[Loch-Ruadh] Gulf War Missive - Day Four

[Pádraig Ruad Ó Maolagáin]

The morning dawned bright and fair, and turned into a nicely warm day. 
Gryffydd and Vivian made their way to the archery field to shoot, and
during a fun shoot, Vivian "died" twice, coming back with some grass in
her hair braid.  Neither Rolf nor I felt up to getting into armor, so most
of us spent a protion of the day just being camp rats.  Polydore and I
made another turn through Merchant's Row, stopping to visit Anna and
Sewerd, as well as Floria and Tom.  Polydore had been looking for a new
pouch and found one that he liked, and I spent some time selecting a
turned bone bobbin for Amber.  We headed back down to the Ansteorran gate
after that, where the Ansteorran Chili Party was getting under way.  After
partaking in some excellent chili and visiting with a few folk there, we
mae our way back to camp so that I could get my guitar to go back up to
the Green Dragon.

Singing at the Dragon has become my favorite part of War.  I get to sing,
they give me free beer, and people stuff the tip jar full of money -
what's not to like?  As expected, during most of my set I had to try to
sing over the crowd noise, but that's not a problem.  But when I did
Ireland, the place was completely quiet expect for my voice.  After I
finished, we met Elayne and Daniel, who are camped with Crimson Chimera
this year, and we went to their camp to visit for a while.  Some of you
may remember Kip and Helen, who have camped with us on occasion at events
- they were there as well.  Our hosts insisted on feeding us some very
good Chicken Florentine soup (I kept thinking of the duel between Louie
and Airaklee at Lughnasad some years ago) and some of Elayne's good Apple
Pie.  Daniel told us about plans to create a performace ampitheater in
time for next year's War, which should be very interesting if it comes off
as planned.  The hope is to attract singers, musicians and performers and
provide more of a venue for the performing arts.

We returned to camp to find that we were being visited by Dolan, the
Calontiri bard who has come to see us for the past three years, and we had
a very good visit with him.  He shared a couple of his newer songs with us
and stayed until midnight.  Cormac, Polydore and I stayed up to watch the
fire burn down, then retired ourselves.

I don't know if I will armor up on Thursday or not, as my right shoulder
is giving me some pain and I'm not sure I want to chance getting it hit,
especially not in the ravine battle.  I will probably shoot for Friday and
the open field battles, where it's much easier to drop out if the shoulder
does start feeling worse.  I sing at the Dragon again Thursday night, and
may sign up for an open spot on Friday night as well.

More tomorrow.  Here's hoping that we will have a MUCH larger Loch RUadh
encampment next year - it's just not as much fun without all of you.

Padraig
-- 
Nunc est bibendum.
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Politicians prefer unarmed peasants.