RenFaire Weekend!

We had a fun weekend, overall. Saturday, we returned to the glam stylings of the Georgia Renaissance Festival for a second weekend, thanks in no small part to comp tickets slipped us by tarkrai, who is working the Faire this year as a street performer. We’d heard enough about his act that we wanted to make sure we caught it.

We got to the festival grounds just in time for the opening of the Gate at 10:30, and promptly wandered to the back of the village, intending to work our way forwards this time to see the bits we hadn’t seen a couple of weeks ago. About 20 minutes later, we touched base with thatcrazycajun, singing_phoenix, and SP’s mother, who we had arranged to meet and spend the day with. We caught up with them in time to catch most of a magic show featuring a clever illusionist and an amazing contortionist. We then wandered back up and around, stopping in the shops and admiring the various folks in costume. Sadly, this weekend was a much more typical Georgia summer day than our unseasonably cool trip two weeks ago. We eventually decided to sit for a while, stopping to catch the Tortuga Twins show, which is always good for a laugh, and then sat through to see the Lost Boys. This is the first chance we’d had to see the Lost Boys since three-quarters of their lineup changed. Their show was still a lot of fun, with a mix of old and new songs, and we decided that they were still good, just different.

Once the Lost Boys wrapped up, we picked up a copy of their newest CD, and wandered back down the dusty lanes, where we happened to run into tarkrai, in his guise as gallamor the bard. I immediately tasked him with singing a song for kitanzi, which turned out to be quite amusing. She refused to tell him her name, so he dubbed her Cassandra and sang of how she and her consort, the Dread Pirate Roberts #42 (me), and her crew were here to take over the Faire. And of course, I got a lot of pictures. (After being scolded for the lack of kitanzi photos in the last set, I should note that there are kitanzi photos in this set. Still none of me, alas, as I was holding the camera, unless singing_phoenix got some she’d like to share with me. Photos of gallamor start on Page 8, for those impatient to see that sequence. *grin*)

We then retired to the Tea Room for a light lunch, and then wandered about a bit more, and finally picked up an earlier purchase we had made, a gift for friends that we’ll deliver later in the summer, and headed for the luxury of air conditioning and home. Being exhausted, we attempted to order in Chinese, but the restaurants phone was out, so we went down the street to eat there, instead.

Sunday was mostly a relaxed day. We watched the latest Doctor Who serial, The Age of Steel, which was marvelous. Or at least, I thought it was. I’m a member of a lot of different discussion groups for shows I enjoy, from Doctor Who to CSI to House, and I sometimes wonder if I just have low standards for entertainment, or at the very least such different expectations that i’m not compatible with the greater FanMind, that I’m no longer fit to discuss things with these groups. I will watch something, find it totally enjoyable, then go online and see post after post about how “That was just awful and I hated it!” I can’t even find the common context with those folks to really have a discussion with them, so I mostly end up skimming over the commentary and not really reading it. And I feel a…loss to myself, because the whole point, for me, of watching TV and movies is to be able to discuss it with other intelligent people who share my interests. I fear I’m growing old. Or maybe the discussion groups are just growing young. Either way, I find it puzzling.

The rest of the day was spent playing City of Villains and waiting for the apartment complex to send someone to fix the AC, which was underpowered again. I finally impressed them that something was wrong with it more than just needing to recharge it. The guy who came was new, and said that we might need an entirely new unit, and certainly needed a new thermostat. He did get it back to cooling the house properly (before, it woudln’t get below about 80F/27C no matter what you did, which wasn’t a problem until the last few days when the weather warmed back up) and promised to be back within the next day or two to replace the thermostat. So we made Thai chicken and watched the finale of CSI:Vegas (No-spoiler review: Wow) before heading for bed.

All in all, a fun weekend, full of friends and festivals and good food and all the joys of life. I could enjoy a lifetime of such days.