12/4, 11.20am irish sea

i feel like i'm in an elevator that keeps switching directions - i can walk fine, but the floor keeps pressing up against my feet or dropping away from it. i haven't been in a boat for a *long* time, and when i was last in one, it was much smoother.
found a tshirt for tricia - i hope she wears xl and not xxl. she asked for 'a rock or something' - silly girl. the sale bin on the ferry is nice and cheap - the shirt was £4.50.
i didn't get to check my email before i left, cause i turned off my alarm at 7.30, closed my eyes for a sec, and woke up at 10 past 8. oops. by the time i actually got going, i was almost an hour behind, and when i got my ticket, the lady told me i needed to take the 9.30 train not the 10.00 one and i bought a phone card, but wasn't belligerent enough and ended up with a shitty bt one instead of a half decent swiftcall one - bt charges you 10p minimum for each call and i'm sure the rates are even worse. everyone's out of the 2p/min ones that i've been using.
i look incredibly beat up. i have five bruises and a slap mark on my right arm - every time i got hit there it must have left a mark, cause i don't remember getting my arm taken that many times. same goes for the left arm, which is the one with the bullseye bruise. and i've got cuts on my knuckles, too. :( and here i am, going to do it again... me is this many smart.
ooh, i see a big lump in the sea! too bad there's too much fog and spray to take a pic of it.
i really hope cernac responded, cause otherwise i don't know where i'm sleeping tonight.
i even remembered to bring my passport! i'm so proud of me. :) and i crammed everything i needed into my backpack.
talked (well, imed) to andy last night, a conversation that we should have had long ago. :s
and troy was making sounds like he was going to *give* me a dagger, which would be damn cool. i need to buy a head and gorget before i spend more money on pointy things. and using antonio's loaner schlagers (no one in europe makes schlager hilts, so they're all makeshift and horribly balanced.) has really made me miss my darkwood schlager. i wonder if it's been blued yet? i'll have to bug troy.
::yawn:: sleeepy... crying baby behind me.
i'll have about 40 minutes to find an internet cafe and check my email before the train... or i could have 2h40, but i'd get to dublin after all the shops close. not sure that matters; i'll have time to wander on wednesday and that way i'd get to see belfast.
god, it seems weird that i'm going to be in belfast... the name associates itself in my mind with sarajevo and the west bank. ack.
oh, wow... i just saw a rainbow so bright it was casting a glow over the water. and it was a doubled for a wee bit, too, but too dimly to take a pic of. ...wow. i saw it and was like, 'cool, a rainbow,' and then it just kept getting brighter...
it feels like we're leaping or running or something, cause we accellerate as we go up on the swells and slow down as we go down, like gathering for another leap.

12/6, 3.45pm irish sea

that was *fun*. wandered around downtown belfast and felt perfectly safe, which was a surprise. i got to the train station 5 minutes after the every-two-hours train to dublin had left, so went downtown to see if cernac had emailed me back. he hadn't. i wasn't *incredibly* worried, cause i knew i could always stay in a dublin hostel, but i was hoping it wouldn't come to that.
when i finally got on the train, i was sitting with three irish who were going home. one of the girls, from tipperary, sounded *exactly* like brad pitt as the gypsy in 'snatch' - pronunciation and rhythm and inflection (only female of course). i was impressed. played cards with them all the way down, and they helped me find an internet place once i got to dublin. where i discovered that cernac *still* hadn't emailed me back. grubbed around the web for his phone number and found etienne's instead. i felt kind of bad calling him, cause he was ill, but he didn't seem upset. got mike's (cernac's) phone number (and discovered that 0800 numbers (ie my phone card) aren't free in ireland) and said 'hi, i'm in dublin, what do i do now?' and he came and got me. :) turned out he'd been having connection problems and hadn't been able to check his email.
apparently he had a small *blond* scadian from the states visiting last week. :) he organized a fighter practice for tuesday evening (the joys of halogen lamps) and watched season 1 buffy with me, so i've *finally* seen all of 'prophecy girl'.
he went to work tuesday morning and was home by the time i woke up (noonish), and took me to trinity college and the national museum. trinity college is where the book of kells and the book of durrow are kept. *very* neat... along with the actual books, they had displays about other books from the same period (pre-1100, i think) and some illuminated bibles from the 14th and 15th centuries. then we went to the national museum and looked at the bronze age and viking exhibits. and had sushi for lunch. :)
fencing was small but fun - it was me, mike/cernac, bernhard/arpad, and ryan/aidan/ i'd met arpad at the yule feast, and ryan was one of the only fencing marshals in the area, with etienne being the other one.
i didn't do a whole lot of fencing,c ause after warming up with epee, i started off with dagger, and took three schlager hits to my index finger cause the guard isn't made for an italian style grip. and i fought aidan a little in schlager, but not much. and then we went out for more sushi (i got udon noodles in broth, mmm....) and drinks. everyone except ryan (and mike cause he doesn't drink) had cider, which was odd - i'm used to being the only one.
ryan and i flirted madly the whole time, which was fun. at one point he made a comment that my hair must be really long when it was down, so i showed him. and flipped it forward and back once i'd unbraided it and he said something like, 'now you're just being cruel, flashing your neck at me.' i went to move my hair aside and tease him, but then i realized, 'i'm wearing a *scarf*,' and it was just silly. and then we got to the part in the conversation where he said, 'and now i'm going to ask the most tactless question a guy can ask. how old are you?' heheh. apparently the consensus was that i was probably early to mid 20s, like 24 or something. ryan's 26. he blinked a bit and said, 'hey, when i was 21 i dated a 30 year old, and it was probably the best thing i ever did. it was a, ah, learning experience.' i like his sense of humor.
eric, who lives with mike but is just a heavy fighter, showed up for the drinks. and when the age trick was going on i reminded him of the tv show reminiscing/babbling he'd done at me - i'm too young for *thundercats*, okay?
ryan's canadian, from victoria, but has been in ireland for 2 years. he's a cadet in an tir, not sure what he is here. eric's southern. his accent starts to piss me off after a few minutes. also, he was military for a while, so he talks about guns a lot. and bernhard is german or something like that (so his steering wheel's in the correct place), so mike was the only irishman there. and i was the only girl.
the irish really can't say 'th's. 'dere' and 'breat' for 'there' and 'breath.' although i did show mike that it's possible to make a th sound, that was amusing.
i'm really glad i had someone to show me around, i had lots of fun. and i'm out of british money and will have to pay for my £4.50 train ticket by credit card. ::rolls eyes:: and, oh god, i have to pack everything by friday morning.
the yule feast in brandon (near london) will be fun - i have a lift from london worked out. no crash space, but there's a £16/night (ie cheap) b&b nearby, which will work great.
i think doing sca stuff has made this a great trip. if i get in touch with scadians, i have a way to meet people and something to talk about with them.. and scadians are generally trusting and trustworthy and are usually willing to show me around, or at least tell me what to see. if i'm by myself with no contacts, i have to shell out more money for things like housing, i don't have transportation or even advice on how to use the public transportation, i don't know what to see and how to get there and when it closes... that and it really sucks wandering around by yourself, especially in the evening. and i'm small and female.
oh! right! when i was walking around downtown with cernac, i saw two eastern european looking women, dressed in brightly colored clothing, with skirts and headscarves, carrying babies and asking for change. i asked mike and he said they were romanians or croatian or something. they may have been, but i bet they were also romany, cause they were so classically gypsy. it was neat. and all the christmas carolers accompany their singing with the rhythm of coin filled donation tins. and the irish pound has almost the same value as the dollar.
mm, need to email etienne and get him to send me my drachenwald schlager auth card. cause that'll just be fun to show the mol at tourneys. especially in an tir. (here's my epee auth from atlantia, and here's my schlager auth from drachenwald, and here i am in an tir... :) )
i've come to the conclusion that it would really suck to be drunk on a boat.

and brent says, 'wow. i keep forgetting that you're short.' and i say in a sort of mock aggrieved way, 'well, fuck you!' so i project an aura of both averageheightness and 24yearoldness... brent says that he's always surprised when he has to look down at me - he thinks of me as his height.

mm, lovely choppy water, makes my stomach go blegh...

that wannabe screenplaywriter guy i met on halloween was *incredibly* pretentious - the 'steam punk' genre he said his screenplay was in is nothing more than the name of a comic book series. ::rolls eyes::

i got an a on my project! ::bounce:: even though i completely forgot about the work ethic aspect of the reformation. but still, i got an a! happy me. :) i'll stick that bit in and post it on livejournal. it's already stored there as a private entry, so you'll have to go back a ways to find it once i make it public.

i look incredibly beat up. after doing nothing but foil for weeks, a weekend of schlager hits a bit hard.
cernac moves kinda like connor... they've got the same body type and their back legs look the same in en garde. cernac had lost one of his fencing boots, so he was wearing ninja boots instead. they had the split toe thing going on, very cute.

heheh, i got hit on by the crown prince of drachenwald. :)

gah, have to do that thing for nancy. and i haven't gotten the triennium form yet. i'm listening to my anuna cd and it's making me miss church music. that's one of the things i like best about triennium - 6000 people singing. and the doxology at presbytery meetings in 100-part harmony.

i see land. ::grin:: almost back to my not-home...

12/6, 6.55pm troon

when we got into the harbor, there were gulls all over. the water and pier were speckled with them, and they'd glide past my window in clouds. they seemed like owls, swooping around in the dark, white bellies streaking past. silent and ...majestic, in a way. and then i got out of the ferry and could hear them shrieking and crying. i should dig up 'bridges' and find a way to fit that in, the clamor of the gulls.

arpad reminds me very strongly of marcellus. they look really similar, both in build and features, and they have the same laugh and grin.

::sigh:: i have so much crap to pack. need to buy another box and a mailing tube.