Pinewoods 8: friends
Aug. 8th, 2004 02:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7my(This was just eaten by an Xjournal crash. Argh. Yes, yes—Jesus saves, every five minutes, and you should too. Anyway, I'd opened previously with a note about how it's hard to keep up with LJ when packing for the move is eating my life; this foofaraw doesn't help any. This will be my last Pinewoods entry (with more details forthcoming in SWAPA), after which I should feel more able to post daily life updates. Since I'm sure you all want to hear about clouds of packing-dust and exploding futon arms.)
When Kendra and I first attended Pinewoods in 1996, the social balance was weighted strongly toward the aged. There was a sort of gray dais, a clique of middle-aged-and-up Boston dancers to whom all heads turned for guidance, who set the traditions and presided over the dances. There were some students and recent grads there, but we were a small and besieged minority. This began to change with the arrival of the fiddling twins in 1999 (ish): they were young and talented and cute and flirtatious, and every male eye in the camp went BONG! in their direction. The process continued with the arrival, a year or two later, of the similarly pretty and young Cat and Ellen S., and with the gradual swelling of the ranks of the students and other younger dancers, many (like us) from the Delaware Valley.
This year, finally, I felt the seesaw was balanced. There are still two cliques, but the younger folk are entrenched enough to be taken seriously as a counterbalance. (Of course, I've been aging each year as well, so my perspective has shifted some.) As I mentioned before, Kendra and I encountered a throng of Swatties and Mawrtyrs at the welcome party, and I got a little dizzy being spun around to meet them all. There were a lot of references to Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. I spent an unusual amount of time gaming that week—in part because the weather sucked for the first few days, but also because it felt like Swat, like gaming was a normal thing to do. We played Guillotine, 22, and Chronology, as well as a Scrabble variant introduced (I think) by Amelia-on-staff: it's like regular Scrabble, but you're only allowed to play words that don't exist, and you have to provide a definition for each one.
CEND is what you do when you tape a penny to the leaflet and mail it in to receive the Very Special Offer. An AAARK is what Noah would have built if he'd been a pirate, and I added the B to make the noise a pirate's dog makes. A VARGEISTJAB has something to do with punching some sort of ghost.
It was particularly nice to see Andy P., who shares many of my outlooks and laughs at more of my jokes than the average person, and Justin G., to whom I explained my lengthy addenda to Lawrence Waterhouse's masturbation theories from Cryptonomicon. MyS finally returned after a two-year baby-having absence, and I was happy to be able to be snuggly and backrubby with her again.
The aforementioned Andy and Justin, preparing to embark on a riverboat sting operation.
Swatties at dinner. That's Andy P., MyS, Kendra, Justin, Kathy G., and Kathy C., with other-Andy P.'s head at the bottom. (I hope Kendra will forgive me for her facial expression....)
I've already talked about Miriam '07 (aka![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shelkesem) quite a bit, but I'll mention again how arresting it was to achieve such a quick rapport with someone, particularly someone unlooked-for and unknown. (And, well, cute as all get-out.) She's quite a good writer, with much better discipline than me; I think she'll be good for my writing. She made me feel welcome as soon as I met her, and she sat (without a moment's pause) on my lap at the first night's party, and I found her fun and intriguing at gaming on Tuesday night...and then, after a long lap-conversation on her cabin porch Wednesday afternoon, we were nigh-inseparable for the rest of the week. (I had two small bruises on my upper thighs after that talk; she has a bony ass. But that's just how long it was.) On the last three nights we stayed up 'til nearly dawn after the parties wound down, and we've continued to stay in close contact since—chiefly via much too much chatting over AIM. It's continuing to go very well. (Though she's currently in the middle of a two-week trip to Ireland, which has cut into our conversation a bit. So I'm suffering a bit of withdrawal. Alas.)
(Yes, obviously I am crushing on her, rather hard. Wanna make something of it? Huh? Do ya, punk?)
My Pseudo-Scrabble partner. Also, Joel.
There were other people from our Ann Arbor group for the first time, which was kinda cool, but also kinda disorienting. (Joe from Ann Arbor should not be rooming with Dan B. from Swarthmore. They're different lives, people!) I can attest that Joe and his mom, Hot Victoria (thusly dubbed by Blaine, tho I agree), had an amazing time; Joe in particular has been burbling about it at dance, telling me at every opportunity how much he misses everyone, and how tempted he's been to email everyone he met. (With a distribution weighted toward the young and the cute and the female.) I expect they'll be back, which is a good thing.
Since they sort of define the poles of the Pinewoods social experience, I might as well close with pictures of Torf and Ellen S. Torf is kind of a shambling mound of tartan who transforms any locale into the Scottish highlands; Ellen is (without exaggeration) one of the most stunningly beautiful young women I've met, and would do very well for herself as a model, as it's bloody impossible to take a bad picture of her. Happily, she's also exceedingly nifty: cheerfully gothic and Buffy-loving and sharp and wry. (Sorry, boys—she's taken. That goes for you too, Miriam dear.)
Torf!
Ellen, playing sultry. O lucky photographer....
All in all, a fabulous Pinewoods, in ways I didn't expect but welcomed.
When Kendra and I first attended Pinewoods in 1996, the social balance was weighted strongly toward the aged. There was a sort of gray dais, a clique of middle-aged-and-up Boston dancers to whom all heads turned for guidance, who set the traditions and presided over the dances. There were some students and recent grads there, but we were a small and besieged minority. This began to change with the arrival of the fiddling twins in 1999 (ish): they were young and talented and cute and flirtatious, and every male eye in the camp went BONG! in their direction. The process continued with the arrival, a year or two later, of the similarly pretty and young Cat and Ellen S., and with the gradual swelling of the ranks of the students and other younger dancers, many (like us) from the Delaware Valley.
This year, finally, I felt the seesaw was balanced. There are still two cliques, but the younger folk are entrenched enough to be taken seriously as a counterbalance. (Of course, I've been aging each year as well, so my perspective has shifted some.) As I mentioned before, Kendra and I encountered a throng of Swatties and Mawrtyrs at the welcome party, and I got a little dizzy being spun around to meet them all. There were a lot of references to Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. I spent an unusual amount of time gaming that week—in part because the weather sucked for the first few days, but also because it felt like Swat, like gaming was a normal thing to do. We played Guillotine, 22, and Chronology, as well as a Scrabble variant introduced (I think) by Amelia-on-staff: it's like regular Scrabble, but you're only allowed to play words that don't exist, and you have to provide a definition for each one.
CEND is what you do when you tape a penny to the leaflet and mail it in to receive the Very Special Offer. An AAARK is what Noah would have built if he'd been a pirate, and I added the B to make the noise a pirate's dog makes. A VARGEISTJAB has something to do with punching some sort of ghost.
It was particularly nice to see Andy P., who shares many of my outlooks and laughs at more of my jokes than the average person, and Justin G., to whom I explained my lengthy addenda to Lawrence Waterhouse's masturbation theories from Cryptonomicon. MyS finally returned after a two-year baby-having absence, and I was happy to be able to be snuggly and backrubby with her again.
The aforementioned Andy and Justin, preparing to embark on a riverboat sting operation.
Swatties at dinner. That's Andy P., MyS, Kendra, Justin, Kathy G., and Kathy C., with other-Andy P.'s head at the bottom. (I hope Kendra will forgive me for her facial expression....)
I've already talked about Miriam '07 (aka
shelkesem) quite a bit, but I'll mention again how arresting it was to achieve such a quick rapport with someone, particularly someone unlooked-for and unknown. (And, well, cute as all get-out.) She's quite a good writer, with much better discipline than me; I think she'll be good for my writing. She made me feel welcome as soon as I met her, and she sat (without a moment's pause) on my lap at the first night's party, and I found her fun and intriguing at gaming on Tuesday night...and then, after a long lap-conversation on her cabin porch Wednesday afternoon, we were nigh-inseparable for the rest of the week. (I had two small bruises on my upper thighs after that talk; she has a bony ass. But that's just how long it was.) On the last three nights we stayed up 'til nearly dawn after the parties wound down, and we've continued to stay in close contact since—chiefly via much too much chatting over AIM. It's continuing to go very well. (Though she's currently in the middle of a two-week trip to Ireland, which has cut into our conversation a bit. So I'm suffering a bit of withdrawal. Alas.)(Yes, obviously I am crushing on her, rather hard. Wanna make something of it? Huh? Do ya, punk?)
My Pseudo-Scrabble partner. Also, Joel.
There were other people from our Ann Arbor group for the first time, which was kinda cool, but also kinda disorienting. (Joe from Ann Arbor should not be rooming with Dan B. from Swarthmore. They're different lives, people!) I can attest that Joe and his mom, Hot Victoria (thusly dubbed by Blaine, tho I agree), had an amazing time; Joe in particular has been burbling about it at dance, telling me at every opportunity how much he misses everyone, and how tempted he's been to email everyone he met. (With a distribution weighted toward the young and the cute and the female.) I expect they'll be back, which is a good thing.
Since they sort of define the poles of the Pinewoods social experience, I might as well close with pictures of Torf and Ellen S. Torf is kind of a shambling mound of tartan who transforms any locale into the Scottish highlands; Ellen is (without exaggeration) one of the most stunningly beautiful young women I've met, and would do very well for herself as a model, as it's bloody impossible to take a bad picture of her. Happily, she's also exceedingly nifty: cheerfully gothic and Buffy-loving and sharp and wry. (Sorry, boys—she's taken. That goes for you too, Miriam dear.)
Torf!
Ellen, playing sultry. O lucky photographer....
All in all, a fabulous Pinewoods, in ways I didn't expect but welcomed.
