[Lariren Shadow]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

that anything said by Brinn or Mira about me getting us so spectacularly lost en route home from the airport last week that a fifteen minute car trip down NY-17 took over an hour and a half... is utter rubbish.

They are inventing it all. Yes, they may include many believable details, such as, "she missed the exit and decided to take back roads instead," or "I tried to called Kelly in a panic, but by then Fea had driven out of range of cell phone service!!!" but as I said before, these things are simply untrue.

As I am neither Brinn nor Mira I can be trusted with what I say. She did get them horribly lost. Yet it turned out to be a circle. For about an hour. During which Mira freaked out a lot and Brinn actually, apparently, took it in stride. I was only there for the frantic phone call to Nienna.

And lo! On Saturday Night of the first weekend, we went to my favorite pub, and that was good.

And thus followed the first and second commandment of the pub: thou shalt do tequila shots and thou shalt consume massive quantities of french fries.

The next morning, we made art.

As is typical for a Sunday in the Household of the Peredhil, we went to the ceramics studio on campus and made things out of clay. Nienna, Mira, and I went straight into teacher mode, as Brinniel and all three of our non-Barrowdowner companions had never thrown clay on a wheel before!

Since when did it become the Household of the Peredhil? Twoish other Downers live there as well (I say twoish because Mira generally tends to spend more time in our cottage than in her own room). There are plenty of other names to call it! Besides Benjamin 1!

And then... well, then the week exploded, as school weeks are inclined to do. With all of us busy but Brinn, the apartment exploded a bit as well.

Stupid History of England paper...and senior sem paper...crap I need to work on that. I plan to die in the following week.

Early in the week, Brinniel had noticed Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit, DVD Edition sitting on one of our bookshelves. Friday night, we sprawled on the living room floor for a nerd battle of epic proportion.

"It's not the Misty Mountains..." you might hear hesitantly thought aloud.

"Ered Nimrais, guys, Ered Nimrais!"

"I can't remember," the occasional Barrowdowner would groan, at which point another might yell out, "The answer is 'doubt'!"

One of my favorite moments was surely Mira joking that she ought to do herself in for not knowing the answer to a question we all obviously knew but her: the answer was Denathor.

I doubled over in my chair in a fit of giggles, "Are you going to do it while on fire by throwing yourself off a cliff?"

Now Mira's selfesteem is crushed even more. And it is my game. Because I need to state that. And it was hilarious playing. It should be done more often.

I tell you all this, yet the highlight was certainly yesterday's road trip to visit Rikae and half of Mac's genetic material.

We packed up our various purses and items of import, doubled back for a forgotten iPod so that we need not listen to Cindy Lauper on the radio, and followed the applicable Finger Lake north for a little while.

I get it! You don't like Cindy Lauper and I should have given you my iPod sooner! I was half asleep at the time!

Upon arrival, we thought it best to acclimate our favorite little 'Downer-in-training to the terror that is Glaurung. She is a braver one even than Brinniel, who faced an art making process that burned hotter than the fires of Mount Doom! The child feared the avatar of Glaurung not even a little. Not even when it began to sing!

And then it had to be hidden from Mira, who kept trying to attack people with Glaurung and not amuse the 'Downer-in-training.

Of course a group photo with SkypeMac was obligatory, particularly given the amount of time we spent teaching him about awkward turtle. In honor of Lommy, Mac is now the world's leading expert on awkward penguin. I consider it a great tragedy that I did not manage to video Bubbles as he performed each awkward movement we described for him.

Yes, it was fun teaching SkypeMac the awkward movements. And I think we should use awkward penguin all the time. Hehehehe Bubbles oh how that is going to be so much fun later.

In effort to show you how difficult it is to organize a group photo of such proportion, I humbly offer my favorite of the batch, in which we are not all looking at the camera.

But there does exist a picture of all of us looking at the camera, even Bubbles.

It was a pretty fantastic week. I really have nothing else to add, considering I spent much of it either working or doing work for classes.