OK, so I’m doing my second meme of 2008. I’m pretty sure that’s more than I did for all of 2007 so obviously I’m now a meme addict.

Anyway, this one is an interview. I’ve been asked five questions by Elasait and here are the responses. I’ll interview you as well if you ask in the comments. However, I may not get to you for a couple of weeks as there is that whole Lilies thing.

Elasait’s questions to me.
1. What made you decide to ask Fernando to squire you?
When I decided to squire I wanted to become more a part of Calontir so I wanted a knight outside of Vatavia. I wanted a knight that would push me to be a better all around person and member of the SCA. I wanted a knight that would help me become a better commander, because some day I would like to be the general of the army. I was debating this during Fernando and Lyriel’s reign, but Fernando wasn’t even close to my radar, I just never once thought about him. Then they came to a small local Vatavian event and I was one of the few faces in the singing circle that he knew, and he started singing You’ve Lost All Sense Of Feeling, and on the line “squire, squire, I get down on my knees to you,” he got down on his knees to me. And I went “Wow, he’s not just a king, he’s a knight!” And that was that. One postscript, Fernando’s much more careful who he sings that song to now 😉

2. What’s the most memorable thing that’s ever happened to you?
Wow, that’s hard to say. In the SCA, probably Katrine asking me to be her Champion, but getting fyrded, having Eoforwic treat me as they have, reciting the Wanderer on the Fyrdraca and in the Norstead longhouse, are all right there as well.

Outside of the SCA, I would say that probably the most memorable good events were my marriage and the perfect game I pitched for Kirby’s in 1997. Slow-pitch softball perfect games do not grow on trees. However, I’ve been blessed with lots of great memories and events in my life, so picking from any of them is a real challenge.

3. What do you think you’ll be doing in 5 years? 10 years?
Hopefully gaining tenure in 5 years and in 10 publishing my second book.

4. Of places you’ve never been, where in the world would you most like to go and why?
Hmmm, too many choices. OK, this probably isn’t what you meant, but I would like to actually be at the next Super Bowl the Cowboys win 🙂 I would also like to go to a whole slew of places in England that I didn’t get to last time like Gloucester and Durham. I would also like to walk Offa’s Dyke some day. I didn’t really get to spend any time in Wales or Scotland last time, so that would be cool. I would love to hang out at an Irish pub in, say, Limerick or Galway, for a week. I want to visit Caen, Rouen, and Aachen to the see the burial churches of William, Richard, and Charlemagne. I think it would be fun to make the pilgrimage from say, Tours, to Santiago de Compostela. Oktoberfest at a mid-sized town in Bavaria. Uhhhh, I’m not sure I can really answer this question.

5. How did you come to choose your academic specialty?
Well, Calontir had something to do with it, but mostly it was because I started enjoying Anglo-Saxon poetry right after I read Tolkien the first time. The more I get into Anglo-Saxon society, the more I admire the ideals of their belief system. It’s about fulfilling responsibilities, not defending prerogatives. My main complaint about the animated Beowulf wasn’t that they changed the story, I expected that, but that their portrayal of the society was absolutely horrid in so many ways. Anyway, back to your original question, I came back to grad school to be a professor, decided on history as a department, decided on medieval as a broad field, and then basically decided I wanted to wallow in Old English poetry for the rest of my life.