Wednesday on the way home from an EE meeting I had a stroke of bad luck. In the train I took of my coat and vest. I just pulled my arms from the vest and let it lie behind me in the chair. Just before we arrived at the station of Deventer we switched places; from a two-seat to a four-seat. In that move I forgot my vest.

When we wanted to depart the train in Hengelo I noticed that my vest was not lying near me so I went back to our former seats (in the same compartment!) and found it gone. Just gone. Not under the couch, not in the luggage space, gone. I asked the conductor if someone had given him a colorful vest supposedly 'found' but alas. I also filled in the web form of the NS but I have not much hope that it will come back to me. I think it was stolen.... I'm very angry and a bit sad about it. It was a Christmas gift from my mother and just a cool vest. People should keep their sticky fingers away from my stuff!

Still, for every piece of bad luck there should be some good luck apparently. Yesterday I received my second deer skin (ordered on Marktplaats a week ago) and found out it was not a deer but a reindeer. Meaning that the skin is almost twice as big as the deer skin I already had. And I only paid 40 EUR for it! It's loosing some hairs, as most reindeer skins do because the hairs are hollow and break easily, but it is very soft and warm. It will make a wonderful poncho.

My Taboe costume is getting there. The 'leggings' are finished, the belt for the loincloth is finished (still working on the loincloth itself), the bandeau is done, the dress only needs some decorations. What is left: loincloth, shoes (I'm not 100% happy with the first try), poncho, possibly a raincoat from reeds, belt for over the dress, bedding and some way to carry all stuff. Oh, and an animal mask.

On the 25th of September Matthijs and I will attend a historical cooking workshop and in November we will learn how to tan hides. We wanted to follow a smithing workshop but it is given in the same weekend that we celebrate our birthdays, so alas.

On the how-to-get-rid-of-the-blubber-front it is going well. I mean, finding sports. The belly dance teacher told me that I may train with the advanced class. Unfortunately it is on Tuesday, the same night as rehearsals (but we'll make it work). Freestyle jazz and streetdance were much fun. Today we will take a try out lesson of ji do kwan. And then I'll have to decide which sport(s) to continue.... Choices, choices.

With the heavy rainfall today, our street looks more like a lake than anything else so the motivation to do some grocery shopping was greatly diminished. We needed bread for lunch and ingredients for our evening meal, but we ended up baking Irish soda bread and we might improvise something for dinner too. (Hurray for provisions)

The soda bread turned out to be a nice larp bread. It's very easy to make (if you have a dutch oven, which we have) because it does not need to rise before baking and it tastes good. The original recipe I used dictates two types of flour. We only had one (tarwebloem) and just used that. It worked out ok. It took some more oven time than the recipe states, but that is because our oven just s*cks. So, for future reference I'll post the recipe here:

Ingredients:

• 500 grams of flour (tarwebloem)
• 400 ml buttermilk (karnemelk)
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (zuiveringszout, check your apothecary)

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
• Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl
• Make a little hole in the middle and pour in the buttermilk
• Stir with a spatula or spoon, or just knead it by hand into a sticky dough
• If it's too dry, add more buttermilk and if it's too wet add more flour. Too moist is better than too dry.
• Knead well, but not too long because then the bread would become tough
• Put on a baking tray or into a baking tin and flatten it a bit
• Cut in a cross on the top with a knife. About halfway down into the dough
• Put in the oven for about 45 to 60 minutes, but keep an eye on it to make sure it won't burn to a crisp
• When the crust is hard and an inserted skewer comes out clean again it's done. (When tapping the bottom of the bread it should sound hollow

It tastes great with lemon curd, jam or chocolate spread but cheese works well too.

Hmm... looking outside I see the rain pouring down once more. Just when there was a little part of the sidewalk visible again. We will survive without doing groceries but I want to go to a try out lessen jazz dance this evening. I hope it will be dry (enough) when I have to leave the house.

Dead Fox Junction was great. Everybody had put lots of effort in their costume and character and it all just fit together. It was wonderful to see how the village came to life. Ehmm.. so to speak of course, since the story was that all villagers were dead and trapped in a time loop.

At the end of the story, Saturdaynight, Olga and I were dressed as Native American dancers (I dislike the word 'Indian') and performed a spiritual dance to "guide the spirits to rest". It took place in a very bumpy field, which made dancing quite a challenge. Afterwards I was panting from both the adrenaline (power-out disabled some nice light effects, resulting in quite some stress; we had to improvise the dance) and the exercise. That, plus the fact that my fake suede skirt didn't fit well and I just don't like the look of myself in the mirror, motivated me to go find me some sports again.

I'm quitting taekwondo. I lost the motivation. The teacher wasn't all that great and I have no ambition to train another three years to get the black belt. (As far as skill goes I'll be ready soon enough, but you have to be a World Taekwondo Federation member for at least three years before you can do your black belt exam.) I do want to continue belly dancing. I'm good (enough) at it and it is fun. It also confronts me with a huge mirror every week, which will keep me motivated to do something about the 'accumulating blubber' (whahaha! so dramatic).

However, I'm looking into martial arts once again. I have found a school that is almost half an hour (by bike) away from my home and has lessons of 1,5 hour. I hate 1 hour lessons: when you're finally warmed up the hour is almost gone. It is kung fu / karate / kempo /tai chi and promises to have lots in common with shaolin kempo which I've done for 9 years (black belt). Matthijs says he'll join me for a try out lesson, if there are such lessons.

This week I'll also try to participate in some try out lessons of 'freeform jazz' and streetdance. Belly dance, however fun, does not do enough for my stamina. Something more powerful like jazz or streetdance is more demanding (no, I won't try Zumba...). So, after trying out those dance classes and the new martial arts I'll have to choose which I will continue. Belly dance on Monday (quite late, 20:30-21:30), martial arts on Wednesday and Friday (20:00-21:30), freestyle jazz on Thursday (20:30-21:30) or streetdance on Friday (18:45-19:45).

Let's see if I can work off some kilos.

Was a plot heavy event for the Ern and Leviathan in general. The issue with the chained people (chained by Wülthgar, our bad ass ancestor) is getting out of hand. Wulthgar managed to create three more debts. An undead baby with a gaping hole in the back of her head was sent to Pit Mot as a fulfillment of his wish for daughters. Ewww! Wülthgar is building cities on our home world U'tahar and creating ever more undead and raping and experimenting on women.

We went on a quest to try to make Wülthgar mortal again and Enid ended up with a part of the possible solution. (Can't spoil more here) Almost got lost on the Crossroads, she'll never ever venture there again if she can help it.

Our summoning ritual was the bomb! In short: people got swimming lessons, dived into the sea where they caught seahorses as mounts, then proceeded on into the deep where they had to fight an angler fish to retrieve a large seashell that contained a pearl: our elemental princess. It looked wonderful. We did it at night when it was dark and we had blue light on everything from the pentagon pillars. We blew bubbles and held up sheer curtains that represented the waterline. The angler fish was a pimped igloo tent and Miranda (our princess) actually lay in the seashell (children's sand box) until she was freed. (Unfortunately at the moment of freeing a huge mist cloud from the smoke machine obscured everything....) We had stick seahorses too. We got a 9 for the performance and lots of compliments.

OC we had a fairly relaxed event. We were on the site at 12:00 on Friday and installed ourselves without haste. We did the grocery shopping after Cora and Rene had unloaded their stuff at the camp around 16:30. The whole weekend long we were able to help out people that needed can openers, an extra plate/bowl, rope, pliers, toilet paper and other stuff. We're well supplied.

Möttul (Matthijs) kept the campfire going and did lots of cooking, handing out tea, cookies, eggs and bacon, dinner and pancakes to passers by. He made everybody feel welcome and a few people thanked us for our hospitality and the great campsite and homely feeling we provided. Yay! And a great campsite it was.

Unfortunately we had to break up on Monday in pooring rain. The whole weekend had been fairly dry with some rain in the evening/night but on Monday we had a good deal of water coming down. So everything was quite wet when we had to pack up. Still my mood was on the bright side and the packing went in an orderly fashion. No real stress there. A one hour drive later had us back home around 20:00.

At this moment we still have to repack the sahara tent, which is finally dry. Some chests need to be repacked and stored in the shed and then we'll have to vacuum clean the whole house again because we have half a forest lying on the floor. All larp related laundry and the dishes have been done already. Yesterday I also cleaned the fridge and the microwave so apart from vacuum cleaning and doing the toilet and bathroom I'm ready to celebrate my birthday this Saturday.

Things learned at the Summoning:

• These things are not water proof: cookie jar and all the other glass pots
• The biggest crate is a good table when you put it upside down
• A central place to put the tea mugs on is a good thing
• Water in the bucket for quickly rinsing the mugs cuts down on the dishes
• The last minute made tarp (patchwork of all left over pieces of tent fabric) worked very well
• The opened up side of the wood storing tent was an improvement. We can now store the food baskets and cooking stuff in there as well
• Nobody eats bread for breakfast so we should definitely buy less of it

Things planned for next time:

• Making an IC cookbook. (The prints with recipes got really wet and are OC) However, neither Mottul or Enid can read so there will be lots of pictures.
• We need to make a new tent for the wood and foodstuffs, made out of actual tent fabric instead of a curtain. (Fabric is already ordered). Even impregnated curtain is not waterproof. (duh)
• I really need to put soles into my boots for extra comfort. Impregnating them would be wise too. Or I could use some actual quality boots.
• The sheet on my knife is useless. I need a new sheet that will allow me to wear the knife on my belt without loosing it.

Added to the congratulations:

• Phone call from my mom.
• Sms from Olga and Jan
• Birthday card with present from grandparents Haeke
• Birthday card, kissing hippo's, from my father and Mieke
• Birthday card from Matthijs' motherBirthday card, mewing kitty, from my mother and Moniek
• Phone call from my dad
• Birthday mail (very happy and crafty birthday) from Cut Out & Keep
• Sms from my boss and Annemieke (design)
• Mail with weird webcam picture from my colleagues at Brevidius

I called both grandmothers to thank them for their cards. They will both attend my 'party' the 7th of August.