As mia_mcdavid wrote early Friday morning, we were extremely busy all last week. She left out a few things–notably all the meetings she had about our children, and my full week at work. There was nothing terrible that happened during the latter, but it there was a lot going on. The weekend was even busier.

We got up about 6AM on Saturday. After an absence of several years, colgaffneyis had an official presence at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, and we were getting paid for it. The show opens at 9AM, so we had to get up, have breakfast, get dressed in our period attire, and drive clear across the Metro to get there by 8 AM for final setup and cast call. On the way we had to stop in downtown Minneapolis to pick up Garlic Annie, who needed a ride. This was not a hardship. She was on our way and at that hour traffic was minimal.

We were not on the main fair grounds, but instead on the “Special Events Field”, an annex to one side where all of the Scottish-themed groups (This was “Highland Fling” weekend) were placed. For me the biggest problem with this was that the porta-potties there had not been maintained nearly as well as those on the main grounds. Our space was just north of the porta-potties, and occasionally the wind would shift, giving us a period experience we could really have done without.

I actually stayed with our group during most of the day, not using much of my scheduled time off to see the RenFest itself. I did not really miss that, having seen it many times over the years. Besides, I have at least one more chance this season to get in with free pass.

We had a good crew at ‘Fest. Everybody was helpful and cheerful all day long. I spent a lot of time at the weapons, much of it explaining how the matchlock muskets work. Many of the visitors were familiar with black powder and muzzleloaders, but had not seen matchlocks. A couple asked, reasonably enough “Where’s the flint?” The visitors were all pleasant and interested, and I enjoyed talking about this. I am generally a very shy person, but I can talk at length about any of my odd geeky interests.

I also got to dress up some of our visitors in our pikeman’s armor. That was a big hit–some of the parents took pictures of their children in the armor.

In the mid afternoon the Highland Games field in front of us were empty for a while, and after careful arrangement with the authorities vitamin_g_prime and I paraded out there with the Tinker (acting as Sergeant of Shotte) and fired three volleys (blanks of course) into the air. Yes, these reproduction matchlocks really work, and I enjoy shooting them.

We left about 6PM, carrying away some of colgaffneyis smaller and more valuable items home. Theft is a big problem on the RenFest grounds. Our trip home was slower than going out. Traffic was heavier in general and particularly in downtown Minneapolis near where Annie lives–the Minnesota Vikings had an exhibition game that night. We got home before 8PM, tranferred colgaffneyis gear to CH’s truck, ate a couple sandwiches and went to bed soon afterwards. Sunday was going to be another long day.

Sunday morning we got up early again. mia_mcdavid was repeating our experience from the previous day. The difference was that she was taking CH’s truck to facilitate hauling colgaffneyis tents and everything away at the end of the day.

I was originally planning to do this with her, but an obligation at my job came up. There was a database task that could only be done that Sunday at 2PM. My hope was to come down in the late afternoon for the end of the show and teardown. There were several other members, including some long-time veterans, who were coming on Sunday but had not been able to show on Saturday, so the organization had sufficient coverage without me.

So after mia_mcdavid left I went back to bed, getting more than an hour’s additional sleep before church, as well as doing some preliminary work for the afternoon’s job.

Church was good. The Old Testament lesson was Exodus 1:8-22, and LeeAnne zeroed in on verses 15-21 for a great sermon (mp3 link) A baby boy was being baptized at the service which made this particularly appropriate.

Another thing about going to church was that I was able to count the offering. Mia and I were scheduled to do and were not sure if anybody had received our e-mail about not being able to come. Since in the end I was able to come, I was able to do this. I still needed someone to count with me: You need two people present when counting cash. However, the right person was right at the door when I walked in, and I quickly arranged to work with him.

Also, it was “Bjorn Appreciation Day”. Our organist/choirmaster just had his 3^rd anniversary with the parish and the members had got together a surprise gift for him. Mia and I had of course contributed, but it was nice to be in church when it was presented.

Starting at 2PM I went to work, connecting from home by VPN. The task was to move the County’s Blackberry Server database from a SQL Server 2000 system to a newer SQL Server 2005 machine. We had tested this earlier in the week and knew it would work. My part was to copy the database files from the old server to the new one. There were several bookkeeping tasks associated with this but I had done things like this many times before and was done by 2:20, and hoped to leave promptly for the RenFest. Unfortunately, my colleagues could not get the Blackberry Enterprise Server to recognize the new database server. A first call to Blackberry (Research in Motion) support did not get us anything useful. Time passed, and I was getting ready to reactivate the copy of the database on the old server. However, by about 4:30 my colleagues had finally reached someone at Blackberry Support who understood the problem. From him they learned about the registry edits(!) on their servers to recognize the new database server. By 4:50 the problem was solved and the County’s Blackberry system was back up.

However, by then it was too late to get out to the RenFest. I contented myself with the usual Sunday household chores and getting a dinner ready for when Mia finally got home, at about 7:30PM.