Strawberrypalooza: executive summary
Operation: Strawberrypalooza was a success, despite developing Sudden Acute Introversion the morning of.
- Final guest count (or semi-final; I'm probably forgetting some people): 56, not including my husband and myself. There were some surprise guests (Sean McC!), some unfortunate cancellations (breakinglight11 had surprise!rehearsal, sadly), and some really late arrivals (offside7 and Cam, who arrived at 11pm and thus only had about two hours of party. They were kind enough to help us clean up, though! Kinder than me, even; I was already in bed by then ;) )
- I had Mel, Will, Alison, acousticshadow2, and Ian at my house the night before. Mel had apparently read the draft of Gods and Fathers in the week before, and she was so impressed that she presented me with fanart of Serevic with the Ruksha mask from the beginning of the novel. I... can't even begin to explain how flattered I was by this.
- The weather was stupidly hot, but the lake happened nonetheless (perhaps because of). I was left to guard the house, but I hear that people were abandoned on the Peninsula of Abandonment, which means it was truly a Matt and Lise party.
- We ran out of cheese for burgers. We ran out of tortilla chips. We ran out of beer. An emergency grocery store run was spearheaded by EB, natbudin, anthropicmoose, and phoenix_rinna, who had random encounters and may have even leveled up.
- On the other hand, my fridge is still full of strawberry shortcake jello shots that k1ttycat brought.
- There were hornets. Someone got stung, although I don't know who it was. shogunhb kindly took wasp spray to them. (Er, the hornets, not the person they stung).
- Frisbee was played! On my lawn! I dunno why, but all that the lake has gotten attention in past years, my lawn has never been in good enough shape to do this until recently. The only mishap was that nennivian found where we threw the remains of the hawthorne tree we cut down last year--with her foot.
- I got to talk writing and VP with sprrwhwk, and I got to meet his delightful boyfriend, who apparently supports himself by making dragon tails for furries. Like you do.
- I molested Wash's head some more, and we geeked out about computer games (natch), Neuschwanstein, Archer, and many many other things which I have forgotten. Here I make a mental note that I should play Warlock: Master of the Arcane.
- Cards Against Humanity. Allll the Cards Against Humanity. A winning combo I was particularly proud of: "Before there was Getting Inside the Horadric Cube with a hot babe and pressing the transmute button all we had was YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS. (Although we argued quite a bit about the correct order).
- Dominion and Race For the Galaxy were played, although I was not part of any of the games :(
- Bernie showed me a video of Pat Rothfuss talking about how guinea pigs are fish (damn, that man can tell stories, even if it's just a stupid college story), and lightgamer showed me Devi fanart, and we just generally geeked about KKC.
- No s'mores were made, sadly. More sadly, this means we have a jar of fluff that will sit in our house for at least another year.
- shadowravyn demo'ed Long Live the Queen for us, which I sadly missed out on--I'd heard about this game on The Border House (I think) and wanted to find out more.
- Matt's Buggy hat came out at some point (Chrisco came to me at one point and said, "Quick! I need a silly hat, stat!) and made the rounds of everyone at the party.
- Somebody left a Tardis towel at my house, which is how you know it was a geeky beach party.
There's probably more, but this is more than enough. Now I'm going to eat leftovers potato salad and try to get some writing done, since I'm now behind on Camp NaNo.
- Final guest count (or semi-final; I'm probably forgetting some people): 56, not including my husband and myself. There were some surprise guests (Sean McC!), some unfortunate cancellations (breakinglight11 had surprise!rehearsal, sadly), and some really late arrivals (offside7 and Cam, who arrived at 11pm and thus only had about two hours of party. They were kind enough to help us clean up, though! Kinder than me, even; I was already in bed by then ;) )
- I had Mel, Will, Alison, acousticshadow2, and Ian at my house the night before. Mel had apparently read the draft of Gods and Fathers in the week before, and she was so impressed that she presented me with fanart of Serevic with the Ruksha mask from the beginning of the novel. I... can't even begin to explain how flattered I was by this.
- The weather was stupidly hot, but the lake happened nonetheless (perhaps because of). I was left to guard the house, but I hear that people were abandoned on the Peninsula of Abandonment, which means it was truly a Matt and Lise party.
- We ran out of cheese for burgers. We ran out of tortilla chips. We ran out of beer. An emergency grocery store run was spearheaded by EB, natbudin, anthropicmoose, and phoenix_rinna, who had random encounters and may have even leveled up.
- On the other hand, my fridge is still full of strawberry shortcake jello shots that k1ttycat brought.
- There were hornets. Someone got stung, although I don't know who it was. shogunhb kindly took wasp spray to them. (Er, the hornets, not the person they stung).
- Frisbee was played! On my lawn! I dunno why, but all that the lake has gotten attention in past years, my lawn has never been in good enough shape to do this until recently. The only mishap was that nennivian found where we threw the remains of the hawthorne tree we cut down last year--with her foot.
- I got to talk writing and VP with sprrwhwk, and I got to meet his delightful boyfriend, who apparently supports himself by making dragon tails for furries. Like you do.
- I molested Wash's head some more, and we geeked out about computer games (natch), Neuschwanstein, Archer, and many many other things which I have forgotten. Here I make a mental note that I should play Warlock: Master of the Arcane.
- Cards Against Humanity. Allll the Cards Against Humanity. A winning combo I was particularly proud of: "Before there was Getting Inside the Horadric Cube with a hot babe and pressing the transmute button all we had was YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS. (Although we argued quite a bit about the correct order).
- Dominion and Race For the Galaxy were played, although I was not part of any of the games :(
- Bernie showed me a video of Pat Rothfuss talking about how guinea pigs are fish (damn, that man can tell stories, even if it's just a stupid college story), and lightgamer showed me Devi fanart, and we just generally geeked about KKC.
- No s'mores were made, sadly. More sadly, this means we have a jar of fluff that will sit in our house for at least another year.
- shadowravyn demo'ed Long Live the Queen for us, which I sadly missed out on--I'd heard about this game on The Border House (I think) and wanted to find out more.
- Matt's Buggy hat came out at some point (Chrisco came to me at one point and said, "Quick! I need a silly hat, stat!) and made the rounds of everyone at the party.
- Somebody left a Tardis towel at my house, which is how you know it was a geeky beach party.
There's probably more, but this is more than enough. Now I'm going to eat leftovers potato salad and try to get some writing done, since I'm now behind on Camp NaNo.