From their Excellencies

From their Excellencies Nordskogen

Their Excellencies letter to the populace from The Quill February 2006

Good Tidings and Salutations from Their Excellencies Rodrigo and Khadijah,

First we would like to thank Mistress Casandra and her staff for the wonderful Yule Moot. It is truly special to get to celebrate the new year with our Nordskogen family.

We also want to strongly encourage all of you to attend the Nordleigh event, Flake Off: Nordleigh Rebels, on February 11th. This is our group and our Canton that we need to support. Please, please, please show your support by showing up with your glowing faces and wonderful smiles, it will make the event that much richer and enjoyable.

Since this month’s Quill topic is love, I thought I would share with you my own love story. Many of you already know that I recently snuck off to Las Vegas and got married (and no it wasn’t an Elvis Wedding).

My daughter, Ashley (Topaz), and I spent the day at Valley Fair last summer in the first weekend of August. We stayed all day and late into the night. As it gets later at Valley Fair the crowds start leaving and the lines on some of the rides all but disappear. Ashley and I decided to ride the Excalibur roller coaster over and over because we could run off the ride and back into the entrance and catch the next train. Of course Ashley being completely in charge of where we were going to sit each time… ‘Hey dad, lets sit in the front this time… or the back this time… etc’. Well, we were not the only ones taking advantage of this amusement park phenomenon, there was a very pretty lady with her daughter that was approximately the same age as Ashley doing the same. Ashley and this other girl must’ve been on the same mental track because they kept choosing the front or back almost as if they had coordinated it. Conversations were struck and thus we met Nicki and her daughter Megan. The four of us ended up spending the rest of the night at Valley Fair going on rides together and before we left, Nicki and I made plans to out to dinner the following week.

We did meet for dinner and had a nice evening that ended with a magical first kiss. But alas the second weekend in August held other plans for me, off to Pennsic. I had explained this crazy hobby to Nicki but I’m not sure she quite understood what I meant when I said I was ‘off to war’. Being gone for over a week right as you’re getting to know someone new can be a small obstacle, fortunately the magical talking box that brings voices from far away someday to be known as the ‘cell phone’ makes overcoming that hurdle doable… usually. Maestra Giovanna had convinced me into trying out actually camping in my pavilion (instead of a nice screened in, bug free, modern tent) at WW this year. I enjoyed the space and comforts so much that I decided to spend Pennsic camping in it as well. However, it was pretty dirty and had mold build up, so I decided to use my power washer to really clean it good. It did a very good job cleaning it. In fact it cleaned off the dirt, the mold, and little did I know, the waterproofing. You can see where I’m going with this can’t you… wait it gets better. Murphy’s law in full force, it rained really hard on day two of Pennsic. I got back to camp to find my entire pavilion was one big puddle. Nothing in it was dry, the bedding was wet, the clothes were wet, the rugs were wet (and smelled), and low and behold the cell phone got wet and wouldn’t work. Baron Geoffe came to my rescue with some tarps for a roof for the remainder of Pennsic and Lady Teffan lent me some extra blankets for bedding so I was able to survive and slowly dry out, but the cell phone looked to be in trouble. I was very worried as many of the numbers I had in the cell phone I didn’t have anywhere else, especially and including this attractive lady’s number who I had just met. I survived my damp war and on the return trip hooked the phone up to a charger in hopes to revive it. Alas, it did indeed start up. Yay!! Realizing my lack of redundancy of especially Nicki’s number, I quickly opened my phone book and copied her number down to paper. Just then the phone did three spins, a couple of staggers, and then enacted the best death I’ve yet seen never to start up again. I did lose all my numbers… or should I say, all but one.

Nicki and I began dating upon my return. In a whirlwind of love and upon a whim a few months later, we decided to run off to Las Vegas knowing that we might come back married. We didn’t plan anything and upon leaving were uncertain if we would throw caution to the wind and actually take the big plunge. But upon arriving and getting settled into our room in the Luxor (the big Pyramid Hotel), we held each other and there was no question of how deeply in love we were and that we wanted to share a life together. So the next day we set out shopping to get some of the necessary accoutrements, like a ring for me (I had some inkling of this so I had already gotten her a ring prior to the trip), and within a few hours had thrown together wedding plans that included a limo, a service with video and photos at The Garden of Love Chapel, and a night on the town. And thus I came back married with a beautiful bride who is the love of my life and still is not so sure this hobby isn’t crazy.

HE Sir Tristan brought up a topic on a few electronic lists that I’d like to expand on. His topic line was regarding understanding the difficulty in judging blows and the absolute necessity for communication. He touched on a point how easily it is to damage someone’s reputation in the SCA and how ‘Herculean’ the effort to repair that reputation is. The reality of this is sad but true and the potential for it is two-fold. You can just as easily damage your own reputation by unthinking words or actions as you can someone else’s. We all make mistakes and usually there are some consequences to those mistakes, but we all need to strive to take responsibility for our mistakes and learn from them. In the same respect we need to allow others the chance to live up to and beyond their mistakes and show forgiveness as we all are capable of making them. Most importantly we all need to be thoughtful of what we say about others that may damage their reputation no matter how private we think the conversation is, whether that’s if they missed a blow in fighting, are wearing garb that you don’t care for, or any other thing that doesn’t strike your fancy about another. We are one big family and we need to take care with each others feelings and reputations and protect them as we would our own. I hate to be cliché, but the old saying holds a great truth: Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

May sunshine always grace your face so shadow never will.

Rodrigo and Khadijah.

This page was last updated 19 January A.S XL (C.E. 2006), by Curwinus Trevirensis.