(no subject)
Jun. 8th, 2003 07:39 pmthis weekend was fun. at atlantian university, i got to hang out with all the people who are basically the reason i'm in the sca and fencing. connor and alejandro and marcellus, the people who i've known as both free scholars and provosts, as well as a bunch of the other provosts and free scholars, are my idols. i'm impressed by the way they fence, the way they dress, the way they teach, and the stories they have to tell. they're all typical atlantian thugs and they inspire me so much. i feel like a starry eyed student, hanging around in hopes that some of their knowledge and coolness will leak out onto me... except for with connor, who is my big brother, sibling rivalry and all. gaston inflates my head every time he talks to me, telling me that if i just stuck around the kingdom for more than 3 months at a time, i'd be a gold scarf before i could blink. i think he's just flattering me, because my fencing isn't good enough and i don't help out with atlantian non-fencing stuff at all (mostly cause i'm not around), but it's really nice to hear. basically he's telling me that he thinks i already am on par with all these people i want to be when i grow up. this is the ONLY down side to moving to seattle, but it's a big one - the fact that i'm leaving all these people behind.
i crashed at connor's house friday night, and watched lilo and stitch and got attacked by the cat. it was fun. :) the movie wasn't as good as i was expecting based on the glowing reviews by my friends, but it was still cute.
i didn't have anything but my fencing armor on this coast, so i was only half in garb for the event, but it was okay. i took a class on late period english pants, which was lots of fun and which i got a few patterns from. next class was intro to kendo, and i now have a cheapo shinai and a very rudimentary understanding of the basics. there was an adventure finding lunch, which involved missing a turn and taking a very pretty road to nowhere before actually finding food.
the rapier marshal 101 class was after lunch, and i basically took it for fun since i won't be here long enough to become a rapier marshal. at one point alejandro started talking about how you'll see some people tightening their pommels all the time, because the handle keeps slipping, at which point i burst out laughing. what he was going to say was that cranking down on the pommel like that weakens the tang, and can sometimes result in the sword breaking at the end of the tang. i was laughing because that was exactly what happened to belphoebe on thursday - i parried her to my outside and came in for a thrust to the torso, and in the process of attempting to parry me away from her, she pushed her weakened blade against mine at just the right angle and it just.... fell off. and then she's standing there holding nothing but a guard. it was sad of course, because now she has to find a new blade, but it was SO FUNNY. she loosened her grip and the tang and washers and guard and handle trickled out of her hand. and i couldn't even laugh because that would be insensitive.
after that class, i sat around on the front steps with the aforementioned rapier hooligans and listened to them tell "no shit there i was" stories, including my favorite provost story. apparently there were three provosts in a melee, and it was decided that to even the odds, the provosts had to fight sitting, while all the non provosts (the other team) could stand. so these three provosts are sitting in a row of chairs, fighting, and one of them misses a parry. the middle one, in fact. aedan, sitting on the right, parries a shot to the inside, where it lands on the (dead) center provost. "ow," the twice dead provost says. and aedan realizes "hey, this is easy! i could do this all day!" and proceeds to parry everything aimed at him to the inside. every time someone takes a shot at aedan, it hits the center provost, who wasn't allowed to dodge, because he was dead. eventually he got annoyed enough that he started fouling aedan's arm and blade and aedan died. but the idea of a provost having to be a pincushion for most of the fight just cracks me up.
there was a class on saviolo next, where the free scholars and provosts were hooligans so the teacher made them sit down and give their swords to scholars, who got to the demonstrations instead. and i got in a really good remark about the difficulty of successfully hitting connor in the genitals. i know i shouldn't do that sort of thing (making cutting remarks, not trying to hit connor in the nuts) outside of the sca, but it's so hard to resist when you're around people who will take a well timed remark as a valid blow. :) i don't know if it's an sca thing, a fighter thing, or solely a fencer thing, but i know the dons in an tir do it too. i don't know embarrassing stories to tell about provosts, but i do generally get points for commentary.
the last class i took was on japanese swords, but the guy who taught it wasn't very interesting and i was really tired by that point, so i was starting to fall asleep. at some point in there, i think during the hooliganing, vitha's jamie (don't know how old she is - she's walking and making noises that are supposed to be words - 14mo?) pulled a chair off a table and it sliced off one of her fingertips. fingernail and joint are intact, but she took off the fingerpad and a sliver of bone. so i got to do some running back and forth getting catalina's medkit. jamie was quite happy today, even with a huge splint on her finger (she managed to pull off the smaller splint before she got to the xrays).
we went to mongolian grill afterwards, which is less good and $5 more expensive out here than it is in seattle, but eh. it was still fun, especially because we had about 15+ people there, mostly fencers. more fun stories. drove home afterwards, stopped for krispy kreme (which was a good idea, because by that point i was worried about how i'd be driving without a sugar rush to keep me going), and crashed as soon as i dragged my stuff back downstairs.
today i went to church so i could stand in front and be a graduate along with the rest of my family (except dad). they gave me a book on how christians can deal with getting ready for entering the work force after college. (the church gave it to me, not my family.) i didn't fence much at practice, but thomas lyon picked me up and spun me around when he saw me. apparently over half of his department was laid off recently (20 people or so), and his 11mo old son liam has been having chronic ear infections for quite a while now, to the point that it's affecting non-ear parts of his health. it was nice being able to make his month not suck quite as much, just by showing up. then i fenced him and he ate my lunch. apparently i forgot how to defend with my sword while i was away. oops.
i think i'm getting a cold, but i'm not sure which family member gave it to me. my throat hurts. :(
i crashed at connor's house friday night, and watched lilo and stitch and got attacked by the cat. it was fun. :) the movie wasn't as good as i was expecting based on the glowing reviews by my friends, but it was still cute.
i didn't have anything but my fencing armor on this coast, so i was only half in garb for the event, but it was okay. i took a class on late period english pants, which was lots of fun and which i got a few patterns from. next class was intro to kendo, and i now have a cheapo shinai and a very rudimentary understanding of the basics. there was an adventure finding lunch, which involved missing a turn and taking a very pretty road to nowhere before actually finding food.
the rapier marshal 101 class was after lunch, and i basically took it for fun since i won't be here long enough to become a rapier marshal. at one point alejandro started talking about how you'll see some people tightening their pommels all the time, because the handle keeps slipping, at which point i burst out laughing. what he was going to say was that cranking down on the pommel like that weakens the tang, and can sometimes result in the sword breaking at the end of the tang. i was laughing because that was exactly what happened to belphoebe on thursday - i parried her to my outside and came in for a thrust to the torso, and in the process of attempting to parry me away from her, she pushed her weakened blade against mine at just the right angle and it just.... fell off. and then she's standing there holding nothing but a guard. it was sad of course, because now she has to find a new blade, but it was SO FUNNY. she loosened her grip and the tang and washers and guard and handle trickled out of her hand. and i couldn't even laugh because that would be insensitive.
after that class, i sat around on the front steps with the aforementioned rapier hooligans and listened to them tell "no shit there i was" stories, including my favorite provost story. apparently there were three provosts in a melee, and it was decided that to even the odds, the provosts had to fight sitting, while all the non provosts (the other team) could stand. so these three provosts are sitting in a row of chairs, fighting, and one of them misses a parry. the middle one, in fact. aedan, sitting on the right, parries a shot to the inside, where it lands on the (dead) center provost. "ow," the twice dead provost says. and aedan realizes "hey, this is easy! i could do this all day!" and proceeds to parry everything aimed at him to the inside. every time someone takes a shot at aedan, it hits the center provost, who wasn't allowed to dodge, because he was dead. eventually he got annoyed enough that he started fouling aedan's arm and blade and aedan died. but the idea of a provost having to be a pincushion for most of the fight just cracks me up.
there was a class on saviolo next, where the free scholars and provosts were hooligans so the teacher made them sit down and give their swords to scholars, who got to the demonstrations instead. and i got in a really good remark about the difficulty of successfully hitting connor in the genitals. i know i shouldn't do that sort of thing (making cutting remarks, not trying to hit connor in the nuts) outside of the sca, but it's so hard to resist when you're around people who will take a well timed remark as a valid blow. :) i don't know if it's an sca thing, a fighter thing, or solely a fencer thing, but i know the dons in an tir do it too. i don't know embarrassing stories to tell about provosts, but i do generally get points for commentary.
the last class i took was on japanese swords, but the guy who taught it wasn't very interesting and i was really tired by that point, so i was starting to fall asleep. at some point in there, i think during the hooliganing, vitha's jamie (don't know how old she is - she's walking and making noises that are supposed to be words - 14mo?) pulled a chair off a table and it sliced off one of her fingertips. fingernail and joint are intact, but she took off the fingerpad and a sliver of bone. so i got to do some running back and forth getting catalina's medkit. jamie was quite happy today, even with a huge splint on her finger (she managed to pull off the smaller splint before she got to the xrays).
we went to mongolian grill afterwards, which is less good and $5 more expensive out here than it is in seattle, but eh. it was still fun, especially because we had about 15+ people there, mostly fencers. more fun stories. drove home afterwards, stopped for krispy kreme (which was a good idea, because by that point i was worried about how i'd be driving without a sugar rush to keep me going), and crashed as soon as i dragged my stuff back downstairs.
today i went to church so i could stand in front and be a graduate along with the rest of my family (except dad). they gave me a book on how christians can deal with getting ready for entering the work force after college. (the church gave it to me, not my family.) i didn't fence much at practice, but thomas lyon picked me up and spun me around when he saw me. apparently over half of his department was laid off recently (20 people or so), and his 11mo old son liam has been having chronic ear infections for quite a while now, to the point that it's affecting non-ear parts of his health. it was nice being able to make his month not suck quite as much, just by showing up. then i fenced him and he ate my lunch. apparently i forgot how to defend with my sword while i was away. oops.
i think i'm getting a cold, but i'm not sure which family member gave it to me. my throat hurts. :(