Ren Fest

It's been a couple days, but I've been busy with this that and the other.

But this was Saturday, and it was good.



A birthday present from my Dad, the cash and a coupon to take the girls to Ren Fest. Given that my current employment doesn't offer the overtime opportunities my last one did, and that I'm spending an 90 minutes to 2 hours a day in my car paying upwards of $3 a gallon for gasoline instead of getting time and a half, Ren Fest wasn't going to happen this year any other way. Not after the circus.



It's not that I never stay late at my new job: I did this evening, because there have been several involved design jobs that put me behind and I needed to catch up. But it's the exception, not the bank-on-it rule.

So anyway, for my birthday, I wanted to take the girls to Ren Fest even though I'd blown my coin on the Greatest Show on Earth.



And we partied like it was 1469.

Once again the girls refused to ride an elephant with their old man. Uncle Brian says it's foolish to trust a wild animal of that magnitude, but I tend to think 'killed by a rampaging elephant' is at least an interesting enough way to die to be worth the risk.



Instead we rode a hand-drawn rickshaw type thing, a bench seat pulled/pushed by two seating adolescents. As they holler 'make way for me lord and ladies,' struggling to keep the cart under control on the downhill and struggling harder to keep it moving on the uphill, you get a glimpse into the psychological addiction of power.








I mean, if by an accident of birth, you can compel such effort on your behalf, why would you not find theories that justify the situation compelling? If instead of these guys lugging you around because you paid them five bucks, they lug you around because they'll be killed, with pain, otherwise.



Em met an elf, after declaring she was too cool for such things.





I should declare, in the same vein, that I did not want to slather the elf with butter and eat her all day long. Okay, I'm lying and I'm sure the elf isn't unaware of the effect she has on human men.



Mo did the Pirate Plunge bungee ride again. She wanted to do it more than once but that wasn't happening.


Both girls were apparently bored by the joust. This boggled my mind: two dudes riding at full gallop to knock one another off horses, damn. It might be staged, WWF style, but getting knocked off a horse, even on purpose, that's hard core.




Still, caught the Jolly Rogers, who have a hilarious new song, I'm in Cider, yes, deep in cider, that's where I belong...