The Lilies Post

Last week was Lilies 20 and I spent June 9th to the 17th sleeping in my canvas pavilion out near Smithville Lake at the Kelsey Short Youth camp for the 7th year in a row. I love Lilies. It's my chance to relax, eat good food, spend time with great friends, laugh until I'm sick and generally re-charge for the year.



Finally a nice picture of my spoked oval all painted. For those who don't know latin it reads "Get off my lawn". It did great in all the wind towards the end of the week, and what I understood was a pretty nasty storm that blew in around 3 am Saturday (I was still out drinking). I beefed up all the wood by 50% from last year and was not so concerned when the breeze picked up on Thursday and Friday.






This Lilies was a bit on the odd side. Our camp was really big so it was hard to find the cohesion and unity that we usually have. Lessons learned: the common tent has to be in direct line of the kitchen tent and the fire pit.




This year we had a bunch of new people, including my apprentice and her husband, who was one heck of a fast learner on the archery field.




This is Liz and Anne (the archery Goddess), hanging out and keeping cool in the shade of the common tent.




The final resting place of the common tent came from the great dumpster cous of 2006. When we arrived on site on Friday and went to our intended camp site we discovered that the "brilliant" staff had deposited a GIGANTIC dumpster in what normally is a very attractive camping area. Much cursing later, we decided to make the best of it and simply set up camp. We did not realize that we would be visited at 7 am each day by Larry the Cable Guy and/ Boomhower opening up the back end of said dumpster and throwing mountains of garbage that crashed within. The final straw was Wednesday morning when they used chain saws to cut down some dead branches to allow a catapiller into the back of our camp so it could compress said garbage, which was starting to smell at this time. That morning many of us were taking shelter from the sun in the common tent and wondering outloud who we had pissed off that we were beset with such a inconvienence. Suddenly there was the sound of a large engine and coming towards our camp was a semi pulling a large flat bed who scooped up the dumpster and took it away. In amazement and delight we watched it drive off. "It's gone!" we said, "but it might come back". Hmmmm..... Well if it does come back it can't really put it back in the same place if there is something already there....like a tent. Quick! Move the common space! And we did, in 30 minutes we had it down and up on the other end of the camp, completely blocking access to where the dumpster had previously been. We were sitting around congratulating ourselves and enjoying some well earned drinks when there was the now familiar sound of semi coming down the road..... The driver was quite befuddled, to say the least as he emerged from the cab wondering if he was in the right spot. I kindly directed him to the end of the road where the dumpster had been placed last year and after confirming it with a supervisor he was off and we waved goodbye.

The following evening (Thursday) was tequilla night. Oof. let's just say that once I expelled the tequilla that i had consumed it was a lovely night, but I was stumbling for several hours afterwards. Fortunately I did not have a hangover in the morning. Images before the party: LOTS of tequilla (there will be pictures of the shrine that we assembled shortly)




Images during the party




I decided to spare everyone and not include the "after the party" shots, which were pretty grim in many ways.

General photos of the camp.

General photos of my campmates.

This is my friend Eleanor, who is also my instructor in period Persian dance.

Yeah, I hate her too. Good thing she is such an awesome person! She was very sweet in saying that I could pull off that look....yeah...right.... LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She's standing with Rich/Madawg who will the recipiant of the second pair of Egyptian socks. He kept me safe while I walked off my tequilla and was an amiable chaperone at the Three River's party.

Ok, so we drink a LOT at this thing....

Lilies is come and gone and now we start working on all the things for WW and all the plans for making next year even better. We did pretty good on the the tentage, nearly 75% canvas, Wa Hoo!

Here is a shot of the gang before we hit the road on the 6 hour drive home. Can you tell that we have been in the sun all week?

One thing to remember about Northshield: we are a fun bunch, we will fill your glass with homebrew and if you come to our camp you can wrestle a small black man.

Even if you are the King of Calontir.
Good times.