BTW I'm not going to try to name everybody who was there because I'll only miss somebody and offend them!
I'm feeling completely incapable of giving a blow-by-blow account of the weekend, so instead I'll just give edited highlights.
ox.meet
Bits of Friday accidentally turned into an ox.meet -- especially the first bit of the evening which ended up being exclusively ox.* folk, with
bopeepsheep + imc, daneel_olivaw, lnr and jiggery_pokery. Can't remember what time other oxnetters turned up but eventually we had fivemack, truecatachresis, julietk (and Pete -- did he ever do ox.* news?), uon and brrm as well. And of course addedentry, lnr and I were once again captured on a Psion microphone doing impromptu karaoke -- "Living on a Prayer" this time.Stupidity
Completely failed to give
addedentry and J-P their birthday presents. I blame total overwhelmedness-by-people and drunkenness, and waiting for Right Moments only to find that people were leaving before Right Moments arrived. I am officially useless, and will post stuff instead.Shiny things
Thank you to everybody who gave me shiny things (both metaphorically shiny and actually shiny)! Lots of fab books and DVDs, and SHARP KNIVES, and shiny kitchen stuff, and NEATO SHINY TECH, and lovely happy-smelling Lush stuff, and booze, and, er, bonsai. What more could a girl want? :-)
Oh, and I was wearing my gorgeous birthday present from
sion_a (the leather corset), and my poingy boots were sort of bought with birthday money from grandparents (although they almost certainly wouldn't approve!). And am just now trying to order the birthday present my parents have agreed to pay for (though ordering presents for myself still feels a bit odd) which is more SHINY TECH.Glitter & cake
Everything, but everything, got covered in glitter. (And quite a lot of things got covered in eyeliner...) I already had glitter all over me, but then proceeded to spray it in people's hair. Sorry folks! And I gather Kate glittered all the people I missed. The cake was already glittery, and hopefully escaped most of the hairspray glitter; everybody ate it, anyway, though two badgers survived. I saw
lnr eat the third badger WITH HER OWN TEETH. Video madness
At about 4:30am on Sunday morning, somebody decided it would be a really good idea to watch "Breakfast at Tiffany's". I managed to fall asleep slightly before the end, which was probably just as well as I'd have only got weepy. However I then proceeded to stay awake through most of the two subsequent videos (both Eddie Izzard)...
Breakfast (not at Tiffany's)
Thanks to
beingjdc for being Grand High Co-ordinator of the Fryup on Sunday morning, and to marnameow for making lovely scrambled eggs and some amazing mushrooms stuffed with garlic and cheese and herbs. Thanks to everybody who was still around on Sunday morning for not talking too loudly, and for doing all the washing up!Wibbles
I kind of feel like I didn't do a very good job of actually spending any time with anybody. This is always the problem with huge gatherings, more so when I'm drinking & thus not keeping track very well. Apologies especially to
bopeepsheep and imc for not managing to say goodbye on Friday night -- I didn't hear you leave, wish somebody had come and dragged me out of my misery if only to hug you goodbye. :-/Sleep
By Sunday evening I was literally asleep on my feet; eventually gave up and went to bed at about 6pm, and managed to sleep till 10am the next day.
Today is my actual birthday, though it doesn't really feel like it. Have spent it pottering around the house doing very little, and wandering round town buying clothes (with vouchers, so it doesn't count as spending money). Going out for dinner with
sion_a soon if we can both drag ourselves away from the computers. 8-) 