Today was my last day off before my trip home…. OMG was it long… Normally my day off goes way too quickly as I fill it with things I wanted to get done. Not today. Today I got trapped in the bank machine line here three times as the machine kept turning my card down and telling me to try again in a few hours. To fill in the time wondered the boardwalk looking for little gifts to give to people back home.

I hate to admit it I am a total snob at gift giving, as I hate the idea of giving things to people that just going to site on a shelf. It’s my rebellion to parents that like to collect knick-knacks that filled a house full of stuff that sat on shelves like an upper middle class Victorian. To compound this deep down I am the same as my parents and so I have this internal conflict of this collectors bug.

My solution for the current gift is to focus my search on collecting items you can’t really get back home, if any one likes a particular item I’ll give it to them. But what do I get? What I’ve focused on is the local handmade arts and craft style jewelry and small textiles like the cashmere scarves. Some of this was sent ahead in the mail and some I take with me. I hope people like it.

Good News

I spent the evening chatting it up with some of the people here. The main subject was how most of the rules here are broken like how to ship alcohol here or comparing porn collections. My plan is defiantly going to start making Mead here when I get back.

Another subject was practical jokes here. One of the new lines men decided to strike one of the IT Guys in my office with the classic of turning the stereo up to max on your car when your park and away from it, so when you come back and start it your hit by a wave of noise. So as revenge we did the same to him but raised it a notch and added the heater too. You may ask well so what the big deal about the car heater, in 50 degree a car heater set to max is a death ray. What we didn’t know was that the lines men bongo A/C doesn’t work so they never used the cars air in literally years. You also have to remember the bongos are from Japan so they right hand drive with everything labeled in Japanese so it takes a while to learn ware all the buttons are. Did I mention he was new? We even convinced one of the veteran linesmen to make sure he was next to use the bongo.

How to describe what happened when he started it. The cars heater fan started for the first time in 3 years and lifted all the dust that had accumulated in the air ducts from 2006 till now and flushed it all out into the cab. All we saw was a dust storm localized to the inside of the lines men cab with the exception of a pair of flailing arms desperately trying to feel around and fine random switched and leavers to get it to stop. The Wipers started, the odd turn signal turned on and off, we even heard the horn go off. He told us afterwards he could not see anything, not even the door leaver to free himself.

In other news did some calling home and both my brothers are doing well. The one from Nova Scotia, Don was put on kemo only a few days after he got back. And Brant is doing better than expected; I was even talking to him on the phone. Good News is always good here. The plan is I’ll visit him on my way down to Pennsic, which brings up my ride. The Porsche is fixed up and ready so I’ll take that to Pennsic. It’s not totally restored but now mechanically sound. It’s still needs lots of work but almost all that is cosmetic. Yaaa

One week to go. The days are talking way too long. Trying to get stuff ready to speed up time but there’s not all that much to do. It’s been really quite at the office, I am almost to the point of calling up Eric and having him run over a computer with a truck so I can spend the next week putting it back to gather.

The manager informed me I have to choose a holiday time for my next contract soon. What I think I will do is to take most of November off and go home for two weeks and then on the way back have a two week layaway in London. I may pull off going to hare. Then at the end of the contract next spring do the same long layaway on the way back to hit the places I had missed.

As for news from home I have gotten very little as how my brothers are doing, I guess I’ll find out when I get home. Hate to say it but all I can think about is what to do when I get home. Being here long enough to se others go thru this state, and everyone just accepts its. People are half useless the week before leaving.

I have mailed some stuff back and hope its waiting for me when I get there. Some gifts and the riot shield that had to cut in half to get it back. As its transparent the plan is to make it folding, paint it masking off a small hole to allow a video camera to be mounted on the back. Let’s see if I can pull off a Shield Cam.

Speaking of mail got my last care package from a college friend and now I have more craft dinner then I know what to do with.

Well the weekend is here and I am down to single digits till a plane takes me out of here. Which remind me, if anyone interested I’d love to get picked up. My flight arrives at 4:05 Thursday the 23rd, flight AC839. If not no worries I been told that there are these things called taxies.

Saturday Night was movie night, well sort of. Not movies but two Jeff Dunham HBO TV Specials, Well sort of. I could not get the second one done as in the middle of the dead terrorist we got hit by a rocket attack. I could not make this up if I tried. Literally as he was saying “I’ll Kill You” the alarms went off.

As my day off I did some shopping picking up a few items to give out as gifts when I get home. The question is if I can mail them in time to get back while I am still home. The tracking numbers say that two of my four parcels have been delivered and the other two are about to be. I gave even odds that Wilhelm engineering’s side take over and he tries to put them together before I get back.

For who that had read my last post, I’m doing fine; I hope I didn’t freak any one out. Thank you for all the replies, Thank you.

That was posted only an hour after finding out. I had a few days to call family since then. I am more or less keeping it a secret here so the only people that know at this end is my manager and Eric who reads my post. This might not sound good but there are people who use that kind of info here. This was a bit of a challenge as instinctually wanted to destroy the first person to cross me on Wednesday out of a raw frustration.

There is not much I can do from here; my leave is set more or less in stone. As you can imagine getting time off for family emergencies is not as easy as back home. On the other side of the coin is there’s not much I can do if I did go home other then stand around and get in the way.

As for my plans for my leave they will not change all that much other than some of the specific days may change as I going to spend some time before and/or after Pennsic in Strafford and Mitchell to see my brother. My London England Plans are on hold till I know more.

Other plan changes are that I’m going to one of the three large markets in Dubai during my 14 hour layover. Each has a specialty one is gold and gems, another is Spices and the third is textiles, as I am traveling with three others I’m not sure which I find myself at. Each has possibilities

We had another SCA Meeting here tonight and we are a growing group. And we are getting free fencing kit in the mail from one of the Groups back home. Add two more daggers and two bucklers to the castles armories.

Too Much

The last two days have been described as a bit of an overload. Monday started with a 7am alarm when awaken by what I describe as the loudest rocket impact I heard followed by the alarm. Turns out the blast was not a rocket but a suicide bomber at the front gate. He had tried to sneak into the base with the local day labor. He failed to kill any NATO personel but killed two locals.

As it was Monday went to our fight practice. The game of the day was two sword using padded plastic sticks. We had a number of new people and a few were going at it. I even went into it, forgot that here if you over do it and start sucking in lots of air that you suck in lots of dust too. I spent the next hour coughing it all back up.
Got back to the tents ware an email from a family friend was waiting that said that I needed to call my mother about my brother planed operation. I tried but I got no answer that night. I tried again tonight after a ramp ceremony for two that got killed in a helicopter crash.

For those who don’t read this very often I’ll get you up to speed. I have two half brothers and one, Brant has leukemia that is in late stages and need a bone marrow transplant. Now I did some blood test before I left as well as my other brother Don. I’m not even close but Don’s a perfect match. The plan was the transplant was to take place in the next few weeks.

I was able to reach my mother tonight and she informed me that it turns out when they did some more blood work on Don as a prep for the operation they detected leukemia in his blood too. It’s in the most early of stages but it’s there. He flew back to his home in Nova Scotia to look into treatment. Brant’s doctors are now rushing to find a donor in the next ten days so they can still do a transplant.

I will be in Ottawa on the 24th, I had planned out my vacation and inform some of you out there when and where I was going to be during my 3 weeks’ vacation home. Those plans are now on hold till I know whats happening.

My three older brothers who I looked up to when I was a child, came with a genetic “blade runner” like end date. For those who don’t know I lost the oldest of the three, Raymond, about five years ago to abdominal Cancer. My only hope is that my mother was somehow exaggerated the situation. And now I find myself out of words….

It's Done!

Good Weekend for me, I got the Mary Rose Jerkin done. YAAAA. It could do with more buttons but I can make those without feeling the dead line breathing down my neck. A few things came up with it in that it’s a bit too big, this is due to giving the leather a seam allowance when it didn’t need one and I have lost a few ponds here. It will fill out once I have a puffy linen shirt under it. Trying my best to avoid thinking that people are at Trillium war or KWDS this weekend, I feel that I turn neon green when I think about it.

It helps that yesterday at work I got a little bit of a bust. There was a day time ramp ceremony and I got picked at random to stay and hold the fort. So I was in the office doing nothing for over an hour with only the job of formatting 10 external hard drives. It struck me that I had the kit that I could do it all at once. I have to do something weird and partially if not totally unnecessary with computers every so often to keep my sense of enthusiasm going and that fit the bill.


A lot of people in my office are running with less sleep than normal. The reason is someone in the company and in my tent line woke up with half his face swelled up. So he was rushed over to the medical tents and after a few tests that he had been bitten by a camel spider when he was sleeping. So some people were freaked out for a few days, compounded that the rumor spread was the he had woken up with the spider still on his face. Camel spiders are the boogie monster of the camp, every one freaked out about them but there bite is not that dangerous, the guy bit took some pills and put his face on ice and was back to normal other then two tiny read spots.


Speaking of things running around in the dark did the three original Star Wars this weekend one each night. The last one was tonight but while playing it I watched as the local hedge hog ran zig-zag threw the still audience that were entranced on the movie. I don’t think the little guy knew that the mounds in the chairs were even living. What was funnier was people started to look around after he passed to figure out what the little spiky shadow they saw in there peripheral vision was.


Just a little over 2 weeks till I am out of here. My only worry now is that my car won’t be ready to take to pennsic. I may have to rent one to go.

Um Hows Roasted Crow in Rumor Grape Sauce ?

Oh ya Rumors can be wrong
I mentioned in the last post how we civilians get to know lots due to our grape vine. Only problem is that it’s a grape vine so a lot of the info on its wrong. Well most of the info is wrong or heavily distorted. In receiving a second care packaged from Kes and Menkin in about two weeks proving that mail delay was totally false… Um… So does anyone know a good period recipe for crow? I’m thinking in a pie or maybe a roasted with a grape sauce. Well in any case I have enough Kraft dinner to last me till I get home … THANK YOU

The mail is running normally is very much good news for me and maybe mixed news for others at the other end as I have send four large boxes with the bits for making 4 very nice folding chairs. With luck they will get there in time to put one or two back together for Pennsic.

Today was force myself to say good bye to a hobby day. Some would know that I have collected and painted miniatures like “Warhammer”. One of the lines I followed was a series of Babylon 5 ships. The line and the game that went with it never did well so it bounced around from manufacture to manufacture. The last official manufacture announced a few months that June 30 was the last day they were allowed to make figures under the license and was the last day to order them and guarantee you get them. I have the money but I never play anymore and almost never have time to paint as SCA and computer stuff takes most of my spare time. So no space ships for me. I will keep what I have now to decorate a shelf and that’s it.

Canada Day in KAF was most of the Canadians getting together and having a big barbeque. Fun, the food was good for a change and got to hang out with some pretty girls that I can’t date. Most of the company and troops were given a half day off which was used by most to sleep. The news likes to say the troops need a rest, which is very much true. And to finish the day a rocket attack to remind everyone not to have too much fun.