Pennsic (part 1)

[cellio]

Pennsic went well this year. This entry is going to be long. It is also incomplete; there'll be more in future entries.

Passing time (early)

I arrived Tuesday of the first week and found that much of the campsite was already set up. (I'd been up Sunday to help with the large-scale stuff, but there's all the little fiddly stuff to do after, like unpacking the pots/pans/dishes, putting up sheetwalls, hanging lanterns, and so on.)

There weren't a lot of people around that early and mid-day temperatures and humidity were oppressive, so I spent a lot of time hanging around camp until later in the day when I could go visit the people who were there. I spent some of that time working on my torah portion for next week (which was very productive) and some chatting with people who stopped by to visit us, but I'm thinking seriously about delaying my arrival next year by a couple days. It's not that this wasn't good, but that the incremental benefit of the first day or two wasn't all that high, and I might need the vacation days for other things. (Particularly if I succeed in organizing an unofficial third year of the Sh'liach K'hilah program.)

One thing I did not spend much time doing is shopping. This is a big draw for some people, and it used to be for me, but two factors changed this: first, there are very few new merchants (or old merchants with new types of stuff), so I've largely seen all their stuff already, and second, I've been in the SCA long enough that there's not a lot of stuff I still need. So I did wander through the marketplace, and spent some quality time with the subset of booksellers who sort their books by topic (important clue here, guys!), and I had specific merchants I wanted to visit, but I didn't spend a lot of time on this.

I attended several classes, about which I'll write more later.

Visits

dglenn found our camp early on and we spent several hours talking about all sorts of things (with other camp-mates who were around, too). Among things, we talked about cameras and how what they see differs from what people see (sometimes); it came up that while my vision in UV-shifted, Johan's is IR-shifted. So while he sees really really well at twilight, this is my worst time. There's a (shifting) period of about 20 minutes each evening (morning is not relevant :-) ) when I try to avoid driving, because everything looks the same color to me. This is not so much an issue in cities, but it's a real problem on highway driving -- road, berm, trees off to the sides up ahead, all look the same. Ugh. I had not previously made the connecton between my range shift and that problem. (Glenn wondered in passing how many science posts our conversation would prompt when we got home. Here's one. :-) )

Glenn mentioned somewhere in there that he can see impending weather changes, which seems unusual to me. I hope he writes more about that at some point.

I spent an afternoon and evening visiting with Dof and Thora, good friends I only get to see at Pennsic. While I was there I also saw shalmestere, Haraldr Bassi, Fritz (who used to live here a long, long time ago when I was just getting started in the SCA), and a couple apprentices. (Um, yeah. Most of the people I listed are peers -- not because peers are snooty and only hang out with other peers, but because if you've known someone for 15-20 years and you've both been pretty active in the SCA during that time, you're probably both peers.) They invited me to stay for dinner, which included fresh flatbread baked by Fritz. Yummy! And Dof and Thora keep kosher, so I know I can eat anything they offer me without inquiring.

I also got to see Eldred (err, Mr. ealdthryth). Last year he was with Atlantian royal and showed me a really spiffy gate that he built; I hadn't realized then that the gate was private, not owned by the kingdom. (It wasn't there this year, which is how this came up.) We showed him our new pantry and he and Johan talked construction, as I recall. One thing that's nifty about Pennsic is that you actually stand a decent chance of running into someone else who shares your obscure interests and experiences. :-) (Johan is our camp's chief engineer, which mainly applies to construction and plumbing.)

I saw sue_n_julia a couple times (well, Julia more than Sue). They introduced me to a couple of friendly heralds; much heraldic geeking ensued. (I am not a herald, so much of this was lost on me.) It appears that many heralds now camp on the little hunk of private land that we used to camp on (when Ts'vee'a was on the Coopers' staff). It looks like the camp is for heralds specifically; I wonder how they managed to get private land outside the land lottery. (Most staff groups do not.)

I visited with chaiya and hakamadare -- not for nearly long enough, but some. I saw their wedding pictures, which are lovely. (They were married in April.) We ended up having an exchange of kosher chicken; they gave me some teriyaki and smoked chicken they'd brought from home, so I gave them some roasted chicken (with garlic and oregano) that I'd brought from home, and much yumminess ensued. They also gave me some lovely pickles (what were the veggies that weren't cucumbers?). I didn't see them until Shabbat was nearly over, so we didn't manage to hook up for anything there.

chaiya is studying massage and brought her table, so I got a nice massage from her and she got some spending money from me. A suitable arrangement. :-) I recommend her.

I caught up with osewalrus, beckyfeld, and Aaron Wednesday night as they were headed out shopping. (Wednesday night is "midnight madness"; the merchants stay open late and often offer discounts, and there are lots of street performers.) I tagged along with them so we could try to catch up a bit; having an adult conversation with a seven-year-old around is a challenge. Not as much of a challenge as when he was a four- or five-year-old, mind, but a challenge nonetheless. I've got to find time to visit with Yaakov and Rivka when Aaron is occupied and we aren't all in the process of getting drunk for Purim.

I stopped by the games tent and found mikekn and jducoeur. We chatted for a while about games, SCA history, and assorted other stuff. Michael recently came into possession of some nifty artifacts from the earliest days of the SCA. Justin mentioned a large treatise on games from the 17th century (I forget which) that is written in a combination of Latin and Hebrew; I was surprised to hear that Hebrew was in use at that time in a secular context.

lefkowitzga didn't have any vacation time this year (due to the baby), so she came up on the middle weekend only. We spent some time chatting on Saturday and I expected to see more of her the next day, but she didn't return. I guess something came up; I hope it wasn't anything bad. (Pennsic can be tiring, so I'm guessing it was that.) With luck she will be able to come up for a longer period next year; by then Rebecca will be a year and a half old, so she might be able to come.

I found dr_zrfq at heralds' point, but he was with a customer so I had to wait. This led to some amusement as three different people I know came up to me (at different times) to ask what I was doing at heralds' point. :-) (It's fairly well-known among the local heralds that I'm not fond of the office of herald. But, ironically, heralds' point represents a lot of what heralds should be doing in my opinion -- providing research assistance to people who want to choose authentic SCA names and armory. It's just that I think it should stop there; I dislike the college of arms, the bureaucratic arm of heraldry, but I have nothing against heralds otherwise. So I think they should advise but not register, and they should function like any other guild in the SCA, not as officers.)

I did eventually get to chat with dr_zrfq and invited him to dinner on one of my nights to cook. It was fun to hang out with him, and it turns out he already knew a couple of people in our camp because they sing in the Known World Choir together. (This is a choir that instantiates at Pennsic; they rehearse for a couple hours a day and give a performance at the end. It's pretty nifty, and one of these days I hope to sing with them, if they ever do a program that doesn't contain material I won't sing.)

Partway through that dinner we were visited by security; two of our members had left their cars parked in front of our camp and the cars were going to be towed if we didn't move them Right Now. The problem is that one of them -- who really should have parked first -- had gone off to heralds' point, and the other (who was, technially, still within the time limit for not parking) had just left to take her some food. So someone (lorddegan) ran off after them, but meanwhile someone else found the keys to the first car (I had no idea they'd be in camp). The car is a stick, which apparently most people in camp can't drive, so I drove it toward heralds' point in an effort to (1) intercept Degan, (2) have it not be there when the security folks returned, and (3) make it the owner's problem ("here's your car; you need to park it now"). But when I got there I learned that Degan and Alaric (the owner of the other car) were already on their way back to camp to park the two cars, so back I went with the extra car.

Now I should mention that parking at Pennsic, especially in the second week, is a challenge. People joke about the parking lot being in the next county, and there's an element of truth to that. There is a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the main part of camp, but it runs infrequently and unpredictably. So it really looked like whoever went to park these cars was going to lose the next hour at least, first in finding a spot and then in walking back from it. This is why I wanted to make it the owner's problem; it was her responsibility and the rest of us were trying to have dinner with a guest. But I followed Alaric, who by rights shouldn't have had to move his car at all, up to the parking lot, figuring that we'd at least walk back together and I'd apologize to our guest later. (Alaric is a sweetie; I've never seen him get angry and rarely seen him get frustrated. I'd love to know how he does it.)

Alaric has good parking karma, apparently. As we were pulling into the parking area he stopped and gestured wildly. The very first spot in the very first row was open. So I took it, and he apparently found a space in about the sixth row or something, because he wasn't far behind me in getting back to camp. Wow! So in the end I didn't miss most of the visit with dr_zfrq, though I did miss a visiting singer.

I utterly failed to connect with Baron Steffan, who I only ever see at Pennsic. I am disappointed by this. I was looking forward, in particular, to discussing all the stuff going on in my life Jewishly of late, and finding out more of what he's been up to there. Drat! (I guess I could send email or pick up a phone or something...) I hope the note I left for him in his camp reached him.

Kosher conspiracy

Before Pennsic I got email (via an intermediary) from some folks from New York (Ostgardr) who would be attending their first Pennsic and wanted to know where to find kosher food locally. For future reference, there are two relevant Giant Eagles in Newcastle. The one at 1700 New Butler Road, New Castle, PA 16101 (724-652-3822) carries frozen Empire chicken but no beef; the one at 3230 Wilmington Road, New Castle, PA 16105 (724-652-5595) carries Aaron's beef and chicken (fresh, not frozen).

(Hmm, that reminds me: I need to get hooked up with the "kosher conspiracy" mailing list, which is mainly used for SF conventions. I gather it's for things like this.)

Anyway, they expected to arrive Thursday and had invited me for Shabbat dinner, so I went to their camp Thursday night to find them. They were still unpacking when I got there but we made introductions. Their little sub-group of the Ostgardr camp was called "Clan MacIvri", which I suppose is what happens when Jews have Scottish personas. :-) I hitched a ride with Matt back to my camp (which was on the way to the parking lot) so I could show him where we are, which turned out not to be too relevant as everything was happening in their camp (appropriately).

I spent a pleasant Shabbat evening with them. There were six of us -- Matt, four Jewish women, and one gentile who was doing everything she could to make things run smoothly in terms of camp operation once Shabbat started (tending fires, buying ice for the coolers, etc).

There is this dance you do when meeting another Jew where you try to determine each others' observance levels (when it matters) without being so rude as to ask outright. I'm not very good at it, I suppose because of two things: I haven't been doing it all my life, and it matters more in the frummer parts of the community. I found myself feeling awkward because Matt just assumed -- reasonably -- that I'm frum (observant as defined by the Orthodox movement), but I'm not. I do consider myself to be observant and serious about it, but in a different way. I think once we all had some actual in-person conversations it worked out fine (I referred to being from an "egalitarian" congregation, for instance), but it felt a little weird. I may write more about this later.

They invited me back down for lunch (accepted) and Tisha b'Av (declined). Next year I will be more organized so that I can contribute something to the meals!

Food

Our camp has a meal plan that usually works fairly well. We have about twice as many adults as nights when we want to have communal dinners, so each person typically has to either cook or clean up once and can just show up and eat the rest of the time. This year we were down a couple people, so I cooked twice.

The first time I served chicken that I'd roasted at home and just warmed up at Pennsic. The second time I made fish, because someone was available to do the shopping trip so we could get it fresh. I used grouper because it's durable and camp cooking is imprecise; it worked well and there were no leftovers. I seasoned it with olive oil, black pepper, lemon juice, and fresh oregano. (And -- score! -- my shopper got the fish for $4/pound.)

My camp-mates try to be good about kashrut issues; they read ingredients and look for hechshers even in cases when it would be reasonable to just say "don't eat that". Hilda specifically looked for a pareve margarine to serve with bread for a meat meal, for instance; it would have been fine for me to just eat the bread without yellow fat (or with jam, which we had in camp). So I really appreciate that people go the extra distance for me.

Even so, there are some practices in camp that make me uncomfortable, and I'm not sure whether I should raise them or opt out of the meal plan to avoid imposing a burden. I think I'm just going to have to assume that the main grill that gets used will be treifed -- so do I ask people to cook my meat on the smaller grill set aside as treif-free? That imposes a clean-up burden. Do I ask them to double-wrap my meat in foil so it can be cooked on that grill? That may make cooking more complicated, especially if sauces are involved. I'm really not sure what to do.

To clarify, I am mainly concerned with actual treif bits finding their way to my food; true kosher utensils aren't going to happen in this camp and I'm not going to try to make it happen. (Well, except by side-effect; if I leave the meal plan then I have more control over my own cooking.) The treif bits, in turn, are aggrivated by the fact that some people in camp have -- IMO -- inadequate standards for cleanliness. I can accept utensils that were previously used for pork or cheeseburgers if they're clean before cooking my food, but I saw some things that make me dubious about that with this group of people.

It's too bad that Pennsic is so big; between Clan MacIvri, chaiya and hakamadare, osewalrus and beckyfeld, Dof and Thora, and people I don't even know about, we could in theory have good communal kosher meals. But in practice, we're spread out over a lot of land, there's no phone service to make planning easier (setting times, etc), we have varied needs for coordination, and no single camp is set up to host that many people every night. What we really need is on-site kosher take-out. :-)

Performances

The Known World Choir did a program of Josquin des Pres this year. It was an ambitious performance; they did six or seven choral pieces, including a challenging Gloria, and also had a small instrumental group that did a couple pieces on their own and a couple with the choir. There were some glitches, sure, but overall they sounded very good. Internal balancing (among singers and among instrumentalists) was good.

I noticed a few issues in the way of performance/director practice that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of but are important. (Hey, you can learn from positive and negative examples.) There was one clear case of "making lemonade"; after a pause in one piece (that gloria, I think) the choir fumbled badly in restarting, and the director simply made a "cut" gesture, gave the pitch on the recorder, and led them in again and it was fine. No confused looks, no "oops", no apologies -- just fix it and go on. All performers will eventually screw up on stage; what distinguishes the ameteurs from the professionals (and I'm not talking about money here) is how they handle it.

The choir had about 50 singers and about 6 instrumentalists (playing quiet instruments). This did not balance well for combined pieces; the instruments got lost in the mix and might as well have been absent. A way to address that, given those kinds of numbers, might be to have a subset of the choir sing joint pieces with the instrumentalists; it's ok if not every person on stage participates in every piece. That's already true, as there were choir-only and instruments-only pieces, so this is just another kind of subset.

When performing on a wooden stage, do not tap your foot to keep the beat unless you're the director. Especially don't do it if someone else already is and the two of you are not precisely in sync. I assume that no one on stage noticed, but the audience did.

There was one thing I was curious about. That gloria I mentioned began with the words "et in terra pax", which is not the beginning of the text. That means that the missing part -- "gloria in excelsis deo" -- was meant to be chanted by a cantor (or in this case just a soloist) before the choir joins in. This was done all the time, and the sheet music doesn't always notate it. I asked Arianna later about it and she said that omitting it was a deliberate decision by the director, not an error from ignorance, but she didn't know why.

I now wonder if the mass has a concept of nusach the way Jewish liturgy does. That is, if the chant isn't notated on the sheet music, is that because you're supposed to just make something up in the right mode, or because it varies based on the season -- there's a correct one and you just have to look it up? I'm using the present tense here and yes, I'm curious about modern practice too, but I'm really curious about medieval and renaissance practice.

(Ok, nusach: Chanted prayer, and also chanted readings from scripture, follow particular melodies. These melodies vary by geography; Lithuanian torah chanting is different from German torah chanting and so on, even though it's all torah. These also differ by type; torah chanting is different from haftarah chanting, which is different from the megilot (Esther, Song of Songs, etc), even though it's all scripture. And finally, these melodies vary within an area and within a type by time; prayers are sung differently on weekdays, Shabbat, and the holiday seasons, and torah is chanted differently during the high holy days. All of these variations are fixed within their communities, though; it's not that you get to just make up a new melody for Pesach, for instance. So what I was wondering is whether, say, that cantorial "gloria in excelsis deo" would use a different, but fixed, melody based on when that particular instance is occuring.)

Arianna will be directing this choir next year, which I think she's been looking forward to for a while. She's planning a program of Spanish music.

I Sebastiani ("the greatest commedia del'arte troupe in the entire world!") performed again this year. I always enjoy watching them. Commedia is kind of like improv theatre; the actors have a plot outline and have obviously rehearsed quite a bit, so blocking is smooth and (I imagine) certain cues and lines are pre-planned, but every performance of the same outline ("scenario", in commedia parlance) is a little different.

Commedia uses a fixed set of characters from show to show, and their types are well-established. Every 'Arlequino, in any commedia troupe, is the bumbling servant. Every Doctore is the pompous, but not necessarily competent, scholar. And so on. What surprised me about this performance is that many of the stock characters I know were not there, though there were similarities -- a character who was similar to the Capitano, one who was similar to 'Arlequino, and so on. (I must confess that the male characters tend to be more uniquely established in my mind than the female ones, except for Rufiana.) But they had different names and slightly different personalities. I wonder if this indicates a different source, or what.

Commedia is usually divided into acts, and there are short performances (usually musical) between them. This time they had a very clever bit for one of these: two dancers dancing Rostiboli Gioisio, a "chase"-style dance for one couple, but the dancers were dressed as a cat and prey (I forget if it was a mouse or a canary). Nicely done!

I Genesii (the local commedia troupe) performed in the marketplace rather than on stage, and I missed them. Bummer.

Dorigen invited me to her bardic circle, which is restricted to period or period-style material and always attracts high-calibre performers. This year, finally, I did not have a conflict and was able to go, and I really enjoyed it. You know how sometimes a bard will tell a ten-minute story and you're looking at your watch by the fifth minute? These were people good enough to tell ten-minute stories and you didn't notice. People like Yaakov, Dof, Morgana, Huginn, Toki, and others I recognized but can't name. (It wasn't all stories, of course; there were a number of singers too.)

I've been wanting to try my hand at story-telling, using talmudic and midrashic sources, so I prepared three songs and three stories for this circle. (I figured it probably wouldn't go around more than about five times, which gave me some wiggle room. I could have done other songs too; this is just what I specifically practiced.) The first pass took about an hour and the second pass took more than two; things were pretty much dying on the third pass. So it turned out I had plenty of material. On the first pass I sang a song because that's what people expected from me; on the second pass I told one of the stories -- my second-favorite of the three, but my favorite is more complex and I wanted to work up to it. By the third pass I judged that people were more interested in music and, anyway, the people from whom I specifically wanted story-telling feedback had left, so I sang and never did pull out the more-complex story. Another time, then. (I hope to do it at Enchanted Ground next year.)

I later went to a class called "storytelling tips" that Morgana taught and picked up a few ideas, but it was a pretty low-key class (in part because she was sick). I had wanted to get some advice from Yaakov too, but we had limited time. Maybe we can talk at Darkover.

Locally we have one storyteller from whom I do not particularly want advice, because while he's active and apparently popular mundanely, he's one of those people who causes me to look at my watch in the SCA. So I don't want to emulate him, and I don't yet have a firm-enough gronding to derive the negative lessons from his advice.

Two followups from Dorigen's circle: there was a knight from Ansteorra there (I sure hope that's a unique identifier) who was very good and had some nice original material; I want to find him. And someone, I think a present or past apprentice of Dorigen, is looking for help with medieval (not renaissance) melodies, something I can help with.

House stuff

Tuesday as I was unpacking the car a freelance writer from Pittsburgh came by the camp. She had questions about my house, which I answered, and she asked if she could take a picture of me standing in front of it. Not having unpacked, I was not yet in garb -- but at least I was wearing a Pennsic t-shirt. :-) She said she would be back the following week to take more pictures (once the inside was set up), but if she did it was while I wasn't around. If I recall correctly, she's hoping to sell a story about Pennsic to Pittsburgh magazine. Or maybe it was some other magazine with "Pittsburgh" in its name. I don't subscribe to any such, so if you do and a picture of me and/or my house shows up in one, could someone let me know?

I got visits from more people who wanted to see the house. One is a very enthusiastic newcomer who wants to build herself a Tudor-style house on a trailer; she seems like she's got enough perseverence that she might actually do it. On the last day I was visited by a couple from (or camping with) Bhakail who are interested specifically in this period (al-Andalus in the tenth century); they showed me their camp where they have used painted walls and a fountain to produce some of the right look. They'd also found some pottery -- at Pier One, of all places! -- that wasn't jarringly wrong. Nifty! The fountain is a nice touch that never occurred to me.

One of my visitors said that I need to somehow enable comments on the web page for the little house. That's an interesting idea. I wonder what off-the-shelf guestbook systems are out there; I don't want people to have to register with some site in order to post. Maybe I'll just create an LJ entry for that purpose and link it. Not sure.

The house had some peeling (exterior) paint, so I scraped and repainted those parts early on. Next spring I should scrape and repaint the whole exterior; I wonder what it would cost to hire someone to do that for me. Explaining that to the contractor might be interesting: "Yes, I'd like you to go to this campsite, find my mobile building, and do the work. No, there's no electricity for you. Yes, there's a restroom some distance from the place where they store mobile buildings. Can you do that for me?"

There's one other bit of work the house -- or rather, its trailer -- needs. The springs are overloaded; I had thought this was from the weight of all the stuff we store in the house, but it appears that despite best efforts to specify this at construction time, the house itself overloads the trailer some. The answer, suggested here and confirmed by an auto mechanic who looked at it for me at Pennsic, is helper springs. He told me what to measure so I could buy the right ones and said that with the right hand tools installation isn't too bad. (He, alas, is from far away and did not have tools with him, else I would have just offered him the job.)

Short takes

I was fed a flemish ale, intentionally sour, named Duchess (I don't know if that's the brewery or the specific product) that was absolutely yummy. I wonder if I can remember who provided it so I can get more details.

I learned that in some groups, the breakfast of champions is "Beerios". I am not making this up.

Our camp uses communal mugs, many of which are indistinguisable plain white ceramic tankards. This always leads to a fair bit of "is that my mug?". I've suggested a small project for next year: stein charms -- kind of like wine charms, but for a bigger vessel. :-) I was thinking of making them out of the random admission tokens that many events give out; these are sometimes plastic beads and such but are sometimes pewter cast tokens that are too nice to throw away but not really good for anything after the event. So we've all got random assortments of these things in the bottoms of our feast baskets, right? Someone else in the camp is thinking in terms of using people's heraldry instead. I figure it doesn't hurt to do both; we do sometimes have guests, after all.

While I was visitng Dof and Thora, Duke Cariadoc came in from next door to repay a loan of some eggs. As he handed Thora the carton he said that the eggs were unusually fertile; later Thora explained that he had borrowed eight and returned a dozen. :-)

Johan on logical deduction: "You can't prove an axiom. That's axiomatic!"

Me, during an afternoon rain: "When I asked for rain, I specified between 3 and 6 AM!"

Overheard at heralds' point: "Well yes, two-headed animals are common in period heraldy, so I guess you can have a bi-polar bear".

From a random member of a work crew, upon discovering an unexpected filing cabinet in a storage area: "You're a Pelican; you can read. Figure out what it is, will you?" (Heard from the new head-honcho herald.)

Rufina (not shalmestere, a different one) stopped by our camp at one point, but I missed her. She was there to drop off some of the good ginger ale (you know, the stuff that actually tastes like ginger). She has learned that I am a ginger fiend and she feeds that habit whenever it's convenient. :-) The person who gave me the message (and the ginger ale) couldn't remember Rufina's name and referred to her as "Grendl's mom". Grendl is a well-known hand-puppet.

Someone in our camp brought up a case of Pepsi One. I knew it as "another diet Pepsi" but didn't know what makes it different; the answer it that it uses Splenda instead of Nutrasweet. Useful! Unlike Coke's Splenda-based product, this did not taste weird. I'll have to start buying it; it may well turn out that there's something bad about Splenda, but we already know there are bad things about aspertame, so a switch seems likely to be at least neutral and possibly positive.

I need to remember to get a new cooler before next year. Mine doesn't have a spigot, which makes removing the water from melted ice a pain. This Pennsic I heard of something called a "five-day cooler", which supposedly keeps things cooler longer (fewer ice changes); I need to investigate that.

I have other stuff to talk about, but I'm going to stop and post this chunk now. We'll see when I get to the rest of it.

Comments

[cellio]

Thanks for the cooler information!

Tudor-style house: nifty! Have you seen the plans (PDF) for our Tudor-style kitchen house? It disassembles into panels up to 6x6 feet and uses rafters and a canvas roof. It produces a 10x10 structure; this year we built a similar one that's 10x15, so I could probably get Johan to write that one up too. (The rafter system is different for a rectangle than for a square.)

We are hoping to come to Pennsic next year - we actually live 1 day's drive closer now...

Woo hoo!

[rectangularcat]

I've seen Johan's plans and we visited your kitchen the first year it was up! It inspired us!

[cellio]

Oh right; I'd forgotten that you've seen the kitchen "in the flesh" (in the pulp?). More and more collapsable structures are showing up at Pennsic; it's a pretty neat thing to watch. So this means there are other people out there whose brains you could pick, if you can figure out where to find them. But hey, you're a couple of engineers with broad clues, so I'm sure you'll do fine on your own too!

(Johan is a civil, not structural, engineer, by the way.)

[rectangularcat]

Well, I think we'll know about the broad clues soon - we are about to start some minor renos on the new place (we don't get possession until the 16th but the current owner is going to be out Labour day weekend so we get to come in and start working a bit early).

It shall be interesting... I wonder if it will be like a large-scale costuming project.