Carolina Renaissance Festival

Well, I said we'd do it and we did! Saturday, Teresa and I took off to Charlotte for the Carolina Renaissance Festival. We had the joy of meeting up with Beth and Jonathan, friends from college, and their two year old son, Julian, who we had never met and were thrilled to get the chance to see. We arrived at the fair grounds a little ahead of them, and went inside.

First of all, it was remarkably similar to the fair in Maryland. The buildings were the same, and the signs all looked familiar. Many of the souvenirs and other things were identical to ones found at the other fair. It makes sense when I think about it, that people who make and sell these things would find similar venues for them. The scale of the Carolina festival was a little smaller. There was still plenty to see and do, but you didn't have to walk quite as far to see and do it. We got there shortly after it opened so there weren't too many people at the festival yet.

Our friends showed up soon after we got there and we took our time going from place to place. It was really wonderful to see Julian rushing from place to place, and Jonathan following closely behind as they took in all the sights. We somehow ended up near a stage where they were doing a falconry show, which turned out to be really cool. The birds would fly out over the audience, really low, from perch to perch.
Teresa and I did not wear any renaissance clothing this time, but there were plenty of people that did. Sometimes it's hard to tell if they work at the festival or if they're just attending! After taking this next picture, the group of people started to do a dance. The formal kind you see in things like Pride and Prejudice.

Further on was a place where there were several Greyhounds just lounging about for people to come up and pet. I can't remember the name of the place now, nor what the dogs were there for, or where they came from, if they were rescued racers or what, but they were sweet dogs, and Teresa loved them.
We continued to take a look at everything as we made our way to the food area. I ended up with another turkey leg, and man, was that thing huge and tasty. Better than the one from Maryland for sure. I don't know what the difference was, but I know I liked it better. We found a play ground for the kids where we ate, and Julian played. After lunch we continued on down to the petting zoo where there were goats, a highland cow, and elephant and camel rides. Then it came time for the joust.

This was our knight. There were three in total, and two of them were heralded as being evil, and this one, ours, was the good one. He also looked very young. At a point in the show where our knight had won a skill trial, he was given a crown of flowers to give out to someone as princess of the joust, and he gave it to a little girl. One of the evil knights commended him... for picking a princess older than he was.

This joust was a bit different from the one Maryland. At that one, they competed for points and in the end, a winner was selected. At this joust, they did more play acting, falling off their horses and culminating in a challenge to a Joust to the Death, which was to happen at the next joust that day. It was entertaining, and I would have liked to see the next joust, but it was getting too late at that point. All the more reason to return!

On the way out of the park, we took the obligatory heads on picture, picture. Look at us! We're King and Queen!
But then there was one other thing near the exit to the park . The goose holding booth. For some reason, this was very cool. And all it is are some very well trained geese. And what they're trained to do is sit in your lap. I did it earlier in the day, and Teresa was a little bit timid. But by the end of the day, she was ready to hold a goose. This is Teresa and Mimi.
It was a great day, and I'd definitely do it again. It wasn't just the fair either, but the chance to see our friends again. Our friends who, it turns out, only live a couple hours a way, so we have no excuse for waiting another five years to see them again. The next festival in North Carolina is in April, but there may be one in Georgia before that. I'll have to start doing some more research!

Howl-a-Ween

I failed to post last week when we went to Howl-a-Ween in Black Mountain, so here's a quick post. Every year they do a dog costume contest and parade in Black Mountain where people dress up their dogs, or with their dogs and just have some fun. We tried to get Hannah into a Lobster costume... but she didn't want any part of that.

We still went, just to see all of the other dogs in their costumes. There were quite a few people, including a couple dressed as Batman and Batgirl, and their two dogs were Robin and Wonder Woman. There was a whippet or something dressed up like a giraffe, and one in a pink jacket of some sort. I'm not sure what it was. Below are a couple of our favorites.

Zorro!

Snow White

Sherlock Holmes, searching for clues...

Our New Couch, and The Onset of Fall

There it is. Our new couch, all comfy and inviting. Teresa likes to the lamp side of the couch most I think. At least that's where she always sits. We've been using if for the last week and a half and I think it's working out pretty well. And yes, Mom, we are gradually getting our Homer Simpson butt prints settled in.

Our house is looking pretty good. We've got pictures on the wall, furniture in the living room, and just recently we finished setting up my keyboard, stereo, and the large book shelf in the small bed room. We threw the Papasan chair in there and it makes a passable reading and music room!

Just one bedroom is unfinished. We need a desk/keyboard chair, and a futon mattress so we can make it a true guest bedroom. Then all that's left is the mess of old boxes and paraphernalia that's in the attic, but it's okay to take some time on that.

Fall is here. I LOVE the fall. Favorite season by far. I can tell when I go outside and the air is cold with a slight breeze, but the sun is up, and leaves are everywhere that my favorite season has arrived. Here is a shot of the hillside from our front porch.
I've got some other shots from this week where it's a lot more pronounced. This was when they first started to turn. The picture doesn't do it justice, but you can start to see it.

Today, I went to a golf tournament with my company. We did Captain's Choice, or Best Ball, where we played in teams of four and hit from where whoever hit the best. I actually got put in a team of three and we just rotated a 4th hitter. I was worried at first. I haven't golfed since before Teresa and I got married. I never managed to find a time to go golfing in Boston. But I am so glad I went today. My first shot off the tee was beautiful, and I continued to do well throughout the day. On the second hole, I think we played from my ball for every shot and parred the hole. On hole 17, I birdied the putt for our group, (That's one less than par for the golfing uninitiated, par being the amount of shots it's supposed to take you.)

We ended 18 holes at 72, just 2 over par and won second place in the tournament which equals fifty bucks for me. After the green fees, the longest drive pot, and lunch, I came out a little ahead for the day. Nothing better than free golf! And even if it had been bad golf, the weather was absofreakinglutely beautiful. This was the view from the tee on hole 18.


Teresa's parents are visiting this weekend. They took off to chimney rock while I was golfing. Hopefully Teresa took some pictures and I'll post those later on today or this week. I'll have to post again just to show off the fall colors before they disappear!

Renn Fair Recap

I've posted pictures of last weekend's Maryland Renaissance Fair to Facebook already, but if you haven't seen them, take a look here.

It was a lot of fun. Would do again. Will do again. In fact, I may even do it soon since I found out there is a fair only a couple hours away from here near Charlotte, NC. Teresa had fun too, at least she tells me she had fun. Our hostess made us outfits, so Teresa got a medieval style dress, and I wore a black tunic. Teresa said it reminded her of dressing up for dance performances. She even had an awesome tiara to go with her outfit. I wore my Red Sox hat. Go 16th century Sox!

We stayed with friends in Arlington, Virginia. Friends who we had never met before. Wait.. what? Yeah, let me expand on that. Teresa and I spend a lot of our entertainment and free time playing an online video game. You may have heard of it. It's called World of Warcraft. I'm pretty sure that's not a secret, so I have no problems talking about it, but I won't bore all of you, my friends and family, with the details because I'm smart enough to know that you don't want me to ramble on about the game, and why I play it. Besides, I have another blog for that.

Well as you might imagine, a lot of people that we play this game with are into the whole Fantasy, Sci-fi, comics sub culture and would enjoy things like Renn fairs. Over the last couple of years of playing, we've gotten to know some of the people pretty well in the game. We're part of a guild, which is just a collection of players in an official group. The guild's name is Veritas. So the people we met up with in VA, are people from our guild. After more than a year of talking and playing together online, we finally met face to face. And it was great. Everyone was just as nice as they are online and very gracious hosts. We even had a guy come all the way from Puerto Rico with his wife just to visit and go to Renn Fair. Whoa!

Okay, so we all got matching tabards, again made by our hostess. The tabards mirror similar tabards that our characters in game wear, so it's a nice little homage to the game. That's the red thing with the flame on it that you see in all the pictures.

Enough about the guild, more about the fair! The first thing I wanted to do when we got there was watch them joust, but that wasn't happening for another hour, so we made our way to where they were selling turkey legs and got ourselves lunch. Teresa wasn't so much into the turkey legs so she had baked potato. The turkey was good. We looked around for a bit more before making our way to the joust. The knights wore actual plate armor and were assisted by squires as they performed feats of skill such as hooking a ring off a post on their swords without touching the post. Then they had some mock battles where they beat on each other with wooden swords. Finally, at the end, they did full on jousting. They didn't knock anyone off their horse, but they broke a lot of lances. Very cool to see up close.

From there we saw the sights. Lots of artisans selling hand made clothing and weapons and cups and pouches and trinkets. I wanted to buy a handcrafted wooden cup but they were pretty expensive. Maybe next year. There were quite a few people very elaborately dressed from different time periods. There were pirates, and wenches, and Robin Hoods, and faeries, and all manor of different medieval style dress. There was also a fair number of pot bellied men walking around in kilts with no shirts, and women with really tight corsets. I'll leave it at that.

We tried Meade, which is a honey wine. It was okay to try, but I don't like wine all that much, so I don't think it's something I would have regularly. Still, I can say I've had mead, and that's worth it. We visited with our friends, saw some more booths and watched part of a stage show where they were calling people up on stage to act out the story of the three little pigs. It was pretty humorous. I think it was mostly improv by the stage actors, so that's always fun.

Several people asked us about the matching tabards, and a lot of them were familiar with the game if the didn't outright play it. We met an older couple right before we left the fair who had all sorts of stories to tell of the game and what they play in it once they found out we were in a guild. They were a riot. We think the man may have had a bit too much mead...

Towards the end of the day when everyone was getting tired, we congregated around a table and just visited. I tried ye olde milk and cookies. They were good. They sell just about everything you can imagine on a stick. Chocolate cheesecake on a stick. Fried Macaroni and Cheese on a stick. Steak on a stake. Lots more I can't remember right now, and a lot I wanted to try but didn't have the stomach to. It was all fairly pricey, but that comes with the territory.

I think I could easily go to these things often if I had the time and the money. It would be fun to build a nice outfit piece by piece until you had something really cool. I think I'd go for a more rustic, robin hood type thing than a royal Renaissance look, with leather pouches and a sword and bow. Oh, weapons weren't allowed in the fair, not even play weapons, unless they were bought there, so I didn't bother bringing the sword I actually owned, but it would be cool to include that somehow.

The fair I mentioned that's in Charlotte runs through November. I'm thinking we might be able to get out for a day and go with Teresa's family or friends in the area. We'll see. Oh yes, we'll see.

The Joust

Prepare thyself for merriment.

Teresa Stencils

Teresa is painting the guild symbol on a tabard to be worn at the Renn Fair. The name of the guild is Veritas, and the guild symbol is a gold flame.