Academy

[cellio]

Today the local SCA group hosted the Academy, a (roughly) semi-annual event consisting mainly of classes. (The event rotates around the kingdom; we don't hold it locally that often.) It went pretty well. The event was held at CMU, which is no more than a mile from my synagogue, so I just walked there after services. It turned out that I beat Dani there by 15 or 20 minutes and he had my garb, but a friend had a spare tunic I could throw on until he got there so that was fine.

Some classes that I wanted to take were cancelled due to instructors not being able to make it at the last minute. Oh well. I did get to take a nifty class on making cheese; Broom (there's more to his name, but that's what eeryone calls him) is an entertaining teacher.

Tofi, who moved to LA a few months ago, came back for this event, so it was nice to be able to spend time chatting with him. He seems to be happy with his new job, and they managed to sell their house here pretty quickly.

There was an "ask the laurel" table set up at the event. This sort of thing is an open invitation to wacky questions and there were some of those, but it was all in good fun. More importantly, there did actually seem to be some useful exchanges of information and advice, so that's good. I don't know how much, but hey -- it gave people a place to hang out and gab, and that's not bad. :-)

As a pleasant change of pace, admission to this event was free (you had to pay to eat, which is appropriate), so there was no offensive corporate tax. So I made a point of supporting the event; I volunteered for the clean-up crew (which turned out to be an easier job than I expected) and also volunteered to do advance cooking, though the latter wasn't needed. I'd like to see my group do more free events.

Comments

[cellio]

Special board dispensation (for all but the major events like Coronation, IIRC) due to the costs and hassles of currency conversion.