jamesq | YA May Days Post-mortem

I'm feeling much better today.

I suspect most of my mood yesterday (after returning from May Days) was due to mental exhaustion. My "psychic shields" (for lack of a better term) dropped without me realizing it - they do take a near constant effort to keep up. My mental demons escaped and took to trashing the playground and taking a big steaming dump in my neocortex.

I might have pushed that metaphor a little too far.

So I fell into bad habits while at the same time deciding to push myself past what I should have been doing. Basically I decided to go see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while simultaneously deciding that nobody would want to go with me due to short notice. This turned into nobody would want to go to a movie with me anyway, which in turn became everybody hates you, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

As I said, the shields were down and the demons feasted.

Crystal Skull was a good movie, though not a great movie. It also had a few things to say about aging and family along with the two-fisted action. This contributed to my bad mood, souring my appreciation for what should have been mindless mental popcorn.

Don't let my issues stop you from seeing it though, it's certainly worth watching on the big screen.

If I had called people up about the movie, I might have learned that assorted friends were seeing it tonight. Then I'd have done what I should have done in the first place - Namely grab a light supper, do some reading, and go to bed early.

So that's why I produced last night's emo-post despite having a wonderful time at May Days.

May Days was The Shire Formerly Known as Windwyrm's annual camping event.

My original plan was to day trip it. Mostly this was because I injured my back last week. Fort MacLeod is only about two hours away, making a day trip a reasonable option. I could go down and shoot, watch the tiny war, hang with some friends then come home once dusk hit. I wasn't planning to camp, but

hislittlekitty convinced me to bring along my camping gear just in case I ran late, or felt better then I expected.

I ran a bit late so managed to miss (by minutes) the choosing of the May Queen. Good thing too, I wouldn't want my anti-sex field blowing the fertility ritual. I did manage to make it in time for the archery competition.

The shoot was fun and reasonably challenging. I started out strong, getting fairly high points at the 40 yard target. I gradually did worse and worse though, finishing (I estimate) somewhere in the middle of the pack for the advanced category. Good. But I can do better.

As this was finishing up I ran into

hislittlekitty,

halfdane866 and

othelianna, who were heading for the liquor store. Did I want anything, they asked. It was time for my decision. Stay sober and drive home, or drink, accepting that I was going to spend the night.

I asked them to grab me a bottle of Havana Club. Then I went to put my tent up.

Several things made my stay better. One was the cluster of friends tents that I found (which included the Baron and Baroness,

thekillerb69,

naughtynat07,

conejita_diabla and later,

othelianna) and joined. The other was the Green Cauldron, food merchants that provided all of my meals while I was there. Fort Macleod was close (downtown was probably only a mile away), but I still didn't want to spend too much time off-site.

Later that day was the war. Wars are becoming a lot more exciting now that I know many of the combatants. This one was especially fun.

The highlight for me was watching Wilma frantically reload her crossbow while the last two guys bashed at each other. Everyone was waiting for the punchline and we were not disappointed. The enemy killed our guy, then raised his arms to proclaim he was "last man standing". Whereupon Wilma shot him in the head, proclaiming "But not the last person standing". There was applause for this Hollywood ending.

The battles continued and then it was over. People broke up for the evening and pursued meals, or showers or pleasant company. The sun fell, and then the carousing began. As did the cloven fruit.

My love/hate relationship with the fruit continues. I enjoy receiving it, though it's always something of a shock given my usual self-esteem issues, but it's always terrifying to give it away. It's only been since last August that I even began playing again, after some early disappointments.

It is, however, fun to watch from a distance, though sometimes it disturbs you. For example, I saw BK ,a guy about my age, move out of my line of sight with the fruit. About a minute later I saw FM with the fruit. She's 15 and well known for being a dangerous bit of jail-bait. Now it's possible it got passed between multiple people in that short amount of time, but the most likely explanation is a guy looking for some action from a girl young enough to be his daughter. Hell, if they were both just three years older, I wouldn't have batted an eye, despite the difference in ages being exactly the same. Buxom as FM is, she still looks far too young to my eyes.

On the other hand, CA is not too young. I'm happy she offered me the fruit. In turn I half-chickened-out and gave the fruit to a willowy red-head from Windwyrm (whose name I don't know, sigh) via the hand-kiss sneak (you hold their hand to kiss it, while passing the fruit into it with your other hand).

Later I saw some kids her own age trying to impress her. It was amusing to watch the awkward romantic fumbling of fifteen-year olds. They didn't have a chance.

There was spear-the-beer (which I've discovered we'd been playing incorrectly up until this weekend), drinking, carousing, marshmallows and singing. I had enough to drink to sing. But not so much that I couldn't observe the fact that

hislittlekitty has a really good singing voice. She should sing more, though I suspect she suffers from the same sort of stage fright that I do. So if you're at a camping event, and she's had just enough alcohol (enough to relax the internal-editor, but not so much as to lose motor control) - and if the stars are right - ask her to sing. It's a treat.

I staggered to my tent around 2 am, which was about the time when the party had settled into small groups and I realized I wasn't part of any of them. I awoke the next morning stiff and hung over. I dozed for about an hour, allowing the tent to warm up in the sun. Eventually a herald came and told us that court would be in half-an-hour. I dressed, had breakfast and attended court. It was fun and short.

We broke camp and, with a small amount of shuffling, I obtained a passenger - FY. We went to Johnny's Restaurant in Fort Macleod for lunch then drove home.

A fun weekend which I would like to repeat soon, without the post-event mental crap next time.