I’m now at the afternoon traditional shanty show and loving every minute of it.
Tom Lewis just did Marching Inland…
And the wreck of the nancy lee, followed by last shanty. |bn

This could be bad…
The show tonight is supposed to be modern shanties…
Uh… Well Bounding Main prepared their more modern shanties…
The opening act dressed in pirate garb, just started out with a cover of a Green Day song…
They are very rock oriented… Yikes… This could break bad for our troup of Shanty singers…

Next troup is up, and they too are playing rock songs… Yikes!!!
I really fear this is not going to be what this audience is expecting to hear… Rut Ro…

On a side note, I really have got to just fully trust my instincts… As I was leaving the hotel room I found myself drawn to a pair of earplugs I left on the table. I felt the need to bring them and I ignored it. As loud as this is getting, I should have brought them… As a dear friend who is also a pilot is fond of saying: “nothing is so useless as fuel on the ground”. Seems to apply here…

Group number three is now taking the stage and I see an electric bass, accordion. And two accoustic gutairs. I fear they won’t be much different…
Well its not quite full rock, its like country-rock. Oy. Hey song two by this group is actually shanty like! Woooohooo even includes a “Wey Hey” song three by this group is “when Johnny comes marching home again”, Bounding Main may be more fitting if they are up after these guys…

Phew Bounding Main is up now! Massive cheer as they took the stage! Wish em luck!

The band currently playing is playing irish tunes in polish! I LOVED their version of “Star of the County Down”, they also did a version of Donnegal danny I believe.

I’m currently at the Saturday earlyer show. Its not a shanty show per say, but rather seems to be a showcase of music that has influenced the people. It was very cool to have heard “St. James Infirmary” done in a mixture of polish and english! Love the song anyway but its so cool to see how music is truly universal. The band started the first few notes and there was a wave of excited murmering from all over the audience, my self included. Here I am 1000s of miles away from home and am able to share the excitement and joy of a great song with a group of strangers who speak a foreign language.
Music, the universal language of the soul.

P.S. Just heard “when the saints go marching in” in polish. Way cool!

Today we all met up around 10am local time to have breakfast in the hotel resturaunt. While there we met up with our friend Powel and then later we were joined by the legendary Tom Lewis. After breakfast the group reassembled to do some touring of the city center.
After touring and shopping we returned to the hotel so bounding Main could rehearse for tonights concert at 10 pm.

We landed without any trouble at Krakows wondfull airport. We were met by festival organizers we then rode straight to the concert hall for sound check. After sound check we checked into our hotel, a lovely hotel right off the city center of Krakow. We then rested for a bit before taking cabs to the show.
The evening concert was phenominal, I’ve never seen such an audience. It was so incredible to see such fandom, and to hear so many old favorite songs sung in Polish!!! Paddy lay back, marching inland, lukeys Boat… Wow wow wow!

Bounding main was LOVED the audience erupted and demanded an encore!

Well it’s 2:18 am Chicago time, we have had breakfast and there is about an hour left in the flight. Then a short layover, and another hour long flight. I managed to get a little sleep earlier although it was in short bursts due to the comfort level of the seats. Oh well, its still more sleep than I got on the Germany flight. Dare I say I’m becoming accostomed to all this?
Scary thought!

This post is from about half way into the flight. The baby has quieted thankfully. David and I are going stir crazy in our seats. One major thing we are missing is the little air jets to give you fresh air blowing on you. Very fustrating.
Also wish I could have brought a giant bottle of water as I’m parched…

I am writing this message from onboard our flight to Warsaw. The flight is supposed to be a nine hour flight, we will see. We waitied at o’haire for an hour to taxi…
They just served dinner and I found it to be very nice. In addition to a chicken or beef dish (I had beef) we were also provided with some bread, cheese, salami, and a type of chutney that was all very delicious.
So far entertainment has been a major difference from that we experienced on the Germany flight. That flight we had extra leg room, and personal entertainment systems in our seats. This flight has no more room than that of a domestic flight and entertainment consists of VCR based videos on a projector for the cabin. We did see a couple of my favorite old Disney cartoons. They just finished played the premeere episode of how I met your Mother.
Earlier in the day I pulled my camers out to begin documenting the trip oly to discover I managed to shatter my LCD screen on my camera. I quickly ran to the nearrst store and bought a replacement. Quite a start to the trip so far.
Oh I forgot to mention we are sgaring the flight with a screaming baby that screamed for an hour and ten minutes straight… Eight hours to go. Hopefully I will be able to sleep some.

Last night was our monthly patch night at work. This is basically the scheduled night were after most of the college is closed certain IT staff and myself stay and patch servers with the latest security patches. Typically the three of us involved go for dinner and a movie to pass the time between 4:30 and 9 p.m. Last night was no different.
For this months flick we ended up seeing Daybreakers. It was an interesting vampire flick that as long as you didn’t put to much thought into it it was watchable, at least no one sparkled. To be honest, we were all already pretty tired so its probably getting more credit than it deserves… I did discover something about myself though. I have either lost my startle reflex, or was just to tired to have one. There were a number of scenes where the typical OMG something jumped out directly into the camera. Just about evryone in the theatre flinched. I sat there compleetly unefected. The only scene that had any physical effect on me was the obligatory projectile vomit scene and that was only because I cannot stand the sight of vomit.
The movie did have one interesting twist to it that we all felt deserved far more exploration. One of the main problems with this movie was that it tried to be to much of everything… One minute it was a political / economic comentary, one minute it was horror flick, one minute it was an action flick complete with rediclious car chases and stunts to fill a mythbusters episode, the next minute it tried to be a deep symbolic piece… Hey movie pick something and stick with it!
Without spoilers there were quite a few “seriously? That doesn’t make sense! Why wouldn’t he do ___ that seems more logical for his character” moments. Plus a few symbology moments that just didn’t make sense. I also spotted scenes copied from a handfull of other movies… Oh well…
It was nice to see Sam Neil on a big screen flick again and I did manage to ocassionally feel some amount of distaste for his character.
Product placement was a bit blatent at least as far a Chrysler was conscerned. They might as well have inserted a commercial in the middle of the movie. “Chrysler, the car of Vampires everywhere”
I did get a little fustrated with the movies vampire lore… The movie was primarilly a science type vampire movie, where they focused on vampirisim as a virus… Except they left in all the mythical traits too… No reflection, stake through the heart kills them, err I mean turns them into an exploding fireball… They never mentioned how that was supposed to work…
Ok I’ll stop now… Go see it at the $1.50 theatre it’s worth a good ribbing, and does have an interesting twist to it. It also has some great makeup, courtsey of weta, although I’m pretty sure I saw gollum lurking about a dozen times complete with his precious!

Tuesday night was open mic night at the Stonefire pub in Yorkville, IL. I’ve been attending it for almost two years now. Last week we discovered that the man resposible for organizing it is no longer working at the pub. The pub has decided to continue open mic night though. I ended up filling in as MC.
When I arrived this week I was asked to host again. Things went pretty well I think. We had a halfway decent turnout and had a lot of fun. I even ended up singing 3 songs.

We had an update to our library system again today. This one was on the test server. Once again the vendor insisted we don’t have a test system. I spent another five minutes of my life arguing with them to convince them that we did indeed have the system that they installed incomplete six months prior. This is at least the fourth time I’ve had to argue this point with them. Yet again today it is supposedly now entered in their inventory system. We will see what happens next time I have a problem.
The upgrade itself went fine, however as expected, it wouldn’t run because the system was never fully setup initially. After a few hours of work the upgrade tech did manage to get it working though. I took the opportunity to ask what she did and replicated it on our production system so it now works correctly too.

Holy cats, I haven’t updated this since October?!?! I guess that’s the danger of having quick easy access to facebook as I do on my cellphone. I guess I need a good wordpress app for my blackberry to make this more convenient. Actually what it boils down to is that I just need to make this more of a priority.

The past few weeks I’ve been really in a funk. It’s my typical winter one I suppose. I love snow, don’t get me wrong, but what bothers me is the general bleak skys you see most of the winter here in Illinois. It’s very hard not to let that seep in and begin to permeate your thoughts.

Another part of my overall blah has been a general frustration over things of a technical nature. I spend all day at my job writing code, solving technical problems, and dealing with general computer problems. I get home from work, and I’m wiped out, my brain needs a recharge and needs to decompress. I get so tired of people calling me wanting me to fix their computers. I get especially sick of it when that is the ONLY time I hear from them. Is it to much to ask for an occasional phone call with the sole purpose that the person on the other end just wants to say “hey, how are you?” and doesn’t ‘cleverly’ work the conversation into a “oh hey… i’ve been meaning to ask you…” or “..Oh I bet you’d know…” followed by a request to fix their email, or remove the latest virus or malware… I wonder if people, when finding out someone is a surgeon, ask the surgeon, “oh hey do you mind taking out my appendix here? No rush just when you have some time off or something?”

This past weekend, I escaped for the whole weekend. I posted on facebook that I would not be answering my phone, and was going to just get away. I recently re-connected with a couple of very dear friends who live south of me and accepted their gracious invitation to come visit for the weekend. It was truly the most relaxing, enjoyable weekend I’ve had in YEARS. Not once was I asked to look at a computer, or even answer a computing question. We hung out, ate well, watched British comedies, shared stories, entertained the cats (I mean really, isn’t that a “peoples” job, to entertain and serve cats?) and just generally had a good time. By Sunday morning I felt at peace, for the first time in a long time.

A compleetly unexpected side effect of that was that I slept well last night. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, I slept peacefully and did not wake up multiple times at night with various panicked thoughts running through my head. I didn’t lay there awake for 3 hours trying to force myself to unwind enough that I could sleep. I just rolled over pulled the blanket over me, and slept.

I need more weekends like this last one.

I bolted awake this morning in a panic. I just knew I had forgotten to renew my license plates. I freaked out, raced through my shower, and getting dressed. I tore my stack of what I was sure was unimportant mail apart. As I thought, it was unimportant… All the time thoughts of fear were racing through my head. “I know my plates expire at the end of September, I can’t believe I was driving around all weekend without valid license plates.”, “What am I going to do if I can’t find the renewal form!”, “Is the DMV even open on Tuesdays!” The panic continued, until I forced myself to take a deep breath, walk out to the car and look at my license plate. 05-10
Apparently my brain had decided to be dyslexic in my sleep and freak out thinking that the plates expired on October 5th, not May of 2010…
Fun way to start the morning…

Well here we are the Friday before closing Friday. It’s hard to believe that we are coming up on weekend 8 of the Bristol Renaissance faire. Its been a wild season for me. This year I finally went ahead and went through BAPA, and with a new friend also put together a seemingly successful daily comedy show for kids.
The year has had it’s ups and downs but I think the ups outweigh the downs. My biggest complaint has been the theft of props. To that end today I purchased a locking bin I can use to hold most items. I hope this will put an end to my dissapearing property and I can return to enjoying the remainder of the season.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m certain cats of previous years have all be amazing as well, but I’ve never been as involved with them as I am this year. Sunday, Andy, Sarah, and I began the daily stage show in Kids Kingdom by gathering a small audience from the overall light faire attendance. We had managed to draw in enough people that it would work. The show began, the audience was laughing and paying attention with the occasional glances up at the sky which was growing ever darker. About half way through the show the wind picked up, and a few rain drops began to fall. As they did audience members began to get up and leave, attempting to seek shelter. At this I noticed two of the FABULOUS Kids Kingdom cast who had been standing at the rear watching the show race back stage, I assumed they were battening down the hatches of things back stage. moments later they re-emerged carrying an enormous deck umbrella and proceeded to set it up of the remaining folks in our audience. Arabella Byrd (also a Sarah) then proceeded to stand there and hold the umbrella over our audience for the remainder of the show. I cannot begin to describe how awesome that was.
I will find some way to repay that kindness.
This cast rocks!

Yesterday just after the final battle between Robin Hood, and the Evil Sheriff I returned to the inner circle of faire to find a group of people staring up at the sky and worrying. The sky looked ominous, you could see the line from the front passing directly over the circle, and the sky to the west looked dark with disturbing cloud formations. I asked a few people if they had heard if there were any special orders, are we supposed to be seeking shelter? etc? No one had heard anything so, After a little discussion I decided to make the best of it. I knew the patrons would all be fleeing for their lives and the only thing to do would be to get out there in the streets and entertain them while we had them, and hope that they might decided that if the cast was still playing around, that it couldn’t be to bad and they might just stick around.
I’m not sure what point Andy arrived during the deliberations but right after I had resolved to go out and make the best of it, we glanced at each other, a flicker of insanity sparked in our eyes, and he suggested, “Hey do we have a rope!?” “There’s all sorts in the pole barn” I replied. “Wanna go row?” As if I would say no?!?!? “Hell yes!”
Andy disappeared into the barn, and returned with a long rope, and proceeded to tie it around my waste, he then did the same to himself, I handed him a paddle and we headed out to the streets. When we stepped through the gates there were patrons fleeing everywhere, and we jumped into the frey rowing, improving our arses off. “No one worry, we’re safe, we lashed ourselves to the nearest large object we could find! Ourselves!!!” Worried looks turned to smiles and laughter. Everywhere we went people rushing to escape the perceived doom began to laugh and smile, point, or offer comments. In top form and not missing an opportunity for comedy, Andy Looped us around a tree so that it looked like the two of us had been tied to it. We leaned out from the tree, and began to row, “No one panic! We are rowing the festival to safety”, “STROKE! STROKE! STROKE! STROKE! …. if we keep this up we are going to have a STROKE!! STROKE STROKE!” We looked for groups of patrons huddled in shops and did our best to entertain. “Don’t worry! In case of an emergency these two idiots can be used as a safety flotation device!” We lashed ourselves to trees in front of shops where patrons were huddling to stay dry, as we did, something amazing happened. Patrons became excited about the nonsense, and wanted to be involved. They would run out into the rain they were so desperately trying to avoid just to get pictures with us. Countless “Captain Morgan” poses were struck by patron after patron posing with us. Some played along assuming the role of a captain, barking out orders. Others just quickly got their picture and ran for cover again.
We wound our way haphazardly towards the gate following the patrons, offering boat rides, and other advice, all the while tied to the end of the rope. “ROW ROW ROW YER BOAT! GENTLY THROUGH THE STREAM!!!” We invented, and promptly forgot new versions of that song all the way to the gate. As we neared the gate we passed the Town Square Public house where the Bristol buskin frolic and others had gathered upon its balcony to sing. “…and the ocean waves do roll…” We hammed it up on the street, doing an impromptu dance worthy of being used as an example illustration of how “white guys can’t dance” and then moved on to leave the BBF and company to entertain folks there, not wanting to eat up focus.
We moved ever closer to the gate, next encountering the Earl of Bedlam, whom we promptly wrapped up in the rope between us, and quickly ran through all the previous bits about lashing things to ourselves for safety. Again not wanting to steel audience or focus from another performer we moved on leaving the Earl to his patrons. We next encountered a couple members of fight cast, one of which decided to dive over our rope and do a roll into the street. We let him, and then moved on to the gate as the storm continued to dump buckets of rain upon us. Once we arrived at the gate we found some patrons, huddled in the remembrance shop, as well as a steady stream exiting the faire. we once again lashed ourselves to a tree, this time by the gate, and started rowing. More random verses of ROW ROW ROW yer boat were bellowed, more reassurances that we were fine , more insistence that we were rowing the festival to safety. As the patrons passed they smiled, they laughed, they occasionally joined in. The last thing they saw as they exited the gate on their rainy day was the two of us making the best of a bad situation. “Look I’m doggie paddling”, I then stuck the paddle in my mouth, leaned out from the tree using the rope as support, put my hands up and panted around the paddle. At times during our fun I even caught the security people laughing at us.
As the rain let up we claimed credit for saving the festival from the storm. As we began working our way back to the pole barn we encountered two patrons, a man and a woman, one insisted on crossing over the rope between Andy an I, We refused, and made him go under, we then insisted that the woman climb over, and we lowered the rope. They chuckled, and as we walked away, Andy turned and shouted “Congratulations! You are now married!”. I nearly lost it, the patrons doubled over laughing, and high five-ed each other and then held hands happily laughing their way to the gate. Andy fell overboard off the imaginary ship, and had to be hauled back up by his rope, as he re-boarded his thankful manly hit to my shoulder caused me to fall overboard, requiring me to be hauled aboard. It was that moment that eventually triggered my favorite bit. I took the 2nd paddle back from Andy and whispered “Water ski!!!”, not missing a beat, he began water skiing off me as I rowed like a man possessed. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Andy was in rare form, he was performing jumps, daring poses worthy of Tommy Bartlet, and all sorts of crazed daring-do. As I rowed I began to shout “We’ve invented a new sport, we are calling it Water Skiing! It’s sure rough on the guy rowing though!” people responded with laughter. Cameras flashed, people pointed. We continued this all the way back to the barn, occasionally switching places.
When we finally returned to the barn we collapsed in a fit of laughter.

Worst

• Forgetting my mothers Birthday was Friday
• Saturday morning rain making for soggy wet clothes all day
• Nearly letting the heat get to me Saturday
• Wet clothes causing chafing is all sorts of abnormal places

Best

• Sundays rain inspiring Andy Maar and I into some great fun bits all involving being tied to opposite end of a big rope
• “don’t panic we’ve lashed ourselves to the nearest large object we can find for safety, each other!”
• lashing the festival to ourselves to keep it safe
• tying ourselves to various trees and rowing the festival to safety
• offering ourselves as safety flotation devices in case of emergency (a nod to Bounding Main)
• boat rides
• marrying two patrons in a bizarre rope crossing ceremony
• inventing a new hobby of water skiing, but boy is it hard on the rower…
• seeing the whole musicians revel Saturday
• Sundays sing-a-long at the old wash well
• the wonderful cast in KK grabbing a giant Umbrella and holding it over the audience for andy and I’s show
• being surprised by a friends visit Saturday
• awesome pumpkin Sunday!
• breaking a group of non responsive patrons Sunday morning
• the return of the newest old holiday “paddle day”
• Jyncks getting beat up by the sheriff but fighting back this time. Then having the kids in the area help crank jyncks back up using his hands as jacks
• cinnamon scones and broccoli cheese soup
• once again seeing how amazingly supportive this cast is of each other

Weirdest

• Once again just randomly blurting out a patrons name without ever having met them before

This, turned out to be an incredibly fun weekend at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. Despite my back still acting up, I had a great time!

Worst

• backing into a friend’s neighbor’s truck after dropping her off Sunday and damaging both vehicles
• still having some back pain Both days
• missing out on duck brownies

BEST

• Best audience of the season!!!
• Sing-a-long at the old wash well with friends on both Saturday and Sunday
• Having a nearly full house for Andy and I’s show in KK
• Hugs, gifts and excited questions from fans of Cutlass Cooking
• Finally catching a New Minstrel Reveu show this weekend
• Fantastic compliment from Joe Fernandez
• Huge turnout for pub crawl Saturday, and actually getting patrons to sing along on songs and even contribute verses
• Finally getting street time together with Andy
• Watching Ann Q’s bit stealing soup from the duck get such great reactions from cast and patrons alike!
• Little girl so excited about learning how to row that she accidentally clocked me in the face with my paddle when she turned to show her mom
• Hearing how excited other cast were over their weekend too!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything family related. Mostly because I’ve been busy and have removed myself from any possibility of hearing anything. Sadly, tonight, the first night I have been home in daylight since last Wednesday that reprieve came to an end. Shortly after arriving home the phone rang and it was my cousin. Palley, my mother, answered the phone at the same time I did, when I heard the voice on the other end, I hung up, not wanting anything to do with my cousin. The conversation didn’t last very long but what I did over hear from the other end of the house involved my cousin’s oldest kid, who is incarcerated, having been beat down yet again.
Not long after the call ended the phone rang again. The electronic voice asked us to accept the charges for a collect call from the detention center where my cousins son was being held… Big surprise… We accepted the charges…
Shortly after the call began I was asked to pick up the receiver, as he likes to talk to me. I did, and he started to explain the whole “beat down” situation. The details and reasons of which I will not get into here but it’s nothing that I didn’t expect to happen…
After the description of that situation was over he brought up that his mother was going to come visit him. She has no car of her own, and has been insisting on using Palley’s car. Palley informed him to not get his hopes up because her car is not in good shape, and they couldn’t come last week because it was in the garage being worked on.
His response? “Why won’t you just co-sign for her!”
“What?!”, I jumped in. I immediately analyzed the situation and realized what con was going on.
“Why wont she co-sign? Because your mother has never paid a debt shes owes once in her life ”
At this he immediately back pedaled and changed the subject.
I just cannot get over her… He has had a horrible life, shes been responsible for a lot of it, and yet she still can’t help using him…
I just want to scream every time I hear anything that goes on with her…