This morning started with kissing Austin on the forehead, grabbing my bags, and catching the bus for breakfast at Thrantar's house. He and I and Lucretia and Gwen ate some eggs and potats, then threw everything into the car (including ourselves) and began to drive drive drive down to Philly for the North American Festival of SCD!
The three of them are all "competing" --quotation marks because Boston is the only branch sending an "improvers" team (dancers who've been doing so for less than two years, no one is looking too closely at the fact that Lucretia has been, uh, closer to five I think?)-- in the festival, I'm just going along to cheer and dance and the like. It should also be a nice chance tomorrow evening/Sunday morning to hang a bit with Galia, who I adore and haven't seen in fuckin' ages.
The drive was really splendid! The company was good, I got to be in charge of the music (Thran has borrowed my CD cases for other road trips, enough to get a sense of my weird mix tapes from my early teenaged years and yet somehow tolerate them, although after I played enough things and let him actually make requests, he voted for Alex Sturbaum/sing-along folky stuff.) and there was shockingly little traffic for what is kindof a three day weekend? It's been a long time since I did an Easter weekend roadtrip, and luckily this time does not involve cramming 5 adults into a sedan, nor going all the way as far as Atlanta.
It did involve going as far as Maryland, since that's where Thrantar and I grew up (and Lucretia, it turns out, although we left her and Gwen behind when we drove through Philly, where the fest actually will be). Park the car amongst the usual Friday Night Crowd, and open the unlocked front door and shout "burglars!" as is my wont. Round the corner into the kitchen and stride up to mom for a hug, as they happily declare "that WAS the voice I thought it was!"
I like having a family situation where I can show up on the doorstop and be all "hey, can I stay the night here?" on zero notice. It pleases me! A little surprise now and again is good fun!
So Thrantar and I ate some pizza, and then he went off to spend the night with his buddy Ryan and I hung out with the Friday night crowd, learning about lockpicking and watching celebrity bake-off. The crowd petered out in time for mom and I to play a charming new game she'd just bought called
Inkwell. It's a nice enough little strategy game, with truly stunning components, and we had a pretty close game through most of it. I'd be interested to find out how different it feels with five rather than two.
It's nice to be in my family house, which does feel rather nicely like home (I continue to hope dad meant it when he said this was the last house they'd buy, that they're planning to grow old and retire in this one). It's a hideous house in the suburbs, but it's what I am raised to, and I am fond of it! And it's full of good people and I like _that_ a lot.
Tomorrow I will awaken very early, so that Thran and I can make it to Philly in time for his 10am team call. I'm planning to dance a bit and do some grading and knit and hang out in general. It's a nice weekend, I think! I hope yours is going well too.
~Sor
MOOP!
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