Weekend overview – Cedarburg Winter Fest

This was a long weekend, but it was definitely worth it. I had a lot of fun, and I think everyone else involved did too. I’m going to list the bests and worsts, and then as time permits hopefully relate other stories in additional posts. If any of my fellow pirates have their own best and worsts, go ahead and post them in the comments, I’d love to hear them. If you have an item that you want me to tell more about feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to remember the circumstances.

Bests:

• Ian and I getting dragged up on stage by “Grey Beard” (David HB Drake) to join him for sea shanties Saturday
• Sunday the whole crew getting pulled in for almost a full set by Grey Beard
• “Of Pirates and Sea Monsters” (see previous post)
• Getting to work with the whole pirate group again
• Having the sausage racers request to have a picture with me
• Carving and arguing over the “ice island of mustacheo”
• “Walking the plank”
• Playing craps and not caring about losing “money”
• Saturday night hot tub pirate defrosting
• Sausage Racers taking pictures of us
• Having to develop a characters signature for autographs
• “I spy with me little eye…. somethin’ pancaky” and “defective telescope salesman”
• Ships of the desert, whales, and the ferocious t-rex
• Having my accent placed, again, to the same location, by another British couple

Worsts:

• It’s winter fest, not arctic fest… -30 windchills Sunday
• Really upsetting one kid at the pancake breakfast
• Parading at double time
• Broken spigot on my new barrel
• “R” jokes till I was ready to vomit, especially from drunks…
• Did I mention the weather?

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Of pirates and sea monsters

During this past weekend I was working at the “Breakfast with the Pirates” event. While wandering from table to table causing trouble, a shy young girl asked me “how come pirates fight sea monsters?!” As she said it, she had a very somber and sad look on her face, I took it to mean that she felt sorry for the poor sea monsters. (thank you water horse, no doubt…)
oh boy…
“ahh the old sea monster question…”, I stalled

quick John think!

“Well lass, ya see… sea monsters, through no fault of their own, have a real taste for ships… no one really knows why, they just like to munch on them, kinda like you like pancakes… they must just taste good… Well pirates, we like our ships too, not fer eatin of course, we preferr pancakes, and we would rather not have our ships eaten by sea monsters. ya know what happens when our ships get eaten by sea monsters? we have to float all the way back to shore, and that takes a very very very long time ya see, and really isn’t that much fun… I got me oar right her so i can paddle back faster ya see… so anyway… we pirates have to hunt after the sea monsters and k… aarr scold them regularly to make sure they all know it’s not right ta be eating all the ships… (i said scold, not kill… please no crying kid… i didn’t hurt the water horse) that goes for the cruise ships too… see if we didn’t hunt down the sea monsters and scold them, then they might eat the cruise ships too… and all those poor people would have to float back to shore too… so that’s why we pirates have ta hunt sea monsters”
At this the mom jumped in smiling and confirmed my story with her daughter, “see hunny, they are all protecting the people on the ships by hunting down the sea monsters. That way mommies and daddies and families on ships are all safe to enjoy vacations” with the external confirmation the daughter smiled and she seemed much happier about the whole situation and later she even smiled and waved when I came back by their table.

Home

Home safe… Roads were fine… The weekend was a blast.. more later… sleep now…

Wow, what a night

Last night I was part of a group hired to be pirates for a party in Milwaukee. I left home early enough to account for bad roads and arrived in Milwaukee with plenty of time to spare. Once everyone else arrived we met with our gracious contact for the event. He provided an enormous room to use as a green room, water, and validated our parking. Before we knew it the clock said six p.m. and it was time for us to start.
All together there were five of us, three pirates, “Captain Joe Cotton”, “Scuttle Sally”, “John T. Hawser” and there were two “ladies” as well, “Pandora”, and “Chastity”. We headed into the party and were an immediate hit. The 1st hour of the party offered free beer, which were we encouraged to take advantage of and in my case, I did. (ok, I had 2 beers during the free period) We all wandered the floor playing with people and generally just causing trouble. We continued on until nearly nine, a full hour and a half extra. The organizers loved it, and were very pleased, enough that they comped us dinner too.

Read on for Bests

Ok, not the banks fault

Ok so, dong some more digging into the auto payment nonsense… It turns out, it’s not the mortgage company’s fault, nor is it the banks fault. The payment in question actually belongs to the car finance people. I called them and they informed me that the payment due date is the 29th. I explained that I had requested a date of the 6th. They moved the date to the 6th as requested. I then asked if they were going to cover the $30 overdraft fee. The rep on the other end of the line responded with “Sir, we didn’t overdraft your account, you did.” Excuse me??? “I’m looking at the transaction…” “We don’t do that sir” “You took the payment on the 30th, my check doesn’t post until the 31st.” “30th? it should have posted on the 29th” “Ok… still not addressing the problem… when I signed up for auto debit, I asked for it to be posted on the 6th” “Well, your payment is due on the 29th and you have a 10 day grace period” “what does that have to do with anything… the debit occurred on the 30th, my check didn’t go into my account till the 31st… so i have an overdraft fee of $30” “well sir you will have to talk to your bank about forgiving the overdraft” “…thanks…” “ok sir, will there be anything else?” “no…” I hung up.

What the hell…