Genevieve
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Gulf Wars, Part 2, End of Nawlins and beginning of the War
2001-03-26 - 06:28 p.m.

Gulf Wars Saga, Part Two

Now, where did I leave off? That's right kids, we had just taken our self guided driving tour of the Garden District. If you have never been, you should. I believe the trolley goes there if you are stranded in the French Quarter without your own vehicle. Luckily we were independent and had not only our own means of transportation, but a crazy woman at the wheel. Have I ever told you that the one English assignment that I excelled at was the streamofconciousness paper?...

Still in Day 5

After the relaxing, read: sitting down, tour of the Garden District, we headed back to the FQ to drop off Alan and Laura and pick up the Rags and Kymber at the airport. We dropped them off on Royal St. with the plan of them finding a different place to eat and if nothing else, meet up at Jax brewery at 9pm. This time we luckily had the cell phone technology at our disposal for the separation. Kevin asks so sweetly if we could swing back by that candy place on the way out to Canal so he could get a snack of yummy pralines. Lured by the seduction of sugar, I easily comply. :) Kevin runs in to pick up some peanut butter pralines for himself, a chocolate peanut butter cup for yours truly and some mint chocolate for the Kymber since we thought that might ease her dealing with the Slacknar's lack of solidified plans. Luckily Kymber is very good at dealing with Slacknar and took everything in stride. Yummmy peanut butter chocolate.... insert Homer Simpon noises here...

So, we head off to the airport to retrieve our friends. Now either Gen drove like a bat out of hell, or it was closer than I thought, or we budgeted too much travel time, but we got the airport with plenty time to spare so that instead of me waiting with the truck at the pick up lanes, we park and go in to find Rags and Kyna. Now I have to interject here that Kevin took a gel capsule during the drive that got stuck in his throat. He decides that instead of hopping out at a stoplight or having PsychoGen pull into a parking lot, he'd just climb into the back seat to retrieve a soda from the cooler from the drive up. Now, I gotta say that this was really fuckin' funny, and I'm trying to not drive off the road or into anyone else while laughing hysterically. Kevin lays down the passenger seat, and "slides" into the backseat after finding out that while he is big, he's not big enough to reach behind the back seat from the front seat. While he was back there I had to ask him for a soda too! :) This was also the time that we re-discovered the large package of grapes Gwen had sent with us. Ewww... So, instead of staying in the back seat Kev decides to "slide" back into the front seat and continue on with life. Sadly his "slide" was poorly interrupted by the armrest coming down and Gen braking at the same time. Opps! Luckily we made it to the airport in safe condition, and even have time to throw out said grapes and some other trash in the airport garage trash cans. So we laze around the airport going many feet in the wrong direction to then go right back to where we were and then right a bit more to find their gate. We wait. Kevin takes off my shoe in a fit of restlessness, and I put my smelly wool-sock-clad foot in his face to convince him that he wants to not only retrieve my shoe, but put it back on my foot. That's right folks, we're getting surly. Then we wait some more. Finally the plane begins to unload. Actually it was right on time, but waiting always feels like forever, especially when you have a package of mint chocolate that you can't eat. It is at this time that we get our first glimpse of the hat. Y'see, I'm not exactly sure when, but at some time Kymber had authorized in Combat Archery, and she decided to use it at Gulf Wars so in her infinitely stylishness, she makes this new helm in Eldrid's shop. (Come to think of it, I am still waiting on two seal top spoons from Eldrid...) This faboo hat is covered in blue velvet, trimmed in bronze (some shiny yellow metal) around the egdes, with stainless diamonds on the four sides and a band of enamaled goodness with quatrefoils and all sorts of fanciness around the brim connecting the required diamonds. Let us just say that it is faboo and leave it at that. It was only later when I saw it on her puddin' head that I saw the cute floppy white feather on the front! Tee hee hee! And Kymber joins our armoured combatants on the field of battle! We proceed to collect their other bags, or should I say body bags! I made the mistake of picking up Kymber's once, the light one, and deciding to play up to my girlish nature and let the boys carry the heavy things. They could have stored dead bodies in there for all I know, except that a dead body does you no good at a war unless you need filler for building a star fort, but they already have a fort built. Keenly enough Kymber's bag is blue and white and Rags's bag is red, yellow and black. What a clever color scheme in purchasing... We lug their luggage out to the 'burban parked on the first level of the parking garage. Sadly, this is all that the Gen remembers about where she parked and we do have to search a bit over the lot to find the 'burban. Now you would think that a large black Suburban with VA plates wouldn't be hard to find, but sigh... I console myself that the boys needed the exercise. So we hop in the truck and drive back to the French Quarter, all the while Kymber happily satiated by mint chocolate. After we reach the FQ, we call Alan and Laura and let them know we are back already, an hour early and did they find anyplace for dinner? They have been abject bums and failed in their one job. sigh. We ask if they want to meet somewhere sooner and then decline. Harumph!!! Fine. We ask the Kymber if there is anything she wanted to do in the FQ in the hour before dinner. She wants a Hand Grenade, this nasty green very-strong fruity rum drink, and she should pick up some souvineers, like for the cat watching friend. We make it to Bourbon St. and the Hand Grenade place and the Kymber gets a Hand Grenade, which is good 'cause going to the HG place for soda would just have been wrong. They have gotten new plastic cups for the HG since my Mardi Gras days in 1995, which is kinda cool, but they still have the cute bobbing plastic hand grenade to go on top. I get a large rum and diet coke, which is as big as her HG, I swear. After I drank it down I had to beg the bartender for more diet coke to be added to my cup for free, like it would really cost him anything, but eventually he complied. I'm not sure if it was due to my cuteness, his complacency or the sheer size of the Rags and Kevin. Either way, I got free soda. While on the way to get cheap crap for friends with Nawlins smeared across the front, we walk by the Court of Two Sisters restaurant entrance. We pause to look at the menu. It all looks good, if a bit expensive, but hey! we are on vacation! We make reservations for 6 at 9:30 and call Alan and Laura to let them know. I guess they were on their way to the original meeting place of Jax Brewery when we told them to meet at the CofTS at 9:30pm for dinner, slackers! We head on to buy said tacky stuff, we look at the silly bumper stickers, I had to get a "Pure Evil" one for Laura, and "Earth is Full, Go Home!" one for Wayne. Both seemed to like their little alcohol induced gifts from me!

So we meet back up to have dinner at the Court of Two Sisters at 9:30. I don't remember much from this thanks to the rather large Rum and Diet and my new weirdo metabolism, other than that the wine was great, the shrimp au gratin was excellent, the chocolate mousse was to die for (sorry Kevin!) and we all had a great time. Luckily Gen sobered up in time to drive back to her aunt's place and we all went directly to bed anticipating the long day ahead of repacking the trailer and setting up camp. Ugghh... sleep! Thus ends the saga of the four odd travelers in Nawlins! The Large One, Angel of Death, Mr. Hmmmm. and the Angel of Minor Irritation, also known as AMI now :)

Day 6, Wednesday, time to get to site!

We awaken to the dred that we have totally wrecked my aunt's place, and must now all get up, pack, repack the trailer and find some food before heading to the site to check in and set up. sigh... I thank my aunt profusely for our use of her place and her excellent hospitality. Yes, Kymber, there are owners to that house and they were there, you just slept through it all, trust me. My aunt, as nicely as possible also makes it evidently clear that six people are not appreciated as houseguests, but that for one night she was forgiving. Got it, four tops! Thanks Aunt Mary! You are so patient!
We all get up and motivated and I convince the guys that we need to move soon and get on the road, times a wasting, and all that jazz. Now, after I repack the back and include a little nest in the bed of the truck for Laura, I get on the phone with my dad while the boyz continue packing the trailer. Only so many cooks should get involved in that soup. I chat with my dad for a while, because amoung other things of just catching up, the kind and wonderful man who was my next door neighbor growing up had passed away on Monday and it took me a while to get the message. I had to wait until after on site to grieve for that loss. But, on the lighter side I got to avoid the packing and finished roughly at the same time they did so I could lock up the house and pat the dog, Dixie, and get on the road. Now with the trailer fully loaded we quickly realize that while two 400lb guys could not lower the trailer much on the new wheels, whatever it was that we packed in it did. Bumps were evil to the trailer and I was glad to be done driving the truck and hand the keys over to the Large One. We decide not to stop at the Denny's from hell thanks to Kymber's protests and stop outside of Nawlins at a Shoney's with a large parking lot. We eat. Food and caffiene are good starters to the day. I was beginning to miss bacon and eggs for breakfast and frankly had my fill of sugar covered donuts. Then the boys spend some time on the ground of the parking lot shaving away parts of the wheel well so that the tires had some room to bouce around on these lovely southern roads. We drive to the site, yes, Kymber is was exit 35 not exit 41, Gen remembered wrongly, sue me, y'all were foolish enough to listen to the blonde anyways! Kymber calls a coworker at his desk in VA to see the Gulf Wars website to get instructions 'cause while I'm sure that we packed a Gulf Wars flyer, we sure as shit could not find it there, and luckily she kept us out of high cotton and got us to the site fine. Thankyouverymuch, listen to the blonde, what were you thinking?!?

So, we get on site, we check in a troll, Isobel gives us red linen tape for our medalions instead of the silly acryllic yarn troll gave out, we drive to where we are to camp and get the bad news. While the camping spot is physically near everything that is great, it is in a washout area and rain is expected tonight, not to mention that the spot is nowhere near enough space for the Atlantians preregistered, much less for the numbers that show up. yikes! Kymber and Rags have space in the royal cabin, lucky dogs. We search the area left, not much to look at, and those keen patterns in the leaves were made by runlets of water, great. We check out one spot in single camping near AnTir, but it is very sloping, not great for furniture and the layout of the tent. We find another spot that Edwin and Genevieve decide not to camp in and figure out that it will work just fine for our tent, but just barely. During set up, Tricia wanders by and I pull out my gift for her to give to the Cu. There is this faboo place on Royal St. called the Three Dog Bakery that makes fresh baked doggie treats. I had to get something for the Cuan from it and they had a lovely t-shirt that said Will fetch for treats on it. This was a must have! It even had the little Three Dog Bakery logo on the back. Tee hee hee, it was meant to be a torture gift, but instead he actually liked it. phooey! So, we unload, we set up, just in time to move everything inside before the first sprinklings of rain settle in. grrrr... I don't know what Karma was trying to prove, but man was she pissed at us. There were also some leaks in the roof, due to citronella exposure we think, that had us worried but luckily the canvas seemed to swell up eventually and keep the rain out. So the boys go to park the trailer and it is decided that Alan and Laura will go to town to pick up food necessities while Gen attended Kevin's EPM meeting to take minutes for him. Minutes in the loose interpretation of the word, really, but it was really cold and I'm a terrible typist to begin with. I got the gist of everything down, and even bolded a few things he needed to make note of for later policy decisions. Let me tell you that the Webministers meeting was so much fun, not as much fun as I imagine a heralds meeting would be. To be truthful it wasn't that bad, but for that to be my first interaction with folks at the war was a bit disappointing. Now here is another thing to note. Never send the redheads on a mission to get food and stuff for folks. They made a list, and they got everything on the list, but the list was not complete and most folks, even this blonde, would know what was missing. Um, things like non-carbonated beverages, and water, and paper towels and tissues and the like. These things were not collected by the redheads. They can't do anything without explicit instructions apparently. They did get alcohol though. :) So, they get back, the rain really starts, grrr... they were kind enough to bring us back cold McDonald's food, but luckily we had the self preservation to go to the food court before the meeting. And then Gen decides that instead of hanging out in the tent during the thunderstorm, she would hang out with her buds in the Royal Cabin. Heck, even if my buds weren't there, I would have found a reason to stay. After the really bad rain storm that evening settled down after midnight we all went to bed and slept peacefully after our hard day's work. Thus ends Day 6 in wet and tired misery. I hoped the weather for the rest of the war improved greatly or I was tempted to get on a plane and fly home leaving the others to fend for themselves.

Day 7, Thursday? Our first REAL day at the war!

Let me just start by saying that Gen and Alan had their first real fight ever over the misery that was the really bad rain storm. For all you folks who saw me that morning, all is well, and no, you aren't getting any more details, but suffice it to say that everything is just ducky now, thankyouverymuch!

When we awoke to the bright sunshine, things started to look up really fast. We realized that only a very small part of the tent got wet and that it was populated with stuff in plasic boxes that no harm came to. The only place in the roof that continued to leak during the night was all soaked up by the spiffy dividing walls and never made it down to wet the carpets. We also found exactly how close we were to the rapier field, bathhouse, merchants, and everything. Life was good. Since I was doing MoL stuff I wore my blue and white horizontally striped dress so that I could be easily found. First thing was the rapier field battle, which was luckily really close by. Alan went around guilting all authorized rapier fighters with gear to come to the field battle since, being on the Trimeran side, we were grossly outnumbered. The field battle looked like a lot of fun and no one seemed to get hurt, permanently that is. Isobel did learn the down side of fighting with a headache, and hopefully has learned not to do that anymore. I also started the getting folks on the field MoL thing and fixing poor fighters who had never gotten permanent cards, etc. Oh the power of the KMoL's white cards!!! Muwhahahha! or something. I then headed off to the Heavy Ravine battle for kicks and to see if anyone needed my help. To my knowledge, while they say to have your fighter cards and a photo ID with you at all times, I could not find a single instance of anyone checking fighter cards. Silly Meridians... So, I ended up watching the ravine battle with Padraiga and Kelly, on the hill and away from the reach of arrows. This was kinda interesting, because while Pennsic has the Woods Battle, I don't think it is anything like this Ravine. The ravine is like 600 feet long and 100 feet wide and valley like. Poor fighters had to fight on very interesting terrain, and after it was all said and done they then had to haul their tired asses up a nice hill to get anywhere close to home. I think it is really some form of torture devised by the Meridians. Were there any meridians fighting in the ravine battle, I don't know. Also, they announced at the beginning of the battle that instead of it being a 60 minute ressurection battle, it was instead 90 minutes. Everyone looked dog-tired at the end of this torture and we were lucky that there wasn't more fighting at the end of the day, since it was the end of the day. At least one fighter had cramps in his legs so bad that Kymber and I walked him out of the ravine and Corby kindly took him the rest of the way back. Kymber and I took the rest of his armour back for him, poor boy was beat to a pulp. We all convene back at the tent and talk about our plans for the rest of the evening and tomorrow. Thurs night was the Royal Dinner so the Elizabethan Secret Service went to rescue Queen Emer from that madness, ended up taking the loads of gifts back to the cabin, and some for An Tir too since they had few retainers. Ah, our boys are good. Now, imagine if you will a group of provosts, that's white scarves to the rest of you ignorant souls, dressed in their finest black Elizabethan wear with rayban snglasses on and ear pieces in following the Queen and Princess around the merchant area. They check out the shop before allowing entrance, they monitor the crowds while they spend money, and tackle any suspicious looking bystanders and get them away from the Queen. "Back away from the Queen and no one gets hurt..." This rounded out the great evening and I even helped Princess Mary-Grace spend more money. But it was going to match her Coronation garb perfectly and it had fleur de lis on it!! I'm bad, I know it. Whew! What a day!

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