After many years of people trying to entice (or sometimes coerce) me into attending the Renaissance Festival in Plantersville, TX, I finally went yesterday.  Halloween seemed like a good time to go - - best opportunity to see the most freaks (and boy, was that true).  Now, I’ll explain later how I got talked into going, but first let’s talk about the festival itself.

It’s this Renaissance village, okay?  A really big village in which I was lost most of the time.   Kind of like a medieval craft show.  With lots of acts and different foods to eat.  And lots of people to gawk at.  I was there with two guys, so that really limited my ability to shop.  They were there to see specific shows, so heaven forbid, I didn’t want to slow them down.  First we saw the Birds of Prey show which was very cool.  The vulture and the buzzard were the best.  And as far as I know, no one got pooped on even though we had various birds flying over us at times (Mary, I would avoid this show if I were you).

Then we went to the jousting contest which I thought was rather lame.  It is obviously prescripted.  I’m sure they say “Okay – this time the guy in the purple tights gets to win”.  They had the Queen there (not the real one from England, silly) and her royal court, and they spoke a great deal into the sound speaker and said stuff that I was never able to understand.  And then the guys on horseback lunged at either other with their jousting spears (I’m not sure if that is the right term) and three guys eventually fell off their horses and finally the Queen’s Champion was named.  Or something like that.

In walking to the next show we were accosted by several vendors.  They were annoying, but the cool thing was everyone called me “My Lady”.  I could get into that.

The next show we attended was The Dead Bob show which I thought was pretty funny.  It’s a ventriloquist with this skeleton dummy.  But the ventriloquist’s face is covered up, so he’s probably moving his lips.  So maybe it’s really a puppet show.  No matter, the skeleton was full of rude comments and inappropriate remarks.  He told a really funny dirty joke (he asked permission first since there were children in attendance, but all the adults gave their consent since they had all obviously been drinking).  But I don’t think it would be appropriate to pass along the joke because this is a family blog, after all.  But be sure to ask me about it the next time you email me or talk to me.   Okay, I’ll at least give you the first line – “What do you call a blonde that is upside down”.  I am NOT giving you the answer though.  Not until the end of this blog.

And then the last show I watched was some juggling act that I thought was rather stupid. 

The guys went on to see another show, but I ditched them at that point to do a little shopping.  It’s too bad because it sounds like I would have enjoyed that show – it was some theatrical guy playing a piano-like instrument that had bells instead of strings.  I didn’t get any shopping done because the place is too damn big, and I couldn’t find the vendors I was looking for.  So instead, I stopped and got my palm read.  I’ve never done that before and have always been a bit leery about it.  So this old guy wearing a robe with a hood and lots of silver jewelry (he’s probably a stockbroker in real life) told me that I had good hands.  He said I was very practical which is true.  He said I never forgot anything (which is definitely not true since I couldn’t even remember to bring the Ren Fest ticket that I bought on Friday online with me to the actual festival).  He said that I like to set goals for myself which is true.  That I sometimes care too much what other people think about me (man, that’s definitely true).  And that I am generous and always willing to help out people (which is usually true).  No life changing information there, but still interesting.

The guys and I reconnected, and we all did a little shopping.  I found a very cool shop and bought a couple of very cool items, one of which I’m giving as a birthday present to someone soon.  Someone who reads this blog, so I can’t tell you want it is.  But it was very cool in a literary kind of way.

So now let me comment on the people there.  Or rather on the costumes some of the people were wearing.  The coolest thing I saw was an entire family dressed as skeletons.  They wore dressy antique-looking black clothing and then had their faces painted in white with skeleton features drawn with black paint.  They kept getting stopped so that people could take their pictures.  At that point I was wishing that I had brought along my digital camera.

There were a lot of swashbuckling pirate type guys, and for the most part they looked pretty cool with their hats with the long feathers.  And a lot of the women were wenches with bodices that had body parts struggling to emerge from the top of the bodice.  And that was okay too.  But there were definitely women there that needed to rethink their costumes and not show as many body parts as were shown.  A little less chain mail, please, and more white shirts with flowing sleeves perhaps.

There were other groups that were more into the whole barbarian look, but I didn’t really care to see so many women with tusks. 

And of course a very popular look was the whole vampire look.  Lots of that there.  I saw one guy with a tremendous painted-on wound on his neck that I thought was particular scary.  Of course it was even more scary when I realized he was not in costume and was instead sporting one hell of a hickey.

We finally left a little after dusk and got out of there with minimal traffic which according to the guys was a minor miracle. 

So, how did I come to be there in the first place?  Well, there’s this guy at work who I sort kinda have a crush on.  He’s an Aggie too.  And an engineer.  And pretty nerdy in a tremendously intelligent kind of way.  And we have struck up a friendship and usually have lunch together one day a week.  And he mentioned on Friday that he was going to the Ren Fest, and I then mentioned that I had never been.  So he asked if I wanted to go, and that was it.  Now, this guy does have a girlfriend that he talks about occasionally, but it sounds like a relationship that has almost run its course (she didn’t come with us on Saturday).  So I’m hanging around to see what happens.  Hopefully I won’t be the rebound girl.

So , I’ve wasted over 1400 words on this blog already when I should have been working on my novel.  Thanks to my friend Ayn Nys from the Women’s Writing Cooperative of Houston, I have decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month (or Nanowrimo, for short).  It goes on during the month of November, and everyone who participates is trying to write at least 50,000 words (which would constitute a short novel).  Yes, that’s a lot of words.  And it’s a shame that I can’t use this blog in my novel.  Of course if the end of November approaches, and I’m off on my word count, I might reconsider and just start throwing all my blogs into the novel.  Except that would be cheating which I don’t want to do.  So far I am up to 3,332 words on my novel.  It’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a middle-aged single woman and her online dating adventures.  It’s called “Spicy, but Sweet” which is one of my profile tag lines on one of the Internet dating sites I use.  And yes, I do use real names.  And I’ve already talked about the time you stole Charles from me, Corina, you shameless vamp! J

Oh, I forgot to mention that I went on a ghost hunting tour Friday night with my friend Stacey’s husband Jeff.  We didn’t find any ghosts (at least none that made their presence known), but it was interesting to hear some of Houston’s history.  And I can’t wait to get back to the Spaghetti Warehouse because it smelled really yummy there.

A brunette with really bad breath