July 31, 2001 (thing)

i return! o, yea, i return! ...i s'pose i should start with my birthday, and work through the weekend from there... i turned 21 last wednesday, and it doesn't feel too much different from 20. same old me, same old drink options, only now i can buy for myself. whoopee. just what i need -- an excuse to drink alone. on the bright side, my relatives gifted me with $200, an antique demitasse set, and a great jacket and hat from a company that makes sun-proof clothing. yes, i know you're thinking, "but isn't *most* clothing sunproof?" depends on who you are, and where you live. in the high desert, at anywhere from 5000-10,000 feet above sea level, you are a shitload closer to the sun. people actually still die of sunstroke here. and speaking of sunstroke, on to lonely mountain!

so we left thursday morning, at some unholy hour, but by the time we finished packing and running last minute errands, it was 15:00. that's ok, but i'd been hoping to travel early, before the cloud cover burned off. turns out it was not so ok. i got sun-sick on the way up to the site. simple enough to fix, really. i drank a good gallon of water, took too many vitamins, and laid down. a few hours later, i was a yellowish shade of pale, but no longer radiating heat. niall and i wound up with a strange girl drunkenly passed out in our tent that night, but she was gone by morning. friday was largely consumed with building the tavern. mind you, by this point i'm nearly bat's-ass blind from all the sunlight, and no protective glasses. i know, i torture myself, but i figure i'll either adapt, or i'll do permanent damage. i'm hoping for adapt, myself. but yes, the tavern. logs, twine, duct tape. i shit you not. we created a freestanding structure. amarys, aelwyn, and i decided that the guys were being macho idiots during the construction, so we decided that we could be just as dumb and macho if not moreso. we moved a 22' log, 2' in diameter 150 yards down the mountain, after lifting it 18" to get it out of the ground. we used nothing but a rope, a shovel and a hatchet. we spent the rest of the day raising the tavern. i was narrowly missed by a falling log, and five other people panicked while i explained that i couldn't possibly have been hit, i was short enough to fit in the angle between the wall and the log, and i knew it. that night, aelwyn and i got tanked at the tavern and wandered off into the woods to ... find a tree ... and discussed whether or not we had peed on our shoes, and if we had, if the smell would keep us safe from black bears. what can i say? we were tanked. i stumbled back to the tent, an 11' diameter cotton pavillion, woke niall, and ... well you can guess.

an aside about the tent: cotton is actually a fantastic tent material for rainy events, if you use it correctly. our pavillion had a conical top with a scalloped edge, and no poles but the center and the hoop that supported the wall. this meant that when it rained the water would wick down the top to the scallops and run off, for the most part, outside the wall. yes it leaked a bit along the wall, but as long as you put everything at least 2" inside the tent, you had no worries about it getting wet. best part? a wet cotton pavillion is an effective swamp cooler.

but back to saturday morning, aelwyn, agate and i went shopping on merchants' row, and at last (at long long last!) i bought a fnord to hold my tankard to my belt. yes, even outside the mundane world, i must carry gear. it's just different gear. i watched niall get all armored up and skirmish a bit, but i missed the tourney. it was too hot, and i had to sit down in the tavern for a while. then, near the end of the tourney, aelwyn got this bright idea that we should cut up our log for table legs. eventually this involved a big norseman and a foppish young squire, but aelwyn and i cut halfway through the log in two places before they even showed up. picture this: one girl, long black hair, dressed in gypsy garb, with lots of jingly bits, wielding a hatchet, and another girl in an ankle length pink dress and black leather vest, also with jingly bits, wielding a full sized axe. neither of these girls is over 5'3". we scared the holy living hell out of most of the guys in the tavern. i got stupidly cranky that night; some kind of uncontrollable hormonal reaction to the sunlight, i suspect, and i started a godawful fight with niall. shorty, if you read this, here's my public apology. i am an idiot. i am so incredibly sorry i put you through that, and i hope to hell i have the sense not to do it again. after a 45 minute nap behind a tree somewhere just off the road, i was fine and sensible again, and i promptly recovered my handsome young compatriot, and got tanked. we picked up aelwyn and amarys and a few others, and then we stole a fifth of tequila from the pyrates...*grin* saturday nite is fuzzy, at best. i remember there being a few rounds of nastrovyas. (i think that's how you spell it...) i remember, near the end of the night, when i was just barely still sober enough not to blow niall in public, singing a bit in the toasting circle at golias, and being asked to sing more. when niall and i got back to our tent, we became a drinking game. every time we got too loud, the dozen or so people outside took a drink. they must've gotten damn tanked from that. *grin*

sunday was just depressing. taking down the tavern with ghostly echoes of some dead can dance dirge wafting in from another camp...it was like watching a funeral. i didn't want to come back to the real! i was just getting warmed up! however, i'd eaten little but fruit and bread all weekend, and i knew i couldn't do that for too much longer. aelwyn and i watched axe throwing at the pyrate camp for a while, and played "spit pits at the big hairy viking". somehow we all made it home.

tonight is niall's niece's birthday party. i have to find a nice wind-up toy for her from my collection. perhaps one of the blue messenger turtles i've had since i was eight. those are a scream.