I am at Pinewoods, is I think the way these entries start, and they are always happy entries to write.

I arrived at camp, and swung past my cabin in and amongst other tasks in order to open the windows and get it ready for me to bring all my stuff up. And upon opening the door, found the entire place covered in beautiful hanger fine art. There were probably about 50 hangers scattered across any hangerable surface, and a lovely wire sculpture dangling through the middle. My friends know me well, and I genuinely did use some of them to hang some of my clothes, so truly a win-win.

Unpacking was aided by a SamSam coming to say hello, and then off to the staff meeting, and then off to the porch. There are many people I adore here --more than I could easily spend time with all at once. That is one of the downsides of ESCape being so good and so popular. My affections have been a bit ADHD today, but I think I haven't left anyone feeling abandoned.

Dinner was delicious, dessert was vegan chocolate cake (I chose not to try and break my record from LCFD weekend, and only ate four pieces). And then there was some beautiful English dancing --I missed the first one but caught the other three, with kateface, then mom, then Robin. And then announcements. And then...

...my first night of calling, like as a serioustimes staff caller, holy shit. This is the biggest teaching assignment I've ever had, like, this could make or break my Scottish Country Dance career. (It's not gonna, there's enough other things I do that will also help, but this is a pretty serious event. It's still not the Big Goal, but it's well in the right direction).

And I nailed it. I got a _ton_ of compliments, including some from extremely well established callers themselves, and some of them with really lovely details that showed good attention and observation to what I try to do. At least one person told me I did a good job of not over-explaining, which is extremely funny to me to consider, given that I want to talk all the time endlessly about everything. But I do try and keep the dance floor flowing real fast --some of this is my training from my tutors, and some of this is my own kinesthetic learning (I want to _do_ the dance, not talk about the dance!)

I was a healthy four minutes under on my time limit, and they asked for an encore for the last one, and I said "yeah, this is a good thing to explain to the dancers anyways". I think I might've been just maybe a minute over after that, but not anything more (so I apologize if the dancers got a four minute break instead of five, or if Ben lost a minute of the contras). I will keep being hyperaware of the timing. I like trying to keep track of how long it takes to do things.

And then I was through the calling, five solid and rapidly done dances (and a very slight sense of smugness, because a week or two ago I got an email from the organizers being all "oh yeah, there are first night announcements and therefore your set needs to be a little shorter timewise than it normally would be, do you want to cut anything?" And I decided to be brave and sassy and said "you know, I _could_ cut the fourth dance if I need, but numbers two and three are 6x32 anyways, and I think I've got this. And I did!)

And the last dance I called was a bit of a stretch goal, a dance I absolutely _adore_ (Lords of the Wind), but felt like would maybe be tricky? And everyone did great! I called it well and clearly, and so the walk-through zipped along, and then we just did it and it went well and like I said, encored! I am getting more and more evidence for the fact that I can and should take the really fun slightly complex flowy dances and go ham on them, even with extremely mixed-level floors. Because I'm surprisingly good at calling them, and my confidence is carrying over so that my dancers can dance them.

(and my music was so good already, and I have three more days to listen to this! Amazing!!!)

After I finished, I got to look at a cool bug (putting a line in my bio that said "I love cool bugs show them to me" ACTUALLY WORKED!) and I chatted with mom some and I determined that I was extremely sticky and hot, despite not having dancing, so I'd better do a couple contras to really commit to being hot enough to jump in the pond after. A lovely one with Myles where we exactly crossed the floor from first to last couple, and then the last contra I danced with Mo and we did a social experiment around carcinization.

(It started as the usual kinda goofing around, with some nice gremliny deep knee squats on the petronella. I'm not sure who in the walk-through turned it into crab hands and sideways prancing around to the next place. But Mo and I committed, and did it every single time our way around, even though it was _exhausting_. It was a ton of fun, and I'd say over 75% of the neighbor couples did at least a little crabbing with us! And after, singleSam¹, who had been the couple just in front of us, complimented us on the fact that they were chased by the delighted laughter of couples becoming crabs with us for the whole dance).

Austin and I waltzed, which was lovely lovely lovely, and then I managed to squeze between Austin and Tess for the song. Into the pond go I, which was surprisingly perfect. I still didn't stay long, but I didn't jump in and start cussing (which happens a lot to me) and when I came out, I was not immediately shivering.

Party and admiring tinfoil costumes and a polycool meeting and back to my cabin relatively on time to sleep. If I hurry, I could get six hours solid before having to go to breakfast! That'd be keen. Just have to dip down to the wifi shed to upload these, and then go brush my teeth.

Happy happy happy!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: "bells Sam" is not actually a differentiator, because SamSam also does bells.

I finished all my packing for Pinewoods _surprisingly_ early --I was done a bit before 2:30pm, which was surprisingly charming. It meant that mom and Robin and I could go out to Boda Borg for the afternoon! We did a lovely four hour run, in which we got three stamps (Quiz Show: Quotes, Star Trails, and the weather one) and morally got a fourth (the last room of Area 51 is _much_ harder with three than with five, and even when we temporarily joined with another group, we still couldn't quite get it, but we know the _idea_). It was jolly!

I'm somewhat unsettled by being fully packed, and reassuring myself with the fact that I still have a bunch of MC/teacher prep work I can/should do, and a fair chunk of printing that needs to happen (after the prep work). I did find my _critically_ important Rowan¹ notebook, which has my ESCape teaching notes for every year starting when I got my full certificate in 2019. It was extremely lost, and I probably spent a total of 20-30 minutes trying to find it, sigh.

I am excited and pleased to leave for ESCape tomorrow. I'll be in the camp in the woods until the 12th or 13th of July or so, so probably not a lot of posting, and definitely continuing my horrid streak of not reading very well. I really ought to figure out a way to work reading dreamwidth into my day-to-day life at times other than part of Standard Morning Routine, because all this traveling and adventure nonsense means my standard routine hasn't been.

I've definitely mentioned somewhere here that I'm teaching at ESCape, right? I am _psyched_ for that. Really strongly looking forward to it, and kinda wicked excited that I will then be going to Scottish sessions and having very few responsibilities so I can just kinda kick back and actually relax for a tickyboo. Maybe I will even wind up working at camp a skootch, who knows!

Anyways, today has been pretty good, even if I've been Very Tired (it is possible I was up _stupid_ late last night in order to do most of my packing, but it's okay, I've had a lot of days in a row of getting eight or nine hours of sleep. I've got backup sleep! Which is very very good to go into Pinewoods with.)

I hope you are well and happy and having good adventures. I hope that we can have a better world than the one that is actually happening. I wish I had anything more useful to say than that.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Rowan is the mascot of the RSCDS youth branch. They are a sheep and they use they pronouns and they are extremely important to me. I have cosplayed them! Carefully, since specifically they are a Scottish Blackface Sheep.

Today started with a goodly long walk.

Well no, it started with floppiness and a slow wake-up and close cuddling of my beloved, and then helping finish the last few pieces of a puzzle and breakfast and things like that. But the walk was the first thing of note!

We saw a frog -very exciting, it was green headed and brown bodied in a somewhat surprising way- and a number of wee little waterfalls and at least one house hidden in the woods looking abandoned and a grand number of interesting flowers. I ate some sorrel and probably didn't wind up in any poison ivy. And I got to hold hands with Tuesday, and pull ker close against me and snuggle as we walked and that was all extremely good.

Then there was lunch and a bit of trivia, and hugs goodbye, and Cameron and I got in the car and performed the long drive back home to Maryland. It was a bit over five hours total driving, but actually a quite jolly adventure. There was much exchanging of music! I heard some very good Mariana and the Diamonds and Enya in exchange for Kate Nyx and Vienna Teng. We mutually grooved to Chappell Roan, the place our venns diagramed. Later, as we drove through some quite hard rain and a splashy sort of thunderstorm, we exclaimed over the rainbow chasing alongside us, occasionally joining in the spray of the water on the road to look like it was landing just in front of our car.

And very good conversation, including swapping stories of how we wound up entangled with our sweeties. It's really damn nice to have a partner's family I can groove with, is what I'm saying.

Mom and Barb picked me up in Baltimore, and there were hugs all around which was lovely to happen. And more driving and a stint in the grocery store and bringing in some heavy bags of salt from the car (why carry the 40# bags yourself if you've got a childe to do it for you?) and my bags. Before I did all the carrying, I stopped on the lawn to watch the grove of fireflies flickering across the driveway. That was a magical moment --maybe I should go out again and check if they're still there? It might be too late now, being as it's well past eleven. Still, nothing ventured etc. BRB.

Okay there were still a few, mostly up in the treetops instead of at knee height, but as I was standing there looking, I heard a bit of a noise and I was like "huh, that sounds like rain but it's....it's getting louder and closer. OH SHIT" and run run run back up the drive. I did beat most of it --but only most. It was very jolly, especially since there was at least one pale flash of lightning as I moved. It's been a very good day for storms!

At mom's house, I curled up on the internet with Tailsteak for our regular Taskmaster date, which we haven't had in _ages_ and won't be able to have again for _more ages_. But it was good to get a couple episodes in! Gradually catch up, as it were.

Now mom's doing some scanning and I'm writing my words, and it's a good close to the day. I hope your days are also nice!

~Sor

MOOP!