Awards and the Aftermath

The new fence doubles as a tent clothes line.

I finally received my AOA at Pax in Thescorre, our Barony of residence, though we have played with Hartstone for years due to distance and travel factors.  In the same breath as the AOA, HRM Timothy bumped it to a Sycamore for illumination and costuming.  I cannot even begin to express how happy/relieved/appreciated this made me feel.

The upside of the award system is that it shows your members how much you appreciate their work, whatever it may be.  The downside is that sometimes people "slip through the cracks" as my friend said, and when I thanked him, he said "it was long overdue."  I don't need cookies to play this game, but gosh darn they taste good on occasion.  Howard, who refuses to tell me if he has any imaginary titles, said "it's nice when it's due, but but better timely than finally."  This was 'finally' and I hadn't realized how discouraged I was getting.  So if your local group has someone who has held office, lends a helping hand, creates beautiful things, fights with honor or even just has a really good kit; write them a recommendation for awards.  You don't even have to know what awards they have already, just write in.  Most Kingdoms keep decent records, though my friend Thorsol told me of a gentleman who got two AOA's.  The sitting king at the time told him if he got a 3rd he could trade it in for a grant level of his choice, which I think is hilarious.

My son had a blast playing in the rain.  He soaked two outfits and fortunately I had one more dry change for the ride home.  

m'Lady or not, we all got drenched by the same rain.  Everything was soaked.  I had to ask a friend to cut me out of my gown because the ties had tightened so much in the downpour that I couldn't get out.  Thankfully Offray is cheap and it wasn't lucette.  At that point I wouldn't have cared either.  Trains are pretty, but I'll never figure out how/why ladies wore these things to walk around outside in.  Clean gardens & grand estates, yes... to market or about town... they'd have been trailing horse dung everywhere.  I know this because I came home with about an acre worth of mud, gravel and bracken tangled up in the hem.

In any case, everything is set out to dry, washed, nearly put away.  Hopefully by the end of the day we'll be packed up for the next time, which will be Pennsic.  Camping, not the next event.  Who knows where we'll slip away to next... hopefully it will be drier.