Ray Tucker (SCA: Guido Aldina, husband of Esperanza Halevi) died last night. He had been sick for a while with a respiratory problem, and was in the hospital a couple weeks ago when it got bad. So we knew this was coming, though we didn't know when.

I called them last evening to see if we could visit, but Esther said he wasn't up for it. She also said that evenings in general are bad (I wish I'd known that earlier), and we should come on Saturday. I guess she wasn't expecting this to be quite this soon either.

Esther has family and a good group of friends here in town, so I imagine she'll get through this better than many would. But they were married for an awfully long time, and this has got to be rough.

I'll miss him. He was a neat person -- generous and courteous, with eclectic knowledge and a sense of humor.

Very quick. But I have a few minutes before Shabbat due to making unexpectedly-good time home.

At choir on Monday we had two new people. I hope they both stay; they are both nice people, and near as I can tell they are both good. One came out for dinner with us afterward, which is a good sign. The new alto was picking things up very quickly; I infer sight-reading skill.

Tuesday Dani and I went to the first meeting of a group of SCA dancers who are going to get together a couple times a month and work on harder stuff. I stopped going to dance practice years ago, in part because we never did harder stuff, so this is appealing. We spent about two hours working on one dance (Gracca Amorosa, 16th-century Italian) and had it in decent shape by the end. (Part of this time went to learning 16th-century Italian steps, which were unfamiliar to many of us.) We need to work on it more, but after a little more practice (and some memorization work) I could dance this at an event. Neat. We had seven people, which was about right (I think).

I don't know if I'm going to go to all of the meetings -- I don't want to constrain my schedule too much. However, if I skip all the ones that are going to focus on English country dances (which are pretty uninteresting to me), that will probably be about right.

Enterprise Wednesday: what was that tripe? The actors should sue for being forced to associate their names with such drivel. Porthos (the dog) was the only redeeming feature. I want my 53 minutes back. (West Wing was kind of "eh", which for that show is disappointing. At least one of the Twilight Zone episodes was very good.)

Last night I went to part of the choir practice for Ray and Jenn's church group, because the SCA choir is joining them on songs for R&J's wedding. (Aleluia Psallat, Deo Gracias (not Deo Gracias Anglia!), and Exultate Deo.) Their choir has about 20 people, I think, so with our dozen this should make for an impressive sound.

And now it's time to turn down the oven and light candles.

Yesterday I went to Johan and Arianna's to help paint the new kitchen for Pennsic. It's a 10x10 Tudor facade, with a canvas roof, so painting involved mostly trying to paint brown timbers without splashing paint on the white walls. We were not entirely successful, but that's what the touch-up pass is for. We got interrupted by rain, but we got most of the painting done. This is going to look quite spiffy when it's set up, and it lets us eliminate one modern fly.

Before the rain the temperature was above 90 and it was very humid. The rain didn't actually do much for the humidity (it was a sprinkle, not real rain), but today is much cooler and less humid so something happened. I guess I was out in the heat and sun for too long yesterday, because I was really wiped out at the end of the day and didn't go to the party I'd wanted to go to.

Wednesday night I went to the officers' meeting for the local SCA group. ( Surprising things happened. )

Tonight I lead services at Tree of Life. Dani's out of town and the weather was hot until today, so I'd already decided to have cold foods for Shabbat. Cold cherry soup is good this time of year, and cherries were on sale Wednesday. Yum.

I'm drawing the cover for an upcoming SCA newsletter. (It's a special edition of our local newsletter -- all articles, no bureaucratic stuff.) I hope to finish it, or at least get most of the way there, tomorrow. The major stuff is all pencilled in, except for some stuff that requires drafting skills that I'm too tired to try to conjure up tonight. So tomorrow I'll do those, fill in some fiddly bits, and, I hope, ink. (It's a black-and-white cover, so I don't need to paint.) I didn't plan far enough ahead to scare up someone whose calligraphy doesn't suck to letter in the title and stuff; I think I'll do my bad calligraphy on a separate piece of paper and invite the editor (whose calligraphy is better than mine) to plug in her own if she likes.

When it's all done I'll scan it in. So you guys will actually see it before the editor does. :-)