jamesq | Nice Surprise

Former coronet events have generally left me emotionally clobbered. I'd go, expecting to have a damn good time, then have events and my own neurosis conspire to drop me into a deep depression.

This coronet, on the other hand, did not. Quite the opposite actually - I was fully expecting it to suck sweaty donkey balls, and I actually ended up having a really good time.

I didn't sleep well the night before the event, so I was groggy getting to the range. I managed to, during the archery competition, miscalculate one of the ends, getting zero points on it. This threw my game off. Attempting to salvage some self-respect I decided to shoot a royal round after the competition, only to discover that I was shooting with a rubber arm and I was angry at myself.

I recognized that I was starting onto a mental-health death-spiral, so I decided to treat myself to sushi. Comfort food was my plan and I figured it could at least give me one positive thing for the day. As luck would have it, MJ decided to join me, followed by M, D and P.

The five of us had sushi at Chinook Center, then I went to the hall.

The hall was tiny. My immediate thought upon seeing it was oh shit, we're fucked.

But then I started chatting with friends both familiar and distant. Saw the finals of the coronet tourney, which was between the guy I've met briefly that oblivions knows and the guy I don't know. Lets just say I didn't have a dog in this fight. The latter won. I found out his inspiration is someone I've met occasionally, who seems to have a good head on her shoulders, so our next princess should be decent at least.

More socializing happened. I got to tell and hear numerous humourous stories. On the down side, I discovered that the spare ticket I had, which I had offered to a cute girl at archery, was going to waste. She had stood me up (maybe. There is still the remote possibility of a communications mishap, but honestly the more likely explanation is that I'm creepy). At this point I'm not going to invest any energy into pursuing her unless she makes an attempt at reappearing.

Fuck it, I thought, I'm having a good time anyway.

Eventually we had the feast, which was damned tasty. It included

wackynephews' borsht and some super-tender roast beef. Followed by tarts.

I've always enjoyed a cheap tart. Especially when I get to eat one.

Court happened, and I discovered that the King and Queen of An Tir have actually got a helluva stage presence. Awards went to numerous people I knew, including

mommaquilter,

oblivions and

othelianna.

speed_ball_boy gave out the results to his archery tournament (you remember, the one I thought I shot like ass in).

oblivions and I were tied for first! I thought for sure I had come in at the bottom of the masters category and dead middle overall. Damn!

Afterwards was more socializing. I was invited to two after-parties but declined both because I had to come to this morning's curia (principality business) meeting. I ended up driving

conejita_diabla (who heralded court, and did a damn fine job of it for a kingdom-herald-noob) and P (who came in first in the novice category in the archery competition) back to their homes (or home-away-from-home as the case was for P the Borealan).

The ride home was not without drama. First, we narrowly missed getting caught in a major ~~accident-induced~~ running gun battle-induced traffic jam on Deerfoot Trail, detouring us into Ogden, which had the potential to take longer (though

hislittlekitty, who did get caught in the traffic jam, says it lasted over 45 minutes). Later, we lost

conejita_diabla's glasses in MJ's parking lot. I made a trip to fetch it and return it to her because playing knight-in-shining-armour pleases me greatly. Thus a car ride that ideally would have taken me about 40 minutes from site to home (with two stops along the way), turned into a two hour drive with six stops along the way.

There was a lot of negatives that went down Saturday. I'm happy that I was able to fix at least one of the problems I was presented with.

As usual, the shit that occurred had little to do with the organization of the event, which went off a lot better then I feared it would. Kudos' to the organizers for pulling off an event with a hall that was simply too small for what was required. We now know better for next time.

More details and pondering to come.