Wedding pictures

 

Last Saturday was the big day! Eric and I renewed our vows at the Eastern Primitive Rendezvous. We were able to invite friends and family who weren’t there to camp since we scheduled it on a public day, but we also had friends who were camped there, some of whom have known me since I was a little bitty thing. Here’s Eric and me with my mom and dad. Yes, Dad is holding a flintlock pistol. He wasn’t going to let Eric get away!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The start of the ceremony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve never been handfasted before. Pastor Mike tied our hands together with a strip of tartan. I’m pretty sure, since we’ve been married 25 years, the year and a day part doesn’t apply!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the kiss. This is actually the second one. We kissed too fast the first time and the photographers missed it, so we had to do it again! Darn!!!

Taking a break

I took a break from conference prep the other day to take advantage of the relatively cool weather (it was only 90*) for some rendezvous prep. We bought a new tent and wanted to practice putting it up, plus Eric and the Boys built a bed and we wanted to see how much space we had left with it inside.

Our new tent is marquis style, and we found it much easier to put up than a wall tent. If you’ve never put up a marquis before, this is how you do it.

First, schlep all the pieces out of the garage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spread the roof out on the ground and get it as square as you can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, you raise the corners, securing the poles with two ropes and two stakes each. Don’t tighten the ropes too much.

 

 

 

 

 

Arrange the ground cover. (We didn’t when we were practicing.) The center pole goes in next, followed by the rest of the side poles. Ours has three on each side, but the number varies with the size of the tent and the manufacturer. Each of those poles gets one rope and stake.

 

 

 

 

After that, it’s just a matter of putting up the side curtains, which hang from a rope that goes around the inside, under the scallop. The drooping side curtain in the picture was done on purpose, by the way. That’s 18th century air conditioning. Hopefully we won’t need that when we go to Ohio next month!
We do have a fly (the tent name for an awning) that we’ll attach when we get to the rendezvous to give us a shaded outdoor area. It was too hot to mess with it Sunday. We attached it but didn’t stake it up. I didn’t get a picture of the bed, but it does fit with plenty of room to spare, so if we have a rainy day we won’t be packed in like sardines.

Total time to put it up, including carrying everything around the house to the back yard, was about 90 minutes. I think it took about half an hour to take it down, and probably another 20 to 30 minutes to wrap up the ropes and carry everything back to the garage. Since we’ve practiced, we’ll likely be faster next time, and the hardest part will be figuring out how to configure the walls so our doors and stove hole will be positioned correctly.

The other thing we didn’t put up was the shower, which is basically four poles, eight ropes and stakes and a pair of cross beams at the top wrapped in canvas. It’s about two feet by two feet and stands behind the tent. It’s not strictly necessary, but it is nice to have when you’re in camp for a week. I’ll have rendezvous pictures to post closer to October, including (hopefully) plenty of pictures of our vow renewal ceremony (henceforth referred to as The Wedding).

So, this is what I do for fun! Well, this, but in petticoats and stays. What do you think? Too crazy for you?

Whirlwind

Crazy (in a good way) week. Mom and Aunt Shirley got to my house last Wednesday, and we left Thursday morning for Newport. We got here Friday after 25 hours on the road. (Not really looking forward to the drive back!) Since Saturday, we have toured The Breakers, Marble House, Chateau-Sur-Mer, The Elms (upstairs and downstairs–the Servant’s Life Tour was great!), and Rosecliff. Yesterday we saw St. Mary’s Church (where JFK and Jackie were married) and Trinity Church to give me an idea of the architecture. We have the Topiary Gardens and Kingscote to do today, and tomorrow we’re taking a day trip to Martha’s Vineyard. Friday morning we head home and should be back at my house Saturday. Driving has been an adventure. Old cities tend to have a lot of one-way streets, and Newport is no exception. I understand why, but I don’t like them, especially when my Tomtom (with Darth Vader’s voice) tells me to turn the wrong way on a one-way. It’s been a good trip, though, and I think I might finally be ready to do some plotting on book 3. I’ll check back in when I get home and settled back in.

Alternate Novel Writing Month wrap-up

The skewed timetable should be a clue that things did not go as planned. Technically, tomorrow is my wrap-up day, but I’m calling it now. I have written 43,129 words (in 28 days) on “King Or Country.” I expect it will take another 15,000 or so to finish it off. My last writing day was Saturday because I’m busy getting ready to go out of town for my research trip to Rhode Island. Yes, the next project has interrupted the current project. I hope that won’t become a habit!

Overall, this has been a positive experience. It was the research trip that caused me to push my timetable back two weeks. It would have been smarter to do three, but I’m not often accused of being smart, especially with a computer engineer and two science majors in the family! (On the other hand, the computer engineer has me edit his grad school research papers, and the science majors often ask me how to spell things, so maybe I’m not giving myself enough credit!)

So that’s where it is. I’m calling it successful because it did get me in the habit of writing every weekday and some on the weekends. Mentally, I’m more focused and happier with the daily writing. I tend to get cranky when I haven’t written for a while. I’ll try it again when things settle down. August, maybe. My calendar looks pretty clear right now, and in August it’s too daggone hot to do anything outside, plus it has 31 days! Yeah, August is a definite possibility. Maybe by then I’ll have figured out how to write, do the dishes, and vacuum all in the same day!