So... Most of the Boscobel site is wonderful, but I did find one serious instance of Fail in the Ladies Room at the pool - ( FAIL )

It's been a busy extended weekend...

Thursday night, I hosted a BBQ for jcwhitaker  and her friends. It was a good time, with a lot of meat (mmm.... meat and carcinogens!) and singing, both choral and bardic. After the bulk of folks left, we sampled absinthe, margaritas, mojitos, and more... probably a bit too much more, but a fitting beginning to the weekend's festivities. I packed hurriedly and then headed to bed since I had to work in the morning.

Friday started with work (ugh). Usually, I don't work on Fridays, but for the summer I have traded some days with my co-worker so she can enjoy long weekends with her hubby. On one hand, this means I had an extra day to come home from Quest this Monday but on the other hand, it meant I went to work with not enough sleep, not enough done and the world's worst packing job in my car. It literally was about as "full" as it was en route to Quest because things were just randomly tossed in. :P Work was work, but soon I escaped, picked up mightyjesse , some booze, and the Jara sunshade and headed north. We got there just in time for our reservation and sat down to enjoy the Fish Fry. Oi. While the fish was as good as ever, the service, which I *thought* had hit an all-time low a couple years ago, was wretched. I made the executive decision that we should raid the salad bar before we knawed off our own arms and that helped at least. Friday night was pretty casual, with some basic prep for the morning, some chattering until late, and of course some tasty drinks until Don G kicked us out of the bar at closing time. 

Saturday began a little damp with evidence of a night-time rain and occasional spitting from the sky, but it never got heavy enough to seriously impede the fun. Thanks to arebekah  and others for providing such a lovely lunch - as usual, it was wonderful to come in off the field to something warm and tasty. The Princess' Sleeve Tourney in the afternoon was fun, particularly because of the A&S/service component (but I'm a dork like that). It was loooong, but I think generally well enjoyed. Congrats to Edward, the new Sleeve holder! And congrats to the Jara fencers - many of you fought really quite well and made me proud to see you on the field!

Unfortunately, Saturday dinner was an even bigger debacle than the night before - we were asked to come back 20 minutes after the original reservation and, although we complied, it still was something like an hour and a half or more from when we were seated to when we got our dinners. :/ Again, the salad bar to the rescue... I was tipsy and hungry from whisk(e)y, but I really pitied the fighters... As it was, I was not over-fond of the chicken parmigana (and, yes, I really did order the chicken parmigana this year ;P) - it is significantly different from Sandy's and I think I may need to find a new favorite on the menu. Again, the evening picked up again post-dinner. We had some drinkies, then my "torchlight tourney" with the torches in question being a car's headlamps because the ground was too firm to put in the torches. I had lovely little foam swords for folks to beat one another with and we had a glorious drunken time. Each round of the reverse warlord tourney* featured a round of drinks for the winners, including some fun ice cubes I had been stockpiling the last week or so. (For those of you that asked, the cranberry-concentrate "rubies" were from this mold and the absinthe's skulls and crossbones from this mold. As a side note- if anyone is interested in ordering a set, note that they are *not* dishwasher safe like may other silicone products - my molds met with a well-intentioned but unfortunate accident this weekend...) Utterly silly fun, but a good way to kick off the partying. I stayed up drinking and talking until late, but slid into "observational mode" around midnight and was less social than I often am. Sometimes it is fascinating to just watch social interactions and reflect upon them and I had a good deal to think about...

Sunday, I was a lazy bump and slept in. Unfortunately, this meant I missed mightyjesse 's authorization bout as I thought she was just headed out to practice and didn't know that ego_id_non_feci  would be a big fat bully and push her into authorizing. ;) The rest of the day was casual, with several planned tourneys and an impromptu one that allowed Her Highness to shoot a lot of "revolting peasants." What a fun event! Thanks to ego_id_non_feci (site steward), damej (gate), otesmacke (web master), cass_lee and iarroganti  (tourney sponsors) and all the others who made it possible by working as staff, marshals, or tourney hosts. We finally left site around 6:30 and stopped by to pester sirzig  and get a burger on the way home. I helped mightyjesse  with some WW things and ought to have been working on my own, but I have been lazy and so now need to address that tomorrow.

In all, an excellent weekend, but I'm glad to have a bonus day tomorrow to catch up on responsibilities!


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*Reverse Warlord Tourney - everyone starts as "in" and the pool is divided into two equal teams, which then have a melee against one another. The team with the last gentle(s) standing wins. That team is then resurrected and subdivided into two teams (additional players conscripted from the audience if the sides need evening out) and the scenario repeats until there are only two fighters left, who then go best two out of three for the status of Warlord. The dark and the drunk and the silliness only added to the confusion and general mayhem, resulting in a disorganized but wicked good time.

...and with a tasty fruit flavor!

The Pomegranate

For those of you planning on joining us tomorrow- 

6:45ish - meet at Eithni's. (call if you need directions)

Around 7PM - meet at Bernie's Rock Shop (on East Johnson Street)

7PM - ? - Curbshop 'til we drop

Refreshments at Eithni's to follow while we gloat over our finds

A good while ago, someone (sorry I don't remember who) brought me a toy - a little egg in which there is a froggie. The idea is that you add water, the Froggie dissolves to reveal your Prince. Then, you add clean water and the Prince is one of those little toys that expands (or "grows") to full size over the next three days.

Frog into a Prince

Now... the thing I find most amusing is, even after you FIND your Prince, you still have to wait for him to GROW UP! :P

Geeking



Out at the Inferno

So, I have recognized a pattern in the men I currently find strangely attractive, namely House, Grissom, and Snape:

1) Go by a single name
2) Quite Odd
3) Highly Intelligent



... and Fictional. :P




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EDIT: OK, so odd, bordering on defective, may be a better characterization of some of these. :P

It has been a busy weekend...

Friday was Pi day. While my plans to go get pie went somewhat awry, I did get a lot of things done around the house, so that was nice. Work has been wild these last two weeks, so it was nice to watch some House and get caught up on the little things that had slipped a bit. Of course, there still is laundry and more to do, but at least I made a dent...

Saturday, I went to the Polynesian in the Dells with a bunch of folks for a Pirate Party. We dresses piratical for bowling and dinner and in between spent several hours wallowing in a hot tub with a tasty drink. Heaven. Dinner was at Marley's so we fit in with their decor. Even though we were a large group I think the waitress was more amused than annoyed with us. :) Even time in the waterpark was a lot of fun - the pools were not too crowded, the water slides were not too huge, and the drinks were high-octane.

There was one unfortunate little trip during the night, though - lateish in the evening I went back to our room to change. On the way down, I ran into a small child in the hallway... it was sort of late for a five year old to be up, but yucky part was the little girl was running around in a string bikini with a fake tattoo tramp stamp on her behind! Yoiks! Who lets a child that young wear prosti-tot outfits in public and unattended? Somehow I see underwear exhibitionism and Girls Gone Wild "stardom" in her future... Then on the way back, there was a crowd of drunken high school boys in the hallway who behaved much as one might expect. Bleh. I escaped with minimal harassment, but the stoopid boys kept banging on the suite door until we removed the pirate flag from the door. Company behind the door was lovely, however, and we had a fun and silly night including an amazing chocolate stout cake. Yum!

Sunday was quiet again, with breakfast at Perkins, a short drive home, some time with Sol and Lance, shopping and dinner with mightyjesse, dessert with corvusjoyous and T, and quality birdie time. A pleasant end to a lovely weekend. :)

I was messing with my birdies and was putting their gravity toys back on their cage when I had a strange experience. I bent down to pick up a toy, and straightened, apparently right into Nechtan's flight path, because the next thing I knew, I had a little birdie beak imprint on the back of my skull!

I'm fine and he seems to be OK too - we were just both rather surprised at the encounter!

"So you put three quarters of the Northshield dons in a box with camel porn..." -Anon, to protect the guilty.

There's this... thing in the sky. Go and look! You can't miss it - it is all glow-y. It makes the snow shiny. It even has this weird property of making the temperature hit double digits. Very odd.

Cords and Coins!

Today, I taught impromptu whipcording classes, passing on the goodness to five students and one person who will try it on their own at home. :) Hurray for propagating hand-woven cord! I also made about 10 yards of black whip cord myself, partly to be productive and partly as a way to lure people into my "classes." This was meant to be my Thing, but another fun opportunity for creativity presented itself later.

As a bonus activity, I also made some "coins" at feast. Food was slow to arrive on the tables, which gave our table adequate time to consume the chocolate coins from Her Majesty, reassemble their gold and silver wrappers, "erase" them, and redecorate them with period and period-ish designs. cassbunny made some Roman-style coins and I made some gold coins with Pictish symbols on them (since we have no idea what Pictish coinage looked like, if it existed) and some "spintriae"  that were roughly modeled after IIII and X. We even cut one of them in half before presenting them to Her Majesty at head table.


My "coins"



(BTW, jtdiii, I think I now have a guess as to the birthday present!)
 

Note: for some of you, this is just odd or confusing... Some of you, however, will find this freaking hilarious. 

After years of resisting temptation, I finally could not take it any more! I was shopping and was seized with an uncontrollable, undeniable desire for a crayon! A pink one! I had to do it! Observe as I finally give in...

 http://www.crayonsinc.com/

I love animals - let me explain why:

Froggies are just cute... And some are kitchen green and poisonous, what more could one want?
Cows make my toast all buttery and allow me to eat my cereal with tasty yogurt.
Bees make my Cheerios and tea sweet.
Chickens and piggies and cows all work together to make me a tasty ham and cheese omlet.
Ducks and sheep and dinosaurs keep my bed warm, so I can try to go back to bed after breakfast.

I love animals!

(This post brought to you by entirely too little sleep.)

Hey, Jock! Someone has it out for you...

http://g.webring.com/hub?ring=antiquackerysite 

Mmmmm... Lunch today was at Smokey Jon's, with BBQ and excellent company. I have a very happy tummy and my jacket and hair still smell yummy! *grin*

In the cool of evening, a cat sits on the patio,
nose pressed firmly against the windowpane, 
staring longingly at birds flying through the room 
and wondering at a world suddenly inverted.