21 January 2003 - 16:29

As of yesterday, I'm 21 years old. Oh, I'm such an adult.

My birthdayfest was awesome. Friday night Wheel made dinner and a cake, with candlelight, wine, and many friends. Elfy, Pairodox, and Oregano cuddled with me while Wheel and The One cooked. And Wheelie gave me a "Krazy Kat" book that I didn't have. And then people drifted off and Wheelie cuddled me.

Late Friday night Charspider showed up, and he hung out with us all Saturday when we finally woke up. We went out to pick up Wheel's bike, but didn't make it before the shop closed. Wheelie gave me a jade wheel. I cut and notched a round chopstick brought bake from a chinese restaurant in Berkeley last year, cemented a strip of innertube rubber in the center of the stone hole, and now I can push together a tiny drop spindle at a moment's notice. It spins very easily. I wear the whorl as a pendant and the shaft as a hairstick. It's almost magical.[01]

Treehead brought DVDs that night. We watched Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Afterwards we decided what to take to the Faire and went to bed relatively early.

Sunday we (Charspider, Treehead, Wheel, and me) got up early. Wheel fixed us all breakfast and we got dressed up and we headed down to Ft. Meyers for the renn faire there.

I love the faire. I love dressing up, I love having interesting things to do outside all day long, the music, the performers (well, some of them, anyway), the vendors, and the crowds of people wearing pretty things. I like trying to go to every performance of The Empty Hats, easily the best show at the faire. I like the bawdy humor. I like being able to sit down in the sun when I need a little rest, and juggle, or contact juggle, or spin, or try to play a little musical instrument, while amidst a crowd of folks who are appreciative of my hobbies without finding them utterly unusual. I like seeing the same shows and the same bad jokes year after year. I get a kick out of the fact that if one were so inclined, one could buy a wax rose, a feather rose, a metal rose, a leather rose, and a glass rose, all in the same place. I like being able to fantasize about running away to follow the faire, even though I'll never do it. I like all the hand made stuff, and the talkative vendors. I like the dirt. I adore the costumed children of Renn folk who run around in the dirt and toss balls back and forth and fight with hand crafted wooden swords. I like the fact that no one takes historical accuracy very seriously.

And of course, any excuse to wear my dragon wings.

My actual birthday, I helped Oregano and Pairodox finish the last of their moving, and they took us (again, me and Wheel and Charspider and Treehead) out to a pub for dinner. Then we went to their house and talked.

And no, I didn't get drunk. I did have some really good blackberry honeyrun.

Today I got some dolphin data on DVD and I finished the shirt I've been knitting. I went birding. I've been doing the birdsong ISP and I even dreamed about birdwatching last night. So far here I've seen (and *heard) during the ISP:

Monk parakeets*
Mocking birds*
Mourning doves*
Ring neck doves
Blue Jays*
Robins*
European Starlings*
American Crows*
Fish Crows*
Common Grackles*
Boat-tail Grackles
Tree Swallows
Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers*
Palm Warblers*
Pine Warblers
Yellow-Rumped Warblers*
Yellow Throated Warblers
Yellow-Bellied sap suckers (male & female)*
Downy Woodpeckers
Pileated woodpeckers*
Red-Bellied woodpeckers*
Pied-billed Grebe
Common Moorehen*
Hooded Merganzer (male & female)
Mottled ducks
Willets
Killdeer
Least Sandpipers*
Laughing gulls*
Brown Pelicans
Cormorants
Anhingas
Tricolored herons
Little blue herons (adult & juvenile)
Great blue herons
Sandhill cranes
Red shouldered hawks* (adult & juvenile)
Turkey vultures
Black vultures
Great Bald Eagle
Kestrel (maybe)

Photos from my birthday dinner, the Faire, and of my new shirt will be on-line tonight. I swear it this time. Check back here around 10:30EST for the link.

[01] credit for this idea to an article in Spin-Off magazine, Winter 2002.