Ren Fair in the Rain

Its Ren Fair at Ardenwood (Renaissance Faire for those who have not experienced the event…) We will have Ren Fair tomorrow as well…

We have Knights, a Queen, peasants, jousters, and vendors… a grand and gay crowd has invaded the farm.

They are celebrating Queen Elizabeth, but we at Patterson House are a Queen Anne…. (bad joke) In a sea of guests in Elizabethan wear, I am dressed as a Victorian... One of us has an allegiance to the wrong English Queen...

The guests are not here for our historic house… they are here for the Faire, the food, the Joust… we get few visitors… not a bad thing… The guests who visit are really into visiting a historic house. Making things better, we have several new volunteers starting… one a high school student, (a second working his 2nd day) the other 11 years old, apparently a Victorian by birth…

The Ren Faire folks have taken over the farm… they are doing the parking, they are doing security… they don’t always recognize that we have farm and house volunteers… and so try to prevent them from joining the event… We are dealing with the issue. This morning I had to tell no less than 6 of their volunteers that I was park staff while driving in… They were polite, but were uninformed… Yes, some people work here…. Tomorrow don’t be surprised… (but they will, I have faith)

To make it weirder we are experiencing a thunder storm… Thunder and lighting and really big raindrops… This is not typical northern California weather… but it is here. At least it is cooler.

So, Brian (aka the son) is now in Jacksonville Florida, in SAR swimmer school… We are proud… Its pretty cool to say you son is a Navy SAR swimmer. The daughter is in Maryland living with her cousin’s wife, and caring for her cousin’s kids and going to the local JC…. (He is in Iraq… in command of a company of Apache Helicopters,. She is a former Army Apache pilot, a West Point Grad… we are proud of both Kellie and Fred, both heros…)

We are going to Maryland for Thanksgiving…. It’s a transcontinental holiday. I plan to visit the Smithsonian History Museum Archives… They have the Jackson and Sharp order books… I may go the Library of Congress… I have a card… Our daughter is trying to arrange a tour of the White House… It will be a good trip.