There and Back Again: Maryland RennFest 2015

Yup, I love going to the Maryland Renaissance Festival.  I've gone almost every year since it opened.  Over the years they've added to it judiciously, presenting more while maintaining a reasonably intimate feel and keeping it well shaded with trees for those hot summer weekends.

More recently I've planned my visits there around the appearances of...wait for it...The Mediaeval Baebes!  A truly excellent group from the UK, they do primarily mediaeval/renaissance themed music.

And yes, I did the whole fanboy (I prefer the sobriquet "Patron of the Arts") thing--bought the new t-shirt and new album.  I mean, I had to buy the new CD--otherwise I wouldn't have all their albums, now would I?

The falconry demonstration was thrilling (although I was thinking it would be even cooler if they did it with giant bats):

But alas, there was no sign of the furries who were all over the place last year.

Dang, now I really have to go (TridentCon)

Okay, so I headed over to the Severna Park Community Center after work for my (semi) regular workout and what to my wondering eyes did appear but a poster for the upcoming TridentCon!

So there pretty much goes my last excuse for not going BECAUSE IT'S BASICALLY RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET FROM MY HOUSE!  And I would like to throw in a heartfelt thank you to Erik Jensen for thoughtfully setting it up here just for me.  I know I can be a bit high maintenance sometimes but this was really (almost) more than I deserved.  Thanks Erik!

Painting progress

Okay, so I had a couple chunks of time this weekend to work on my large painting inspired by classical Chinese art.  The bamboo is done and I'm pretty happy with the shading.  The characters all came out nicely but I'm worried they're a bit small to fill that space.  Originally I planned to fill in the whitespace around them with black background to provide a nice sharp contrast.  Now I'm re-thinking it and may 1) just keep the white squares but tidy them up a bit, or 2) tidy up the edges and also paint over the three black spacers between the characters to create one big white rectangle, or 3) add an outer border of purple, which will include making the three spacers purple as well.