Weekend Retrospective in Unordered List with Minimal Nesting

[dawn_felagund]

• Every now and then, I have one of those social butterfly weekends. This was one of those weekends. Bobby and I met our friends Tristan and Don for Indian food on Friday night. On Saturday, we hosted a Burns supper for six of our friends in the SCA. It was so, so much fun. The food, prepared by Bobby (except vanilla ice cream by moi), was fabulous

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[dawn_felagund]

But when we would separate them by putting them in different rooms with a child gate, they'd sit there gazing at one another mournfully.

Alex and Lance would probably do the same! They adore each other. Bobby and I often joke that they like each other more than they like either of us!

(And they didn't even need crumbs to fight over, either.)

Lol. My neighbor's dogs are that way. (He has two Boston terriers and a Yorkie.) We'll hear screeching and carrying on and my neighbor yelling, "Lily! Joey! LILY!! JOEY!! Goddamn it!" :D

Alex and Lance only ever fight over food. We still laugh over the time, at a cookout we had around Lancelot's first birthday, that we got each of them one of those Frosty Paws dog ice creams, and they got in a fight because I guess Alex was standing too close to Lance while he was just trying to enjoy his ice cream. We still call Lance "Ice Cream Fighter" sometimes.

Umm...who is Princess Dashkova, and why are her memoirs significant?

She was the best friend of Catherine the Great. She participated in the revolution that put Catherine on the throne, then served as her lady in waiting. She was an intellectual, and Catherine appointed her first to the Academy of Science and then put her in charge of compiling the first Russian dictionary. When Catherine died, Dashkova was exiled, and almost no one knows her now. (I didn't until I had to take this class.)

Her memoirs are fascinating in that they show how such an obviously intelligent and competent woman negotiates that success and her position of power in a society that still valued submissiveness in women. (To give fair warning, there are also extremely boring stretches that are Silmarillion-like catalogues of the various important people she met in her travels.) She is also very obviously trying to manage her legacy and that of Catherine, which makes her a fascinating real-life example of the unreliable narrator.

I miss the SCA. *sigh*

We are not officially involved at the moment, but we have so many good friends in the SCA that it is impossible to separate entirely. Our friends have coaxed us into attending Kingdom A&S this weekend (co-hosted by our barony and the next barony over) and starting to get involved in demos again.

[dreamflower02]

If we'd stayed in Mississippi, I'd still be involved. I had only just taken over the office of Herald when we found out we were going to move.

I miss it dreadfully, but it's just not the same here.

[dawn_felagund]

Things changed in our barony, at least from where Bobby and I were sitting. We had a series of negative experiences that soured us both. We just weren't having fun.

We've decided to play more on our terms. We have some great friends, so we'll hang with them and do the things we love. We both enjoy demos, so we're going to start there.

We're not going to make the mistake of being officers or too deeply involved as volunteers again; that was just too cutthroat last time, and recognition is not why I do things, so it seemed weird to be the subject of vitriol for doing a job that needed doing.

[dreamflower02]

Our Barony was, well, special. I won't say there were never disagreements or personality clashes, because that wouldn't be realistic. But there was a feeling that pervaded the group, that all that had to take a back seat in order to do what was good for Seleone. When an event or a demo came around, everyone pulled together, and everyone pulled their own weight.

Our founding Baron and Baroness were/are amazing folks, and most of those who started the group are still core members, and yet new people were/are always made welcome. I still follow the groups' e-list on Yahoo! and often "watch" them preparing for events and such, so I know that the best things have not changed.

The closest group here--well, I went to one or two meetings, and just did not feel included. I don't mean I was unwelcome, but there wasn't a lot of effort to draw me in, either. Plus, here the distances are a lot more as well.