Bob will be working on the hardware and the cheeks over the winter. I have a box of hardware with nuts and bolts that will have to be threaded, too. The "jewelery," I think of it, a term also used in auto restoration for the chromework. (Funny, my brother finally understood about my interest in cannon when I explained it in terms of his passion for vintage autos...) She'll just be glorious when she's finished.
Regarding Bob, he was there with entourage, his daughter and son-in-law (whom I'm training as a gunner)who live in Sacramento, and his lady friend Carol, who was up from El Centro with him. At least I figure her for a lady-friend, since she's nice and local to him, and I frankly don't care, since she doesn't affect me, she's local and they seem to get along.
I'm wondering if there is a category called "non-practicing poly" that I fit into, since I have one local sometime lover, and Bob, who regards me as his "best friend" and is quite smitten with me, but is frankly at the far end of the universe (though not of the phone), plus an old boyfriend who's still a friend but hasn't really been a lover for a long time, though we've never actually "broken up."
As expected, I was elected 1st Sgt. for the unit by popular acclaim. I always get talked into these things, since I have this unending sense of responsibility, and I'm good at these positions. By the end of the weekend, I was having flashbacks to being Jilara the Lady Lord Constable in the SCA, when I couldn't get a hundred feet without something coming up. (Taking midwatch Saturday night, for guarding the ammo tent, probably helped that impression---I will never ask people to do things that I won't do myself, and believe in leading by example. It was really quite lovely, with the moon up, and only a couple people still stirring around the camps.) But what really surprised me was people who had left our unit or even the club, who said "If you're the 1st Sergeant now, I might come back. I just couldn't stand that other guy." Well, a lot of us couldn't, including myself, but I was rather bemused to find that a lot of people actually like my leadership style, and made a point of telling me so.
My spies tell me that the "other club," the Civil War club that split off of ours because they didn't like a lot of factors in ours, is now embroiled in a political infighting mess. I always contended that I wouldn't join said "other club" because that was where all the people I had problems with went. Well, a bunch of people have now joined them to supposedly avoid political infighting. They left, and now the other other club is full of political infighting, and ours has mellowed out. What does that tell you? Some people take their situations with them, it would seem.