And the Finns go on...
So, I spent a lovely 6-ish hours in the company of the House of Nog + Agan.
Things got off to a bumpy start when it turned out that their phone had no minutes left. I was asleep in my room when they got to the cafe we'd planned to meet at, having been up till 2 in the morning driving a kid to the ER (she's fine). They IMed and PMed me, but to no avail... till I woke up and saw I had a waiting IM on my comp.
I dashed over to the cafe, taking a call in the meantime from Sally who had been called by phantom who had seen the Finns' panic-stricken plea on Facebook.
All the Finns, needless to say, were lovely. We hung out in the cafe for a while, while deliberating what exactly we were going to do for the day. Eventually we settled on driving to the local public gardens and strolled around until we found the Epic Magnolia of Epic.
Agan and I immediately set to climbing it (me in tights and boots, which is a very idiotic thing to do in NC weather), which I only later found out was against park policy. Many photos ensued--apparently we both looked very elvish from the ground. Then Lommie joined us in the tree for a bit, there were more photos, and a discussion of various school organizations and things.
Afterwards we camped underneath what was dubbed Young Man Willow and played a rousing game of Apples to Apples (Sally's magnanimous gift). We were going to play Munchkin as well but ran out of time.
Dinner was at a Greek restaurant, in which we discussed such things as climate, tabletop RPGs, and linguistic tastiness. I have decided that all accents need to be IPA'd, and decided that what made Aganzir's accent sound more "British" was because she made her o's a diphthong.
All in all I found my visitors to be august company--a real delight to speak with, especially after being surrounded by pubescent nerds for the past three days. There was surprisingly little Tolkien talk, but when it slipped in it was natural as breathing.
I'd offer photographic evidence, but I'm afraid the pictures that I took were intended to be supplemented by the ones that everyone else did. So await their massive posts for illustration.
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