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.

Off to Rennfest!

Teresa and I are (soon to be) on our way to the Maryland Renaissance Festival! We're going to stay with some friends who live near Washington D.C. and enjoy a weekend of eating Turkey Legs and seeing people dressed up in fancy medieval gear and stuff. I'm pretty excited. Our hosts may even be putting together some costumes for us, since they do this more often and have extra stuff on hand. That sounds silly at first, but where we're going, it won't be silly. At least I hope so.

I've always enjoyed fantasy. From books to video games to the fascination with swords and knights. But I've never actually made it to a Renaissance Fair. There was one called King Richard's Fair that was held near Boston, but we never went because we didn't have anyone to go with, and it was more my kind of thing than Teresa's. Well now we have someone to go with, friends of both of ours, and even Teresa is a little excited about it which makes me happier about it all too.

The trip is about 7 or 8 hours up, but I'm taking the day off from work tomorrow so we can spend two whole days there. We'll spend tonight in Greensboro and then drive the rest of the way in the morning. It's been a long time since we made a trip just for fun and not just to see family, or to move. Some of our best memories are of traveling places during college, and seeing new things. We've been cooped up too long. Time to get out.

Speaking of getting out, the weather turned all Autumn like this week. After the rain cleared up on Sunday it's been nothing but chill breezes and lazy sunny days. I love it. It's my favorite season. And my hope is that soon it will frost, and then the grass will stop growing. And then I can have two to three hours of my life back on weekends. Wait, I mean, darn, I won't get to be outside with that awesome lawn mower of mine I talked about. Shucks.

Dan Luckman Theme Song (Remix)

Several, several, months ago, I took a commission from my sister to write a song for my dad. I make up a lot of music as I go along while playing the keyboard a lot, but I never really write anything down, or remember it when I come back to the keyboard later. It's always just for fun. I took this opportunity and wrote something fun and catchy with some things about my dad that my sister and I have experienced and love him for.

At the time I had just gotten a Powerbook with Garageband. I didn't really know how to use it and ended up just recording the song while playing over the lap top microphone. The quality was bad, and I wasn't so great and singing and playing together but the idea came across and my parents and my sister loved it. At least that's what they told me.

Well today after church, I was inspired to play my piano again and decided to try and understand Garageband a little better. Dad's song loaded when I opened the program, and I started thinking about ways I could improve on it. So here's what I did. I added drums and a bass line, then recorded piano and vocals on separate tracks so I could do one at a time. I also used an external mic as opposed to the on on the laptop. This all culminates in a remix of the Dan Luckman song which I am absolutely thrilled with. It was a lot of fun.

This one's for you dad. Love you.



Lyrics:
Hey look who's that over there?
Watching NASCAR in his La-z-boy chair
Drinking Henry Weinhard's Root Beer
Don't worry you have nothing to fear
From Dan Luckman

Works at Fred Meyer down the street
Selling produce to all that he meets
His sidekick Dax at home at his feet
Faithful forever, she really likes meat
From Dan Luckman

He's your best friend
He'll be with you
Until the end
He's Dan Luckman

Once in a while he'll come to you room
Say he's a terrodactyl and then he'll screech real loud
He'll make you proud

Then he'll play his air guitar
It's not that good but you'll still laugh
Cause it's so bad
And he's your dad

Yes, he's crazy, it's true
He'd wear Hawain shirts every day if he could
Goes out on his boat, to catch fish
Brings them home to make a tasty dish

He's Dan Luckman
He's your best friend
He'll be with you
Until the end

He's Dan Luckman
He's your best friend
He'll stay with you
Until the end

He's Dan Luckman

Our Smoky Mountains

This is a view of our new place from the street. That's the front door and the living room window. On the left are the master bedroom windows. There are two drive ways, one on either side, and that's our garage back there on the right, but it's mostly for storage and lawn equipment, not for a car. The staircase you see goes out to the street, so we don't really use it much, but it looks nice. One of these weekends I'm going to work on removing weeds and brush from that front yard. We're responsible for yard maintenance, so I figure I should take it seriously. Teresa just bought me a rake and shovel too! Isn't she thoughtful? Oh, and by the way, this picture was taken just after mowing with my fancy electric mower. If you look real close at the front door, you can see Hannah wondering what I'm doing.

Here is the back of the house. That door leads to the kitchen and the windows are to the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms. The larger bedroom will be a guest room and study. The third bedroom is slowly becoming a music room where I have my keyboard and stereo and various other items that don't fit anywhere else in the house. Again, I had just mowed the lawn, so it looks real nice. It had gone three weeks prior to this. It did take me two hours though. Even with a nice lawn mower, the lawn is just big. Speaking of the lawn.


Here is the back yard. It's fenced on the sides and at the back, which you see here, but not the front to either side of the house yet. I'm working on fixing that so we can let Hannah out without a leash. Supervised, but free to run. I'm pretty sure if we just left her on her own, she'd find a way out, but it would be nice to be able to play with her out there. The yard is sloped. High at the left, and low at the right, so it's really easy to mow going one direction, and lot harder going the other.


And this last picture is the view from the South side of the house taken from our front porch. If you're facing our front door, as in the first picture, and turn 90 degrees to your right, you'll see the mountains. It's really pretty. And in the mornings and some rainy days it's either completely obscured by fog and clouds, or you can see them lingering around the mountain tops. We're not sure, but we think that large gash in the mountain top might be preparation for a road leading to the new Tiger Woods golf course that they're building somewhere around there.

So that's our new place from the outside. Eventually when we get a couch and set things up how we want it and it's all clean, I'll take some inside pictures for you all to see. Speaking of a couch, we did some more shopping in Asheville and didn't really find anything. We did however revisit a store in Black Mountain and Teresa kept coming back to a couch she had tried out several weeks ago. It may end up being the one. I'll keep you posted since I know you're all riveted to the Luckman Couch Search 2009 adventure.