Spent some time out at the Scarborough Renaissance Faire today.  This is the first time I’ve been back down there in somewhere close to four years.  I think.  They say that memory is the second thing to go when you get older – I forget what the first is.  😉  Never-the-less — I wandered all over the place, visited nearly every shop I could locate, and watched a few of the performers that were there.

In the past, I usually dressed up in the “ren garb” and even played around with the performers.  This year, however, I deliberately went “tourist”.  I even dug deep into my mind for a particular setup to wear – and settled on my Hawaiian shirt, a pair of shorts, tennis shoes, and my cheap sunglasses.  In other words, I was dressed as Two-Flower from the DiscWorld series – and playing the part of a bemused and overly curious tourist.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a sapient pearwood trunk wandering around behind me — though that would have been useful at one point.

There were a handful of vendors that I managed to stop and talk with…the most intriguing and interesting, was Mark Cooper (aka – Coop) of “Signs of Spirit“.  He had a large number of wooden spiritual symbols that were meant to be utilized as wall-hangings – along with several IMPRESSIVE cabinets that can be easily hung on the wall.  One of the symbols was extremely similar to that of the OBOD Bardic Grade, and natrually I purchased it for the house.  I also purchased one of the cabinets and intend on using it in the master bathroom as a medicinal cabinet.  Oddly enough, this is the only bathroom in the house that does not have one (until now).  I also got the chance to talk with Coop about Druidry, and he told me about another Ren Faire called “Sherwood Forest” down near Austin.  Not sure if I will have the free time to make it down there — but I plan on making every effort to go.

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Now that I am winding down my day-time classes – and moving into the much easier (and more online) classes at DeVry, I’m finding a lot more time to continue moving forward in my Bardic Grade studies.  I’ll likely have to backtrack a few lessons, but am hoping to make my way through a large majority of the material by the end of Summer.  Yeah, its taking a while, but I really am getting a lot of the lessons…which is an extremely good thing.  As the lessons are meant to be done individually – I won’t post any of the specifics here…but I can say that I have gotten a lot more out of the material than I had ever thought I might.

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Next week, when my classes all calm down again — I’ll have the next podcast episode completed (crossing my fingers).  I know I’ve not been uber consistent on that area…and its mostly due to poor planning on my part.  I’m hopefully going to be doing a better job going forward.  I promise all five of my listeners…  😉