catching up: Friday evening

Friday evening was the trip to the College of Arms. This was something that I was looking forward to a lot, but I didn't realize just how cool it was going to be until we were all in the little main lobby room and suddenly two Real Life Heralds walked into the room and my stomach started quivering with excitement and my first thought was "I have to take a picture of them!" It was like meeting a movie star. They divided us into two groups for the tour/discussion, with the first group of 20 going with Somerset Herald and the second group of 20, in which I was, going with Bluemantle Pursuivant. Bluemantle seemed a little bemused at his audience; I don't think that the College of Arms has ever hosted a group like us. For one thing, the sign outside giving opening hours for public visits says that by special arrangement they can handle groups, maximum of 10 people. They had over 40 with us. But Bluemantle was quickly able to adjust his usual spiehl (he was going to start with the origins and purposes of heraldry, until we all pretty much chorused, "We know...."), and he told us some specific things about the main room, which is where the Earl Marshal's court is held when it is convened, and when he asked if we had any questions, we had questions along the lines of "How did the College of Arms get the arms that they do, and what kind of bird is that on them?" and "We weren't able to figure out which banner went with which King of Arms, are we right that it's Norroy & Ulster, Clarenceaux, and Garter?" (Yes).

Then we moved to the next room where the records and manuscripts had been kept before they ran out of room and built the room next to it, where the older MSs are now. They had out some grants of arms both ancient and modern, and again we rather baffled him with our questions, such as "Do you know what kind of pen was used in these 18th C records in order to get the fine lines and angles of the script?" But the crowning glory was the final room where the rolls of arms were brought out. amykb and I were nearly beside ourselves, "Oooh, oooh, look at that, is that really what I think it is??" By this time Bluemantle was enjoying himself hugely, though when we asked him if he ever knew that he had groupies, he had to confess not. (amykb was a very big fan of his, she wants to take him home. He was pretty cute.) After the tour, they had a lovely reception for us, with plenty of wine. Some time into that Juliana came over and let me know that she'd asked Somerset if he'd turn some pages of two of the manuscripts and that a couple people could join her for a more indepth look. I guess when she'd ask him this, he gave her a look like "OK, you're rather strange, but I'll humor you", and then he ended up having 7 or 8 people huddled around the MSs in awe. His estimation of us certainly went up when someone asked "What are those?" and fosveny responded without hesitation, "Oh, those are stirrups". The two MSs that we looked at were Flowers's Armorial and a roll of crazy Tudor arms. We asked them what would need to be done to get a reproduction or digitization of one or both of these. They said it's really a matter of funds---the CoA is self-supporting and they don't get any money from the government, so they don't really have that much money. A couple of us have some ideas for some fundraisers that we might try to do to raise some money for them, and I'm also going to talk to some academics that I know in the UK and see whether it would be feasible to write some type of grant proposal to get one of them digitized. What a wonderful source that would be.

The entire evening was just amazing. I suddenly felt like I'm just pretending to be what they really are, and that what I pretend to be there really are people that do this for real! A couple of us did ask Bluemantle how he'd gotten the position, given that he's fairly young, and how on earth do you break into the field of heraldry when there's only 13 offices and they only come open upon death or retirement? I guess he started out as a research assistant in the CoA doing genealogical research for some of the Heralds, and eventually was familiar enough with the facilities and the duties that when the office of Bluemantle came up he was offered it. Pretty cool. What I want to know is whether you have to be a UK citizen to be eligible. Because if I ever end up living in England, I might very well be tempted to try myself... What a cool job.

It's hard for me to express just how amazing that trip was. Definitely one of the neatest things I've ever done, and right up there competing with my wedding day as Best Day of My Life.

current events: AiML

I'm going to go at this from both ends.

Tuesday evening I got into Nancy around 6pm, got to my hotel with no trouble and figured I'd do what I needed to do to find out how to get to where I needed to go for the conference Wednesday morning, and then go to bed, and finally catch up on sleep. It turns out that my hotel has free WiFi access---but I couldn't ever find a spot close enough to an access point where I could see the network long enough to log in. So the nice lady at reception pointed out an internet cafe to me on the map and I went off to find it. I hadn't gone a few blocks when I saw a sign for the Musée Lorrain, which made me go "Hey, wait a minute, isn't that where the opening reception was going to be?" I walked over to the museum and saw a couple people I recognized, and it turns out that I got to the reception only about 10 minutes after it started. So at that point I figured I'd stay and chat. There were two short tours (45 min.) of the museum, which included a room of etchings and copper plates by Jacques Callot which were very interesting; I like etchings. Then there were some nibbly bits downstairs, and a little bit before 9 a group of us went off to find dinner. We ended up at a place which was rather expensive but the saffron risotto with cured ham that I had, with a very unusual take on tiramisu for dessert, was quite good. Unfortunately, this means I did get back to the hotel rather later than planned!

At breakfast yesterday morning I ran into Clemens, who had been at the ILLC and is now at CWI, and he was sitting with Robert, from Darmstadt, who is also attending the conference, so that made figuring out how to get to the site easy, I just followed them. The selection of talks is in general more mathematical than I can easily follow if I'm tired, so I used some of the time to catch up on my email and work on the slides for my talk this afternoon. Lunch was fantastic; lots of little nibbly bits plus two hot dishes, and for dessert little glass cups with a layer of raspberry puree, then cream, and then a raspberry. Ooooh, superb. I had two. :)

Then for dinner 11 of us met in Place Stanislas (the main square) and went to find a place nearby; it has hard to find a place that could seat 11 outdoors but the place we found I was happy with. I had the quiche Lorrain (wow was that the best quiche I have ever had), and then trout with almonds (also very good). We weren't entirely sure of the translation of some of the dishes on the mneu, so three people ended up ordering tête de veau, which was, yes, veal brain (complete with the outer facial skin with hair on it still). Eeww.

I ended up leaving right after dinner so that I could go back to the hotel and work on my slides some more. I have them mostly finished, which is good because there's one more talk (just about to start), then lunch, and then my talk.

Time to go!

wheee!

That went well! The speaker after me ended up not showing up, so my talk ran over 5 minutes with questions (that was the one thing I was worried about, that I'd have no questions), and then we had an extended coffee break (1 hour, 10 min) of which I had people coming up to me to discuss my talk the entire time (including Rob Goldblatt!). So it definitely went well, I'm very happy.

catching up: Friday evening & Saturday

After the CoA trip a group of us went out to dinner. I'd left a note for Joel at reception saying where we were going, and then we ended up going to the restaurant next door so I figured he wouldn't be able to find us. We'd just about finished dinner when this cute guy came downstairs we were seated and I looked again and realized it was my husband. :) He bought a hat when we were in Chicago in June, and I haven't totally gotten used to him wearing it, but it looks really good at him. So I gushed my giddy glee about the CoA trip and he gamely sat through a thoroughly heraldic conversation before we headed back to Astor College; he went to bed and I went down to sue_n_julia's room, where we yakked and geeked and had chocolate until nearly 1:30am. And basically from then on I've been running on too little sleep...

Saturday there were lots of classes I wanted to attend but the only one actually got to was Ælfwynn's on occupational bynames for women in 12th and 13th C Germany -- some fascinating material. fosveny, amykb, shaunacarrick, Jeanne Marie and I spent a lot of time working on putting together PP1 of May, which should hopefully be going out soon. Ælfwynn made new garb for Joel and me and that was very nice! New garb! That I didn't have to sew! And made out of linen so it really had a nice drape and feel to it.

After the classes ended, Duke Alaric and Duchess Nerissa presided as regents for their Majesties of Drachenwald and opened court, where we had a ceremony to confirm me in the office of Pelican Queen of Arms; bend_gules's lord Robert did the heralding of the ceremony and did a wonderful job. He has such a presence and gravitas and is one of the best court heralds I know. The ceremony was a good balance of solemnity and humor and His Majesty Thorvaldr sent Alaric some very nice words about me to be read in court. I was thoroughly baptized, and promised to be "sober and discreet" (not discrete! :)), and was gifted the cup for my baptism, a lovely pewter goblet. Joel got into garb for court and escorted me into their graces' presence, and was in general a good sport about the whole thing.

We then changed back into normal clothes and headed off to the pubs for drinks, munchies, and then dinner. Alexander Beacon bought me dinner as a thanks for everything I've done for Meridies, which was very nice of him! The evening then saw the party happening in our room, though thankfully it didn't last nearly so late, we all pooped out around midnight.

Only three more days left to go...