New Year

It's a new year here, seems the LJ tradition is to cover what the plan for the year to come. To be honest not sure if I have the energy, at this point I should warn everyone now the first half of this post is going to be a bit dark.

Those who have not been keeping up with the news we lost 5 people the day before new year eve by a road side bomb not far from the base. One of the five was a civilian reporter from Calgary. She been here just two weeks and I feel a bit guilty as she worked in the same compound and I hardly recognized her pictures when they were flashed on the news. I'd probably walked by her a few times, just another face in the crowd here.

The place has not been feeling as safe as it was, not that anything tactical has changes. Steph one of my co-works that I mentioned before had his kidneys shut down here, well they finally sent him home today, more then a week from when he had his close call. The talk was him staying longer, they only told him he was leaving yesterday. We suspect the sudden change in plan corresponds to the return of Jack the department manager from his vacations. He is one of the few here willing to stick his neck out to get things done and such is one of the few that does get stuff done. It's made a lot of people worried here that it took so long to send him home, the long timers here just tell you “Don't Get Sick Here”. Its one of the mantras that you hear here too often.

Its not all doom and gloom, we have a dairy queen open here, well a very minimal one that only serves blizzards, shakes, sundays, and of coarse soft ice cream cones. I look forward to getting home It's only 60 days till the contract is up and I am on a plane out of here. I'll probably stop off at London for a few days to see some of the sights that I missed on the trip here. What I do when I get home? Whats my plan for the new year?

Hmm the first month will be lounge around a bit and visit friends, get my head back into Ottawa. Then get started on my SCA projects starting with the clock work spit.

I have enough research to produce a good reproduction example I think. The little research I have is pictures of the few surviving 16th and 17th century examples. It's not going to be an exact copy of any given example as I can't get my hands on one to dissect it to figure out all the details. What worries me and excites me at the same time is that I can't find much research in them at all, well not on the web anyway. And when I do find research by anyone what I find is a sentence in history book that states they existed and nothing more. The only reproduction I can find is a wooden example at a US museum about “Medieval Technology” and it has a number of things wrong with it that make it impossible to work. Have I actual stumbled on a Original SCA Project. So my goal this year is to Get one built by Baronial Muster for testing and working by Pennsic.