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two weekends, and the week between
I have been meaning to post about my adventures over easter weekend, but haven't spent all that much time on the computer since then, so haven't gotten to it. However, I know that I have taken too much time to get to it because my mother sent me a facebook message asking about the trip. (Note: oddly enough, I can't actually access FB today, so I couldn't reply to her there if I wanted to. Is anyone else having issues with FB?)
Over easter weekend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
archinonlive and I took the train south to Gothcon, Sweden's largest role-playing gaming convention. This con is held in Göteborg in southern Sweden, which means that it is around 19 hours by train. I am pleased to report that train travel when one has a sleeping bunk is quite the civilized way to travel. Our car had bunks for six people, but there were only three of us in it for the first part of the journey, and the third person dropped off her stuff and wandered elsewhere in the train as soon as the trip begun, so we had the car to ourselves till we got tired and decided to go to sleep (quite early--around 9pm) which meant that I could do my yoga without bothering anyone else. I slept deeply, and was surprised that all six bunks were full when I woke up in the morning--I never heard the others come in.
The original plan had been to Göteborg around 11:00 on Thursday, wander around the city for a few hours till the site opened in the evening. However, I remembered on time that some of my Finnish cousins live in southern Sweden, so I contacted one in Finland I have email for and asked him to put me in touch with his dad, aunt, and uncle in Sweden. He did and they invited us to spend Thursday with them, suggesting that we leave the train two stations early, so they would have a shorter drive to pick us up.
I am so glad that we did--it was a delightful visit. The cousin who picked me up was one that mom and I met when we visited Finland last year--she tells me that I look like one of her daughters. Alas, that daughter wasn't available that weekend, but I did get to meet another of her daughters, and a couple of her grand daughters (one of whom looks just like my sister did at that age--I kept doing double takes). (Note; these cousins are actually my grandfather's first cousins--their dad and his dad were brothers, but my great grandfather was the eldest child in the family, and their dad was the youngest, which is why they are my mother's age.) I am very glad that I hadarchinonlive on this trip. While pretty much everyone I have met in Sweden under the age of 50 is so fluent in English I need never slow down when I talk, my cousins who are over 50 speak little to no English. While my Swedish is getting much better, I am still only just able to figure out the topic of conversation sometimes, when they happen to be using words I have learned, I can't actually communicate in it yet. But with his help to translate we had a very nice visit. Her brothers and some of the younger generation joined us for a yummy lunch and much fun was had by all.
After lunch some of the family departed, but we stayed and visited, and got a tour of their beautiful property--they live in a farm house with a lovely bit of woods out back, and a very rocky hill nearby. The stones I saw lining the bank next to the road were all pretty igneous rocks, cut by pegmatite veins. About the time I got hungry again they cooked yet more food for us, and then packed up a huge amount of left overs for us to take with us (and swapped out our now melted bottles if ice for some fresh ice packs from the freezer). They eventually drove us to the city, and dropped us off at the door of the convention, with instructions to return on Saturday for a bbq.
The convention was much fun. We didn't bother signing up in advance for anything, but instead stuck to playing in spur of the moment games. We spent most of our time in the cafeteria, where where were huge numbers of board and card games that could be checked out by anyone, and joined in games there. One of the games we played, tantrix (which I had never seen before) was so much fun that we wandered off to the merchant rooms and purchased a copy to bring home. I met a bunch of new, interesting, people, and got to know a few SCA friends who live in the Stockholm area a bit better. In hindsight I wonder why there wasn't an SCA demo or presence at this event--many other groups had rooms set aside to do recruiting, and seemed to be doing well at it.
We stayed up till after 03:00 every night playing games (and still managed to get up around 08:00 or 09:00 every morning for more adventures). Saturday we did head back out to the cousins for the bbq, taking the train there and back this time. I liked the way they did the bbq. They grilled both hot dogs and vegetarian hot dogs, had a huge pot of mashed potatoes, some salad, and a variety of condiments. The "plates" were large sheets of a soft flat bread, not unlike tortillas, but rectangular, larger, and with a much different taste. We piled potatoes, dogs, salad, etc. onto the bread, rolled it up, and ate it. No dishes to wash other than the cooking ones. Very civilized. And tasty, too. (Note: one feature I really like of their house is the cabinet over the sink, which is the drying rack for dishes--it is open on the bottom, and the shelves are wire racks, so one washes the dishes, sets them in the cabinet to dry, closes the door, and walks away from a clean looking kitchen while they dry. I want one!)
We got back to the con in good time to join in evening games and had much fun. It wasn't until Sunday evening that we finally got around to actually playing in a role-playing game instead of board games and card games. Part of that was the fact that I am limited to games running in English, and not everyone is interested in running them in English, partly because we were having fun with what we were doing, so didn't really look all that hard for role-playing games. But since it is a role-playing game con, we thought it would be fun to participate in one.
The one we played is called "While the World Ends" (or "Medan världen går under" in Swedish). It was written by a friend of ours, so we travelled 19 hours each way to play a game with someone who lives within walking distance. However, the game was much fun, and totally worth the trip. This particular game is a story-based game. The group of three or four players starts out by listing a handful of themes they enjoy in science fiction stories. The themes we wound up with were The moons, Teleportation technology, Feudalism, Alien Technology, and Archaeology.
We then had to choose five physical locations, each one associated with a different theme. Our place were (in order) The Railway Station Hanger Bay (located on a space station which is in the center of orbit of a bunch of moons which have broken away from their planet and orbit one another), The train (which is how the teleportation technology works—as it heads down the track it leaves here and arrives there, as through a wormhole), The Count's Office (he is the noble in charge of the space station), The Montgomery Caves (where the Alien technology was found), and the Laboratory (where the archaeologists and other scientists are studying the items found in the caves).
Once the places are assigned we then came up with random names of characters, two per location. Then we each chose one of the names to be our characters and decided upon their role in that location, their goal, and their fear. I was Li Ping, a young student of archaeology working a part time job in the hanger bay with the goal of getting a research job in the Laboratory, and the fear that he might fail in his classes (and so lose the chance at the research job).
We then assign connections between our character and some of the other characters and state the relationship. For example, I decided that my character is the nephew of John, the train conductor. At this point we were close to ready to play, but we needed to set up the sides. Given the plot elements and goals we obtained we needed to decide on the major world-changing happening the story would be about, and to state both what would happen if thing went poorly (in our case the "end of the world as we knew it" would be people getting their hands on the alien technology and using it for warfare and destroying the race) and if things went well (the alien technology would be used for good, ushering in a "golden age" for humanity).
Now that we knew the two possible paths for the world to take we needed to decide which "side" each of us player characters were on, based on if our goals were more likely to help push things towards the destruction or salvation of humanity. Two of the characters had goals that were directly aligned with saving humanity (my character's uncle had the goal of sabotaging the train to cut the station off from the rest of the universe so that the dangerous stuff they were finding in the caves wouldn't fall into the wrong hands), so it was decided that we other two, whose goals had to do with working in the lab, were on the other side—our research, if we were successful, would lead to people finding out how to use the alien technology for war.
The game is then played by each character taking a turn to choose a scene—where is it (which of the five locations)? When does it happen? Who is present (must be someone who is associated with that location, or is able to get there)? What has just happened (right before the scene starts)? The person whose turn it is also states if this scene is to be played in hopes of progressing the character's goal, or if it is simply narration to enhance the story. If it is to progress the goal the characters present play out the scene up to the point when it will either accomplish the goal, or they will fail. At that point dice are rolled to determine the outcome. If it is just a narrative scene the players on that side earn a token that they can use to reveal more relationships between characters (which make it possible to have people present in a location in which they are not based, and which give characters more dice to use when it is time to roll, thus increasing the odds of success).
Each character has a check off sheet with three boxes each next to their goal and their fear—if they roll the dice towards the goal and succeed in a scene they get to tick off one of the boxes by their goal, if they fail they must tick off one of the boxes on their fear list. The first player to tick off all three of their goal boxes "wins". However, the story line itself progresses based on the success or failure that happens in each scene played out. Each location starts with two tokens. Each time a player sets a scene in a location and tries to accomplish a goal their success or failure moves a token from the location to either the + (the world enters a new golden age) or – (the world is destroyed) based on which "side" the character is on. The first side to achieve five tokens determines which way the story ends.
If a character dies there is no problem—that player can simply do any remaining scenes they wish to run as flashbacks. In fact, they can still work on their goals in the flashbacks. That is how it worked in our game: The train conductor ticked off his last goal box by playing the scene where he hit the train driver over the head and then caused the train to crash, thus becoming a martyr to the cause. It took a number of additional scenes before the game was resolved: his "side"—humanity entered a new golden age, however, for the individual characters things were different—he was a dead martyr, and the other character on that side wound up imprisoned as a concubine of the count (her fear—she failed in her goals), but the characters on our side wound up achieving our goals in the epilogue—my character wound up being a respected researcher in the laboratory.
This was my first experience in "story based" roleplaying games, and I quite liked it. Unlike traditional role playing games, which have complex rules (usually focused on combat), this game had very little need for dice, and only six-sided dice were needed at all. The emphasis was on creating an interesting story. I have always described myself as a reader, not a writer, so I was a bit sceptical before the game began. However, as it turns out, the cooperative nature and the formula for the start makes it easy for even non-writers to participate in the creation of the story and to enjoy the process. I started out content to let the others come up with the first scenes, but once I'd seen how it worked it was easy to become inspired as to what sort of things my character might try to do to achieve his goal of getting the job in the lab, and then suggest scenes in which he could try them. Perhaps all those years of reading have paid off.
The convention ended on Sunday afternoon, and we had the 17:00 train. We left for the train station early enough to stop at a bookstore, where I picked up a copy (in English) of The Land of the Painted Caves. I also bought myself a copy of The Name of the Wind, since I had borrowed it from a friend in Milan and I have been wanting to get a copy ever since. They did,'t have the sequel in stock, but I want to re-read this one before I read the next, anyway, so I can cope. It isn't like I have had much time for reading, anyway. I rather thought thatarchinonlive would like The Name of the Wind, so I handed it to him to read the back cover while we were waiting to board the train, and he agreed that he falls exactly into the middle of the target audience, and has been happily working his way through it ever since. His spoken English is way better than his reading in this language, because he doesn't often have to read, so he started out kind of slowly, but has been steadily gaining speed on it. I have, of course, already finished The Land of the Painted Caves, but I cheated, as I have been reading while he was at work.
The train ride home was just as nice as the trip down, and involved some hanging out and chatting (I am rather enjoying being involved with someone with whom I can spend nearly every waking hour of a long weekend, and we still have plenty to talk about on the journey home), some reading, and lots and lots of sleeping.
The week then slipped by amazingly fast, with accomplishments of working together on sewing and art projects, reading books, attending Swedish class, choir, and even doing the grocery shopping.
This weekend we went to visit his brother on Friday evening (two hours drive south), and while there he repaired the cup hilt for my sword. It had originally be riveted together, but the metal split near one of the rivets so the tang which attaches it to the sword was now lose and wobbly. He has welding equipment, so was able to fix it in only a few seconds work. Then we drove an hour back this direction to their parent's house, where we spent the night, and in the morning visited with their dad (andarchinonlive repaired his mother's printer) before returning home.
Saturday afternoon our choir had a performance. The performance turned out to be at a church, and much to my surprise there was an actual church service which our performance was part of. The pastor opened his service, announced that the student choir was here to perform, we walked in singing, performed a couple of other pieces, then sat down in the front two rows while he did more of the preaching. My Swedish is nowhere near good enough to tell what he was saying, other than to note that at one point he mentioned Aslan, Narnia, and C.S. Lewis (not all that surprising in a Christian setting, I suppose). Eventually he was done talking again, and we performed the rest of our songs before returning the podium to him for his concluding remarks. I have no idea if I would have agreed to participating in the performance had I known in advance that we would have to sit through a church service. One of the other choir members says that he envies me, because I couldn't understand the sermon, so I didn't get as annoyed by it as he did—he understood every fallacy in the lecture. Though he was amused by the fact that the pastor called upon a fairy tale book to support a fairy tale book.
Sunday morning was fighter practice. For reasons I am not clear on we didn't have our usual site in a school, instead we fought in the back yard of our local knight (who comes from England—he met a nice Swedish girl at an event years ago and followed her home). I am really enjoying living in a smallish shire again, as it is really encouraging me to put on armour and fight. There are few enough fighters in the group that each of us is valued and encouraged to participate to give the others someone else to play with, but there are enough of us to achieve critical mass and have us actually armouring up most weeks. Our knight is one who enjoys training, and every week he is able to attend practice (which is usually, though not always) he gives us specific training exercises to work on, and it is much fun. I have a *long* way to go to get any good at this game, but I am hitting them sometimes, and managing to block sometimes, which is an encouraging start back into it. This was my third time in armour since moving here, and my 165th time in armour ever. Granted, most of those 165 times were when I still lived in An Tir (where I first learned to fight).
Sunday afternoon was our normal folk music session—he plays music and I make progress on sewing projects, followed by folk dancing. We are now starting to prepare for a performance, which will take place the Monday after we return from Double Wars.
I have been wanting more exercise in my life, so I have set myself a goal of getting my trike out and riding it often and long enough to get in at least 50 km a week. Sincearchinonlive doesn't currently have a bike this means doing my pedalling during the week while he is at work, since we like to do things together on the weekends. I came up with this plan last Friday, and managed just over 10 km that day. Today (Monday) I did just over 14 km, so am doing well towards that goal.
Tonight's project was taking in a shirt to fit me. It was one of the items we picked up at the clothing swap last month. A nice shade of blue, and a very good fit in the shoulders, but it was quite loose in the waist (possibly designed for pregnant people?). So he set up the sewing machine and quickly took in the side seams, and then decided we should also take a couple of tucks in the center front as well. I am very happy with the result—it is quite comfortable and flattering, too.
Over easter weekend
archinonlive and I took the train south to Gothcon, Sweden's largest role-playing gaming convention. This con is held in Göteborg in southern Sweden, which means that it is around 19 hours by train. I am pleased to report that train travel when one has a sleeping bunk is quite the civilized way to travel. Our car had bunks for six people, but there were only three of us in it for the first part of the journey, and the third person dropped off her stuff and wandered elsewhere in the train as soon as the trip begun, so we had the car to ourselves till we got tired and decided to go to sleep (quite early--around 9pm) which meant that I could do my yoga without bothering anyone else. I slept deeply, and was surprised that all six bunks were full when I woke up in the morning--I never heard the others come in. The original plan had been to Göteborg around 11:00 on Thursday, wander around the city for a few hours till the site opened in the evening. However, I remembered on time that some of my Finnish cousins live in southern Sweden, so I contacted one in Finland I have email for and asked him to put me in touch with his dad, aunt, and uncle in Sweden. He did and they invited us to spend Thursday with them, suggesting that we leave the train two stations early, so they would have a shorter drive to pick us up.
I am so glad that we did--it was a delightful visit. The cousin who picked me up was one that mom and I met when we visited Finland last year--she tells me that I look like one of her daughters. Alas, that daughter wasn't available that weekend, but I did get to meet another of her daughters, and a couple of her grand daughters (one of whom looks just like my sister did at that age--I kept doing double takes). (Note; these cousins are actually my grandfather's first cousins--their dad and his dad were brothers, but my great grandfather was the eldest child in the family, and their dad was the youngest, which is why they are my mother's age.) I am very glad that I had
archinonlive on this trip. While pretty much everyone I have met in Sweden under the age of 50 is so fluent in English I need never slow down when I talk, my cousins who are over 50 speak little to no English. While my Swedish is getting much better, I am still only just able to figure out the topic of conversation sometimes, when they happen to be using words I have learned, I can't actually communicate in it yet. But with his help to translate we had a very nice visit. Her brothers and some of the younger generation joined us for a yummy lunch and much fun was had by all. After lunch some of the family departed, but we stayed and visited, and got a tour of their beautiful property--they live in a farm house with a lovely bit of woods out back, and a very rocky hill nearby. The stones I saw lining the bank next to the road were all pretty igneous rocks, cut by pegmatite veins. About the time I got hungry again they cooked yet more food for us, and then packed up a huge amount of left overs for us to take with us (and swapped out our now melted bottles if ice for some fresh ice packs from the freezer). They eventually drove us to the city, and dropped us off at the door of the convention, with instructions to return on Saturday for a bbq.
The convention was much fun. We didn't bother signing up in advance for anything, but instead stuck to playing in spur of the moment games. We spent most of our time in the cafeteria, where where were huge numbers of board and card games that could be checked out by anyone, and joined in games there. One of the games we played, tantrix (which I had never seen before) was so much fun that we wandered off to the merchant rooms and purchased a copy to bring home. I met a bunch of new, interesting, people, and got to know a few SCA friends who live in the Stockholm area a bit better. In hindsight I wonder why there wasn't an SCA demo or presence at this event--many other groups had rooms set aside to do recruiting, and seemed to be doing well at it.
We stayed up till after 03:00 every night playing games (and still managed to get up around 08:00 or 09:00 every morning for more adventures). Saturday we did head back out to the cousins for the bbq, taking the train there and back this time. I liked the way they did the bbq. They grilled both hot dogs and vegetarian hot dogs, had a huge pot of mashed potatoes, some salad, and a variety of condiments. The "plates" were large sheets of a soft flat bread, not unlike tortillas, but rectangular, larger, and with a much different taste. We piled potatoes, dogs, salad, etc. onto the bread, rolled it up, and ate it. No dishes to wash other than the cooking ones. Very civilized. And tasty, too. (Note: one feature I really like of their house is the cabinet over the sink, which is the drying rack for dishes--it is open on the bottom, and the shelves are wire racks, so one washes the dishes, sets them in the cabinet to dry, closes the door, and walks away from a clean looking kitchen while they dry. I want one!)
We got back to the con in good time to join in evening games and had much fun. It wasn't until Sunday evening that we finally got around to actually playing in a role-playing game instead of board games and card games. Part of that was the fact that I am limited to games running in English, and not everyone is interested in running them in English, partly because we were having fun with what we were doing, so didn't really look all that hard for role-playing games. But since it is a role-playing game con, we thought it would be fun to participate in one.
The one we played is called "While the World Ends" (or "Medan världen går under" in Swedish). It was written by a friend of ours, so we travelled 19 hours each way to play a game with someone who lives within walking distance. However, the game was much fun, and totally worth the trip. This particular game is a story-based game. The group of three or four players starts out by listing a handful of themes they enjoy in science fiction stories. The themes we wound up with were The moons, Teleportation technology, Feudalism, Alien Technology, and Archaeology.
We then had to choose five physical locations, each one associated with a different theme. Our place were (in order) The Railway Station Hanger Bay (located on a space station which is in the center of orbit of a bunch of moons which have broken away from their planet and orbit one another), The train (which is how the teleportation technology works—as it heads down the track it leaves here and arrives there, as through a wormhole), The Count's Office (he is the noble in charge of the space station), The Montgomery Caves (where the Alien technology was found), and the Laboratory (where the archaeologists and other scientists are studying the items found in the caves).
Once the places are assigned we then came up with random names of characters, two per location. Then we each chose one of the names to be our characters and decided upon their role in that location, their goal, and their fear. I was Li Ping, a young student of archaeology working a part time job in the hanger bay with the goal of getting a research job in the Laboratory, and the fear that he might fail in his classes (and so lose the chance at the research job).
We then assign connections between our character and some of the other characters and state the relationship. For example, I decided that my character is the nephew of John, the train conductor. At this point we were close to ready to play, but we needed to set up the sides. Given the plot elements and goals we obtained we needed to decide on the major world-changing happening the story would be about, and to state both what would happen if thing went poorly (in our case the "end of the world as we knew it" would be people getting their hands on the alien technology and using it for warfare and destroying the race) and if things went well (the alien technology would be used for good, ushering in a "golden age" for humanity).
Now that we knew the two possible paths for the world to take we needed to decide which "side" each of us player characters were on, based on if our goals were more likely to help push things towards the destruction or salvation of humanity. Two of the characters had goals that were directly aligned with saving humanity (my character's uncle had the goal of sabotaging the train to cut the station off from the rest of the universe so that the dangerous stuff they were finding in the caves wouldn't fall into the wrong hands), so it was decided that we other two, whose goals had to do with working in the lab, were on the other side—our research, if we were successful, would lead to people finding out how to use the alien technology for war.
The game is then played by each character taking a turn to choose a scene—where is it (which of the five locations)? When does it happen? Who is present (must be someone who is associated with that location, or is able to get there)? What has just happened (right before the scene starts)? The person whose turn it is also states if this scene is to be played in hopes of progressing the character's goal, or if it is simply narration to enhance the story. If it is to progress the goal the characters present play out the scene up to the point when it will either accomplish the goal, or they will fail. At that point dice are rolled to determine the outcome. If it is just a narrative scene the players on that side earn a token that they can use to reveal more relationships between characters (which make it possible to have people present in a location in which they are not based, and which give characters more dice to use when it is time to roll, thus increasing the odds of success).
Each character has a check off sheet with three boxes each next to their goal and their fear—if they roll the dice towards the goal and succeed in a scene they get to tick off one of the boxes by their goal, if they fail they must tick off one of the boxes on their fear list. The first player to tick off all three of their goal boxes "wins". However, the story line itself progresses based on the success or failure that happens in each scene played out. Each location starts with two tokens. Each time a player sets a scene in a location and tries to accomplish a goal their success or failure moves a token from the location to either the + (the world enters a new golden age) or – (the world is destroyed) based on which "side" the character is on. The first side to achieve five tokens determines which way the story ends.
If a character dies there is no problem—that player can simply do any remaining scenes they wish to run as flashbacks. In fact, they can still work on their goals in the flashbacks. That is how it worked in our game: The train conductor ticked off his last goal box by playing the scene where he hit the train driver over the head and then caused the train to crash, thus becoming a martyr to the cause. It took a number of additional scenes before the game was resolved: his "side"—humanity entered a new golden age, however, for the individual characters things were different—he was a dead martyr, and the other character on that side wound up imprisoned as a concubine of the count (her fear—she failed in her goals), but the characters on our side wound up achieving our goals in the epilogue—my character wound up being a respected researcher in the laboratory.
This was my first experience in "story based" roleplaying games, and I quite liked it. Unlike traditional role playing games, which have complex rules (usually focused on combat), this game had very little need for dice, and only six-sided dice were needed at all. The emphasis was on creating an interesting story. I have always described myself as a reader, not a writer, so I was a bit sceptical before the game began. However, as it turns out, the cooperative nature and the formula for the start makes it easy for even non-writers to participate in the creation of the story and to enjoy the process. I started out content to let the others come up with the first scenes, but once I'd seen how it worked it was easy to become inspired as to what sort of things my character might try to do to achieve his goal of getting the job in the lab, and then suggest scenes in which he could try them. Perhaps all those years of reading have paid off.
The convention ended on Sunday afternoon, and we had the 17:00 train. We left for the train station early enough to stop at a bookstore, where I picked up a copy (in English) of The Land of the Painted Caves. I also bought myself a copy of The Name of the Wind, since I had borrowed it from a friend in Milan and I have been wanting to get a copy ever since. They did,'t have the sequel in stock, but I want to re-read this one before I read the next, anyway, so I can cope. It isn't like I have had much time for reading, anyway. I rather thought that
archinonlive would like The Name of the Wind, so I handed it to him to read the back cover while we were waiting to board the train, and he agreed that he falls exactly into the middle of the target audience, and has been happily working his way through it ever since. His spoken English is way better than his reading in this language, because he doesn't often have to read, so he started out kind of slowly, but has been steadily gaining speed on it. I have, of course, already finished The Land of the Painted Caves, but I cheated, as I have been reading while he was at work. The train ride home was just as nice as the trip down, and involved some hanging out and chatting (I am rather enjoying being involved with someone with whom I can spend nearly every waking hour of a long weekend, and we still have plenty to talk about on the journey home), some reading, and lots and lots of sleeping.
The week then slipped by amazingly fast, with accomplishments of working together on sewing and art projects, reading books, attending Swedish class, choir, and even doing the grocery shopping.
This weekend we went to visit his brother on Friday evening (two hours drive south), and while there he repaired the cup hilt for my sword. It had originally be riveted together, but the metal split near one of the rivets so the tang which attaches it to the sword was now lose and wobbly. He has welding equipment, so was able to fix it in only a few seconds work. Then we drove an hour back this direction to their parent's house, where we spent the night, and in the morning visited with their dad (and
archinonlive repaired his mother's printer) before returning home. Saturday afternoon our choir had a performance. The performance turned out to be at a church, and much to my surprise there was an actual church service which our performance was part of. The pastor opened his service, announced that the student choir was here to perform, we walked in singing, performed a couple of other pieces, then sat down in the front two rows while he did more of the preaching. My Swedish is nowhere near good enough to tell what he was saying, other than to note that at one point he mentioned Aslan, Narnia, and C.S. Lewis (not all that surprising in a Christian setting, I suppose). Eventually he was done talking again, and we performed the rest of our songs before returning the podium to him for his concluding remarks. I have no idea if I would have agreed to participating in the performance had I known in advance that we would have to sit through a church service. One of the other choir members says that he envies me, because I couldn't understand the sermon, so I didn't get as annoyed by it as he did—he understood every fallacy in the lecture. Though he was amused by the fact that the pastor called upon a fairy tale book to support a fairy tale book.
Sunday morning was fighter practice. For reasons I am not clear on we didn't have our usual site in a school, instead we fought in the back yard of our local knight (who comes from England—he met a nice Swedish girl at an event years ago and followed her home). I am really enjoying living in a smallish shire again, as it is really encouraging me to put on armour and fight. There are few enough fighters in the group that each of us is valued and encouraged to participate to give the others someone else to play with, but there are enough of us to achieve critical mass and have us actually armouring up most weeks. Our knight is one who enjoys training, and every week he is able to attend practice (which is usually, though not always) he gives us specific training exercises to work on, and it is much fun. I have a *long* way to go to get any good at this game, but I am hitting them sometimes, and managing to block sometimes, which is an encouraging start back into it. This was my third time in armour since moving here, and my 165th time in armour ever. Granted, most of those 165 times were when I still lived in An Tir (where I first learned to fight).
Sunday afternoon was our normal folk music session—he plays music and I make progress on sewing projects, followed by folk dancing. We are now starting to prepare for a performance, which will take place the Monday after we return from Double Wars.
I have been wanting more exercise in my life, so I have set myself a goal of getting my trike out and riding it often and long enough to get in at least 50 km a week. Since
archinonlive doesn't currently have a bike this means doing my pedalling during the week while he is at work, since we like to do things together on the weekends. I came up with this plan last Friday, and managed just over 10 km that day. Today (Monday) I did just over 14 km, so am doing well towards that goal.Tonight's project was taking in a shirt to fit me. It was one of the items we picked up at the clothing swap last month. A nice shade of blue, and a very good fit in the shoulders, but it was quite loose in the waist (possibly designed for pregnant people?). So he set up the sewing machine and quickly took in the side seams, and then decided we should also take a couple of tucks in the center front as well. I am very happy with the result—it is quite comfortable and flattering, too.