... a deviant path is the only way ...

(written shortly after the start of the faire. slightly edited to reflect change in time)

I'm in the army now
I'm not behind a plow
I'm digging a ditch
I'll never get rich
I'm in the army now

There are two campgrounds at the Arizona Renaissance Festival - Camp Paradise, for the rennies, and Camp Superstition for the weekenders. Camp Superstition is closest to the highway on the northeast side of the faire site. Camp Paradise is to the south and west of the faire, over a broad wash and a barbed-wire fence-hop from state-owned desert land. This is not to say we're not in the desert, but rather that we don't have a whole lot of saguaro and teddy-bear cholla cactuses in the midst of all the tents and trailers.

Anyway, what I really meant to write about was all the rain we had second weekend (I think? It's been awhile). The rain started Thursday, a light,steady drizzle. It didn't let up Friday, and by the time I fell asleep around midnight it was raining hard. Saturday morning I woke up, threw on my garb, and went to use the priv. I got about 30 feet before one of my neighbors stopped me.

"You haven't heard the news yet? The faire's closed! Flooded out."

So, after gawking at the fast-flowing, 20-foot wide wash, the boy and I retired back to the tent for a bit of R&R. Some time later, we heard drama occuring outside, so we went to see if we could help. Well, I opened up the tent door to see a lake going right up to my door, an inch up the tent walls. My neighbor's tent was already completely flooded out, and they were digging trenches and building walls to guide the river away from her tent, and also (very, very kindly) putting up a wall to minimize the water's access to my land.

So, I spent a couple hours on Saturday widening the trench around my tent, fortifying the inner island with mud walls, and just generally playing in the mud.

The water receded after a while - turns out that during an earlier storm part of the wash got a dam built up in it, and it was causing the washwater to overflow to the campground. So once it was cleared, that stopped the overflow and we haven't had any further problems with flashflooding.

There were a lot more people at Siouxland from MN than in years previous - lots of Chess Match folk, Zilch and Lolly, the Royal Guard, and Gilly Dew.

... I need to rave about Gilly Dew for a moment ... I absolutely adore him - It's so wonderful to see him interacting with little (and not so little) kids... there's this touch of awe as they sit with him in his nest, for truly, he is magic made flesh and blood.

Roleplay goal for this August - In-character, talk to Gilly and see if he will say what manner of faekith he is.

I tried out my new home - a REI Base Camp 4. It's very nice, I like it lots, and I will have plenty of room. Now, I need to get a reflective-tarp-thingy to put over it and maintainence stuff (lube for the zippers and waterproofing for the seams).

On a similar note, I found out I can take down my tent in full garb, in sunny, low wind, 80-some degree weather, by myself, in under an hour.

My great big happy - I finally screwed up my courage and stood on the side of a thoroughfare and sang ... *big nervous breath* ... and people liked it! And I didn't suck too much! I even got tips - after Woeful Tones of all things! ... but now I have a bunch of people saying I should do something with my voice, and I need to figure out how to accompany myself on a bodhran, which will be interesting - I am used to singing while I walk, not singing while I wield things in my hands.