Friends

Iiit's still NEFFA!

Gosh I am suddenly weirdly tired! I can't imagine why this might be! What could've possibly caused this?

Actually, the thing I want most right now is like. Playing video games or something silently by myself. It's been a great day but also a _very_ social day. I have had so many wonderful discussions! Short and long, in snippets across a set or hours wandering and hanging out. Real damn good!

(Highlights include a very rewarding bit of convo about the ways SCD is a little too insular sometimes with Jenny Beer, an extremely illuminating fun fact of learning that the concept of clothing that doesn't fit the people wearing it is even more recent than I thought (it's a post WWII factory conversion thing!), and a glorious two hours hanging with Alexander and Willow, including an amazing reading of the most nonsensical academic paper abstract that has ever been written.)

In terms of actual official things I did:

*I started the day by wandering down to Observe the Morris dancers! Muddy River has a zillion people I know on it! WhistlePig has fewer people I know but as I mentioned offhand to one of the other people watching, it has an extremely high proportion of people I have Big Idle Crush Feels For, which makes a lot of sense for the dedicated queer team. I had good morning chats with bunches of people and also got to see an *extremely* new babby, just two weeks out of his mother and small and neato!

*I managed to miss all of the pre-noon things that were otherwise on my "maybe I'll do that" list, but I hung with Lucretia some and had a lovely-but-sad chat with Val about the state of public school education (grr). I did manage to wander back up the hill in time for Susan dG's "Jane Austen's Squares" session, which surprised me slightly by being not Regency (the period in which Austen's books are set) but in fact late baroque (the period Jane would've been dancing as a 15-20 year old!) It's been a hot minute since the last time I've been in one of Susan's classes, and I found it very pleasant to realize just how much my teaching style is cribbed from hers. (I don't know that anyone else would see the parallels, but yeah, there's some stuff there about how to make hard dancing accessible).

*From there was lunch (more siopao!) with Justin dC and Charis, then Justin and I realized we were both interested in Scott Higgs and Jenny Beer's panel on "Better Dancing is More Fun!". Which like. If that wasn't already inherently enough to catch you, they also had Joanna Reiner give a 3-5 minute spiel about some of the good stuff she intentionally does for her floors. MORE AMAZING TEACHERS OKAY?! It was really good vibes!



*Had a half hour of chatting time with friends, where I confirmed a band for my GenderFree SCD class party in June (yay! This was starting to get slightly urgent! I also confirmed a band for the 2027 party, which I hope will be a Bigger Shindig¹!). I also exchanged Important Baby Gossip with Beth, which was extremely fun to do!

*Off we all went to the beginner SCD session, which was quite well taught (nice job Charles!) and also extremely beginner-filled, in a way that feels heartening and also makes me more annoyed at myself that I forgot to bring my flyers. Sigh! But it was fun! And then I didn't bother to change my shoes, just swapped sides of the hotel for the regular-type SCD, except I forgot that the two events were on opposite of the "sometimes events start on the hour and sometimes they start on the half-hour" thing that NEFFA does, which means I danced three _very_ good waltzen first! Okay fine, technically what Bret and I did was some variety of tango, but Monya and I did an _incredible_ Waltz with lots of lead switching and intensity and good non-verbal communication and it felt soooo goodoooo! And Teah was excited to let me lead, which felt good --leading waltzes was like the single dance skill I really felt like I _lost_ during 2020/2021, and I'm extremely pleased to feel like it has come back some.

*SCD was fine! Howard made some _wild_ choices dance-wise, but he fit the pieces together pretty well. And then I found myself outside chatting with Alexander and Willow, and I guess checking the timestamps on the schedule, that's then what I did from about 6:30 until 10. Huh. Nice job!

Ben stopped by at one point which was Very Good, and Tuesday joined for a bunch of it, and it was really lovely. And we did eat dinner-type things, and I did not successfully buy them gelato this time around, but that will be a future adventure maybe.

*Anyways, I had a hard cutoff of 10 because that was Michael Karcher's "Stream of Contraness" 41-dance hash. To Torrent, natch! Apparently they all signed up together and everything, which is very sweet. I happened to encounter a wild Anna Rain, at exactly the right time to ask her to dance and she said yes and I said "but I prefer not too wildly flourishy" and she said "oh yes that's perfect" and it was SO GOOD!

And then I never made it back to the hotel half of the festival like I intended. I chatted merrily with Keira and Charis and Annie and then with Hannah and Ian and then saw Sammy-the-new-musician-we-like-so-much-at-Scottish who was bubbly and enthusiastic and excited to ask me to do the last contra. How could I say no to that? We did an extremely chaotic and energetic dance and it was grand! (oh to dance with nineteen year olds!²)

I wrapped with a lovely conversation and walk with Apollo, and then it was time to drive back to the AirBnB! The fomo is real, but counterpoint, it's incredibly valuable to not accidentally stay up singing until three AM when I've got rehearsal at 9 tomorrow. Speaking of which...off I go to bed, goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: This year is "Flights of Fancy" (Emily and Dirk Tiede, Beth Murray) and next year will be Torrent (Sarah and Ross Parker, Nadia Gaya). Hellll yes for all these musicians!

2: I am, first of all, too young to be any sort of "gosh did I have that much energy when I was that age" and also yes _yes I did_. And let's be real, yes I _do_, because there was a very good climbing tree at the NAFest a couple weeks ago, and weirdly no one else was in it at any point.

Dang, today was really good!

And like......I've been saying for a while now that my hypersimplified political stance is "community is good". And while it wasn't the first thing I did today, it was pretty early in the sequence that I looked at the young woman with the small child standing in Park Street station and looking _extremely_ confused about the lack of a map, and so went over with my phone and helped her identify the station she wanted to be at and which train to get on. Then I sat on a bench and did some knitting until my own train arrived. This wasn't the entirety of the day, but it did set the tone really really nicely!

Before that, I had a lovely long phone chat with my mom as she was driving to her sister's to do more work with their dad's stuff --we organized when and how I'll be going to MD to visit this summer, and then chatted about many lovely inconsequential things. And I visited the post office to mail off a book for a friend (I was point person for a kickstarter a bunch of folks on my discord were excited about). And then it was off to bells, where I arrived halfway through but had a jolly time ringing everything after. Not going to bells very frequently means that we suddenly have an all new crop of skilled ringers and that's quite neat to observe!

Bells lunch was lovely, and taking the T home with Laura lovlier still --I got to hear some of her exciting upcoming plans for adventure! And then I was home long enough to change my clothes and take a quick rest and then off to my work-bestie's old house to help him move a bunch of boxen out of his attic. Originally the plan was three of us and I think he was expecting it to take 2-3 hours. The two of us were handily done in well under an hour and I near melted in delight as he said "you being the stupendous badass you are"¹.

(His attic ladder broke right before moving out, so he'd rigged a quite nice pulley setup with a little handmade cargo net. But I don't think he realized how strong I am, and subsequently how quickly I could get things out of the netting and stacked up in the room downstairs. It was a very jolly time!)

Afterwards, I got to see his new house, which is absolutely gorgeous in every way except that it's diagonally opposite our principal's house (which like, isn't an inherent flaw but is very very funny). And he treated me to dinner, which we did at a nice sushi place on Mass Ave that has set out their outdoor seating --it was just warm enough to be happy, and I think we spent the entire time joyfully discussing Taskmaster. I'm real lucky!

Home again home again, and I managed to kick my brain into enough order to get started the newest bit of knitting project (or rather, the first in a series of swatches for thus) before getting into the car(?!) and driving to the airport. It's Magus and Keira's car, on loan while they were overseas, so we can do grocery runs in exchange for giving them rides to and from the airport.

It was my first time hanging out in the cell phone lot, and that was actually quite jolly as well. "Take your time", texts I, "I have music and knitting" and I did and they were both quite good, which was especially good because their airplane did not have access to any stairs for quite a long time and so what could've been a 45 minute errand had everything worked optimally was actually about two hours. But again, I had music and knitting and that was _lovely_. I only had to work on two of the projects (and listen to my CD twice through) and then suddenly we were back at my house and I was handing them the keys.

Dishes properly done *before* coming upstairs to fuck around, and that's where I am now. I have a few hours before bed, I expect, and while I can never guilt-free do things (there is grading and my desk is a disaster) today really was enough that I feel like I can really relax into whatever else I decide to do with my evening.

Community is good! I am so happy I am a part of mine.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Call me pretty and I will smile, call me useful and I will melt. I know what I'm about. (5'2" and carrying classic oldest daughter trauma)