SCA: What to wear with a bliaut?

I am blessed with wonderful friends of incredible talent. I am very new to the SCA and haven't been able to attend as many events in the past year as I had hoped - yet I continue to find phenomenal clothiers - Lady Sibella Denton of Talmere crafted the Tudor outfit I wore to our "Vision of the Twelve Goddesses" event and the lady wife of my friend Baron Cynric of Bjornsborg (the Baroness Seraphina Maslowska), created this beautiful bliaut which, I'm ashamed to say, I'm wearing for the first time since I received the gift this summer.

But aside from a leather belt and pouch which my mother has given me, I'm not sure what else to wear. Should I wear my white puffy shirt? And what of pants? Would my purple wool cloak be completely and utterly out of Period?

I'm trying to balance being "period compliant" with practicality and warmth....all thoughts are welcome and advance apologies for incorrectly stating terms or titles I'm still learning. I'm off tomorrow so I have a (very small) window to do some shopping if necessary.

Car Accidents, Missing Tows, Good Kids, Oh My!

Let's look at my Saturday, shall we?

• Woke up at 6:30am, cereal and juice for breakfast
• Several rounds of Magic School Bus and Curious George while playing with a massive hotwheels collection
• Head out to hike at the state forest about 10:30am
• Rear end Jeep Liberty when foot slips off brake pedal in minor stop and go traffic - little man notices nothing
• FIRST ACCIDENT SINCE I GOT MY LICENSE IN 1992 - yes, seriously.
• Hood bent, radiator pretty damaged, some coolant system pipes disconnected. (can't tell other damage until shops reopen Monday)
• Police officer across street catches bang and writes up report - Jeep Liberty driver offers us a lift home
• Police officer offers tow - decline and go home to get Triple A.
• Ride home with incredibly pleasant people, call wife to have long conversation - in Singapore
• Call AAA and find out wife is Associate on parents account. Despite her jointly owning car, they will not tow even with proof.
• Call Dealership - is told they'll send a tow truck right out
• Grab son and scoop into car to see tow truck(!!)
• Proceed to wait an hour with no tow.
• Call police officer back to take him up on tow offer.
• Officer arrives and informs me that car will be towed to lot 3/4 a mile away rather than dealership. $110 plus $20 storage. Will have to get another service to tow to dealership. Officer requiring tow at this point.
• Shop owner where car was parked encourages me to talk to tow driver and ask for cost to tow to dealer - he agrees.
• Little boy has been napping in other car for 45min at this point
• Get to Collision service and have car dropped off. Pay driver, head home.
• Realize "my" car is an absolute man-made mess and fairly under maintenanced. Decide to stop at Jiffy Lube and get car serviced and slightly cleaned.
• Finally, around 3:45pm, Will starts getting punchy and antsy. Service lasted a little longer than expected and boy was going crazy.
• Home for dinner - pizza for him, Chinese for me. (How many toddlers do you know that will eat a Spinach and Feta Calzone.)

I am so lucky to have a little boy who is so mellow and happy and playful and tolerant. Truly spoiled.

Update on StumbleUpon nightmare- emailing company management

I am battling a panic attack here as I try to figure out what happened. Best I can determine, their AJAX (Javascript/XML) interface on their checkbox feature completely tanked when I checked my address book.

I am taking this VERY seriously. For over 10 years, I have made a point of never emailing people without the legitimate context to. When using a social network I *NEVER* send an email to a single person in my address book who is not ALREADY on that network.

You see, those who are already on are more likely to use it and spread the word. Why send unsolicited emails to services these people may never want to use?

More importantly, why expose my friends, family and worse - acquaintances and professional colleagues to services that may someday release more information then they want to share? It's certainly not MY place to hand over that information. Hell, this is why I've spent AT LEAST the last 5 years ranting about trust-relationships.

And one single point of failure on Yet Another Social Networl of StumbleUpon has killed my own trust levels.

Those of you who have responded to this horrible action with a laugh and a smile, I thank you.

I've sent the following email to the management team at StumbleUpon in hopes they will respect my polite request:

'm disappointed to be having to write this email. I am an avid supporter of social networks and have accounts on almost all of them.

Today, I did an update in StumbleUpon to see who from my contact list
was already a member.

I made sure everything was unchecked and the people I did not want to
receive messages, didn't receive them.

Then I clicked on the "Next" button and my world imploded.

Over 5,000 contacts and several hundred email lists got spammed with a
StumbleUpon email "from me" that I did not send them.

I tried to look at it a hundred times. Did the "uncheck all" or "check
all" checkbox not function properly? What was going on?

I only ever use such import services to check and see who exists on
any networks. I NEVER send out an email to anyone else. Ever.
---------------------

That being said, what's done is done.

Can I please expedite deletion of my StumbleUpon account and get some
sort of written confirmation that the contacts both emailed and
downloaded from my GMail account will not be used in ANY manner once
my account is deleted?

Please be in touch at your earliest convenience.

I only hope they will change their interface or add more prompts in case the JavaScript isn't properly working.

StumbleUpon STUPIDITY. Apologies

Well, what a way for a check-in with anyone I've ever emailed in the last 4 years.

Sincere apologies for this mass StumbleUpon Spam.

I am usually incredibly vigilant in making sure I won't accidently spam my contacts and try to ONLY add those already on the service.

StumbleUpon auto selected ALL my contacts and those NOT on the service were two pages down. Even though they gave me the option to add just those on the service separately.

I HATE services that do that.

GRRRRRR.

Douglas Adams, How I miss you

Yes - no posting of late. It's not due to lack of material - I'd love to be posting multiple times a day. Suffice it to say that 4Q is kicking my butt - in a good way.

So my reading has been quite erratic of late. Sucked into a bit of Heinlein for a while until I couldn't read faster than the library wanted it back. Read Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" and was floored. Awesome, awesome story. Read....only 8 years after most of my friends. Want to review.....

I was going through my office things, (Will's room is there now), and came across all my books. I found a pristine, uncracked copy of "Salmon of Doubt" by Douglas Adams. I began reading it on the way back from Chicago Tuesday night and continued it on the train today.

*sigh*

It was so nice to read something intelligent and funny. It had me grinning like a fool...and slowly tearing up once I realized how a brilliant light has gone out, never to put pen to paper again. Ah well, back to the funny and amusing. ;)