Healing Fireball

As promised I’m back with another installment of the Faire and Con Report.  This time I am hear with a preview of our next faire, the Maryland Renaissance Festival.  For our readers that have not visited this one, here is the rundown of this larger faire’s stats.  This faire is set during the reign of King Henry the Eighth and every year features a story about his reign.  However, that’s not the only theme; each weekend has its own subtheme and performing acts and shows related to that subtheme.  The faire itself is located in a comfortably shady glen in Anne Arundel County in Crownsville, Maryland.

This year I am proud to announce that our resident pirate and newest roving reporter MUM the pirate cook will be attending the fair the weekend of September 26 to join in the Adventure Weekend and celebrate all things piratical.  This fair is always one of our favorite fairs and this year is sure to be no different so if you’re in the neighborhood come out and see it.   
~Chris Baldi “The Healer”~
    ~September 26, 2008~

As I mentioned in the last Faire and Con Report, we were off to the Village Renaissance Faire in Wrightstown, Pennsylvania last Saturday. We had another fine sunny day for the trip and were glad to see that this fair just keeps growing. This year the children’s area was even larger, with castle blocks, a bubble table, a music area and balance platforms for foam sword fighting on. Round Table Jousting with our friends from Period Productions put on another fine jousting show which ended in a little intrigue and was quickly followed by a bar brawl at the tavern. But the real gem of the show was Shakespearean chess where Shakespeare’s tragedies took on his comedies. This was done brilliantly, using the lines from the individual plays as the dialog on the field and the starting rundown of the plays was very funny. Then there was the food. This is another fair where they let in almost any food vender and your taste buds will thank you for it. While I stuck with the simple cheese sticks and a hamburger, Carol on the other hand had a cross between a quesadilla and an empanada [That would be an “empanadilla.” – ed.]. All in all it was a fun day.

~Chris Baldi “The Healer”~
~September 23, 2008~

Wow, it’s been a while since I wrote one of these.  I apologize for the delay but unfortunately due to work and gas prices we chose not to attend all the faires we usually do.  However I do have another faire preview for you.  This time it’s for the Village Renaissance Faire in Wrightstown, Pennsylvania.  This is a one-weekend fair that is a charity fair that raises money for the Wrightstown Village Library.  My wife and I are friends with many of the actors at this faire.  The faire itself is designed to both entertain adults with a different story every year and children with a play area and arts and crafts table.  This year the plot of the main story revolves around a plot hatched by King Phillip II and Mary Queen of Scots to remove the protestant Elizabeth and replace her with a Catholic monarch.  It promises to be fun day so if you’re in the Pennsylvania area, come out and support the library. Both I and my wife will be there taking pictures for a follow up Faire and Con Report.
~Chris Baldi “The Healer”~
  ~September 17, 2008~

The show will go on. As I said in the previous post, the NJ Renaissance Kingdom and Faire opened on Saturday May 31. Regrettably, we opened to a thunderstorm and were forced to shut early. Last weekend we opened to stifling heat and underwhelming crowds but the show went on. Below are some pictures of the day. As I stated in my first teaser, this year we are doing a pirate-themed show called the Pirates of Tortuga in which the tensions between France and England boil over onto the port of Tortuga and into the court of the pirate king. So come on down and see us. The show runs weekends from to June 21 at South Mountain Reservation in West Orange.
           

~Chris Baldi “The Healer”~
         ~June 9, 2008~

In an attempt to better ourselves through yarn reading, Chris and I journeyed into the city to visit the Philadelphia Book Fair at the Free Library last Sunday. We certainly did not go for the sole purpose of meeting the inimitable Yarn Harlot, who was there giving a talk and signing copies of her new book, if that’s what you’re thinking. (Chris tells me to keep the knitting-related news items to a minimum. I don’t understand why yarn and gaming have to be mutually exclusive, but whatever.) My apologies to the Yarn Harlot for the photo:

The library was very efficient with moving people, though, so I didn’t get to take a picture with the sock, alas.

While I was hanging out with the knitty people, Chris went to hear the discussion by the folks from LibraryThing. (Visit our Library!) They talked mostly about the implementation of interesting new features, and I have to say, it keeps getting better over there. I especially like that you can now label books with the Date Started and the Date Read, so I can finally keep track of that sort of thing. (As an aside, Chris nixed my idea of doing book reviews, unless they were gaming-related or themed. He didn’t think the geeks would like to hear about Atonement. Maybe I should take a survey).

At this point, it started raining. We putzed around, and it started to rain harder. So we jogged over to the nearby Franklin Institute (sorry, it’s “The Franklin” now, it seems) to purchase some appropriately dorky drip-free umbrellas. By that point, everything was beginning to close up and we headed home. Hopefully we’ll have better weather next year, and we can actually use the tote bags for new books we brought along.