May 26, 2003 - 1:43 p.m.
She drifted from some minor festival,
Didn't look like any Summer of Love:
just a thousand weekend warriors in a muddy field...
If I ever asked myself Just how much can it rain in one weekend? I think I have the answer now.
Lots.
It didn't seem so bad when I arrived Friday night at Sapphire. I got a little lost getting there: had the gate number wrong and couldn't see the SCA signs since I was coming in from the opposite route of the printed directions. (Another reason never to trust me when I say anything like no, this way looks quicker...) I checked in and made the discoveries that 1. no one else from my group had yet arrived and 2. we weren't on the "you are camping here" map. So Troll called over Nikoli. He didn't know where I was camping. He called Bryce, who didn't know either but had the authority to grant land. Bless him, he gave us high ground. We would end the weekend soaked but not swamped. Anxious to stake our land before confusion could send us elsewhere, I drove up the hill and opened up the bookgrlmobile to start unloading before the rain could set in... and a little voice of wisdom in my head warned me to call someone for their ETA first. Everyone I called seemed to be in the middle of something else but universally had decided to wait until the following morning to arrive on site. With Colin still a few hours away and Marcus back at my mother's house waiting for me to come back and put him to bed (he still nurses at bedtime) I chose not to hang around a soggy field alone and turned back toward Mom's.
Two good things did come from this, though. Mike and I got to go see Matrix Reloaded after the boys went to sleep (groundwork for conversation with jdl over the weekend) and a detour through Plan 9 yielded a nearly pristine copy of the 20 Years of Jethro Tull set on CD (to replace my old cassettes). Now I'm thinking of pricing a cd player for the bookgrlmobile... but first I have to get rid of that wet canvas smell.
Saturday was surprisingly nice: overcast, cool breeze, no rain. I even managed a sunburn. Sunday, however, was miserable enough to drive us to break camp a day early and head for home. Figures the sun would skip out today and mock our choice... But I can't complain about a day at home with Mike and the boys :)
