and i didn't even care that my hair was disgusting

this weekend was the busiest, so fun, but something almost every second kind of fun.  sarah and aileen and a couple of their friends and i went to a contra dance, and it was guy heavy, so i wound up dancing every single one with a lot of really good dancers and it was so so good.  i hadn't been in forever and sometimes, i don't know, i get all funny feeling about it.  i'll be there and i'll be two dances in and someone will dance a little too close or step on my foot or swing me poorly and the whole thing makes me feel nauseous about dancing and i have to go because it doesn't get better.  but that didn't happen at all - i was so pleased with the dances and the partners i had and sarah was SUCH a trooper and stayed the whole time, even though it was her first time, it was really a great night.

saturday morning bix and i got up and it was cold cold cold, so i bundled way up and we hit the dog park.  there were just two or three other dogs when we got there, but as it got warmer, more people came and bixby had a wonderful time.  we stayed for probably an hour and a half, so he was good and tired when i left to play paintball (say what?).  so for sarah's birthday (stencer) we went to frankie's fun park and played laser tag and other sarah (swerner) had a blast and kicked ass and shortly after found a living social deal for paintball and asked if we wanted to go, and having very little idea of what we were getting ourselves into, stencer and i said "sure!" and then as we learned more and more about paintball got more and more terrified.  but we put our game faces on and drove out to the middle of nowhere and walked past all the scary looking guys decked out in camo and got our guns and masks and played paintball.  well, swerner played paintball.  stencer and i did a lot of hiding behind things and laughing at how ridiculous we looked and hanging out at the checkpoint for a good long while whenever we got hit.  in the end, we gave our leftover bullets to some guys that we'd chatted with before the games, and they were all really sweet and they flirted with us and one of them might join stencer's volleyball team and one guessed our names right on the first try and one was wearing neon green and purple leggings under his red fleece pants.  and then we left and got margaritas and queso and all was right with the world.

rough & tough paintball faces - swerner did not get the memo.  also our initials spell ASS.

we had to kind of hurry the margs & queso bit because stencer and i were going to a concert at cat's cradle.  scythian - who i had heard at shakori and she had heard at merlefest - is a folk rock kind of band, they played a lot of irish music but then some scottish and some ukranian and they brought the opening band up to play their west african drums with scythian's fiddles and accordion.  the danciest music, we spent the majority of the concert jumping and clapping and grinning and trying not to spill our cider.  i adore live music, i will go to about any show, and this was one of those that i'd been looking forward to for a while and knew i'd have a wonderful time but i got there and squirmed up closer to the front row and remembered that i actually didn't know any of their songs.  but they played "cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue" so i sang along with that and they encouraged audience participation like nobody's business so the guitarist would have us do backup oooohs or the fiddler would get us to echo their lyrics, so i never felt like a worse audience member for not knowing every (any) song.

sunday was meet up with people day.  i had coffee twice (and by "had coffee" i actually mean i hate coffee, so i got chai in the morning and hot chocolate at night, it's funny how getting coffee just means going to a coffee shop and ordering whatever the heck you want) plus mina's because it's a sweet little place and nothing ever stays there and i want mina's to stay and insomnia cookies because yum.  and i made it out to open studio and threw a vase, not a very great vase but it's a vase, and trimmed a couple things.  i went to trader joe's to get a couple things (read: cheese.  i went to trader joe's to get cheese because ain't nobody does cheese like trader joe's does cheese.) and when i was leaving, i saw this old man with an old seeing eye dog at a crosswalk.  the dog looked at me and looked the other way and then very very carefully took its owner across the road.  the intersection is more diamond shaped than square, so the dog didn't quite do it right - he went sort of out of the way and the two of them had to loop back but he was being so careful and so sweet and caring and trying SO HARD to do it right even though he didn't that i got all teary and had to give bixby an extra snuggle when i got home.  dogs!  nobody's got hearts as good as dogs.

and that, friends, is more than anyone ever needed to know about my weekend.