busy days for a lame blogger

1. Yes, okay, I'm lame for not writing. Doubly so because my batteries are dead, so I have no photographic evidence for the past two weeks (I'll post them tomorrow). But I'll write anyway. It's all been covered blow-by-blow on the twitter feed.

• Picking up more or less from where I left off, we had a very busy weekend with Will, his roommate Kevin, Sara, and her boyfriend Scotty. Sara and Scotty came up Saturday afternoon, and we quickly found that we have more in common than ever (literally) and decided to ask Will and Kevin over so they could cook their half-cow they brought up from Ontario (they had originally planned to camp and barbecue a lot). We set up the barbecue on the fire escape, and were just finishing up the ribs when Matt and Porter unexpectedly showed up, making it a very full house indeed.
• The next day, we sent Scotty home on the bus to see his family, and Sara and I had lunch at the Fox and visited the BAG so she could see our famous gigantic Dali. In the evening, Sean stayed with Matt and Porter and apparently had a great time playing D&D (a rare treat these days) while Sara and I joined Will, Kevin, Amanda, and Julia at Mactequac Provincial Park to camp overnight. Despite some really incompetent fire building, we had a terrific time.
• On Monday, I slept. Sean got a tattoo.
  
• Tuesday, Sean and I got up early and rushed about getting ready to leave for Moncton, and met Amy and Silas at the NBCC offices to load the enormous cube van and drive up to the Delta Beausejour. It took us until 9 pm to finish most of setup; we did take a break to go to Jungle Jim's. The food was copious and reasonably okay, but the veggies and dip and blackberry merlot we had at our debriefing at the Chateau Moncton afterwards was better. The Chateau is rather nice - distinctive room decor. I've gotten really used to cheap hotels, between archaeology and Mexico, so government accommodations are a pleasant change.
• On Wednesday, we had our continental breakfast and then went back to the Delta to continue setting up. I'm glossing over a lot of operational hiccups in the process of setting up, but we were seriously sick of sliding plinths around by noon, when we finished up and adjourned to Chan's for some really standard, yummy Canadian-Chinese buffet. We are people of simple taste. We passed a few hours in the late-summer sales at the mall before heading over to the Delta for 5 to be very, very ready for the official opening of the conference. The food! I wish I could have been a real tourist and taken pictures, but there were sailboats of shrimp, and stuffed salmon, and pork loin sandwiches, and white chocolate & lobster canapes, and handcrafted fruit wines and beer. And, of course, herds of politicians. A delegate from Alberta talked to Sean about Acadians and lobsters for half an hour, and the premiers were drifting around (though none drifted over to us). About fifteen craftspeople showed, which was a lot of fun, because a lot of them I hadn't met before, like Adeline and Ghita, and they seemed to have a lot of fun. I wish I could have taken a picture of Peter Powning (this year's Saidye Bronfman Award winner) chatting with Lee Clark (one of our slightly eccentric young stars).
• Thursday was a lot longer, and quieter, bordering on mind-numbingly boring. We sold a couple of things, but the only real highlights of the day were free food. In the evening, we went to a really amazing pasta place called Pastalli, and I discovered that I don't much like anchovies in my pasta, but the pasta was so good it didn't matter anyway. We bought a couple of cheap DVDs and watched Bandits (hilarious; I recommend for a silly evening).
• Friday, we checked out and started the long process of packing things up and coming home. I'll gloss over the technical aspects, but it was 5 pm before we got back to Fredericton. Sean had to run to work, and we unpacked the van for an hour before finally calling it a day and going home. I was exhausted, and fell asleep; Porter randomly showed up, and I managed to wake up long enough to let him in and say hello before crawling back into bed.
  
• The weekend was very, very quiet. Matt visited briefly, but otherwise I can't even remember much of the weekend.
• Last night Danielle came over for dinner and knitting lessons. Sean roasted garlic and baguettes for an appetizer, and we had a vegan red sauce on farfalle. Simply terrific. I made a coconut cream pie and forgot about it until today. The knitting lessons went much better than last time; Danielle can now knit, purl, and rib, with freakishly perfect tension. She had one hole in her learning swatch and was horrified. I'm glad she didn't see mine.

2. So work is chugging along slowly. We have 45 people, and almost everything is done... I'm so tired of thinking of it right now!

3. This week, we're cleaning and trying to set things right around the house. We're going to go to the BAG so Sean can see the show at some point, and thought about taking some time next week to visit his parents because he has time off, but realistically? They'll just call him in anyway, so why bother. On Wednesday, I'm going to Miramichi with Sue to the opening of the Metepenagiag Heritage Centre, so I can dust off my Archaeology Student persona a bit, and on Thursday we're meeting a reporter who is doing a feature on the Fredericton show...
Busy days. But really, the best thing about the past few days is that Tonks is walking around like normal instead of hiding; she was playing with Parallax when I left for work this morning.