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Last weekend was my madrigal group's annual retreat. This year we spent it at Camp Westwind, which is on a beautiful mile-long stretch of beach south of Cascade Head. It's used as a youth camp in the summer, but last weekend we were, I understand, the only group there. Since there is no other access to the beach that is both public and easy, and since it was not the tourist season, we nearly had the entire beach to ourselves. In fact, when I went out after our afternoon rehearsal and before dinner on Saturday, I was, for a while, the only person on the whole beach. I found a Japanese plastic float on the sand, which felt strange, a reminder in an empty and wild landscape that the vast ocean was connected to a human world thousands of miles away, even as its connection to the human world on this side was at its most tenuous.
I also found some agates. I do like shiny rocks!
We sang quite a bit as usual. Because we have a recording date coming up, we've been focusing on polishing the songs we're going to record. But we did break out some songs that we let slip out of our active repertoire last year, and noodled around with extra verses and original language versions that we never sing, which was a lot of fun.
I ate way too much food. I can never stop snacking at these things. And the cooks in the group outdid themselves with Saturday night dinner, delicious tamales with homemade salsas, and flan for dessert. Oh, and guava margaritas.
Saturday night folks turned in a lot earlier than usually happens, (certainly a lot earlier than on Friday night, when I lost a Scrabble game in which I managed to play HEXANE.) But I stayed up a bit longer and read a couple of stories from the free Tor.com Best of 2011 ebook.
And then -- I couldn't go to bed. Because I'd forgotten which room I'd moved my stuff to that morning. (There was some shuffling due to Saturday morning arrivals and people with CPAPs moving into the same room so as to disturb those of us without less.) And I didn't want to
have a 50% chance of disturbing people in the wrong room, so I just sat on a bench in the meeting room area all night and put my head down on the table, but I didn't actually sleep.
And I know how dumb that is, but I get in this sort of cycle, where I've done something dumb, and then I need to punish myself for it. So it wasn't just the anxiety about disturbing people, but it was also that because I'd been dumb and forgot which room I was supposed to be in, I lost my sleep privileges.
In other news, I've received the prototypes I had made of my exchange gift for Gathering for Gardner, and they turned out nearly perfect. I've put in my order for the exchange gifts themselves, and I am awaiting delivery. (I cut things a bit closer than I should have in terms of the timing of getting them made, but hopefully it shouldn't be a problem.) I still need to make the slides for my talk, but there's plenty of time for that.
I also found some agates. I do like shiny rocks!
We sang quite a bit as usual. Because we have a recording date coming up, we've been focusing on polishing the songs we're going to record. But we did break out some songs that we let slip out of our active repertoire last year, and noodled around with extra verses and original language versions that we never sing, which was a lot of fun.
I ate way too much food. I can never stop snacking at these things. And the cooks in the group outdid themselves with Saturday night dinner, delicious tamales with homemade salsas, and flan for dessert. Oh, and guava margaritas.
Saturday night folks turned in a lot earlier than usually happens, (certainly a lot earlier than on Friday night, when I lost a Scrabble game in which I managed to play HEXANE.) But I stayed up a bit longer and read a couple of stories from the free Tor.com Best of 2011 ebook.
And then -- I couldn't go to bed. Because I'd forgotten which room I'd moved my stuff to that morning. (There was some shuffling due to Saturday morning arrivals and people with CPAPs moving into the same room so as to disturb those of us without less.) And I didn't want to
have a 50% chance of disturbing people in the wrong room, so I just sat on a bench in the meeting room area all night and put my head down on the table, but I didn't actually sleep.
And I know how dumb that is, but I get in this sort of cycle, where I've done something dumb, and then I need to punish myself for it. So it wasn't just the anxiety about disturbing people, but it was also that because I'd been dumb and forgot which room I was supposed to be in, I lost my sleep privileges.
In other news, I've received the prototypes I had made of my exchange gift for Gathering for Gardner, and they turned out nearly perfect. I've put in my order for the exchange gifts themselves, and I am awaiting delivery. (I cut things a bit closer than I should have in terms of the timing of getting them made, but hopefully it shouldn't be a problem.) I still need to make the slides for my talk, but there's plenty of time for that.
