Ten things that i wish i had known two years ago

Advice for a new Titleholder
(or Ten things that i wish i had known two years ago)

You will always hear the standard advice: Don’t agree “absolutely” to anything until you check your schedule and your finances; eat well; get as much sleep as you can; water is important; have fun... but there are things that i learned along the way that i wish i had thought of at the beginning...

1. Look into Frequent Flyer programs instead of just going straight for the cheapest flight. i flew a lot in my two years holding titles, and i possibly could have earned a free trip by now if i stuck to one airline

2. Save EVERYTHING. Get a box and toss everything from your travels into it. Skip the 100+ ads for WET, but save your boarding passes, event programs, flight plans. You can always toss it out later if you accumulate too much, but in the meanwhile saving all that stuff is a great map of where you have been.

3. Come up with how you are going to store/display your run pins before you lose any. Personally i’m not into that “Boy Scout” look of keeping them all on a vest, but there are lots of other ways to show them off. Maybe display them tacked to a square of leather that you hang on the wall. i glue them to the inside of my wooden shine box.

4. Organize the business cards you accumulate. Get a three ring binder and some baseball card collecting pages. A pack of baseball card pages is like two bucks for ten, and each page holds nine cards.

5. Get business cards of your own. There are lots of cheap computer programs for creating and printing business cards, and the pages of cards are pretty cheap as well.

6. Create an e-mail address that is JUST for “Title business”. Through Hotmail and Yahoo you can create as many e-mail addys as you want for free. Make it something related to your title so it is easy for others to remember and/or spell when they want to write to you.

7. If you can afford the initial cost, get a digital camera. You can find remanufactured digital cameras on e-bay for $100 or less. If you like to take pictures, you will save in film and processing costs in no time. Also—get rechargeable batteries. CD burners (so that you can store long term all of your photos) run as cheap as $25.

8. Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember everyone’s names. i am terrible at names when i first meet someone. i tend to remember names of people that i have heard about before ever meeting them in person.

9. If you are flying, pack only as much as you can carry because you just might have to, and you might have to carry it far...

10. And something that i DID know, but will stress because it is important (and i also wanted my list to be a nice, round, 10 things): having a title entitles you to NOTHING special. It does not mean that you will always get a date (or get a date at all). It does not mean that people will always care who you are. It does not mean that you will get things for free. It does not mean that you will get your way. But i guarantee that you WILL make friends you shouldn’t trust; you WILL suffer from disappointments; you WILL have moments, even if fleeting moments, where you WILL wonder if your title is worth the hassle/gossip/expense. Just remember—it is up to YOU and no one else to make your title year worth all of that, because if you do it right, it WILL BE.

izzy
Great Lakes Bootblack 2003
International Ms. Bootblack 2004
PET YOUR BOOTBLACK

KILTS GALORE!

you know you had a good night at the bar when you've got Boba Fett looking for you the next morning...

i worked at the Utilikilt booth for Gen Con and had a BLAST telling men to take off their pants. that was actually my sales pitch: "Come on in and take off you pants!" yeah, that got a lot of attention at a gaming convention! some guys were shocked that i MEANT it, too! wrapped s kilt around their waist and said "okay, drop trou!"

the bittersweet "highlight" of the weekend was when i met the brother of an old friend of mine who was killed in a motorcycle accident 11 years ago. he overheard me tell someone that wearing a kilt in Indiana shouldn't be too shocking since there is so much historical reenacting in Indiana. and i also said that i am involoved in historical reenacting. i happened to mention Tippecanoe Ancient Fife and Drum, which caught the brother's attention. when it was his chance to get fitted, he told me that he WANTED a kilt but couldn't afford one because he had just bought a new motorcycle. i feel really stupid that i can't remember if his name was Adam or Alex or what... but here's the conversation in a nutshell...

brother: so, how long have you been involved in reenacting?

me: about twenty years

brother: did you know Derek Catt?

me: yeah, he marched with us for a couple years

brother: he was my brother

me: oh my god, wow. wow. he dated my friend Kym. wow

brother: yeah i remember her. small world!

me: yeah, he marched with us, but who DIDN'T he march with!

yeah, i met Derek back in 1987 when my friend Ilsa (she was 11 yrs old at the time) befriended him. she probably had a crush on him, but he was around 18 yrs old at the time :D. Derek was motorcycle-safety man... reflective tape all over his helmet, leathers, etc. just took one person to NOT pay attention... he was a good kid.

ha ha ha

my cat is watching TV... intrigued by the strange flashing shapes. Koshka LOVED NASCAR...

the 21st century

holy christ i just bought a picture phone...

okay, it was free because of the Verizon "New Every Two" plan, and these days all new phones are picture phones...

i got this one because it's got Bluetooth and that means when i have spare cash to burn i can get one of those wireless headset things to use while driving. And honestly it doesn't hurt to have a brand new phone every once and awhile since cellphones are hardly durable...

damn i'm gonna geek out with this thing...

pain at the pump

i like to drive. i like a LOT to drive. driving hard, fast, balls to the wall. nothing dangerous; i don't make foolish driving choices, i just don't make timid driving choices.

but with how expensive gas is getting, i'm working on bleeding the rock-- driving more sedately to maximize my MPG. my car has a real-time MPG meter, and last night for my drive home i averaged 33.8 MPG for the trip with moments reaching nearly 36 MPG. my old average per tank was closer to 27, which is not bad for a V6 sportscar. but because of a performace chip the car requires 91+ octane, usually twenty cents more a gallon than standard grade.

so glad i have to go to Indy this weekend... AND next weekend :)

favorite boots ever

my favorite boots ever would have to be my first pair. purchased back in 1990 in Madison, WI at a hole in the wall Army surplus store off of State Street for about $40 or so. they were brand new army issue of an obsolete style (the man at the shop said that they are referred to as "pancake" boots because the toes flatten out relatively fast).

i bought them for my Study Abroad semester in London that started January 7th 1991. my first long walk in them was form the hostel to Buckingham Palace (about an hour). NOT a good way to break in new boots... my feet were so sore, i had to unlace them to JUST tight enough to not fall off my feet. we took the Underground back to the hostel (thank the gods; i couldn't walk another step that day...)

but after my feet recovered, i did a LOT of walking around London; i convinced a good percentage of the group to walk places with me-- if we were seeing a show for Theatre class there was usually enoug time between dinner and showtime to walk to the West End (sometimes even walk home).

Our class schedule was open enough that we had a great deal of free time, which were were encouraged to use sightseeing. for the sake of excercize and saving money, we walked as much as possible to the point where i was easily walking 10-15 miles a day.

this wear and tear was taking its toll on my boots, and it was during this semester that i realized that i was going to have to figure out FAST how to get the most life out of my boots by taking care of them the best i could. i think that the tin of Kiwi that i was using was just the tin of polish that had been in the junk drawer at home since the dawn of time (i never saw anyone in my family polish shoes, but still that tin moved three times with us...) and i was using a toothbrush to "buff" the polish until i found a more proper brush in Cambridge at a street vendor... Even still, a bootblack was in the making...

by the time the semester was over, the soles were worn completely smooth, but i didn't have the money to buy a new pair (and my size is hard to come by... i now realize how lucky i was to have found THIS pair fairly easily).

Those boots ran the Olympic track in Rome, explored the Catacombs of Paris, dug in to the WWI trenches of Belgium, marched through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, climbed the stairs to Anne Frank's annex in Amsterdam, tread the grounds of Buchenwald where so many gays were imprisoned, tortured and worked to death by the Nazis.

and one day, those boots went missing-- as so many of my personal possessions did over the course of a five year period i wish never happened... (the bitch stole my Christmas stocking, for pete's sake!)

A few months ago at my favorite Goodwill, i found an EMMACULATE pair of pancake boots for all of three dollars. they were so new that the tread still had remnants of the moulding sprues. i bought them without even checking the size-- i didn't care if they fit or not; they were identical to my first pair! i checked the size when i got to the car... i actually got choked up when i realized that they WOULD fit. they are date-stamped from 1984.

i haven't worn the new boots much. they sit on the top shelf of my boot rack. actually i think the last time i wore them was at IML... for Alan's Last Shine and then that evening on stage when i was up on stage for the announcement of the new IMrBB, Arthur.

they will be saved for specical occasions.

Fifes and Drums

f you live near here:
http://www.fort-ticonderoga.org/visit/directions.htm

come see me and the River Valley Colonial Fifes and Drums at the
National Muster of Fifes and Drums!

it's this coming weekend and is Saturday/Sunday (August 6th and 7th)

izzy
http://www.rivervalleycolonials.com
and more pics on my personal site:
http://www.izzythebootblack.com