Piracy in the land of three rivers, French style!

This is the city of Saint Louis. Named, surely, for one of the King Louis all of whom I love so well (endless French history, politics, and art history and architecture classes). There's a Kingshighway. There are beautiful Catholic churches towering tall above the city, rivaling the skyscrapers. I love getting off of 70 East at the first exit for Grand (north) and then driving into South City through downtown. Coming in on Broadway takes me past the breweries, smelling of yeast and wheat and malt and hops, churning and brewing and vibrant with life. Statues at the corners, gremlins and goblins and gargoyles supreme, Anheuser Busch style.

Pirate Festival STL out in Rotary Park in Wentzville (45 minutes from South City, sort of) was a smashing good time, in spite of early hurricane and flooding and other trouble the first weekend. I had the privilege of being there for the second and third weekend, working a bit for a short-handed English pub (Fish n' Chips! Bangers n' Mash!) and loving on beautiful Hanwei Paul Chen swords. I had a chance to explain SCA-edition fencing and rapier and directed some young pups (yeah, ancient here! so ancient! and by young pups I mean 16-18) to various SCA and midrealm and Shattered Crystal websites to research and ask some queries. I do like fencing, and I do miss it. My muscles were all oooh, nice balanced blade. Lunge and parry and back step and one two three. It felt good.

I had such a surprising array of food that it was accused that I was "pulling it out of my ass" leading to much discussion of the time/energy to generate a chocolate cake. M. was convinced that she'd rifled through all the tasty groceries I had brought (she absconded with the mini Snickers bars intended for the s'mores later). It turns out that dark and campfire to teens means marshmallows, while it meant whiskey and rum for us grown ups. Funny how that works. (Hey! It was cold! Whiskey was warm! ... so was wool.)

I do love to sleep under trees, even with the mold count through the roof. We were all hacking and coughing and scritchy-voiced in the morning. It was charming. A Pirate Festival full of pirates coughing up left or right lung, depending. I met some Calontiri Landskenects (argh, germanic spelling fail) who are garb creators/merchants. They had incredible garb; I had mad garb envy. The governor tried to abscond with me, but the pirate in charge of me (yeah, kidnapped by pirates, are you surprised? How do you think a pirate out of Marseille and the Mediterranean ends up in Martinique after all?)

This pirate though is already part of a crew and is a regional Magister, so I suppose there are some sort of principles of piracy involved? I hope? If not, the blacksmiths' default handcuff size is too large for my tiny wrists and hands, so escape was quite easy. Shhhhh! Don't tell.

I am deeply infatuated with this city in all of its gritty glamor though. Mmmm blogger doesn't like the British spelling of glamour. I believe that's valid, yes? no? I am trying to distract myself from Sarah Palin right now, something I'm failing at given that my blogosphere is having a violent allergic reaction to her lack of intellect. Yowza. Want to upset the blogoverse? Fake intelligence and foreign policy experience, for starters. I'd rather have the pitbull on my left in lipstick and running my country; she would do a better job.

Dog chow for all! No more dog fighting! Also, lots of love and kisses and lapsitting and occasionally horseplay. I love Bomb Girl's bat ears and whippy tail. She's made of solid muscle, surely weighs more than me, but is convinced of her lapdog status. Now she's in alpha prime position, sitting in line with me on the sofa, glaring at the pup and the others. Pack lead! At least I'm the alpha female here. Does this make me top dog or top bitch... hrm...