Pennsic creep

As I look at the schedule for Pennsic, it's looking more and more like the next time we go, whether that's next year or the year after, we should consider going Weds to Weds, or Thurs to Thurs, instead of "second week." Too much is moving earlier, and less is happening late in the week. It's the order meeting announcement that has set me off in this particular case. All four of the orders to which either jducoeur or I belong will have met before we get on site this year. And the days of a big splashy Great Court on the final Saturday are long gone (and we're supposed to be off-site by then anyway). I'm hearing from friends that breakdown starts in some camps on Friday nowadays! The times are a-changin'.

(no subject)

Great turnout for Karen's wake last night. At the time of the OES memorial service reading, I swear there were over 200 people, and that's not counting those who had left, or had come to one of the two other sets of calling hours. As I said to the woman behind me in the queue for the guest book, they could've held the supplementary Grand Chapter session then & there and had a better crowd than they'll get in August. Yet, it wasn't "our Karen" in the casket. It scarcely looked like her, and there was nobody home.

Somebody added a nice touch, distributing evergreen twigs to all the OES people there, to put in the casket after the memorial. Nice. But it meant another lap through the already sort of recursive receiving line. (Moebius receiving lines are an OES specialty - first you go through the line and greet everyone, then the line folds over on itself, and of course that's not counting the people you already hugged as folks were assembling beforehand.)

In other news, Joan's going to need a plate put in, surgically, next week, to aid the healing of her sternum, fractured in a car accident. Everyone was very solicitous of her, and she couldn't hug anyone, poor thing. But we all just kept ribbing Judy, who had hit a moose and got away unscathed.