Marquis Cthulhu

1:54am: Funny thing about fires
So, a funny thing happened the other day. I was driving from Moses Lake to Ellensburg early in the morning (like ~4), having been spending time with the Echo Base crew. Well as dawn started to break I saw smoke coming from the little town of Vantage on the far side of the Columbia River. I stopped by to gawk and perhaps take a nap when I realized I was the first person at a little eatery.

As I slowed down to call 911 a pajamaed woman in a golf-kart yelled at me to get out of the way of the firetruck. Not being one to argue with a firetruck I did so and the firetruck pulled up to the fire.

I jumped out to see if I could help, and ended up hauling around hoses. Once the truck's water supply was set up I was given a hose and the west side of the building to spray.

None of this is particularly funny, but what is interesting is that I had brought my fireman's jacket, or as I now know are called 'turnouts'.

I am not a fireman, nor do I really have any good reason to have a flame retardant jacket.

Although I do like to run around in it yelling “I'm retardant! I'm retardant!”

9:46pm: A distant Mirror
I'm currently reading Barbara W. Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. I've owned the book for... oh I don't know, several years I suppose. It was given to me by Tom the bookstore owner, a good friend of mine at the time. I don't believe he ever really told me what the book was about, only that he had read it and throughly enjoyed it.

It has been sitting on my bookshelf for several years now. I have several books I simply haven't ever gotten around to reading for one reason or another. There is always a certain amount of risk in starting a new book. It is far easier for most occasions to simply pick up the light fantasy read, or dry textbook full of interesting information that has been picked apart in the past.

A new book takes an amount of investment before it pays anything back to you. Since I refuse to read inner cover blurbs, or at the very least take them with a grain of salt, I rarely don't know what a book is even about. I prefer the author's introduction to the subject and characters rather than a dry, and often misinformed publisher.

A few days ago I felt like starting a new book, adventurous I suppose. I am home for christmas, and have access to my several bookshelves for the first time in half a year. The second book from the start of the row, and the second shelf from the celling was A Distant Mirror.

It turns out that the book is a narrative study of the 14th century particularly through the life story of Enguerrand IV, Sire de Crecy. His story had been told through the chronicles of Froissart. It turns out I already have a copy of and haven't read either, the same book has some Mallory (whom I have read and love) and Holinshed (whom I haven't heard good things).

Tuchman handles the subject very well so far in her book. She has held my interest through the first 3 chapters. She's even apologized for the boring back-history she must wade through before she gets to her more interesting chapters.

I enjoy her style quite a bit. If I ever write a book (which *is* one of my major aspirations) elements of her style might be worth further study. She appears to be a relatively prolific author for historical works.

2:41am: show me no deference and I'll do the same for you
"gravity boy. I'm counting on you to be my protage"

I've been thinking about 'things' today. These 'things' never really lead anywhere for me, so don't worry about any starting relevations from me right now. I think it may have been 'Siddhartha' that got me thinking about things.

I can see myself in him in a lot of ways. In the way he can focus his life on something and have it be meaningless to him. I can see myself in the way he decides to change everything, to die in a way, and move on. I can see myself in the way that whatever he takes to he must excell in, and does.

I have only a few pages left in the book. I am some pages after his lover dies. Reading the story has made me think of the Cerebus series again, and why I like it. I read a blurb once by Cerebus' author Dave Sims about how the series was his attempt to cronical a lifetime. I thought about how sometimes Cerebus is the main character in the story and controlling the events, about how sometimes he is the one controlled by the events, and about how sometime he is just observing events and they exist apart from him. About how the story moves with lighting pace, with a beautiful F. Scott Fitzgerald inspired riverboat journey that lasts most of a year, or with a dragging slowness, just like life. I've thought about the people that he loves and meets in his life.

I've thought today about the people that I've cared about in my life as well. The people I've seemed to make a connection with, the people who have cared about me. The paragraph where Siddhartha's lover wakes up once more before she dies and sees him standing above her bed, where she said she was seeking Gotama and peace, but she found him and that was just as well. The adoration implied in her sentence really moved me.

Where this moved me I don't know. Likely nowhere, I'm just feeling introspective, philosophical, overly poetic, overly pretentious and overly pedantic.

I'm tired cold and lonely, I'll stop ranting now.

10:58am:

The Dude You scored 88%

You had it all figured out by the end. Well, not quite all of it, but considering the strict drug and alcohol regimen you've been adhering to, and all those concussions you sustained, you've done exceedingly well. You're clearly a fan, and I commend you on your sophisticated grasp of Lebowskian detail.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 76% on Lebowski lore

Link: The Big Lebowski Test written by JoeCoolJoe on OkCupid Free Online Dating

5:38pm: 20 answers
Mary tagged me, so enjoy all.

Write 20 random facts about yourself then tag the same amount of people as minutes it takes you to write the facts.

1. I am moving to CWU in less than 6 days.
2. I went to special 'smart' classes in grade school. And then did really bad in Middle school.
3. I live in a building that's 100 years old.
4. I can not taste sweet.
5. I can hear fluorescing lights from a long ways away and I can't filter them out.
6. The only tv show that I watch every week is Battlestar Galatica.
7. I think that zombies are funny.
8. I no longer consider myself a guitar player because it's been so freakin long since I've taken out my guitar.
9. When I move next week I will not take more than a car load of stuff, and probably not end up using a lot of it.
10. I have an embarrassingly large liking for Buffy, I haven’t gotten into Firefly yet.
11. I am not very good about talking about myself, at least not in a way that people want to hear.
12. I have dreams of being successful one day.
13. My roommate-to-be's name is Ransom Allison. Everyone says it must be a weird christian thing. I’m not sure what they mean by that.
14. I am so not going to be able to tag enough people for the amount of time it took to complete.
15. I really want to be able to sing, but can't too well.
16. I like to think I can act. But can't too well.
17. I'm in fact not too bad with a longsword or rapier.
18. I am fairly non-religious.
19. My nose is kinda runny and I haven't been sleeping well as of late.
20. I just found out an armor colleague of mine is a white supremacist.

7:12pm: dumb question thingie, stole from dahlia
Click here.
Take the quiz.
Post your results.
( See MarquisCthulhu's results. )

3:45am: Ninja Nemesis
I've decided upon a Nemesis for myself. I have decided on the Ninja as my nemesis. This was the product of a very late conversation with one of the Emilys. For some reason this was related to the fact that ninja stars go *kapwing!* when encountering armor.

But in other sword news my fight partner and I are working on starting a non-profit for doing our presentations. It appears that the state of Washington is one of the best states for setting up a non-profit. The taxes are possibly a little daunting, as well as some of the paperwork.

I am doing the brunt of the research on the project at the moment, since it is close to my future career path. It might in fact be helpful to know how to set up a non-profit at some point in my career, who knows? They don't seem terribly difficult if you know the steps needed for one.

Along with a new business model, this NP is going to change a lot of things. Firstly we will likely be changing our name from the Knights of Arador, to the Knights of Veritas. There are going to be some issues with our service mark, we have quite the name established already. But with our resumes and new abilities it shouldn't be a problem.

Also is a change in our armor. The mild steel we wear is slightly more correct than stainless, but it's going to be handled by lots of children with grubby little hands, it's better this way. Since we're getting new armor anyway, we're going to move from about 1535 (and slightly later) to about 1370. I would prefer about 1400, but that's still being discussed. Also we are moving to a time period where putting on an arming coat with riveted mail already pointed far easier do do half way through a show.

Becoming a non-profit and getting grants is going to let us travel much further than we have in the past. I should also allow us to do far more shows in the area we already travel, and for a lower cost to the libraries and schools that we instruct.

Once we have have non-profit status it is going to be made a lot easier to fund many other projects as well. Heck, even the projects that don't require funding are going to have much more support.

I really should be sleeping, and yet I can not sleep. I am going to go back and do some more reading on grant writing.

4:08pm: Quick quiz, I'm out of town

Mary Sue Your score was 72 in Unbelievability!

You are your author's Mary Sue, and if a fiction writer wrote about a character like you, they would be doing something very wrong. You're unreal. There's something about you which words cannot describe- well, OK, they can, but not in a way that you seem at all plausible. You are completely unique, special, and, most of all, improbable. The chances of you being the way you are are about the same as the chances of your computer screen exploding right now. It could happen, but it would come as a big surprise. A novel with you as a character wouldn't even make it past the publishers. It would be rejected immediately because nobody would ever believe you could exist. You and your life are the stuff that daytime talk shows are made of. If you ever want to publish the story of your own life, make sure it's an autobiography, because you're too damn weird for fiction.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 95% on Implausibility

Link: The Are You a Plausible Character? Test written by coldrose on Ok Cupid

10:24am: Alas, less friends than we thought
I must first rant about the latest Arador gig, and then I will proceed into slightly less geeky topics.

We had a great show in Longview, Washington this Tuesday past. For the end of their summer reading program the county (not sure which one) decided to hold a mini ren-faire for their community. The highlight entertainment was us, the Knights of Arador. The total attendance was somewhere around 400 which will greatly pad our numbers for the total summer audience count.

It was a great show, well liked by the librarians and by a huge number of kids as well. In fact the librarian is going to pimp for us to various other libraries in the area (rich area).

We had our first real encounter with the SCA as well. I had worried about the SCA showing up and trying to discredit us during a show. Not that I was worried that they would succeed, I was hoping they wouldn’t taint the show anyway. Well they showed up in their completely a-historical armor and ridiculous costuming (try a post 1700’s collar for someone portraying a ‘fencer’ from the late 1500’s).

And I was never worried they would ask an armor question that Eric wouldn’t know. I would be hard pressed to find a question myself that he wouldn’t know the answer to and the audience would actually understand the question.

And I was *never* worried they would try to pick apart the combat, they’re fight style has no basis in any sort of history.

I guess I was worrying for nothing.

I wish they hadn't made fools of themselves and tried to intimidate us. I really wish they had been gracious about the show. And I really really wish they would ask before handling the armor (and stop calling it chainmail).

I’ll tell more about what’s going on in my life later in the day.

4:40pm: Another Arador Show
We had a Knights show up in Cusick, a small community about three hours north of my home town. The small library (and equally small librarian) was only expecting ~20 people to show up. We pulled a crowd of 58, which admittedly is a small crowd for us it gives us the chance to explain what we do really well. When we have crowds of little kids counting 300 or more we start to lose them a little bit. We were told after the show that we were the first group that library has ever paid to bring out for a show. The decided to hire us after they called our local library where we did our *first* show and they told them that we were the best show they’ve ever had! That was really exciting news to hear. While I felt our first show was a good one I feel that our current show is much better. We’re doing our second performance for them next month, and we hope to blow their socks off, and hopefully find some students for the academy (fechtschulen for Zorn out there).

In the front row of the show was a young man, kind of buff, hair slicked back, ear ring and arms crossed across his chest. My first impression was that he was local SCA coming to critique us. This sort of thing happens, not that the average SCAdian can pick holes in our research (there are very few that can out talk Eric about armor, and we always admit what we do not know). But they do tend to give a bad vibe to the audience. Talking to Eric and his wife Kara after the show, they had got the same vibe from him. (Dear audience member if you are reading this I apologize.) But once the show started his demeanor immediately changed. He became attentive and obviously fascinated with the material. After the show he talked with Eric and me about armoring and blademaking, correct steels for each and a number of other topics. He wasn’t a member of the SCA but was in a local acting troop. He even got information about bringing Eric out to teach a theatrical combat workshop.

I have a gig next Tuesday in Longview Washington, which is going to be a very long drive. But that event is their big summer time reading event with lots of performers. We seem to be the headliner event for the night and should have really high numbers show up.

That brings me to a good point. The promotion for the Knights needs to be reworked a little bit. Libraries aren’t getting the fact that we’re a show for all ages. We have constantly entertained audience members from 8 to 80, but we tend to scare small children (but so do puppet shows *shrug*).

12:40pm: too late
I was up until 6:30 this morning. I got maybe 4 hours of sleep last night. I was planning on just grabbing two so I could write someone in Finland and have him get it before... too late in the day. But it's like at least 10 P.m. there right now, so I likely missed him. I'll have to catch him on the next day cycle.

I have an event I'm throwing in the chapel upstairs tonight. It's going to last from ~7 until the end of time. And then saturday I have a combat presentation, which with any luck I should be exhausted for.

Ah these crazy summer nights...

12:41am: Shoulder problems
So my roommate Mason has reappeared out of the netherlands that are called 'outside'. He's been gone for two, three days. I figured he'd been eaten by a bear. They still have those 'outside' don't they, bears?

My other roommate is in Japan at the moment. I don't know what he'll be eaten by there. Something I can’t pronounce likely.

I am fairly sure I dislocated my shoulder at fight class the other day. I have really loose joints so it’s not *that* big of a deal. It’s just sore for a few days, no lasting damage...that I know of.

3:40am: Strange occurance with dancing girls: The real story
Ok, now I have a chance to actually explain myself. As I've said before I live in what used to be chapel. Or to be more correct I live *beneath* what used to be chapel.

The building was purchased by my fight partner primarily to have a place to practice swordplay. Subsequently it was decided that the building should pay for itself (which is how one should handle all of one’s liabilities). So it’s currently being renovated for weddings, and in the mean time it’s being used for dance classes and an EMA dojo.

The incident happened a week ago or so. I was out of town doing a library show and there was supposed to be a dance class upstairs in the chapel while Eric and I were away. Around 10 a.m., the time the show started (an hour and a half away), one of my housemates started hearing strange voices coming from my bedroom. Being the sleep deprived person he is, and with incremental amounts of my own tutelage in German wresting arts he grabbed his ‘clobbering stick’ and slowly opened the door to the sound of many female voices. At which point the lady in my window, attempting to break into my room, screamed; hilarity ensued.

Fortunately things were quickly sorted; the dance instructor had a bad key for the building and was desperately trying to get in. Eric was unreachable because we were in the middle of a show by the time she called. I (the sometime on site manager (only when shite hits the fan (and then just a guy who lives down stairs when the occasion calls for it))) (ah, nested parentheses how I love them, should I use brackets instead?) was gone.

So Mason let the dancing women (girls?) into the Chapel and everything thing went well after that.

So that’s my anti-climatic dancing girls story.

Today (yesterday now) I got up at around 8 and took my truck to the mechanic. I don’t suppose I mentioned this, but my truck died a couple of weeks ago on a trip to Spokane. I’m fairly sure it was the syncron in the manual transmission. Fourth gear had been having a problem for a month or so previously when I down shifted. Well on the way to Spokane it finally died on me. I could drive it, but only if I double clutched it like a Semi. Basically it was like not having a clutch at all and being able to shift simply by knowing where the transmission will actually sync up and change gears. It wasn’t easy, and if I had learned how to drive using a tac I may not have been able to get the damn thing home.

But as it was I got it home and have been driving my father’s big red beast of a pickup. I took it to the mechanic who had replaced my flywheel and contact plate about 6 months ago and had him take a look at it. If it was the transmission it wouldn’t be worth it to fix, but if it was something that was his fault it would be great! Anyway he was taking a look at it and he thought that it had to do with the hydraulic clutch system and not the transmission at all. Woooo!

If it’s just that it will be a simple matter to fix, and not $1800USD. But I know this, as soon as I get that damn thing back I’m selling it. The parts are too expensive for foreign cars. It’s been a great ride otherwise.

Other projects today:
Got a point man for the music project at the chapel
Worked on a research paper on WMA
Made a flier for my parent’s selling their house, and an ad for the local paper’s
Played a bit of Halo2 online with an old friend
Updated my Lj twice
Took a Nap
Answered an obscure question on the forums about the Dussack
Drew up plans for making wasters and priced Woodworth

Things to be done tomorrow:
Get over to my ‘rent’s place and change the oil on my dad’s truck
Distribute a flier for the LAN party

2:10pm: Call it providence, call it coincidence, call it what you wish.
Call it providence, call it coincidence, call it what you wish.

Someone added me to their msn messenger about a month and a half ago. I didn’t recognize her name and when we got to talking about it she had added me trying to add someone else with a similar name.

We got to talking and it turned out she was in Washington, planning on going to the same college as me in the fall. It was a strange coincidence but out of this world type of coincidence. What was strange was the fact that we knew some of the same people that I had had a serious falling out with about a year ago. She knew my ex girlfriend, was her friend’s cousin. Not only was she not from this area, she was from France. Now *this* was an incredible circumstance.

And given what her friends had told her she probably wouldn’t have talked to me at all if she hadn’t been the person she was. Instead of shunning me and/or ignoring me she helped me get some perspective on the situation, she listened to me and didn’t automatically take the side she had already heard.

I received an email in my box today from her sister, informing me that this incredible person, whom I had never met, died in a car accident this Sunday past. Her funeral service will be held in Geske Germany this Sunday.

Elizabeth, there is no way I can attend your funeral. But I swear that one day I will lay a flower where you rest.

12:59pm: Armor and Swords, the '05 tour, or how crowds of dancing girls were breaking into my room
It's been a while since I've updated my LJ. Something that I'm a little disappointed in about myself. But on the other hand I have been *very* busy this past... well forever.

It's been well over a month since I last posted and since then a lot of really neat things have happened to me. As each new event happens it makes each previous event less and less important. If I can still recall all that's been happening I'll try to update you all.

As many of you know I've moved out of my parent's house and I'm living in an apartment under a 100 year old + chapel. To those of you from where the history comes from probably wont think much of that figure but for eastern Washington it's one of the oldest buildings around.



This moving happened around the first of May. It being June I have a lot to tell people still.

June was a loooong month. My fight partner Eric, his wife Kara, and I had been throwing around the idea of an entertainment group for high class events, primarily wineries, for some amount of months. We finally got a website up in January. Eric and Kara did some marketing to several wineries in during a valentines day event in the Yakima Valley growing area. In late May the rather upscale winery Hedges' called us up and wanted us to perform for a VIP dinner for them.

Eric accepted the gig, worked out some particulars and we decided this was the chance we'd been waiting for. Unfortunately we weren't quite ready for a show. By not quite I mean not at all. But it was in our abilities to learn. Kara, Eric's wife, had to learn stage combat with a rapier nearly from scratch. We had all new costumes made for ourselves (a very long process with terrible patterns and sickness all around). We spend about every single waking moment of the next month getting ready for the show. To try to sum this section up, we kicked ass. On the basis of this show and a promotional cd I'm producing we should be getting more of these shows shortly. The pay scale for this show is about $200 apiece for a half hour show. So I'm excited to get more shows.



Next: what else was happening in June.
I finally graduated from Big Bend Community College (technically did this last winter). But now I am finally done taking classes there and I got my Associates Degree. Mid June I went through finals week. I've been fairly stressed out this quarter between my parents, moving out, various sword things and to repeat myself: my parents. To put it mildly I slacked off this quarter, a lot. Finals week was harsh on me. I had a 30 page math project due the week before finals, which I stopped sleeping for altogether. The actual week of finals I was lucky to grab 4 hours a night while still maintaining my practice for the rapier show.

Let's move forward shall we? July.

So far this july I've performed 1 hour armored combat presentations for:


# Wednesday, July 6th, 11am: Yakima, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Yakima Public Library
102 N 3rd Street
Yakima, WA 98901

# Wednesday, July 6th, 3:30pm: Granger, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Granger Public Library
508 Sunnyside Avenue
Granger, WA 98932

# Thursday, July 7th, 4pm: Moxee, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Moxee Public Library
255 W. Seattle
Moxee, WA 98936

# Tuesday, July 12th, 10am: Wapato, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Wapato Public Library
119 East 3rd Street
Wapato, WA 98951

# Wednesday, July 13th, 1pm: Winthrop, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Winthrop Public Library
509 Highway 20
Winthrop, WA 98862

# Wednesday, July 13th, 4:30pm: Omak, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Omak Public Library
30 South Ash
Omak, WA 98841

# Thursday, July 14th, 10:30am: Ephrata, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Ephrata Public Library
45 Alder NW
Ephrata, WA 98823

# Thursday, July 14th, 2pm: Wenatchee, WA. 1 hour armoured combat program.
Wenatchee Public Library
310 Douglas Street
Wenatchee, WA 98801




Believe me, even if this doesn't sound like a lot, it is. This brings us to last night, where I slept for 18 hours because I hadn't slept more than 4 a night for about two weeks.

I have a lot more projects upcoming that some of you may be interested in, including going on tour, a dvd and possibly the history channel.

Oh darn, I didn't even get to the title of the post, I'll have to do that later today.

9:09am:

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey
Name:	Seth Woodworth
Birthday:	06-16-86
Birthplace:	Uh, not sure
Current Location:	Moses Lake
Eye Color:	Green I think? I can't look there
Hair Color:	Brown, with what I like to think are red highlights
Height:	Well I usualy say 'somewhere over 5'10" ' but recent events have made me start to wonder if it is in fact 5'9"
Right Handed or Left Handed:	Right
Your Heritage:	Your guess is as good as mine, partially irish I've discovered recently
The Shoes You Wore Today:	brown leather dress shoes with no socks
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger:	any responce less than two words that wasn't brb
Thoughts First Waking Up:	it's cold?
Your Best Physical Feature:	legs perhaps? you tell me
Pepsi or Coke:	neither, but I suppose pepsi is slightly less disgusting
MacDonalds or Burger King:	I can't really tell the difference
Single or Group Dates:	single
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea:	I couldn't tell you the difference, but lipton isn't trying to sound clever
Chocolate or Vanilla:	Vanilla (chocolate *shudder*)
Cappuccino or Coffee:	coffee
Do you Smoke:	nope
Do you Swear:	too often
Do you Sing:	far too often
Do you Shower Daily:	by daily you mean once between sleeping periods or every 24 hours? nm, I think I qualify for both
Have you Been in Love:	once
Do you want to go to College:	I'm already there
Do you want to get Married:	to who?
Do you belive in yourself:	...what an incredably useless platatude
Do you get Motion Sickness:	I have, but not recently
Do you think you are Attractive:	not terribly
Are you a Health Freak:	um, no
Do you get along with your Parents:	rarely
Do you like Thunderstorms:	yes
Do you play an Instrument:	several, including now a lute
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol:	yes
In the past month have you Smoked:	yes
In the past month have you been on Drugs:	no
In the past month have you gone on a Date:	yes
In the past month have you gone to a Mall:	no
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos:	yes
In the past month have you eaten Sushi:	no
In the past month have you been on Stage:	yes
In the past month have you been Dumped:	no
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping:	not yet
In the past month have you Stolen Anything:	no
Ever been Drunk:	yes
Ever been called a Tease:	yes
Ever been Beaten up:	yes
Ever Shoplifted:	no
How do you want to Die:	in bed, by which mean crushed to death by an elephant while having sex, with someone else's wife
What do you want to be when you Grow Up:	a person with a really interesting job
What country would you most like to Visit:	germany
<

5:32pm: Playing solitare with a deck of 51
I am currently stuck in my bedroom. For the first time in human history Mason actually has a female in the house.
*shrug*
Redhead, figures. What is it with this house and redheads?

Anyway, updates about me.
Well first of all living in the Chapel is both better and worse than living at home. I get nearly nothing done. That's a lie actually. I get a lot done, but I have so much interesting stuff to do it feels like I'm always doing something else. My roommates are really fun.

Lowell is a pilot geek and if it's a videogame, he's played it. And can probably beat me at it.

Mason is a flight instructor's son. He's a writer, he just got out of HS, has a small next egg and plans on living on that until he can make a living writing. Good luck capn. Very knoldgeable in most subjects. If it's obscure and slightly interesting and even I don't know it, he does.

Crouton is a lucid dreaming christian who sleeps all day. I ended up staying up all night discussing religion with him, good times.

The Chapel business plan is coming along as well. A Dojo is lined up for eveningings, and a dance studio for afternoons. Still allowing time for Hamlet (which I'm producing this summer) Arador fight academy (stage and historical combat) and other assorted projects.

I found out on the 26th of May that I have a Desert Duelers gig on June 26th. The DD gigs consist of playing a ~1620's character and do a bunch of stage combat as entertainment for wineries and such.

More news later

2:03am: Moven out
So I finally moved out of my parent's house. I've moved into what was a 100 year old ex-chapel. It was most recently used as a theater and then a dance studio. My fight partner Eric bought the building, and I am renting the downstairs apparement with my buds; Lowell, Mason, and Crouton.

I've been in the building for about a week now. I'll tell you all about it when I've had more than an hour's sleep. I woke up on Sunday at around noon, and it's 2:30 am two days past that. I'm going to try to get some sleep now. Not that I'm very tired for some reason.

1:14pm: Limes? What limes?
Ok, I can finally tell you what *was* going to be going on this weekend. My group, the Knights of Arador were going to be filmed for the history chanel. We didn't have our own show or anything, it was going to be a section on historical armored combat in a show about a castle being built over Idaho.

Armored combat, historically and outside of renfairs, didn't happen with 20 lb swords slamming against metal armor creating holes in it. No. Armored combat was a contest to slide a sword where the armor was not.

This is what we would have told them on the show. This is something that has been shown on the history chanel only once before (afaik) when John Clements was on a program, and it didn't come off too well.

But alas, it was canceled.

I informed my parents of this terrible news (well terrible to me, apparently they didn't care). And they replied "You were going to be on the history chanel."

:-|

I'm not terribly hurt by this, I'm well aware they have no interest in my sword stuff. But perhaps a little interest when I'm going to be on TV? And they complain that I never tell them anything *shrug*. Well I'm sure as hell not going to tell them anything now.

11:54pm: Further updates
Ok, I'm mostly human again. I kinda like the feeling of supreme exhaustion. I might start just skipping every other night of sleep, just to try it out. The other thing that would be really neat is the uberman schedule. It's where you only sleep 20 minutes every four hours. Then you may or may not have a core sleep of two hours in the middle of the night. If one does it right one only sleeps a total of 2-4 hours a day and it keeps you refreshed. I'll blaber more about it some other time

Right now I want to post a picture from this weekend. It's not the best picture, and doesn't do justice to the makeup job that was done.



I'll also explain why we're all dancing the thriller at another time. And yes, it *is* my fault. I'm a bad person

10:50pm: Everybody wants prostetic foreheads to wear on their real heads
Saturday was the longest day in the history of the world. Well not really. It was clearly the longest day of my life, but it's far more dramatic this way.

The story begins Thursday night. I went and played Halo with the dorm nerds, Chanel, and Crouton. I got home from that around 2 in the morning. I got home to the 5th degree from my mother, and then slept from about 3 to 9:30. Not a terribly large amount of sleep, but I've had much worse.

So Friday I spent the day packing for what was planning to be an eventful weekend, doing yardwork, and going on a 2 mile run. Not a bad way to spend a day all things considered. I wrapped this up at about 6 when I went to bed, falling asleep by about 7.

My alarm got me back up at 11 p.m. This was planned, so I wasn't too upset at the damned thing. I got my stuff together went to Eric's and left Moses Lake by 1 in the a.m.

Mapquest

Where we were heading was Fort Flagler State Park to do some stage combat in the movie Gamers: Second Edition

http://www.the-gamers.com/

We arrived on set around 5:30 (we were expecting the drive to be much longer). And drove around looking for the actual place we were supposed to meet up with people until 7:30 when the cast finally started stirring (lucky bastards).

We didn't do much until about 8, when we helped stuff get set up a little bit, and did odd jobs. By about 9:30 we ran out of things to do, and ended up in a 2 hour conversation with an eastern marial artist about western martial arts, but that will have it's own post later.

Around 11:30 I finally made it into the makeup chair, where I stayed for an hour and a half. I was playing a ghoul and had an elaborate prostitic forehead that needed to be glued on and set up properly. Some sort of gelatin, great material, very comfortable to wear. The rest of the makeup/costuming was very comfortable. The makeup covered most of my body, making me itchy and not able to touch anything for the rest of the day.

At one we *finally* were able to start filming fight scenes. The fights wern't complicated at all. I've done far more taxing ones (admittedly with greater space to do them in), and far more complicated ones. But apparently neither were required for this part of the movie.

The armor I wear for Knights of Arador was brought along for one of the main actors, really bailing out the production. They didn't have *any* sort of armor for the guy who was suposed to be the armored tank type of charactor. I'm glad that we could help out, but I'm much smaller than this guy, and not all of the armor fit the way that it should. Contrawise, it could have been far worse.

I was really enthused to be in a movie, so whenever anyone needed anything, be it an actor/extra to lay dead somewhere, help moving something, or voluenteering to fall off of stuff, I was asking if I could do it.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk about the movie per-se, so I'm going to avoid posting any specifics of the actual production or script online.

We finished up this section of the movie around 12:30 in the a.m. on Sunday. By this point I'd been up for well over 24 hours, and I'm not even going to tell you how long Eric had been up.

We would have much liked to bathe and crash, but there were problems with that. We didn't really have any place to stay. We had checked into a hostel online a few days previously, but we missed the check-in time since we were on set. And we really didn't feel like imposing on the already very cramped cast quarters.

We were sticky, tired and wanting to be home. So we decided to simply do that.

Around 2 in the morning we decided to start driving home. I wasn't driving, but I stayed awake to help keep Eric up.

I finally got home myself at about 7:30 in the a.m. this sunday morning. I stayed up for another hour and a half scrubbing makeup off of me and eatting a little something before sleep.

At 9 a.m. sunday I had been up since friday at 11 p.m. 34 hours, with a lot of combat, and falls, and swinging weapons in the meantime. Incredable.

I grabbed myself about 10 hours of sleep, and now here I am. Fun times, fun times...

I have a lot to day about the experience, but I'll post my feelings about the weekend later. I just wanted to get the story out first.

Thanks everybody!

10:49pm: Web comics are my friends
First of all, I've found a new webcomic that I hearily recomend:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/

This is being added to my daily regiment of:
www.penny-arcade.com (my first and only love)
www.sluggy.com (isn't it nifty?)
www.sorethumbsonline.com (political retoric at it's worst)

I've spent a lot of time in the past few days reading the backlogs of schlock mercenary. And when I catch up I'll likely keep reading them. But in the meantime I have a lot of really nifty reading to do.

2:32am: Gummi Bear
Oh, and one day I *am* going to marry you Niki Jones.

2:15am: Way too late...
So I went back and am an editor for the college newspaper again.
I've spent more time in the journalism building in the past three years that I have at home. I just can't stay away from the job. *shrug*

This quarter I'm doing the 'features' section. Which basically means whatever I want. If that turns out to be somewhat interesting; great. Preferrably with lots of pictures.

Great, sounds like a blast. The downside is that I didn't get to use the camera at all this last week. So I don't have any material, we print monday.

This was the problem as I realized it about 12 hours ago. I spent the next few hours rummaging through a photography closet looking for inspiration. I eventually made a machine that was honestly the coolest strobe light in existance. Unfortunately that didn't work out to any picture ideas for two reasons: it was too short of range to make an effective lighting source, and when I'm around strobe lights I go into a complete catatonic trance and lose my ballance. So that didn't work.

I forgot to bring any of the pictures home of the set that I *did* finish. But I'll tell you 'bout them later. I had a lot of fun today irregardless.

*sorry 'bout the spelling it's really early and I havn't slept much lately, I'll fix it later*

9:58am: It's thursday, I think
Yay, it's thursday-ish.

That means that... well I guess that doesn't mean anything in particular. My college is on a 4 day work week, which means longer days, but longer weekends as well. So I supose that means that today is my friday. Yay for fridays!

I also am heading over to the shop after my next class and I'm going to go build some armor. More yay for Seth.

This saturday I might be learning some I.33 with Magnus' group, and we'll teach his group some Leichtenhaur in return. The downside is we need to find a place to meet in the middle where we can all practice. The town of ellensburg is the best choice, but I don't know if the cops are going to hassle us there. It's likely they will, they've been giving us trouble here in the park.

As far as local practice goes we should have the chapel soon, so fights will be indoors and comfortably private once again.