Good morning!

As we enter the All-Star break, Boston's Magic Number to eliminate New York from contention in the American League East is 72.

Thank you, and have a great day.

A lunch-time post

Yep, hard at work.

I am getting more and more involved in the employment aspect of the job. I am learning a lot.

We had a very full weekend.

Saturday, alethea_eastrid and I drove to Springfield, Vt., to see her dad compete in an acrobatics contest in his one-seater Pitts airplane.

We were chatting with a guy because fo the cool design (the "course" for a different competition), and it turned out the shirt was from the world competition in Poland. Turns out he was a member of the Ukranian national aerobatics team. He lives over here now, I think. He and another guy were taking turns in their plane, which was a Russian-made YAK-51M.

The whole thing was very cool.

We wound up helping a bit on the competition.

On the way over, we found a terrific farmers' marker in the middle of Vermont, where we saw lots of vendors we had never seen before.

On the way back, we would up in Northshire Books until it closed.

Sunday, we were up early (8 a.m. ish), because the tremendous thunderstorm had briefly know out power, and we were unsure of the time.

We took advantage of this and went to the Schenectady Farmers' Market, which rocked and then went to visit dulcinbradbury and everyone else at her house. We talked, ate and later went out for ice cream.

It was great to get to spend the whole weekend with Alethea.

Back to work.

Mid-afternoon break . . .

 So Anthony Bourdain will be on stage Nove. 15 at Proctor's Theatre in Schenectady. Tickets are on sale.

Apparently, he talks about all the stuff he does, and then he answers questions.

Here are some of the things he said last year when he was here.

I have mentioned the last comment at least once.

• “When someone cooks for you, they are telling you about themselves. They’re telling you about their own personal histories, they’re telling you about what their mothers made for them, their ethnic history, their national history, the history of their region, what they like. And they’re giving you the purest expression of that by offering you food.”
• Quoting Mario Batali on omnivorous eating: “If it’s slower than me, stupider than me and tastes reasonably good, then pass the salt.”
• “I thought I could drink, but every 90-year-old Russian grandmother can drink my sorry ass under the table and drive me home while rolling a cigarette.”
• “The first person to eat a snail was one hungry son of a bitch. Some starving, country-ass (expletive) is so hungry he’s watching a lone snail crawl by and he thinks, ‘Well, maybe by slathering enough garlic butter on it, I can choke it down.’”
• On Mario Batali: “Little by little by little he has elevated our hopes and expectations of what a meal should be and can be.”
• On Rachel Ray: “First of all, bitch doesn’t tip. … If you’re doing $40 a day, that means (you’re) stiffing waiters all over the place. … Aspiring to mediocrity is not a good thing, and that’s what pisses me off. It’s not OK to buy prechopped onions in the supermarket. It’s just not OK. Garlic powder is not food. … It’s her world, I just live in it. And on what she spends on (nail care) in a week she could have me killed, and she probably will. But at least I can watch her neck slowly disappear on television.”
• “I respect nonprofessionals on the Food Network. Giada De Laurentiis isn’t a chef, but I’d eat her food. … Ina Garten is certainly not a chef. I wouldn’t want to spend a weekend at her house … When Ina makes mashed potatoes or Ina makes meatloaf or Ina makes chicken, it’s good. She takes that extra step and she tells you … it is possible to properly roast a chicken. She will show you how.”
• On Gordon Ramsay’s Fox series “Hell’s Kitchen”: “It’s a horrible theater of cruelty.”
• His preferred final meal: Roasted bone marrow spread on crusty bread and sprinkled with sea salt.
• (Warning: Some readers may find this offensive): On the only circumstances under which he could tolerate sharing a meal with Rachel Ray: If she were wearing “a ball gag and assless chaps.”

EK Royal Travel Fund sale!

I posted this earlier on EK List. That's why it may look familiar.

There is now an updated (beyond what's here) web site at Pennsic Sale for East Kingdom Travel Fund

There are some cool new items on the web site!

We are continuing to raise money for the East Kingdom Travel Fund.

We have some excellent offers from bards, artisans and some guys.

We’re going to put them up on a web site, but I thought I would offer them here first

First-come, first-served. These are all planned for Pennsic. Yes, send me an e-mail claiming the item, and  I hook you up with the donor.

Minimum $25 donation

1. Lady Judith, royal bard, will do a 30-minute command performance of period pieces for you and your camp.

2. Lord Joris will give you a one-hour juggling lesson.

3. Master Andrixos (trimguy)says:

 

During the first week of Pennsic, Master Andrixos Seljukroctonis will provide you with two hours of personalized tutoring in Latin, at whatever level you need.  Alternately, it can be claimed as two hours of his time in translating documents or scroll texts into Latin.  (this is probably best redeemed when he is at home.  If you are taking on-site instruction, we should probably spend some time beforehand feeling out where you are in your studies.

Minimum $40 donation

1. Lord Maeryk has hand-crafted a pen of coco-bolo wood, especially for you.

It's the second from the left in this Photo.

SOLD: For 50 quatloos!


Minimum $50 donation.

1. Lady Katherine Ashwode will write a poem, song or story from information you provide. If you win this item quickly enough, she may well have it ready for Pennsic. (Ask Countess Alethea about the on-the-fly song Katherine wrote about the manliness of Duke Gunthar of Ansteorra.

2. Master Liam will visit your camp and he just might happen to have a variety of combinations of water, malt, yeast and hops with him. Let’s say he might have six different combinations of those elements. He’ll have tasting glasses, too, and with a little encouragement, he might tell stores about his six favorite beers.

3. Master Liam, busy guy that he is, will shoot at least 100 pictures of you and your household/camp/etc. and provide them to you electronically after Pennsic. These can be in-camp photos, pictures of your unit at a specific battle or anything else you might work out. (This item available more than once).

Minimum $65 donation

4. Lady Alesoune will make you a fencing doublet to your specifications. This will not be able to be done before Pennsic.

As you might guess, we are also looking for additional donations of time and skill.

Popular items include preparing dinner for a certain number of people. (The bidder also pays for the food items needed)

An hour or two of camp work.

Dinner cleanup for one or more nights.

Lessons of an hour or two from people with specific skills.

Anything else you might think of.

Please contact me at liamstliam@gmail.com to claim an item or to offer a donation.

The white courtesy phone is ringin' for some of you folks

Obviously, I would like to publicize the  Pennsic Sale for East Kingdom Travel Fund as well as I can in the next week, but obviously I do not want to spam everyone, either.

I think there are items there that will interest anyone going to Pennsic (and some that will interest folks who are not).

If you could post something to the effect of.

There is a pre-Pennsic sale of some pretty cool donated items going on at Pennsic Sale for East Kingdom Travel Fund. If you have a chance, please take a minute and check it out.

Or something to that effect.

I'd like to ask the following people to hit their kingdom list with this if they think it would be appropriate:

silme

pepperbeast

uniquename123

summers_place

much_ado

silverstah

trimguy

ladyeliz

That covers The Midrealm, Aethelmearc, Ealdormere, Ansteorra, Atlantia and the hordes of folks coming from Drachenwoald and Lochac. ;)

If you are not on your kingdom list, can you please pass it to someone who is? And confirm for me.

If anyone thinks it would be appropriate for a local list (I am thinking mainly East, but there are other local groups that have a lot of people go to Pennsic), just drop a line here to let us know you did it.

Thanks, everyone!

One last thing

My photos from Northern Region War Camp are being uploaded even as we speak.

There is pink and red awesomeness.