#MTG

Most weekends are just…
rough.
Church is great, but when you have a fairly big responsibility, they may be a day of “rest from the cares of the world,” but they’re not at all relaxing. Saturday is the time to schedule meetings and volunteering that doesn’t fit in anywhere else, or catch up on cleaning and studying and practicing and projects that didn’t get finished during the week, so you’re not starting the next week behind the 8-ball.
But this weekend was…
GREAT!

It started out with me reading the draft of the first few chapters of my newest book to my captive-audience family on our drive to (and from) the St. Louis Renaissance Fair, and them laughing and gasping at all the right spots.

We made it in time for the first jousting event, and our knight, who we’d cheered with all our might, won the round. We caught the end of a magic show, listened to some great live music, tried on armor and asked all the questions we wanted about it, petted the snakes and thought about petting the owls and raptors, watched a long-sword demonstration (and cheered for our champion, who lost at the last), and spent far too much money on magic wands and fair eats and some great leather (including what will be the base of my new D&D outfit, which I hope to have put together in time to wear to the church’s chili dinner/trick-or-treat event):

Then we hurried to our favorite gaming store for the pre-release event for Guilds of Ravnica. When I’d called a few days before to register, they told us to pick our guilds, so I had to hang up the phone and take the quiz on the Wizards of the Coast website. Alas, it came up Orzhov, which, as everyone knows, is a bunch of lawyers. Because it’s no fun to do your day job when you’re fantasy gaming, I took the quiz again, and changed my answers. It came up: Orzhov.

But I was saved, because, when I called back, they said this release only has 5 guilds, and Orzhov isn’t one of them. (*fist pump*) I decided to forget the quiz and just chose the guild least like me but most appealing: Dimir. At the tournament, my set didn’t seem a good draw at first, but with ten minutes left to deck build, I decided to go tri-color and get my giant red creatures in there. The combo proved a good one, as I came in 7th out of 40:

The next day, at sunset, still feeling a little worn-out from all the fun we’d had the day before (and from surviving the excitement of another short-staffed day of church) (which is actually pretty exhilarating), I went outside, and just stood as still as I could, barefoot in the cool grass that’s gone a little too long since the last mowing, as the monarchs fluttered all around me. They fly 2,000 miles to Mexico, but it’s really much farther than that in raw miles, because they only fly in long loopy circles, probably traversing each meter at least three times on the horizontal. I could even hear their wings beating when they circled around my head. After a few minutes, I went inside, grabbed my camera, and took this:

I don’t know what your great weekend is, but I hope you have them as often as is good for you.