kareina

The Known World Dance event was long enough that we established a "routine" schedule--up early, attend a class or two, skip a couple of classes around lunch time to eat good food, chat with people, and then go out for ice cream and/or yummy stuff from the bakery, attend more classes, practice singing for the choir performance on the last night of the event, grab a quick bite to eat, change into fancy clothes for the evening ball, and dance till around midnight, give or take an hour, depending on the night, head back up the hill to the hostel, and repeat for four days, with slight variations. One day I was sensible enough to do yoga before changing into my pretty new dress for the ball (which I wore every night, in hopes that it would increase the odds of getting a decent photo of it posted to FB, but I haven't seen one yet...), the other nights I had to do it after we got back to the room and I had changed (I just wasn't going to lay down on a stone floor in a silk dress when I could do it on a folded blanket in my room wearing tights and a t-shirt).

Such a fun event, I totally recommend them to everyone--especially when they are held in a 13th Century town hall, which has been used for balls ever since it was first built. Both lord_kjar and I came home very inspired to do more Medieval music!

After the event we had time to visit two castles on our way to the airport. One in Miltenburg, the town the event was in (nice red sandstone tower, but the "fine art museum" contains nothing of interest), and one not so far away, built on top of some lovely basalt columns, in Otzburg. The latter has a much nicer museum, with displays from various times in the castle history, and lots of Hobbit stuff, too. apparently the German Tolkein society hosts regular Hobbit days at that site to entertain the tourists.

Now that we are back we need to focus on building a cover for the trailer so that we can take stuff to Double Wars (which is looming really soon now), and at work they are finally installing our laser ablation system. The tech who is doing the work is one of those people who really doesn't talk much--he will answer a direct question, but he volunteers no information, so it is a bit frustrating being there, unable to help or participate. But it is going to be my responsibility to care for it, so I will head back and keep watching tomorrow, even if I would rather be doing than watching.