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The Key West Entry (warning: extremely long, still probly needs editing)
Herein lies my account of the events of December 1-4, 2005.
I just finished putting some lj-cuts into this... I figure if I don't post it public soon, I'll never get around to it. Besides, I doubt anyone will actually read the whole thing anyway. ;)
I'll edit in links to pictures later, too, maybe, from my picture collection.
Thursday
Thursday evening I got back to the apartment at 1am or so, and proceeded to waste 3 hours doing stuff like playing Set with Charlie, talking with Benoit, and wasting time online. Benoit worked on his paper and I worked on Perl, and eventually he went off to sleep, and a few hours later I got ready to leave Pittsburgh. I got a 61C in Squirrel Hill, then a 28X down by CMU. As usual, leaving Pittsburgh made me a little weepy-eyed, but I fell asleep soon enough on the bus. Got to the airport at 6am for what was actually an 8:30am flight, not an 8am flight. Oops. Fell asleep in the terminal too.
Infact, to be honest, the first thing I really remember being conscious for was getting to baggage claim in Miami, finding my bag, calling![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fish_tie, and having to drag my stuff from claim 9 to claim 27, which was a royal pain, and the thought going through my head was "If I were a D&D character, I would totally be right at the limits of my 'max drag' strength right now."
Anyway, I found Ghoti andpiratelemur, and shortly after that captain_squid showed up with the car. We piled in and got on our way. I still hadn't actually finished sewing my banner, so I finished sewing the pink trim onto the bottom. I finished that about the time we got to a Wendy's, where we grabbed lunch, and kept going. Lemur iPodcasted a bunch of crazy music to the radio, and I looked out at the lovely scenery, noting the surroundings such as a bowling alley called Fish Bowl, a who-knows-what called Squid Row, one of the keys called Duck Key, etc.
An hour or two into the drive, I got a phone call from Charlie:
"Um, Deanna, did you mean to leave us your keys as well?"
"What? They're in my bag."
"No, they're not. Unless someone else left us a set of keys with a Lego pirate and a duck and a smartcard and..."
"Oh, FUCK."
So, my keys were in Pittsburgh, and I was in the Keys. I'm sure there's irony in that, but so I called around a bit, and IMed Megan, and it turned out she could pick me up Sunday and also get my keys mailed to her. So we settled that, and I tried not to panic too much. Yay for Charlie, and Megan.
Eventually we got to Key West, at long last, and found the Pelican Landing place, where we were staying, and got keys and stuff. (We had to give them the real names of the people staying there, and it was funny trying to remember them all -- I actually hadn't previously known Hom or Sigil's real names, and I'd forgotten Wildrose's.) We went up to the room, and were greeted byhomullus, ohsochewy, Caspian, Fronsac, and Sigil. Shortly after that, digriz and Wildrose showed up as well. Cool beans.
Only problem was, where should people put their stuff? Who was staying with who? We had 12 people, 6 guys and 6 girls, 3 couples, 4 rooms, and 7 beds, 8 if you count the couch. For the time being, it was decided to move Hom and Thus into the main bedroom, and put Garbuck in the room with Fronsac and Caspian, and then Wildrose and Jacquilynne and I would share the other upstairs room, and Ghoti would stay with Lemur and Squid, and Sigil would... sleep on the couch. There wasn't much time to really worry about it anyway, because we had to get down to the wharf for the champagne cruise! Ghoti, Wildrose, me, and Thusnelda all wore "Ye Win" shirts down to the cruise.
At the wharf, we meet up with several familiar faces... and wonder why Pierut is wearing a nametag that says "Hypnos", and of course it's no surprise to me that Jeff's nametag says "Bia". It was still sort of funny, though.
Hmm, I suppose I'm one of the lucky few (Hom, Thus, Fronsac, Wildrose, and Jacktheblack were the others) who managed to be on the special cruise two years in a row. This time things were a little different, though. Firstly, unlike in San Francisco, it got dark REALLY early. Secondly, it was winter and got really COLD. So, I spent the first hour of the trip talking to Gar, and mingling a little (Poseidon was like "Hey! Where's your apron?"), but then it got dark and I spent the last hour of it sitting next to Hermes and worrying about him because the ship was tilting pretty far over and he was shivering and coughing and stuff. (Although an hour or two before that we'd had an exchange like: "Hey, Janthina, can you do me a favor?" "No." *general giggling from crowd*) Some people got to actually work with the sails, which was cool, and occasionally we'd pass other boats and shoot the cannons at them, and yell "YARRR" and whatnot.
Afterwards, we all walked over to the house the OMs were staying at. It was this really nice, really big house on Caroline avenue, with a ton of bedrooms, a big living room and kitchen area, and even a backyard area with an in-ground pool and a hammock and stuff. After a while, some of us realized we were ravenously hungry, and after wandering around a bit en masse, found our way to a bar/restaurant at the corner of Caroline and Duval. We split up into three tables of people, and I ended up at a table with Homullus, Thusnelda, Lemur, and Sigil. It was a pretty good group, even if I felt vague guilt over sitting with all Loots. Because Thus, Lemur, and Sigil all split appetizers together, I sat across from Hom and chatted with him for a while, which was really fun, because Hom is really pretty damn cool -- infact, if anyone ever says Hom isn't cool, they just haven't really talked to him. Anyway, an amusing point was that the bar had Yuengling on tap, much to the joy of many Pennsylvanians. And there *were* many Pennsylvanian ex-pats, which was also a little odd. While walking there, I'd actually heard Quiglin and Maidenvoyage talking to Nemo about Pennsylvania stuff and I chimed in about Tastykakes, and Nemo did a double-take like "My god! When did you get here? Were you on the boat? Whoa! ...where's your apron?"
After dinner, there was more partying at the OM house. Roparzh was the bartender, which is to say, he drank a lot, and made sure everyone else did as well. I tried to lay down on the hammock and nap, but after about five minutes Cleaver came out and told me to go home and get some real sleep, which I wasn't about to do. So I sat around drinking and talking to people. Jeff was completely drunk and I spent half the party either making fun of him or flirting with him or both, I can't remember which, because I was sort of drunk too. He was like "Deanna, do you think people know who I *really* am? Nooooo... realllllyyyy?" Fron and Gar and I wanted to throw him in the pool at some point, but Eurydice wouldn't let us.
The Fandango kids "dropped a blockade" on Looterati, which is to say, they declared they'd be showing up at our place in 24 hours with snacks and booze. Therefore, we would be having a party at Cameloot (as we'd dubbed the penthouse apartment) on Friday night, or something. Whee.
We all eventually ended up back at Cameloot. Because Wildrose had skipped the entire evening thing due to not feeling well, I decided I should probably not play around trying to do web stuff and email on my cellphone while in our room for fear of waking her up with light or sound. So I ended up lying down on the couch bed for a while, typing stuff on my phone and talking to Sigil, who was occupying the other half of it. It struck me as odd that he actually wanted me to hang out for a bit, because I'd been under the impression he really hated me, for some reason. (I suppose I misinterpreted some of his standard-sigil-silly-surliness towards me at some point and never bothered finding out otherwise.) I guess I was wrong. Eventually I went upstairs and sprawled out on the bed and fell asleep.
Friday
So, we get up, get dressed, get snacked, and walk down to the Schooner Wharf bar. The walk was pretty cool -- it was really nice out, and I remember walking down the street talking to Hom. Again, Hom is damn cool. (I repeat this, because someone besides Thusnelda has to assert it in order for people to believe it.) One of the parts of this walk involved seeing a ton of roosters and chickens along the way, including my now-infamous delighted squeal of, "Oh my god, there are roosters in that bush!"
I should probably now mention that as I was falling asleep Thursday night at around 2am, I heard roosters squawking in the distance, which seemed curious at the time.
We get to the bar, and go to the upstairs patio area, where there are a ton of people and not nearly enough chairs. All of the OMs are wearing rad new Puzzle Pirates shirts, which fool me into thinking we're going to get some of these rad new shirts as our party shirts, but no, they're just so we can see the shirts available in the new Puzzle Pirates Store. We get our party packs at that point, which turn out to consist of:
- a very nice cloth bag that everything's stuffed into
- a parrrrrty t-shirt featuring Nemo's Pirate Party graphic
- a shot-sized bottle of rum
- three doubloon coins
- a PP deck of cards
- a bandana
Unfortunately, since it's not only insanely crowded upstairs but it's also insanely sunny, several of us decide to take shelter in the downstairs area. Since I had been talking to Indeed upstairs (I don't think I'd really talked to her since the time we hung out on Philly's South Street a year ago with some other PP folk), our table ends up being Dorel, Trilly, Artemis, Hom, Indeed, Ghoti, and Hack. Indeed breaks out her new deck of cards, and I play Hearts with the latter three of the listed folks. That was pretty wacky, except that for some reason I've gotten it into my head that I like competing at cards with Ghoti -- probably partially because the first time I met him, we were sitting there competing at cards within an hour, and partially because he's good at cards and fun to compete with -- so I pretty much kept trying to send points at him and he was doing the same to me. And it was fun!
Hack got a call from work and had to leave to take care of some stuff, and Artemis disappeared into the ether, so Dorel took over at cards, and Hom and Indeed ate all of Artemis's lunch. After that, I end up in a discussion with Hom and Dorel about inventing a drink called "Blockade", along the lines of lemonade and limeade, y'know? Dorel comes up with the brilliant idea to put grapes in the drink, like grapeshots, which sink to the bottom, and Hom decides we need to stick little flags in it, and I say it should be blue, maybe with white swirlies somehow.
Eventually everyone goes back upstairs for a little while, at which point we get a brief "welcome" speech from Cleaver, find out he bought us lunch, and are told to go back to the OM house for the Q&A session. The Q&A session lasted an hour or two, but most of what I remember of it is that a lot of us were sitting around with our feet in the pool, which was nice, and that eventually the noise pollution from chickens and construction work nearby got in my way of paying attention, so I drifted off into websurfing on my phone and doing some updates on Marinerds. Honestly, I think I was just getting sick of the very me-centric questions people were asking, anyway. An amusing part was when Drunk Girl showed up and was running all over the place being loud and obnoxious and at some point she just plunked herself down next to Cleaver. Oi.
We walked back up to Cameloot, and in the meantime,jacquilynne had gotten to town! Yay! She brought us all mix CDs. That was rad.
People changed into piratey outfits (well, I changed into my "I'm a PITTSBURGH PIRATE! ARRR!" outfit) and we drove down to Fort Zachary Taylor for a "pillage and plunder party", which meant a lot of standing around in the dark. First it was dark outside, and then dark inside. Cleaver bought drinks for a bunch of us, including me (I had a honey mead), and we wandered around in the dark "pub" area. There were musicians, and there were food stands outside, so a bunch of us grabbed greek food and sat down and ate dinner. After an hour or two of hanging out there, I said, "It's dark and unfun here. Let's go home." So we did, and we informed a bunch of the other PP folk about the "blockade" at our place (and asked Nemo to show up and "call off the blockade" as a joke). The annoying thing that happened when we were leaving is that the waistband on my piratey knee-length pants unravelled or something (it was a cheap pair of costume pants that I got a few years ago), so I had to walk back to the car and the apartment holding my pants up. Fortunately, it was dark enough that I don't think anyone noticed. Infact, I'm not sure why I'm writing about it, except to remind myself that I need new pirate pants.
We got back to Cameloot with Pierut in tow, which meant we could do our Looterati gift exchange before the big party started. A few weeks before Key West, Jacquilynne had assigned everyone a secret Santa (or as Squid would say, a secret Mantis Claus), and we were told to buy piratey funny gifts for someone, in a chain. So, Ghoti inadvertantly started the present unwrapping chain by giving Caspian the gift he had for her, a bunch of Pirates of the Spanish Main sets. As such, the presents were, IIRC:
Ghoti => Caspian : Pirates of the Spanish Main sets
Caspian => Jacquilynne : Stuffed monkey
Jacquilynne => Wildrose : Goblets with roses painted on them
Wildrose => Homullus : Loot, the card game
Homullus => Squid : Squid-shaped power cord strip thingy
Squid => Fronsac : piratey toys
Fronsac => Sigil : Pirates of the Spanish Main sets
Sigil => Lemur : Pirate figurine and a book
Lemur => Thusnelda : Pirates megablox set
Thusnelda => Janthina : Octopus, duck soap, rubber carping duck with lyrics and carp pieces drawn on
Janthina => Pierut : Pirate socks, Pirate beach set
Pierut => Garbuck : Pirate tissues and some jewelry (I think)
Garbuck => Ghoti : Pirate Hunter book
A little while later, people started showing up at the house for the "blockade". First it was a bunch of devs and some other players. Nemo set up a game of Bang and I was sitting there, so I ended up in it. It was an 8-player game, I was an outlaw and sitting next to Nosracait, the sherriff. I said something like "Oh, you're the sherriff, okay," and she was like "What's it to you?" and I'm like "Nothing?" and she got the wrong idea and shot me the first turn, so I shot her back. Naturally, I was taken out of the game before I even got a second turn. Bah, I hate Bang.
Other games went on, like Apples to Apples, and Fronsac's bunny-dice game, and I got Hom and Lemur and Ghoti to play Set with me for a little while, but other than that I mostly just wandered around the party talking to people and sometimes watching games. A bunch of us hung out in the kitchen for a while drinking and talking, too. The Fandango kids were out karaokeing and didn't show up until 11:30pm, of course. So by 1am I was sitting on a couch talking to Gar and Ghoti for a while, and around 1:30, Ghoti said he was pretty much going to kick everyone out at 2am if they weren't gone by then. Amazingly, that's about when things started to wind down, and I think everyone was completely gone by 2:30am. The end.
Well... actually, not really. Jacquilynne had passed out on the bed I was supposed to be sharing with her around midnightish, and was all sprawled out, and I didn't want to wake her up. So after trying to figure out where to sleep instead, I ended up sleeping on the sofabed with Sigil. No, all we did is sleep. Shut up, Rani. :P
Saturday
Woke up from a combination of two things: 1) sleeping in the living room is tough when everyone else gets up and comes downstairs and 2) Ghoti was cooking breakfast for everyone, and the smell of bacon and eggs proved difficult to resist. He is, indeed, the quite talented real-life Cook and Swordsman of the Cult of the Red Mantis.
Anyway, people got ready to rumble, and we walked down to the OM house for the scavenger hunt. I left my camera battery in my room by accident and everyone left without me, so I ended up running about 6 blocks to catch up with everyone. It wouldn't be a big deal, except that it was hot outside, so by the time we got to the OM house I was pretty dizzy. We hung out for a little while, going over stuff on the scavenger hunt list, and eventually set out for it. Our hunt team was Lemur, Squid, Ghoti, Wildrose, Sigil, Thusnelda, me, and at the start, Jacquilynne. The first place we went to was Pat Croce's Pirate Soul tour, though, and since it was $13, Jacq and I decided to go get lunch instead.
We went to "B.O.'s Fish Shack", which Jacq had heard about from Chowhounds. The guy at the counter needed our names. Jacq gave her name as "Jackie" and I, as a joke, said my name was Janthina. He looked at me funny, and I said "Just call me Jan". Anyway, talk about a run-down hole-in-the-wall sort of place, but the food was fantastic. I had a really great fried fish sandwich.
We got lost heading back to meet up with the rest of the Loots -- BUT we found Nemo! One of the hunt items was "Find Nemo and get him to draw something shiny for you". Well, we found Eurydice, Prometheus, Hermes, and Nemo finishing lunch and playing Nintendo DS at a cafe on Duval St, so we got Nemo to draw us something -- a picture of a monkey playing Mario Kart. It was cute. In the meantime the Loots had gotten some Key Lime pie (another hunt item) and then we met up with everyone.
As part of the scavenger hunt, we:
- walked down to Mallory Square, explored and shopped for trinkets. Jacq left us after that point.
- saw a partially obscured sign that read "Assbottom Boat", which I decided HAD to be our Key West ship rename
- Found the Iguana Cafe, where Iggy the Iguana used to live, but he was sadly gone
- Thusnelda picked out an insanely tasteless and tacky necklace (I'm not even going to describe it, though when we submitted it, a comment we got was "I think you broke Demeter.") as our "tacky touristy trinket" for the Ringers at a sidewalk jewelry seller on Duval. I got a necklace of rubber duckies, though, which ruled.
- Stopped by Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, where I got my dad some postcards
- Found the "Mile 0" marker of Route 1. It was conveniently a block from an awesome costume shop where I got a Pirates in Paradise t-shirt and others got various costume goods, including Ghoti's awesome captain's jacket. While we were in the shop, some other people found Cleaver going by outside, and he was also a hunt item.
- Went to Fort Zachary Taylor again to visit the "Thieves' Market". One of the items said "Find the booth where the proprietor plays Puzzle Pirates", so we did that. The fort was a lot cooler by day, honestly, and we wandered around to the merchant stalls, which were neat. We ran into Cleaver again, and he saw my ducks necklace and said "That's a lovely necklace you're wearing, Janthina." I replied, "Thanks! I'm a duckaneer!" He paused, then said "...That's lovely. I think I need a drink." and walked off to the pub. As far as I can tell, he didn't stop drinking from that point on.
- On the way to the fort, incidentally, we waylaid Poseidon and convinced him to ban me (another hunt item, "find an OM and get a party member 'banned' and 'unbanned'"). Two minutes later we ran into Hypnos and Bia and asked them to unban me. Also, when we reached the gate to the fort, it looked like a cars-only entrance. So we lined up in pairs of 2, and Ghoti pretended to be driving our "car".
- We went to the beach near the fort (another item - "go to the beach!") and Sigil took a picture of me, Wildrose, Ghoti, Thus, Lemur, and Squid in the water.
Problem was, after taking off my shoes to step in the ocean, they were full of sand when I went to put them back on, which sucked for walking. Squid was going to go back and get his car anyway and pick people up from the Southernmost Point in the US (another hunt item), so I said I'd go back to Cameloot with him, saving car room and my sandy feet. So we did that. We intended to bus or taxi back, but we couldn't find an open taxi and never saw a bus, and just kept walking and walking, and a mile and a half later, we were back at Cameloot.
I took the not-crowded-house opportunity to shower and change into my dumb pirate costume. After everyone else got back, we all ate dinner together. Ghoti had cooked a gigantic pot of chili the night before, and Jacquilynne and Artemis made garlic bread, and Homullus had bought key lime pie. All in all, it was a great dinner, the amusingest part being half of us going "OMGWTFSPICY!" about the chili, and Ghoti saying "Hey, this is at ONE-THIRD my normal spice level, guys!"
Everyone else got into their pirate costumes. Squid, Lemur, and Ghoti had very suave, classy outfits. Thusnelda had the absolute most impressive one with her version of a gunwhale. Hom wore rags. Wildrose looked like a Christmas pirate. Garbuck and Sigil had ren-faire outfits. Jacquilynne had knitted and sewed herself a real-life version of her pirate's pink-and-lime outfit which was pretty impressive as well. I felt vaguely lame in my squid-and-crossbones shirt and fishnets, but ah well, it beats a yellow apron. Next pirate party, I won't spend 12 hours sewing a stupid banner and instead I'll make a rad costume. I joked that I was dressed up as a Cult of the Red Mantis wannabe (red tights, red sashes, piratey Squid-related shirt? You be the judge).
We drove over to the Hog's Breath Saloon for the big parrrrrty afterwards. This is where my weekend got really bad. I don't know why, but something about the layout of the party made me really uncomfortable. It felt like a highschool reunion gone wrong -- not great lighting, little 4-person tables, a stage with a mic, a big open bar, a food buffet, and lots of people dressed up weird. We put up our banners and then just... well, hung around. I had a few mixed drinks (I told the bartender, "Just make me something that tastes good", so she came up with lots of fruity stuff) and tried to relax and hang out, but something just felt really wrong. I was even snapping at people for no reason, and such. Then, when I figured I'd just go off somewhere by myself and chill out a little... I found there was no convenient such place. The immediate area outside was entirely taken up by smokers, and the room was shaped such to have no real side spaces or corners.
THEN THE SANTAS HIT.
I don't know what the hell Cleaver was thinking, but apparently when he was drunk and got lost trying to find the blockade party, he ran into a bunch of people who were part of the Santa Brigade, and invited them all to come to the parrrrrty. So they did. They were dressed... mostly rather scandalously, including guys in assless chaps, girls barely wearing anything under a Santa jacket, etc. One guy even had a megaphone and was going around yelling at people. As if I wasn't already freaked out enough about the party, this just sort of sent me over.
I ended up sitting at a table with a bunch of Loots, just trying to sort of focus and zone out on it all -- I remember just staring at a table candle for a bit -- and Garbuck noticed and put his arm around me and I ended up crying on his shoulder -- and that already-annoying redhead wossname Ivdripper picks that moment to complain that she hasn't taken any pictures of me yet, and would Garbuck and I smile for the camera?
I, in a low and forceful voice, said "No. NOT RIGHT NOW."
She, not getting the hint at all, was like "Awwww, cmoooooooonnn, I don't have you on camera, what's yer problem?" and aimed the camera at us anyway.
So I got up and just walked out of the room, walked through all the smokers, down the steps, across Duval Street, and eventually just found somewhere to sit down. And actually, I felt better immediately, just being outside and by myself. Garbuck came outside and hunted me down and we sat there talking together for a half hour or so. That was actually pretty cool since we hadn't really talked all weekend anyway. Gar is awesome.
Eventually we came back inside, by which point all the santas had been chased off. And at that point the party just went on as "normal" for me. I drank some more drinks (never did actually get buzzed, let alone drunk, though) and talked to people and took some pictures. They eventually gave out prizes for the scavenger hunt teams, and Looterati was first place! So we got to pick our prizes first out of the pool. I got the black t-shirt with the white girl-fights-monkey-for-treasure cartoon on it that I had been coveting all weekend, so that was great! I don't really remember details of most of the rest of the party, since, again, nothing really *happened* there. I remember moments, like trying to cheer up Demonyaj at one point, and Silvermoon taking my picture, and people blackspotting each other, and the antics of Indeed, and Pro following Thus around with the Kniterati sweater, and I remember signing Hack's yellow apron, and singing Canadian folk songs with Roparzh, and nearly falling asleep on Sigil's shoulder. The rest of it's a blur, honestly. Oh, wait, I also remember Endymion pulling me away to talk to me about Black Death for like fifteen minutes until I finally managed to get away.
Afterwards, there was a party at the OM house, of course. Cleaver had said it'd be a pool party, so some of us went back to Cameloot to put on swimsuits. When we got there, though, several people were sitting *around* the pool but not many were *in* it. Garbuck, Ghoti, and Thusnelda ended up swimming, and Indeed and Hussar were *in* the pool, still in their costumes, but that was really about it. I sat around talking to Sigil for a while, and then talking to Fronsac for a while, and then went indoors to see who was still around. Fron and Bia and Sigil and Gar all deserted me at some point to go into Eurydice's room since there were some loud drunk people still wandering around, so I hung out and talked to some other random people I hadn't really met all weekend, like Dashli and Beckers and Heksubah and whoever.
Oh, um, I wandered out to the porch at one point, and Cleaver was there, as were some other people. Cleaver was just totally drunk off his ass, as he had been all night. Anyway, I talked to him for a little while, and out of nowhere he suddenly just looks at me like "Janthina, have I ever told you that you have the most beautiful eyes?" and he put his arm around me and smiled a very drunk smile at me, and I was just like, "Um, Daniel, sweetie, I think you need to sit down -- perhaps you've had one too many drinks?" He leaned on my shoulder and laughed drunkenly and I actually wasn't quite sure what to do, except fortunately at that point Indeed walked over like "OMG DRUNK CLEAVER!" or something, I don't remember exactly, but either way I somehow got away. It was vaguely amusing and vaguely traumatic at the same time. I don't think I'd mind Cleaver hitting on me if he was sober.
Eventually I managed to get into Eurydice's room and look all pathetic like "Plz cn we go bk now omg slepy", and so Fronsac drove us all back to Cameloot. Sigil said something to me like "by the way, if you need to, you're welcome to stay on the couch with me again." I went up and saw that I had plenty of room, but I came back downstairs to tell him that and give him a hug goodnight, and we ended up staying up talking for a bit. We heard the roosters crowing, and I remember Sigil saying something like "I just don't get it. Since when are chickens migratory?" I went upstairs and crashed a bit after that.
Sunday
I don't remember anything of the morning, really. We all got up and got showered and changed and packed and all. We packed up our remaining food and drove over to the OM house, where everyone else had also dropped off their remaining food, so lots of people were pigging out on breakfast-like food, and chatting and hanging out for their last bit of time before most people had to hit the road.
After a lot of hugging people goodbye, we hit the road around 12:30pm. Lemur broadcast crazy music from her iPod again, and this time as a car game I decided to write down all the keys and channels that we drove by. I have them all in my pocket notebook, but can't decide if it's worth typing in. It was well over 6 pages long. We passed by Duck Key and Squid Row and everything again, but I was too zoned and tired to get pictures.
We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so since my flight was first, the whole gang came with me to Gate D, where we grabbed some bad airport food and hung out for an hour or so, until I got on my flight. My flight stopped in Dallas, and there was an hour or so layover, though I was getting back on the exact same plane to continue to Seattle. I got out and got food for the heck of it anyway. Both flight legs showed Fever Pitch, which was sort of funny, since I slept through most of it on the first leg and only saw the ending, whereas the second leg I watched most of it again anyway, while reading a baseball book off and on, and sleeping some as well. I got to Seattle and found Megan! Who had keys! And so then I came home. The end.
So, yeah. What did we learn this weekend?
- Key West is inexplicably full of chickens and roosters.
- Yo ho ho and Ho ho ho don't mix particularly well.
- Squid is smart. Having 12 of us stay in a penthouse apartment was the best idea ever.
- Despite me having few female friends in my normal life, it's very different when I'm surrounded by cool chicks like Thusnelda, Lemur, Jacquilynne, and Wildrose. I feel like I should have brought something to knit, though.
- Jacquilynne and Wildrose are good roomates.
- Ghoti rules at, like, everything.
- Sigil doesn't hate me, and is actually a pretty great guy.
- I blame Garbuck for being an awesome friend.
- Homullus is the coolest person ever.
- Fronsac and I are not only cool with each other, I think we're actually friends again, at long last.
- Despite what she may say jokingly, Lemur has great taste in music.
- Indeed is a very sweet girl when sober. Indeed is a very scary girl when drunk. (I suppose I could say the same for Cleaver, if you switch /girl/guy/)
- Despite being in Dam-fango, Dorel and Trilly and Quiglin are pretty cool too.
- Hack is smart. Getting people to sign your apron is pretty clever.
- Hypnos is a small Asian chick. Bia is a tall guy with red hair and mutton chops. Eurydice says "wat". Prometheus is even dorkier than Hermes (in a good way, of course). All of the OMs are in Looterati. (Okay, I'm mostly kidding.)
- Silvermoon is very different than the last time I saw her, in a good way.
- Jacktheblack, Nuemenor, and Falkenberg get the "What, you can't POSSIBLY be over the age of 16" awards.
I just finished putting some lj-cuts into this... I figure if I don't post it public soon, I'll never get around to it. Besides, I doubt anyone will actually read the whole thing anyway. ;)
I'll edit in links to pictures later, too, maybe, from my picture collection.
Thursday
Thursday evening I got back to the apartment at 1am or so, and proceeded to waste 3 hours doing stuff like playing Set with Charlie, talking with Benoit, and wasting time online. Benoit worked on his paper and I worked on Perl, and eventually he went off to sleep, and a few hours later I got ready to leave Pittsburgh. I got a 61C in Squirrel Hill, then a 28X down by CMU. As usual, leaving Pittsburgh made me a little weepy-eyed, but I fell asleep soon enough on the bus. Got to the airport at 6am for what was actually an 8:30am flight, not an 8am flight. Oops. Fell asleep in the terminal too.
Infact, to be honest, the first thing I really remember being conscious for was getting to baggage claim in Miami, finding my bag, calling
fish_tie, and having to drag my stuff from claim 9 to claim 27, which was a royal pain, and the thought going through my head was "If I were a D&D character, I would totally be right at the limits of my 'max drag' strength right now."Anyway, I found Ghoti and
piratelemur, and shortly after that captain_squid showed up with the car. We piled in and got on our way. I still hadn't actually finished sewing my banner, so I finished sewing the pink trim onto the bottom. I finished that about the time we got to a Wendy's, where we grabbed lunch, and kept going. Lemur iPodcasted a bunch of crazy music to the radio, and I looked out at the lovely scenery, noting the surroundings such as a bowling alley called Fish Bowl, a who-knows-what called Squid Row, one of the keys called Duck Key, etc. An hour or two into the drive, I got a phone call from Charlie:
"Um, Deanna, did you mean to leave us your keys as well?"
"What? They're in my bag."
"No, they're not. Unless someone else left us a set of keys with a Lego pirate and a duck and a smartcard and..."
"Oh, FUCK."
So, my keys were in Pittsburgh, and I was in the Keys. I'm sure there's irony in that, but so I called around a bit, and IMed Megan, and it turned out she could pick me up Sunday and also get my keys mailed to her. So we settled that, and I tried not to panic too much. Yay for Charlie, and Megan.
Eventually we got to Key West, at long last, and found the Pelican Landing place, where we were staying, and got keys and stuff. (We had to give them the real names of the people staying there, and it was funny trying to remember them all -- I actually hadn't previously known Hom or Sigil's real names, and I'd forgotten Wildrose's.) We went up to the room, and were greeted by
homullus, ohsochewy, Caspian, Fronsac, and Sigil. Shortly after that, digriz and Wildrose showed up as well. Cool beans. Only problem was, where should people put their stuff? Who was staying with who? We had 12 people, 6 guys and 6 girls, 3 couples, 4 rooms, and 7 beds, 8 if you count the couch. For the time being, it was decided to move Hom and Thus into the main bedroom, and put Garbuck in the room with Fronsac and Caspian, and then Wildrose and Jacquilynne and I would share the other upstairs room, and Ghoti would stay with Lemur and Squid, and Sigil would... sleep on the couch. There wasn't much time to really worry about it anyway, because we had to get down to the wharf for the champagne cruise! Ghoti, Wildrose, me, and Thusnelda all wore "Ye Win" shirts down to the cruise.
At the wharf, we meet up with several familiar faces... and wonder why Pierut is wearing a nametag that says "Hypnos", and of course it's no surprise to me that Jeff's nametag says "Bia". It was still sort of funny, though.
Hmm, I suppose I'm one of the lucky few (Hom, Thus, Fronsac, Wildrose, and Jacktheblack were the others) who managed to be on the special cruise two years in a row. This time things were a little different, though. Firstly, unlike in San Francisco, it got dark REALLY early. Secondly, it was winter and got really COLD. So, I spent the first hour of the trip talking to Gar, and mingling a little (Poseidon was like "Hey! Where's your apron?"), but then it got dark and I spent the last hour of it sitting next to Hermes and worrying about him because the ship was tilting pretty far over and he was shivering and coughing and stuff. (Although an hour or two before that we'd had an exchange like: "Hey, Janthina, can you do me a favor?" "No." *general giggling from crowd*) Some people got to actually work with the sails, which was cool, and occasionally we'd pass other boats and shoot the cannons at them, and yell "YARRR" and whatnot.
Afterwards, we all walked over to the house the OMs were staying at. It was this really nice, really big house on Caroline avenue, with a ton of bedrooms, a big living room and kitchen area, and even a backyard area with an in-ground pool and a hammock and stuff. After a while, some of us realized we were ravenously hungry, and after wandering around a bit en masse, found our way to a bar/restaurant at the corner of Caroline and Duval. We split up into three tables of people, and I ended up at a table with Homullus, Thusnelda, Lemur, and Sigil. It was a pretty good group, even if I felt vague guilt over sitting with all Loots. Because Thus, Lemur, and Sigil all split appetizers together, I sat across from Hom and chatted with him for a while, which was really fun, because Hom is really pretty damn cool -- infact, if anyone ever says Hom isn't cool, they just haven't really talked to him. Anyway, an amusing point was that the bar had Yuengling on tap, much to the joy of many Pennsylvanians. And there *were* many Pennsylvanian ex-pats, which was also a little odd. While walking there, I'd actually heard Quiglin and Maidenvoyage talking to Nemo about Pennsylvania stuff and I chimed in about Tastykakes, and Nemo did a double-take like "My god! When did you get here? Were you on the boat? Whoa! ...where's your apron?"
After dinner, there was more partying at the OM house. Roparzh was the bartender, which is to say, he drank a lot, and made sure everyone else did as well. I tried to lay down on the hammock and nap, but after about five minutes Cleaver came out and told me to go home and get some real sleep, which I wasn't about to do. So I sat around drinking and talking to people. Jeff was completely drunk and I spent half the party either making fun of him or flirting with him or both, I can't remember which, because I was sort of drunk too. He was like "Deanna, do you think people know who I *really* am? Nooooo... realllllyyyy?" Fron and Gar and I wanted to throw him in the pool at some point, but Eurydice wouldn't let us.
The Fandango kids "dropped a blockade" on Looterati, which is to say, they declared they'd be showing up at our place in 24 hours with snacks and booze. Therefore, we would be having a party at Cameloot (as we'd dubbed the penthouse apartment) on Friday night, or something. Whee.
We all eventually ended up back at Cameloot. Because Wildrose had skipped the entire evening thing due to not feeling well, I decided I should probably not play around trying to do web stuff and email on my cellphone while in our room for fear of waking her up with light or sound. So I ended up lying down on the couch bed for a while, typing stuff on my phone and talking to Sigil, who was occupying the other half of it. It struck me as odd that he actually wanted me to hang out for a bit, because I'd been under the impression he really hated me, for some reason. (I suppose I misinterpreted some of his standard-sigil-silly-surliness towards me at some point and never bothered finding out otherwise.) I guess I was wrong. Eventually I went upstairs and sprawled out on the bed and fell asleep.
Friday
So, we get up, get dressed, get snacked, and walk down to the Schooner Wharf bar. The walk was pretty cool -- it was really nice out, and I remember walking down the street talking to Hom. Again, Hom is damn cool. (I repeat this, because someone besides Thusnelda has to assert it in order for people to believe it.) One of the parts of this walk involved seeing a ton of roosters and chickens along the way, including my now-infamous delighted squeal of, "Oh my god, there are roosters in that bush!"
I should probably now mention that as I was falling asleep Thursday night at around 2am, I heard roosters squawking in the distance, which seemed curious at the time.
We get to the bar, and go to the upstairs patio area, where there are a ton of people and not nearly enough chairs. All of the OMs are wearing rad new Puzzle Pirates shirts, which fool me into thinking we're going to get some of these rad new shirts as our party shirts, but no, they're just so we can see the shirts available in the new Puzzle Pirates Store. We get our party packs at that point, which turn out to consist of:
- a very nice cloth bag that everything's stuffed into
- a parrrrrty t-shirt featuring Nemo's Pirate Party graphic
- a shot-sized bottle of rum
- three doubloon coins
- a PP deck of cards
- a bandana
Unfortunately, since it's not only insanely crowded upstairs but it's also insanely sunny, several of us decide to take shelter in the downstairs area. Since I had been talking to Indeed upstairs (I don't think I'd really talked to her since the time we hung out on Philly's South Street a year ago with some other PP folk), our table ends up being Dorel, Trilly, Artemis, Hom, Indeed, Ghoti, and Hack. Indeed breaks out her new deck of cards, and I play Hearts with the latter three of the listed folks. That was pretty wacky, except that for some reason I've gotten it into my head that I like competing at cards with Ghoti -- probably partially because the first time I met him, we were sitting there competing at cards within an hour, and partially because he's good at cards and fun to compete with -- so I pretty much kept trying to send points at him and he was doing the same to me. And it was fun!
Hack got a call from work and had to leave to take care of some stuff, and Artemis disappeared into the ether, so Dorel took over at cards, and Hom and Indeed ate all of Artemis's lunch. After that, I end up in a discussion with Hom and Dorel about inventing a drink called "Blockade", along the lines of lemonade and limeade, y'know? Dorel comes up with the brilliant idea to put grapes in the drink, like grapeshots, which sink to the bottom, and Hom decides we need to stick little flags in it, and I say it should be blue, maybe with white swirlies somehow.
Eventually everyone goes back upstairs for a little while, at which point we get a brief "welcome" speech from Cleaver, find out he bought us lunch, and are told to go back to the OM house for the Q&A session. The Q&A session lasted an hour or two, but most of what I remember of it is that a lot of us were sitting around with our feet in the pool, which was nice, and that eventually the noise pollution from chickens and construction work nearby got in my way of paying attention, so I drifted off into websurfing on my phone and doing some updates on Marinerds. Honestly, I think I was just getting sick of the very me-centric questions people were asking, anyway. An amusing part was when Drunk Girl showed up and was running all over the place being loud and obnoxious and at some point she just plunked herself down next to Cleaver. Oi.
We walked back up to Cameloot, and in the meantime,
jacquilynne had gotten to town! Yay! She brought us all mix CDs. That was rad. People changed into piratey outfits (well, I changed into my "I'm a PITTSBURGH PIRATE! ARRR!" outfit) and we drove down to Fort Zachary Taylor for a "pillage and plunder party", which meant a lot of standing around in the dark. First it was dark outside, and then dark inside. Cleaver bought drinks for a bunch of us, including me (I had a honey mead), and we wandered around in the dark "pub" area. There were musicians, and there were food stands outside, so a bunch of us grabbed greek food and sat down and ate dinner. After an hour or two of hanging out there, I said, "It's dark and unfun here. Let's go home." So we did, and we informed a bunch of the other PP folk about the "blockade" at our place (and asked Nemo to show up and "call off the blockade" as a joke). The annoying thing that happened when we were leaving is that the waistband on my piratey knee-length pants unravelled or something (it was a cheap pair of costume pants that I got a few years ago), so I had to walk back to the car and the apartment holding my pants up. Fortunately, it was dark enough that I don't think anyone noticed. Infact, I'm not sure why I'm writing about it, except to remind myself that I need new pirate pants.
We got back to Cameloot with Pierut in tow, which meant we could do our Looterati gift exchange before the big party started. A few weeks before Key West, Jacquilynne had assigned everyone a secret Santa (or as Squid would say, a secret Mantis Claus), and we were told to buy piratey funny gifts for someone, in a chain. So, Ghoti inadvertantly started the present unwrapping chain by giving Caspian the gift he had for her, a bunch of Pirates of the Spanish Main sets. As such, the presents were, IIRC:
Ghoti => Caspian : Pirates of the Spanish Main sets
Caspian => Jacquilynne : Stuffed monkey
Jacquilynne => Wildrose : Goblets with roses painted on them
Wildrose => Homullus : Loot, the card game
Homullus => Squid : Squid-shaped power cord strip thingy
Squid => Fronsac : piratey toys
Fronsac => Sigil : Pirates of the Spanish Main sets
Sigil => Lemur : Pirate figurine and a book
Lemur => Thusnelda : Pirates megablox set
Thusnelda => Janthina : Octopus, duck soap, rubber carping duck with lyrics and carp pieces drawn on
Janthina => Pierut : Pirate socks, Pirate beach set
Pierut => Garbuck : Pirate tissues and some jewelry (I think)
Garbuck => Ghoti : Pirate Hunter book
A little while later, people started showing up at the house for the "blockade". First it was a bunch of devs and some other players. Nemo set up a game of Bang and I was sitting there, so I ended up in it. It was an 8-player game, I was an outlaw and sitting next to Nosracait, the sherriff. I said something like "Oh, you're the sherriff, okay," and she was like "What's it to you?" and I'm like "Nothing?" and she got the wrong idea and shot me the first turn, so I shot her back. Naturally, I was taken out of the game before I even got a second turn. Bah, I hate Bang.
Other games went on, like Apples to Apples, and Fronsac's bunny-dice game, and I got Hom and Lemur and Ghoti to play Set with me for a little while, but other than that I mostly just wandered around the party talking to people and sometimes watching games. A bunch of us hung out in the kitchen for a while drinking and talking, too. The Fandango kids were out karaokeing and didn't show up until 11:30pm, of course. So by 1am I was sitting on a couch talking to Gar and Ghoti for a while, and around 1:30, Ghoti said he was pretty much going to kick everyone out at 2am if they weren't gone by then. Amazingly, that's about when things started to wind down, and I think everyone was completely gone by 2:30am. The end.
Well... actually, not really. Jacquilynne had passed out on the bed I was supposed to be sharing with her around midnightish, and was all sprawled out, and I didn't want to wake her up. So after trying to figure out where to sleep instead, I ended up sleeping on the sofabed with Sigil. No, all we did is sleep. Shut up, Rani. :P
Saturday
Woke up from a combination of two things: 1) sleeping in the living room is tough when everyone else gets up and comes downstairs and 2) Ghoti was cooking breakfast for everyone, and the smell of bacon and eggs proved difficult to resist. He is, indeed, the quite talented real-life Cook and Swordsman of the Cult of the Red Mantis.
Anyway, people got ready to rumble, and we walked down to the OM house for the scavenger hunt. I left my camera battery in my room by accident and everyone left without me, so I ended up running about 6 blocks to catch up with everyone. It wouldn't be a big deal, except that it was hot outside, so by the time we got to the OM house I was pretty dizzy. We hung out for a little while, going over stuff on the scavenger hunt list, and eventually set out for it. Our hunt team was Lemur, Squid, Ghoti, Wildrose, Sigil, Thusnelda, me, and at the start, Jacquilynne. The first place we went to was Pat Croce's Pirate Soul tour, though, and since it was $13, Jacq and I decided to go get lunch instead.
We went to "B.O.'s Fish Shack", which Jacq had heard about from Chowhounds. The guy at the counter needed our names. Jacq gave her name as "Jackie" and I, as a joke, said my name was Janthina. He looked at me funny, and I said "Just call me Jan". Anyway, talk about a run-down hole-in-the-wall sort of place, but the food was fantastic. I had a really great fried fish sandwich.
We got lost heading back to meet up with the rest of the Loots -- BUT we found Nemo! One of the hunt items was "Find Nemo and get him to draw something shiny for you". Well, we found Eurydice, Prometheus, Hermes, and Nemo finishing lunch and playing Nintendo DS at a cafe on Duval St, so we got Nemo to draw us something -- a picture of a monkey playing Mario Kart. It was cute. In the meantime the Loots had gotten some Key Lime pie (another hunt item) and then we met up with everyone.
As part of the scavenger hunt, we:
- walked down to Mallory Square, explored and shopped for trinkets. Jacq left us after that point.
- saw a partially obscured sign that read "Assbottom Boat", which I decided HAD to be our Key West ship rename
- Found the Iguana Cafe, where Iggy the Iguana used to live, but he was sadly gone
- Thusnelda picked out an insanely tasteless and tacky necklace (I'm not even going to describe it, though when we submitted it, a comment we got was "I think you broke Demeter.") as our "tacky touristy trinket" for the Ringers at a sidewalk jewelry seller on Duval. I got a necklace of rubber duckies, though, which ruled.
- Stopped by Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, where I got my dad some postcards
- Found the "Mile 0" marker of Route 1. It was conveniently a block from an awesome costume shop where I got a Pirates in Paradise t-shirt and others got various costume goods, including Ghoti's awesome captain's jacket. While we were in the shop, some other people found Cleaver going by outside, and he was also a hunt item.
- Went to Fort Zachary Taylor again to visit the "Thieves' Market". One of the items said "Find the booth where the proprietor plays Puzzle Pirates", so we did that. The fort was a lot cooler by day, honestly, and we wandered around to the merchant stalls, which were neat. We ran into Cleaver again, and he saw my ducks necklace and said "That's a lovely necklace you're wearing, Janthina." I replied, "Thanks! I'm a duckaneer!" He paused, then said "...That's lovely. I think I need a drink." and walked off to the pub. As far as I can tell, he didn't stop drinking from that point on.
- On the way to the fort, incidentally, we waylaid Poseidon and convinced him to ban me (another hunt item, "find an OM and get a party member 'banned' and 'unbanned'"). Two minutes later we ran into Hypnos and Bia and asked them to unban me. Also, when we reached the gate to the fort, it looked like a cars-only entrance. So we lined up in pairs of 2, and Ghoti pretended to be driving our "car".
- We went to the beach near the fort (another item - "go to the beach!") and Sigil took a picture of me, Wildrose, Ghoti, Thus, Lemur, and Squid in the water.
Problem was, after taking off my shoes to step in the ocean, they were full of sand when I went to put them back on, which sucked for walking. Squid was going to go back and get his car anyway and pick people up from the Southernmost Point in the US (another hunt item), so I said I'd go back to Cameloot with him, saving car room and my sandy feet. So we did that. We intended to bus or taxi back, but we couldn't find an open taxi and never saw a bus, and just kept walking and walking, and a mile and a half later, we were back at Cameloot.
I took the not-crowded-house opportunity to shower and change into my dumb pirate costume. After everyone else got back, we all ate dinner together. Ghoti had cooked a gigantic pot of chili the night before, and Jacquilynne and Artemis made garlic bread, and Homullus had bought key lime pie. All in all, it was a great dinner, the amusingest part being half of us going "OMGWTFSPICY!" about the chili, and Ghoti saying "Hey, this is at ONE-THIRD my normal spice level, guys!"
Everyone else got into their pirate costumes. Squid, Lemur, and Ghoti had very suave, classy outfits. Thusnelda had the absolute most impressive one with her version of a gunwhale. Hom wore rags. Wildrose looked like a Christmas pirate. Garbuck and Sigil had ren-faire outfits. Jacquilynne had knitted and sewed herself a real-life version of her pirate's pink-and-lime outfit which was pretty impressive as well. I felt vaguely lame in my squid-and-crossbones shirt and fishnets, but ah well, it beats a yellow apron. Next pirate party, I won't spend 12 hours sewing a stupid banner and instead I'll make a rad costume. I joked that I was dressed up as a Cult of the Red Mantis wannabe (red tights, red sashes, piratey Squid-related shirt? You be the judge).
We drove over to the Hog's Breath Saloon for the big parrrrrty afterwards. This is where my weekend got really bad. I don't know why, but something about the layout of the party made me really uncomfortable. It felt like a highschool reunion gone wrong -- not great lighting, little 4-person tables, a stage with a mic, a big open bar, a food buffet, and lots of people dressed up weird. We put up our banners and then just... well, hung around. I had a few mixed drinks (I told the bartender, "Just make me something that tastes good", so she came up with lots of fruity stuff) and tried to relax and hang out, but something just felt really wrong. I was even snapping at people for no reason, and such. Then, when I figured I'd just go off somewhere by myself and chill out a little... I found there was no convenient such place. The immediate area outside was entirely taken up by smokers, and the room was shaped such to have no real side spaces or corners.
THEN THE SANTAS HIT.
I don't know what the hell Cleaver was thinking, but apparently when he was drunk and got lost trying to find the blockade party, he ran into a bunch of people who were part of the Santa Brigade, and invited them all to come to the parrrrrty. So they did. They were dressed... mostly rather scandalously, including guys in assless chaps, girls barely wearing anything under a Santa jacket, etc. One guy even had a megaphone and was going around yelling at people. As if I wasn't already freaked out enough about the party, this just sort of sent me over.
I ended up sitting at a table with a bunch of Loots, just trying to sort of focus and zone out on it all -- I remember just staring at a table candle for a bit -- and Garbuck noticed and put his arm around me and I ended up crying on his shoulder -- and that already-annoying redhead wossname Ivdripper picks that moment to complain that she hasn't taken any pictures of me yet, and would Garbuck and I smile for the camera?
I, in a low and forceful voice, said "No. NOT RIGHT NOW."
She, not getting the hint at all, was like "Awwww, cmoooooooonnn, I don't have you on camera, what's yer problem?" and aimed the camera at us anyway.
So I got up and just walked out of the room, walked through all the smokers, down the steps, across Duval Street, and eventually just found somewhere to sit down. And actually, I felt better immediately, just being outside and by myself. Garbuck came outside and hunted me down and we sat there talking together for a half hour or so. That was actually pretty cool since we hadn't really talked all weekend anyway. Gar is awesome.
Eventually we came back inside, by which point all the santas had been chased off. And at that point the party just went on as "normal" for me. I drank some more drinks (never did actually get buzzed, let alone drunk, though) and talked to people and took some pictures. They eventually gave out prizes for the scavenger hunt teams, and Looterati was first place! So we got to pick our prizes first out of the pool. I got the black t-shirt with the white girl-fights-monkey-for-treasure cartoon on it that I had been coveting all weekend, so that was great! I don't really remember details of most of the rest of the party, since, again, nothing really *happened* there. I remember moments, like trying to cheer up Demonyaj at one point, and Silvermoon taking my picture, and people blackspotting each other, and the antics of Indeed, and Pro following Thus around with the Kniterati sweater, and I remember signing Hack's yellow apron, and singing Canadian folk songs with Roparzh, and nearly falling asleep on Sigil's shoulder. The rest of it's a blur, honestly. Oh, wait, I also remember Endymion pulling me away to talk to me about Black Death for like fifteen minutes until I finally managed to get away.
Afterwards, there was a party at the OM house, of course. Cleaver had said it'd be a pool party, so some of us went back to Cameloot to put on swimsuits. When we got there, though, several people were sitting *around* the pool but not many were *in* it. Garbuck, Ghoti, and Thusnelda ended up swimming, and Indeed and Hussar were *in* the pool, still in their costumes, but that was really about it. I sat around talking to Sigil for a while, and then talking to Fronsac for a while, and then went indoors to see who was still around. Fron and Bia and Sigil and Gar all deserted me at some point to go into Eurydice's room since there were some loud drunk people still wandering around, so I hung out and talked to some other random people I hadn't really met all weekend, like Dashli and Beckers and Heksubah and whoever.
Oh, um, I wandered out to the porch at one point, and Cleaver was there, as were some other people. Cleaver was just totally drunk off his ass, as he had been all night. Anyway, I talked to him for a little while, and out of nowhere he suddenly just looks at me like "Janthina, have I ever told you that you have the most beautiful eyes?" and he put his arm around me and smiled a very drunk smile at me, and I was just like, "Um, Daniel, sweetie, I think you need to sit down -- perhaps you've had one too many drinks?" He leaned on my shoulder and laughed drunkenly and I actually wasn't quite sure what to do, except fortunately at that point Indeed walked over like "OMG DRUNK CLEAVER!" or something, I don't remember exactly, but either way I somehow got away. It was vaguely amusing and vaguely traumatic at the same time. I don't think I'd mind Cleaver hitting on me if he was sober.
Eventually I managed to get into Eurydice's room and look all pathetic like "Plz cn we go bk now omg slepy", and so Fronsac drove us all back to Cameloot. Sigil said something to me like "by the way, if you need to, you're welcome to stay on the couch with me again." I went up and saw that I had plenty of room, but I came back downstairs to tell him that and give him a hug goodnight, and we ended up staying up talking for a bit. We heard the roosters crowing, and I remember Sigil saying something like "I just don't get it. Since when are chickens migratory?" I went upstairs and crashed a bit after that.
Sunday
I don't remember anything of the morning, really. We all got up and got showered and changed and packed and all. We packed up our remaining food and drove over to the OM house, where everyone else had also dropped off their remaining food, so lots of people were pigging out on breakfast-like food, and chatting and hanging out for their last bit of time before most people had to hit the road.
After a lot of hugging people goodbye, we hit the road around 12:30pm. Lemur broadcast crazy music from her iPod again, and this time as a car game I decided to write down all the keys and channels that we drove by. I have them all in my pocket notebook, but can't decide if it's worth typing in. It was well over 6 pages long. We passed by Duck Key and Squid Row and everything again, but I was too zoned and tired to get pictures.
We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so since my flight was first, the whole gang came with me to Gate D, where we grabbed some bad airport food and hung out for an hour or so, until I got on my flight. My flight stopped in Dallas, and there was an hour or so layover, though I was getting back on the exact same plane to continue to Seattle. I got out and got food for the heck of it anyway. Both flight legs showed Fever Pitch, which was sort of funny, since I slept through most of it on the first leg and only saw the ending, whereas the second leg I watched most of it again anyway, while reading a baseball book off and on, and sleeping some as well. I got to Seattle and found Megan! Who had keys! And so then I came home. The end.
So, yeah. What did we learn this weekend?
- Key West is inexplicably full of chickens and roosters.
- Yo ho ho and Ho ho ho don't mix particularly well.
- Squid is smart. Having 12 of us stay in a penthouse apartment was the best idea ever.
- Despite me having few female friends in my normal life, it's very different when I'm surrounded by cool chicks like Thusnelda, Lemur, Jacquilynne, and Wildrose. I feel like I should have brought something to knit, though.
- Jacquilynne and Wildrose are good roomates.
- Ghoti rules at, like, everything.
- Sigil doesn't hate me, and is actually a pretty great guy.
- I blame Garbuck for being an awesome friend.
- Homullus is the coolest person ever.
- Fronsac and I are not only cool with each other, I think we're actually friends again, at long last.
- Despite what she may say jokingly, Lemur has great taste in music.
- Indeed is a very sweet girl when sober. Indeed is a very scary girl when drunk. (I suppose I could say the same for Cleaver, if you switch /girl/guy/)
- Despite being in Dam-fango, Dorel and Trilly and Quiglin are pretty cool too.
- Hack is smart. Getting people to sign your apron is pretty clever.
- Hypnos is a small Asian chick. Bia is a tall guy with red hair and mutton chops. Eurydice says "wat". Prometheus is even dorkier than Hermes (in a good way, of course). All of the OMs are in Looterati. (Okay, I'm mostly kidding.)
- Silvermoon is very different than the last time I saw her, in a good way.
- Jacktheblack, Nuemenor, and Falkenberg get the "What, you can't POSSIBLY be over the age of 16" awards.
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You looked terrific in your pirate outfit! ;) Sexy fishnets and skirt! rawr!
Sigil and Indeed are both cute ;) Looks like cleaver had a hell of a vacation :P
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That is one thing I will proudly be at fault for. :)
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"- Sigil doesn't hate me, and is actually a pretty great guy."
"So after trying to figure out where to sleep instead, I ended up sleeping on the sofabed with Sigil. No, all we did is sleep. Shut up, Rani. :P"
*tents fingers, raises an eyebrow, and smirks*
Mm HMMM! ;)
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1) Who could blame you?
2) You know you're always welcome to share the red Kool-Aid.
'Twas a very good parrrty, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
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