Last Saturday was the semi-annual Greenwood Isle Picnic. It was a tad small this time around, for no particular reason that I could find -- lots of little conflicts keeping individuals away, rather than any one big thing. But I have to say: y'all who haven't been coming to this really ought to give it a try. It's always a pleasant afternoon out, sharing food and stories and generally having a good time. Our events are so often busy and stressful that it makes a lovely change of pace to just hang out and be with folks.
That said, if we were going to have a small session, this was the time for it. When we got there, we discovered that the residential quad was full of "The Simmons Cup". Far as we could tell, this is some sort of post-Potter innovation, getting the various dorms into various little athletic competitions with each other. Fond though I am of a green full of cheering women, it would have kind of cramped our style, so we chose one of the little grassy knolls between a couple of buildings for the picnic, and had a lovely (if slightly cool) afternoon of it.
Note to self: Stilton is a very good thing to bring to picnics, and a little goes a long way.
The following day was May Day, which was full of good memories. In general, it was a delightful little event on an absolutely smashing day -- the weather was about as good as you could ask for, and that brought out a lot of folks who don't make it to a lot of events. In very loose order:
I was playing deputy Chatelaine for the day, and I have to say it was more fun than I was expecting. The advantage of being the official newcomer-welcomer is that there's no uncertainty to it: it is my responsibility to go talk to the people who I don't recognize, and it's somehow easier when I know that. Wound up spending much of the day talking with around eight new folks, most of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves. My thanks to all the activity heads at whom I pushed newcomers -- I think everyone was quite welcoming, and did a lot to help folks get acclimated.
Due to Life issues, we never did manage to get something together for the auction; fortunately,
Court was longer than usual, since Her Majesty was there -- she was largely having a nice day out, but got in a modest Royal Court along the way. I will undoubtedly forget some significant items, but I particularly recall
I came into the Commedia performance a bit late, and missed the opening setup. So I came in to see some of the usual characters clearly on shipboard (lovely physical humor, really evoking the rocking ship), and then getting shipwrecked. Okay, says I -- fairly ordinary scenario. And then out comes Dottore Gratiano with his daughter Isabella, lamented how they were stranded on this island 11 years before -- and I finally twigged to what was going on. Fun performance and a good spoof of the Bard, with more good physical bits throughout (especially with Pamelina and Fritz). I'd say the only weakness was that the ending was a bit abrupt -- it felt like the pacing was slightly off at the end.
For dinner, we did a Falling Leaves style potluck. I'd been a bit skeptical -- potlucks sometimes fall apart when they aren't strongly publicized and led, and this one had flown a bit under the radar. But in fact it worked well, with a decent variety of food and just about the right amount of it shared around.
Everything ran a ways behind schedule: the event was fun but a bit overscheduled, and nothing got dropped. Which was mostly fine, except that it meant that Commedia finished after 7pm, and it was about 8:30 by the time we started the dancing. I can't say I was overjoyed by that, but I wasn't surprised either -- I could tell by noon that the schedule was doomed. So I ruthlessly slashed the dancing down to a single set, since I was pretty sure that most of the remaining people would vanish during a break. Things were small, but we had decent fun, and got everyone out of there at a decent hour.
Today's day out was Laurel's Prize Tourney, in Bergental.
Being unable to choose which of my arts to challenge in, I decided to do both, and had both a games challenge and an arts one; each was to do a full reconstruction. When it came down to the wire, the only entrant on the games side was
Suffice it to say, it's a specialized trick-avoidance game, where the top cards (ten to ace) are worth points, and the objective is to not be the first person to get to 31 points. This makes for a surprisingly subtle game -- while I got a handle on the tactics fairly quickly, it's going to take some practice to figure out the strategies. (For instance, I believe it is sometimes worthwhile to eat a court card, in order to avoid having to later take a high-value Ten.) On top of that, it is unusually explicit in allowing mistakes, and even cheating: the rules imply strongly that you don't need to admit that you've lost until and unless someone catches you at it. (I suspect
(Which reminds me: Mike, any objection to me starting to teach the game up here? I think the reconstruction is sound enough that I don't see any reason to wait to start playing it. And can you email me a copy? I neglected to grab one for my bag before leaving.)
Anyway, having only one entrant made things easy over there, and I gave Mike my latest project: my first foray into whittling, a heraldic-style chess rook. That was a fun excuse to try something I've been meaning to do for a long time. However, the decision was much harder on the dance side.
Both

On the other hand,

After vascillating a number of times, I eventually gave the prize to
Once that was all done, the bunch of us (me,
