damont

It's been a month since I last did much by way of an update. Let's see...

The weekend after Labor Day I went up to PA for the SCA demo at the Green Lane Scottish/Irish Festival (crashing with

alphaggek and Shannon and Cat). Had tummy issues in the morning so I was late getting there, and therefore missed seeing

h3salthea (bummer). I did get to mingle with many friends though, including but not limited to

math5,

siobhan1214,

merricke,

fosveny, Scholastica, John, Arpad, Juli, Marta, and of course the lovely

aliwodehalle who organized it. I also got formally introduced to

bertana although I think we'd met before. As with last year, I had a lovely time and will be putting it on my tentative schedule for next year.

The weekend after that was a family affair, traveling down to the Neck for Kinsale Day.

montuos's brother came up with Winston (the pug) in tow, and we all stayed at Mama's, along with Cheri (cousin Joe's widow).

montuos's cousin Robbie and her family were also present for the celebration; I had forgotten that Robbie's oldest (

killernurd's third-cousin on his mom's side) is a few months older than my niece Rachel (KN's first-cousin on my side), and both of them have just started high school. The odd part about all this is that Robbie and her family live about 5 miles away from my parents... and yet we only ever seem to meet up with them on the Neck!

The following weekend was the beginning of autumn, and the weather actually cooperated even though it's warmed back up since then. I went to a Mabon/equinox harvest potluck with

jacylrin and Cora on Saturday evening, which was a very nice time. The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with

montuos, which was also a very nice time. It's good to have a low-key, low-travel weekend once in a while.

The last weekend of September I was back to traveling, this time on a short plane ride over the Appalachians. For some reason, the start-of-runway markings at Dulles remind me of golf tee boxes, and I found myself mentally telling the pilots to "give it a little backspin"... both to get us airborne, and to limit the amount of time spent "rolling" upon landing. Turned out to be the smoothest plane ride I've ever had... not that I've been on that many (maybe 15 all told, counting each way of a round trip separately).

This past weekend was another weekend spent mostly at home, with us meeting

sister_devora,

pedropadrao,

nostasia, and

blaisedec for dinner at Mandalay on Sunday evening to celebrate

montuos's birthday.

And as for what's coming up? I honestly don't know, which is probably one reason I've been rather subdued of late.