The lyf so short

... WHY DID I JUST SPEND TWO HOURS WATCHING OLD MEN IN DRESSES TALK IN LATIN AND PRANCE AROUND UNDER BLUE ROMAN SKIES. OK, not exactly prance. You know what I mean. WHY IS THIS PAPAL STUFF SO ADDICTIVE.

I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for ritual. And for living history. And for costumes. And they're good at all of that. That was probably real gold brocade, too, not some poly crap. OK, maybe it was gilded copper. It was still real metal, that's the point.

Ritual story time!

( Cut for length and LARP rambling; it will kind of make sense in the end, I promise? )

So there's a fine line where a ritualistic ceremony stops working for me. For instance, if you see those evangelical [was nicht das Gleiche ist wie evangelisch, falls gerade jemand verwirrt ist] events on TV some time, where people pretend to speak in tongues (or maybe they really believe they do) or sway with their arms held up like they're possessed by the holy spirit (or maybe they really believe they are) - that makes me deeply uncomfortable and, I admit it, disdainful. Like the appearance of those dressed-up extras in Talogon's LARP ritual. It turns a ceremony (fictional or otherwise) into play-acting. But the predominantly symbol-based ritual of a "normal" service, or a coronation, or even this papal inauguration? I totally dig that. Both in fantasy and in real life.
There, I admitted it! I'm a ritual offender.

And you have to admit that they just have the prettier costumes in Rome.

What the title says!

We're back from MEF and DF, as alive, crazy and overwhelmed as usual. My f-list is presumably full of ToME planning stuff (note: it's really awesome and useful that I no longer need worry about anyone confusing MEF and MEFA!) so I won't even try to catch up with that, so:
If I missed anything important going on in your lives or on the web or whatever in the past two weeks that you'd like me to take note of, please comment here with a link or a summary or whatever you feel suitable. Thank you!

There's a heap of cleaning to do and a heap of stuff to sort, and then of course there are the photos and the attempts at writing at least a brief sort of report, so NOT having to read through two weeks worth of backlog will be helpful anyway.

Happy belated birthday, laurenia!
Hope you had a great day.

Also, Happy belated birthday to my baby boy!
Everyone keeps asking what special thing we did for his birthday, and my answer is "It mostly went by", which is, of course, not strictly speaking, true. His birthday was the day of the Festfrieden (the general peace agreement of the festival) at the DF so there were many things going on, and he garnered congratulations by all sorts of fantasy people, pirates, knights, fairies, avatars, alchemists, mages, scribes and everything in between. Which is probably special for any normal person. Just not during DF week.
A year already. Can't quite believe it. Where did the time go?