Crown Tournament

It's amazing how fast some things can change! One minute you are watching your husband fight in a tournament, then you are standing next to the throne to watch the finals, then everyone in the kingdom is hugging you! I have to say the best part for me was the hugging, it's like the receiving line at a wedding, but lots less organized. It's like a receiving blob.

OHH NOOOO MR. BILL!

So this happened forever ago while we were in New Orleans, but it has come up a couple of times in talking to our friends recently. One of my friends got us tickets to see Walter Williams (creator of Mr. Bill) at Oswald's Speakeasy (owned by Harry Anderson, the judge from night court).
It was an awesome show, then a few nights later, while I was at a bellydance seminar, Anton ran into Walter and ended up going bar hoping with him and his freinds all night.


www.bestofneworleans.com/dispa...ry.php

No Gulf Wars

We can't make Gulf Wars this year due to a lack of vaccation from the honeymoon, and Anthony's spring break is the wrong week. I am more than a little bummed since it is my favorite war and I haven't missed one in years. That and it's our anniversary!

Wedding and there after

So we are married!

backed up blogs

So I have been very busy doing stuff and haven't posted any of it. It has been a crazy summer. I am in the process of adding a bunch more pictures for all y'all to see. Things like Anton's birthday, Molly's going away party, several float trips, Fringe Fest, and many other fun activites.

Handfasting

On the one one year anniversary of the day we met, our sca personnas were wed. Master Conrad brought my dowry, which you see in the wooden box in the picture. I got to shop for him all week it was lots of fun. We were handfasted to eachother by Anton's friend Sir Keif. The ceremony was beautiful, and it was great to have several of our friends there to witness. Those of you who were not there were missed and thought of.

Earlier in the week Anton won the Spear Tournament and his household Rhoadd won the Five Man Melee Tournament. I danced and drummed and waterbeared for most of the war. We also both did a fair amount of sleeping.

What a Weekend!

Well what a strange turn of events. I guess I should start at the begining. Anthony found a cool shop in the French Quarter called the Pharoh's cave. We ended up buying a really cool green Hookah pipe and a couple of belly dance CDs and talking to the guy some about starting up a drum circle again (there hasn't been one since the storms). Anthony picked up a card for me for a local dancer that is teaching belly dance lessons.
I called Amae her about her monday night class, and asked if there were any advanced classes in town. She told me that sadly there were very few dancers that had come back. From her troupe of eight, it is just her and another girl. She invited me to come to the class and brush up on basics. She told me that they were planning on going to Artemis's workshop in two weeks. I got a bit excited when she mentioned Artemis because I had such a great time taking classes from her in DC.
I went to the monday night class and had a great time. Amae is an amazing dancer with an insane schedule. She works five days a week and dances five nights a week. She has four restaurant/bar gigs and teaches on top of that. She said most places are desperate for dancers and has invited me to come dance with her on the 22nd, and that she could probably get me into the rotation if the club owner likes me.
Anyway, so this weekend I went to the workshop with Artemis in Lafayette (2.5 hours west of New Orleans). I ended up getting there on Fri. night at about 8:30 and who should I run into but Zenia. For those who don't know she is an SCA friend of mine and Layla's. We were very worried about her and Munlik right after Katrina.
Munlick was with her and they were the special guests of the people hosting the event. I'm still not exactly sure how this all happened but I ended up at dinner with the hosts of the event and Artemis at a really cool greek restaurant. It started with me asking if Munlik and Zenia were going out to dinner and would they mind me tagging along since they were the only people I knew. They told me they were going out with some people and to hop in their truck. I didn't realize who the people were until we were already there.
Anyway I said hello to Artemis and she actually remembered me and seemed genuinely happy to see me. I heard all about how things are going for Mulik and Zenia and told them about Anthony. They are still living out of their FEMA trailer and are in the process of rebuilding their house. Both of their houses were destroyed. They had moved into their new house and were trying to sell the old one when the storm hit. They were able to save some of their belongings but like many others most of it was washed into the Gulf of Mexico.
During dinner I mentioned that I needed to get a hotel room when we got back. Sydney, who was organizing the seminar asked me to stay with her in her huge suite. I tried to say no, but as I discovered it is very difficult to refuse southern women when they are offering you something.
The next morning when I woke up breakfast was being set on the table. Zenia and Munlick and about 10 other people showed up and I was told to eat something. So I did. Lunch seemed to go the same way. Sydneys mom and aunt had made chicken salad sandwiches and were already planning dinner, which I was also expected to eat. I of course felt like a horrible mooch, and kept trying to wiggle my way out of it, but it seemed that I had been accepted into to the group and was therefore now acounted for, and expected. Anthony told me when I got home that it would have been rude of me to actually down right say no, and that's just the way things work down here.
The show Saturday night was looming over my head. When I signed up for the workshop there was one solo performance open, so I thought I would give it a shot. I ended up buying another damn cabaret outfit on e-bay, cause well... it was cheap and cute, and it got here two days before the show. So I was about to perform in front of a bunch of people that I had just met that were all very talented, in a costume I had never worn before, without my girls there to back me up. Talk about nervous.
I decided the safest bet was to do the new cabaret piece, cause I could do it by myself and could still remember most of it without thinking too hard. I about peed my pants I was so nervous as I was walking back stage. They started to anounce me and who should walk up and give me a hug but Artemis. She must have seen the look on my face, she told me I would be great and that she was glad that I was dancing. Well that kind of surprosed me enough to get me up on the stage. I don't think I missed any of the important parts of the dance a didn't lose any of my costume so I figure it went pretty well. I was really amazed when people I didn't know came up to me after the show and told me they liked my dance. It was quite the ego boost, I had to go and ice my head.
Zenia did a dance that made everyone cry, it was an interpretation of the storm. Munlik was playing the Zerna for her while she came on stage with many scarves in her hands and tucked into her belt. She began to spin like the storm and the music became faster and wilder. She flung the scarves in every direction and dropped to the stage as the drums and zerna stopped dead.
As the soft notes began to play, she gathered the scarves one by one, shaking them off and placing them back around her neck and tucking them into her belt. She wiped her face with one and scraped the mud off another. She began to dance again, happily and made her way off the stage.
The hafla after the show was fantastic! All the drummers and musicians stayed and played until the end of the night at 11. The drive home was long, but I decided I needed to get home to my sweetie.

GIS Work

It seems like more and more people are discovering what GIS is capable of and that means lots of work. It pretty much goes like this, someone walks over with a confused look on their face and asks if I make maps or am I GIS, I say yes and they sit down and start telling me what they are looking for. I pull up some imagery or some vector files. I fine tune it to what they are looking for and then print it out. They take it back and show there supervisor. Then about an hour later, the original requestor and their supervisor come over and sometimes a couple more people, and ask for about six more maps that are somewhat similar to the first one. For the most part I can just shift the view or drop in a couple more layers and print them out within a half hour or so. This seems to make everyone happy and they hang up their maps where everyone can see them. Then people ask, "Hey where did you get that?" then they too are sent to me with a confused look on their face, and the cycle starts again.

FEMA was not prepared for Katrina because of it's loss of funding to "Homeland Security".

FEMA was not prepared for Katrina because of it's loss of funding to "Homeland Security". This is a huge part of why Katrina was so badly responded to my FEMA. Most of the agency's preparedness budget and focus are related to terrorism, not disasters.The most interesting fact that I found from this article was this "Three out of every four dollars the agency provides in local preparedness and first-responder grants go to terrorism-related activities, even though a recent Government Accountability Office report quotes local officials as saying what they really need is money to prepare for natural disasters and accidents."

www.latimes.com/news/natio...,full.story

In New Orleans

So most of you know that I am in New Orleans, for those that don't, the call finally came and they have sent me down here for three months. Anthony is coming down to join me this weekend. I found us an apartment across Rampart from the French Quarter. For those of you who want to look at it on-line the web site,
www.historicgarlands.com/archi...ex.php