Renfest

Saturday was a good day, especially as far as Renaissance Festivals go. Maybe it’s just me, but combine 90+ degrees with hours of walking, and sweating, and dirt, and thirst, and rip-off style prices, and you’ve got a recipe for short tempers and bad times. I look back at past festivals, and I can’t think of one where I didn’t fly off the handle at a friend, companion, acquaintance, or random dude dressed in tight leather pants and puffy drawstring shirt. In hindsight, all ill events occur toward the end of the Renfest excursion after hours of hot discomfort. Despite the inevitable Shenry tantrum I used to look forward to Renfest. When I was younger (like 12 through 18) I used to psyche myself up, forgetting about the previous year’s crescendo of tempers and focusing solely on my male adolescent fetish with swords, axes, and other ass-kicking devices of destruction. Yeah, sharp stuff is cool! It’s a good thing none of had the monetary means to obtain any skull smashing maces because come the end of the day inflamed tempers would’ve resulted in maimed friends. Now, even the weaponry has lost its allure. Why go? I guess it’s the same reason I wanna go to the zoo or museum; see the sights and experience something a little different.

We started the day off with a carload or doughnuts and coffee, which put me instantaneously in a good mood. Monkey Fist(LC) was instantaneously happy to be dressed in her pretty princess play clothes complete with pink pointy hat, and SSDiabolique was instantaneously happy because we were headed to Renfest. We all started out happy and remained that way for the majority of the venture. Sure we had a couple of tentative moments that resulted in tension, but we rose above it… mostly, kind of, sort of. After four hot hours of medieval madness we ended the outing with a late lunch at the golden arches, McDonalds. Air conditioning, food, and just the simple fact that we could relax recalibrated everyone’s mood to “instantaneously happy.”

Aftermath: Thanks to Renfest 80% of my torso is mildly sunburned, except a little patch across my shoulder where the strap of my satchel left a nice tan line. Thanks to Renfest I also trimmed my chest hair. (wtf?) As I trudged around all day without a shirt, I kept glancing down at the diamond-shaped patch of hair nestled between my pectorals. It was so pube-like curly and long that I was kinda grossed out by it. My chest hair was longer than the hair on my head, and that just didn’t seam right to me either. So when I got home I took the ol’ beard trimmer to it. Bzzzzzz. I have to remember that a setting of “4” on the beard trimmer is a little too short for chest hair. A “4” is perfect for sideburns and soul patches, but not chest hair. Hey, at least I didn’t take a razor to it. Hmm, razor… maybe. Naw.

Fare-est thee-est well-est
...and so it was written, shenry at 7/15/2002 12:40:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .