jedimentat

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Driving back from Maine, we took a short detour to Ticondergoa, NY, to see a Star Trek Set exhibit, which was fantastic!

mill stones in Ticonderoga Park

Don't worry, we made the kids watch lots of OS episodes so that they would be properly appreciative and awed before the exhibit..

...of *course* we bought them Tribbles. of course we did.

..The tourguide let Kirk go first in the Captain chair, since he was a namessake and all..

(we're such happy nerds)

spray bottles: the futuristic new hotness

hilarious pom pom plant

also, this rest area in Vermont was so nice and pleasant that it briefly made me realize how much of a shithole NJ is sometimes...

....when the Jeep Gladiator backseat is full of Star Trek OS swag, Atari games, and White Claw, is it peak Jedimentat?

driving through PA, en route to a week of camping like a pirate...

woodburning a sign for our castaway camp...

I'm largely opposed to pics at an event like this, but here are the few I took...

got to camp with these cuties, and I can't wait til their wedding...

...you can't quite see it, but we are all aboard a very, very tiny ship.

really, just getting to wander, and not be in mom-mode, was amazing.

our castaway hut by the lake

s'about as full as the parking lot got (for those of you who know what a normal year looks like!) I literally thought my car got towed and then realized it was closer than I thought.

it was pretty weird to arrive so early and see everything so bare

Did a *lot* of shopping at Armistice this year, gotta help out those vendors! Lookit this enormous LOTR mug to rule them all, as big as Kirk's head.

Armistice thoughts: There was no Pennsic in 2020. The idea of Armistice was *very* divisive online; people said that without SCA involvement, it was going to be a shitshow; uncontrolled, undisciplined, wild and unsafe. Personally we thought it could be done safely and with relatively low risk, plus we both felt an extreme need to blow off some steam and have some alone (non-mom and non-wife) wander-around time. Tried to put together a camp without offending people or stepping on toes. it's nice to see posts on FB saying how awesome it was, how it was an awesomely chill mini-Pennsic, and what a good time everyone had, but what attendees tend to forget is how it could easily have been otherwise. There were times when I was expecting a wild party ("Ok, *tonight* will be the wild party!" and it just...wasn't). The insane-cut-loose energy that you might expect just wasn't there, or, not there to the extent that I thought it would be). In terms of Covid, Armistice felt as spaced or distanced as you personally wanted it to be...but also, a lot of things just got normalized as people slipped into Pennsic-mode. It's nuts how my brain tries to evaluate and weigh different risks, now, constantly comparing risk-differences between activities and events. With how contagious Delta variant is, even a sneeze at a grocery store can do you in, at what point do you just live your life and hope for the best? I know it's such a slippery-slope way of thinking. If parties got physically crowded, I backed waay off or left, and same when people would close-talk with me, and I didn't share food/drinks/etc. but anyone sneezing/coughing/breathing heavily/talking loudly in your vicinity is enough to spread it, and I feel like it was just a peace-of-mind/comfort=level thing on my part. I believe that most of the crowd I hung with at Armistice was vaccinated, and I'm hoping for the best, but let's give it ten days and see how it all goes.

Overall, I had a fantastic time. I cried the first day, because it was the mental equivalent of "mom-seatbelt-arm"..if I'm not physically present with my children, how can I protect them, etc? It has been a long, long time since I've been away from them, and certainly not for a week. It was my first time being a Camp Coordinator, and I enjoyed 'setting up' the camp; I also enjoyed meeting new people. There were so few people, that you would encounter the same faces at nightly gatherings, and were more likely to talk to them, so I met more people than in the past, and it was really fun.

watching 'Jurassic Park' with the kiddos