is it really late November already?
Nov. 22nd, 2020 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaOh, dear, November has mostly slipped by, with hardly any posts from me...
I have been busy...
I hosted Norrskensfesten the weekend of the sixth. A month before things were still good in Sweden--we'd been at a country-wide recommendation to keep gatherings under 50 people, and our pandemic numbers were low. The 40-person event "There will be cheese" happened, I attended, and it was much fun, and I looked forward to seeing people again at Norrskensfesten. A couple of weeks before the event Sweden's pandemic numbers started rising, and I looked at them nervously. The week before the event the curve was looking really ugly, and we decided to switch to a virtual event.
However, the Norrskensbard and his lady had already booked their non-refundable train tickets to come up from southern Finland, attend the event, and then continue south to his family home in Umeå (three hours south of here), pick up his dog and some other things that had been stored at his mom's house, and then take the ferry back to Finland (he only moved there to be with her this summer, so hasn't yet brought everything over).
While I was not willing to run the risk of a 40-person gathering sponsored by Frostheim, I was willing to have a much smaller gathering in my own home, as an individual. They had been taking sensible precautions, and had masks to wear on the train, so I told them to come up and stay with me as planed--we could run the zoom meeting in the living room, and project it onto the big screen, and play it on the stereo.
When we opted to cancel the event cook for the event commented to me "I just want to see people", so I told him he was welcome to come over, and, since he had already done some of the pre-cooking for the event, he said he would bring it along.
So I decorated the living room:
and on the day we had me, my housemate E, the Norrskensbard and his lady, our cook, and my friend V., who doesn't have a good way to do video calls at home, and who was also performing as a bard. Which of us were present for which parts of the on line event varied, but it was nice to have the small group, and to be part of the larger event.
Friday night was a couple of bardic workshops, taught by bards in the states. That zoom session was hosted by a kind lady in Insuale Draconis, so I opted to go to sleep early and missed the last couple of workshops. Saturday morning started with an 08:00 workshop on breathing for singers and heralds, which I really enjoyed. Then there was a break till the early afternoon, when the bardic performances started.
The bardic rounds had originally been planed to happen every two hours, shortly after each new course of food was served. However, with no feast being served, it made sense to me to change the bardic to be one round every hour, so that we would have short breaks between, but not not too long. This seemed to work well. It gave me enough time between each round to change costumes, just for the fun of it.
After the final bardic round ended we had about 45 minutes till court, and our cook told me that he was going to head to Antnas and would be back later. Since I had seen the scrolls for the event (sent to me as the zoom host to project on the screen when the herald reads them out, a task I delegated to the kind and talented Johan.), and I know which of the people who would be receiving awards lives in Antnas I just smiled and waved as he went out the door. It wasn't until the part in court where the herald, having just finished reading the scroll for Egil's Court Barony, said "let him be vested with the circlet of his rank", and suddenly Egil's eyes got really big as he looked away from his computer screen and Kheldor walked in and put the circlet he had made onto Egil's head that I truly understood just why he needed to go. He also held a really large axe for Egil to swear fealty on, since he couldn't reach through the screen and touch the sword of state.
That part was a particularly fun part of the event. Kheldor had arranged things with Egil's wife to be let into the house so that he could sneak in at just the right moment (he had court playing in his headset, so he would know when to go in). The SCA may have needed to go on line, but we are still doing cool things.
After court there were several hours of hanging out chatting with people, until the evening workshops begun (which were really interesting), and then more talk well into the night.
Sunday (8 Nov) we enjoyed a lazy morning eating and talking, and went for a walk, after which we put W into my old armour so he and K could fight. Eventually K went back home and we four had a nice, relaxed evening.
On Monday (9 Nov) we borrowed E's car and drove out to Storforsen, since neither E nor E had seen it before, and W hadn't been since he was a small child. It was a beautiful adventure, as always.
Tuesday morning I dropped W and E at the bus station so that they could continue their loop trip and fetch that dog, and I returned the car.
Then I spent much of that work week finally taking care of the paperwork to get an extension in my timeline for my second PhD, to account for the time that I haven't been working on it due to a variety of stresses over the past couple of years (bereavement, job uncertainty, etc. none of which would normally be so much of a problem as to interfere with progress, but taken together and compounded by 2020 have added up to just a bit much).
The following week (last week) I focused on working in the lab, catching up on experiment that couldn't be run the week before due to Issues. Now I have one full week and a couple of days left in which I need to run more experiments and finish writing the report consolidating everything I have learned about how to do things in this lab sot hat they will be fine without me. I also need to get myself a new phone (since I will have to give back the work one, and will be without), and get all of my data off of the computer.
I should also check in with my boss at the archive and see if she still wants me to do another short archive contract in December, or if that has changed with the current pandemic upswing.
Come January I should probably seriously think about what I will do for an income next.
I have been busy...
I hosted Norrskensfesten the weekend of the sixth. A month before things were still good in Sweden--we'd been at a country-wide recommendation to keep gatherings under 50 people, and our pandemic numbers were low. The 40-person event "There will be cheese" happened, I attended, and it was much fun, and I looked forward to seeing people again at Norrskensfesten. A couple of weeks before the event Sweden's pandemic numbers started rising, and I looked at them nervously. The week before the event the curve was looking really ugly, and we decided to switch to a virtual event.
However, the Norrskensbard and his lady had already booked their non-refundable train tickets to come up from southern Finland, attend the event, and then continue south to his family home in Umeå (three hours south of here), pick up his dog and some other things that had been stored at his mom's house, and then take the ferry back to Finland (he only moved there to be with her this summer, so hasn't yet brought everything over).
While I was not willing to run the risk of a 40-person gathering sponsored by Frostheim, I was willing to have a much smaller gathering in my own home, as an individual. They had been taking sensible precautions, and had masks to wear on the train, so I told them to come up and stay with me as planed--we could run the zoom meeting in the living room, and project it onto the big screen, and play it on the stereo.
When we opted to cancel the event cook for the event commented to me "I just want to see people", so I told him he was welcome to come over, and, since he had already done some of the pre-cooking for the event, he said he would bring it along.
So I decorated the living room:
and on the day we had me, my housemate E, the Norrskensbard and his lady, our cook, and my friend V., who doesn't have a good way to do video calls at home, and who was also performing as a bard. Which of us were present for which parts of the on line event varied, but it was nice to have the small group, and to be part of the larger event.
Friday night was a couple of bardic workshops, taught by bards in the states. That zoom session was hosted by a kind lady in Insuale Draconis, so I opted to go to sleep early and missed the last couple of workshops. Saturday morning started with an 08:00 workshop on breathing for singers and heralds, which I really enjoyed. Then there was a break till the early afternoon, when the bardic performances started.
The bardic rounds had originally been planed to happen every two hours, shortly after each new course of food was served. However, with no feast being served, it made sense to me to change the bardic to be one round every hour, so that we would have short breaks between, but not not too long. This seemed to work well. It gave me enough time between each round to change costumes, just for the fun of it.
After the final bardic round ended we had about 45 minutes till court, and our cook told me that he was going to head to Antnas and would be back later. Since I had seen the scrolls for the event (sent to me as the zoom host to project on the screen when the herald reads them out, a task I delegated to the kind and talented Johan.), and I know which of the people who would be receiving awards lives in Antnas I just smiled and waved as he went out the door. It wasn't until the part in court where the herald, having just finished reading the scroll for Egil's Court Barony, said "let him be vested with the circlet of his rank", and suddenly Egil's eyes got really big as he looked away from his computer screen and Kheldor walked in and put the circlet he had made onto Egil's head that I truly understood just why he needed to go. He also held a really large axe for Egil to swear fealty on, since he couldn't reach through the screen and touch the sword of state.
That part was a particularly fun part of the event. Kheldor had arranged things with Egil's wife to be let into the house so that he could sneak in at just the right moment (he had court playing in his headset, so he would know when to go in). The SCA may have needed to go on line, but we are still doing cool things.
After court there were several hours of hanging out chatting with people, until the evening workshops begun (which were really interesting), and then more talk well into the night.
Sunday (8 Nov) we enjoyed a lazy morning eating and talking, and went for a walk, after which we put W into my old armour so he and K could fight. Eventually K went back home and we four had a nice, relaxed evening.
On Monday (9 Nov) we borrowed E's car and drove out to Storforsen, since neither E nor E had seen it before, and W hadn't been since he was a small child. It was a beautiful adventure, as always.
Tuesday morning I dropped W and E at the bus station so that they could continue their loop trip and fetch that dog, and I returned the car.
Then I spent much of that work week finally taking care of the paperwork to get an extension in my timeline for my second PhD, to account for the time that I haven't been working on it due to a variety of stresses over the past couple of years (bereavement, job uncertainty, etc. none of which would normally be so much of a problem as to interfere with progress, but taken together and compounded by 2020 have added up to just a bit much).
The following week (last week) I focused on working in the lab, catching up on experiment that couldn't be run the week before due to Issues. Now I have one full week and a couple of days left in which I need to run more experiments and finish writing the report consolidating everything I have learned about how to do things in this lab sot hat they will be fine without me. I also need to get myself a new phone (since I will have to give back the work one, and will be without), and get all of my data off of the computer.
I should also check in with my boss at the archive and see if she still wants me to do another short archive contract in December, or if that has changed with the current pandemic upswing.
Come January I should probably seriously think about what I will do for an income next.