, but spend 10 minutes of stage time panhandling the audience.

I noticed that most of the shops are selling stuff I can make for myself, or “Renaissance” tchotkes I don’t want. The nice stuff I would like is SO expensive. Oh, well, I guess that’s just a fact of life.

IRL, Tom’s mom is now staying at the Greensburg Personal Care Center. We hope it’s just temporary while she recuperates. Mike says she’s doing OK and settling in, but getting her to go and picking the right place was really difficult. Poor guy. I wish we could have done more to help.

And I said I would NOT dance the stupid, awful Chicken Dance at my wedding…UNLESS the BareNaked Ladies came and performed it live for me.

We got the BareLaked Nadies video and concert DVD from Netflix and what do I see during the live performance of One Week, but the BareNaked Ladies performing the stupid, awful Chicken Dance live (but not at my wedding, thankfully). Truly a “blue feather” moment as Tom would say (read Illusions by Richard Bach). I am again humbled by the amazingness of the world at large.

SCA meeting tonight. Should be fun and pretty relaxed as we have no big event looming (*sigh*).

Going to the Carolina Ren. Fest this weekend (if everyone doesn’t cop out on us). Looks to be a fun time and it definitely won’t be too hot. I made a partlett to go with my striped linen middle class Elizabethan. I think I’ll finally be respectable enough to go out in public.

Work continues. We’re waiting for the budget to come. Ho Hum.

It’s official. Cossacks, Mongols and Huns has been cancelled. I’m bummed. But it does free me up to put more energy into the Picnic in the Grove event at work the weekend before.

On the home front, Tom’s mom is in the hospital with pneumonia (sp?). The Dr’s are still doing tests so we don’t know if there are complications from other things. The family is worried, but I’m glad she’s getting care. Tom’s brother and sister and aunt have been visiting her. When we know the situation a little more clearly we can decide what to do.

Tom is very worried and he’s not handling the stress very well. I hope his long weekend will give him time to settle down and get centered again.

You are Phlegmatic. You have a peace-loving
nature, and make a good listener and a faithful
friend. You do have a tendency to be selfish
and stubborn in your worst moments, and your
worrying can lean towards paranoia. Phlegmatics
should consider careers as accountants,
diplomats, engineers, and administrators. You
are a somewhat reluctant leader, but your
practicality and steady nerve under pressure
makes you a natural choice for leadership
roles.

Which of the Humours are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

We’re having an emergency SCA meeting tonight to decide what to do about the site for our event. I haven’t been to see it yet, but apparently it is not clean or safe enough for us to use at this time. It’s make or break time. Either we solve this now, or we scratch the event. I hope we can solve it. I’ve been looking forward to doing this for quite a while now and it would really suck to have all our planning go down the drain at this point.

I guess we can chalk a lot of this up to the “planning in advance” factor. Planning slowed down over the summer due to some personality issues and now we’re getting close to the event and we’re behind.

Lessons have been learned (I hope).

So Tom makes me listen to many repetitions of the Buffy musical episode, “Once More with Feeling,” which he got turned on to by our “friend” Brett (thanks, Brett ;P ). And while I’m listening I realize that the guy singing the part of Sweet, the demon, sounds like the Cat (Danny John-Jules) of Red Dwarf fame. So, I go on trusty IMDB (www.imbd.com) to see if I’m right…I’m not, he’s a guy named Hinton Battle. BUT I look down at Hinton Battle’s filmography and what do I see…he DID play the Cat in the short lived American version of Red Dwarf (which I’ve never seen). The result, I’m both right and wrong and don’t you love the Internet!

Danny John-Jules fun fact. He played the part of a doo wop singer in Little Shop of Horrors, one of my all time fav. movies. I’m going to have to get it again and watch for him.

On the life front, we had a nice trip to Crusades this weekend. Atlantia won (although it was close) thanks to the combined talents of all our martial artists and artisans. Tom MIT’ed and seemed to have fun. Our friend Gavin fenced and had a good time. I helped out at the newcomer’s table and went tent flap shopping (no windows on SCA merchants’ stalls) and had a pretty good time. The weather was nice and we got to stop at IKEA near Baltimore, yay!

Little sister Anne’s b-day (A-day) was on Saturday, so Happy A-day to her.

That’s the noise of blowing noses!
The song of the Kuntz household this weekend.
Tom brought home a nasty little cold from work the other day, so we’re both suffering.
On the plus side, the kitties are no longer suffering from the fleas. We got the good Frontline flea killer from the vet and dosed them both with it. Then we bug bombed the house. With luck, Winston will have fur on his butt again befor it starts to get really cold.