Well, where should I begin? This was my first RU in three years, and the first I attended on my own, not as part of a couple. This fact made me very nervous and anxious for the week beforehand, as I am not the best at group social situations. Curiously, however, once I arrived, all nervousness vanished. I think I can safely say that (not including family-related occasions) RUVI has the honor of being the only group social occasion I have been totally comfortable at. I don't know what you guys did, but you rule.

Rinkies I met for the first time this weekend were Gahalyn, Monkeyman, Sara, Selah, and TalkingDog. Monkeyman acted so exactly as I had imagined him to act that it was difficult to believe I hadn't met him before. Sara was the only one who wasn't really like what I had expected. I can't really say what I had imagined her to be like, as it was pretty vague, but it didn't really matter; it was easy enough to redo my whole mental image. Everyone I met for the first time, and everyone I had met before, were of course totally awesome people.

I arrived at the Salisbury airport Friday afternoon. I was apparently the only one using that airport, despite that it was half the distance from Chincoteague of the other option. My brother Isaiah (not to be confused with Selah's brother Isaiah) had volunteered to drive down from Baltimore, take me to Chincoteague, and drive back that night (he's a little crazy). This happened with many delays because of wonky MapQuest directions, but since nearly everyone else was late to the hotel as well that didn't matter so much after all. Along the way down, we saw a sign for German Shepherd puppies, and pretended to be interested in buying one for the purposes of going "awwww" over them.

So we arrived at the hotel, eventually found out that everyone was in the pool we had passed three million times, and talked late into the night. My brother Isaiah (and his girlfriend, who had come along) stuck around for a while. They were the only ones who actually decided to go swimming. The rest of us were too busy swapping chairs and chatting (since it was difficult to hear someone on the other side of the circle). This resulted in the phrase "You've been buffered!", meaning someone had an empty chair on either side of them. When it came time for my brother to leave, he impressively remembered everyone's name except the other Isaiah... rather funny considering he had earlier been talking about how remarkable the occasion was, never having met someone else with the same name as him before.

Saturday morning revealed that the breakfast provided by the hotel was sugary sweet doughnuts and muffins. Ugh. Some of us decided to look for breakfast elsewhere, and eventually ended up at McDonald's (because that was so much better). After rushing back to get directions to the meeting center and nearly getting lost on our way there, we discovered that it didn't matter because no one had been able to get in yet in any case. Eventually we got in, and Saturday was the usual crazy fun. There was much passing out of RinkTokens, the traditional memory game, Stupid Human Tricks, a ruling interpretive dance in two acts on the Suckage of Sam Losing His Job by Issachar, and poetry readings. My particular Stupid Human Trick was duplicating a photo of me in my sixth grade yearbook I had brought along: being pigeon-toed, I turned my feet inwards so that the toes met and they formed a straight line, while touching my tongue to my nose. Yes, this was how I wanted my sixth grade classmates to remember me. Whenever there was an awkward moment all that day, Issachar took it upon himself to read a line from a copy of the hilariously bad fantasy story The Eye of Argon.

After lunch at a seafood/Italian restaurant called Maria's was Bad Movie Time. Apparently Sinbad is getting old or something, as we didn't get to watch that this year. Instead, it was Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II, which was almost as good. Well, bad. You know what I mean.

Memorable line: "I'll skewer you like you've never been skewered before!"

WotLK II was preceded by some home movies of a parody of Indiana Jones made by Grishny and The Scotsman and a friend of theirs from when they were younger.

Memorable line: "What happened to your accent?" "It fell on the floor."

After splitting up for dinner (my group headed to Subway), we reconvened for board games, as we had the meeting room until midnight. TalkingDog, his brother Dan, Selah's brother Isaiah, and I played some game that I can't remember the name to despite having had it told to me about a skillion times, but it was apparently a derivative of Settlers of Catan (which I have also never played). Most other people played Apples to Apples, which is what MatchBot was based off of. Later we had a competitive reading of The Eye of Argon -- on your turn, you read out loud as much of the story as you could get out without laughing. There were several times when one person couldn't even finish a sentence without having to hand it over to the next person. We read some of the story that night until about 12:20, deciding to finish it up the next day at the beach.

Memorable phrase: "the many-fauceted scarlet emerald" (sic)

Sunday was the bus tour of Assateague, the island where the wild ponies live. Before I had heard of the bus tour, I had assumed the island was totally wild. As it turns out, it's still mostly untouched except for a few buildings and a couple of roads, but not exactly wild as the animal population is kept close tabs on. Anyway. We saw lots of WILD PONIES right next to the bus. At one point, we were held up for a few minutes because of a herd of ponies across the road who didn't want to move. We also saw some birds and stuff. Lots of egrets. Egrets are cool. Other people took a lot of pictures which I am sure they will eventually put online and link to.

For lunch we went to Don's Seafood, as we had two Dons in our party. I was not impressed, because our waitress forgot all about bringing me the rest of my food. I was hungert! Then TalkingDog and his family SLIPPED OFF PRACTICALLY WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE and hardly anyone got to say goodbye. Including me. Hrmph. And then the rest of us headed to the beach.

The beach there was very different from the beaches I'm used to in Florida, though I'm assured most of the differences were because of an approaching tropical storm. The sand was noticeably made of crushed seashells, rather than being finer white sand. The beach sloped suddenly before getting to the water, the waves were quite high and strong, and the water was rather cold; these were what I had been told were all because of the storm. Almost no one actually went swimming because of this, but most of us did stand around and try to keep our balance as the waves crashed in around our legs. We buried the two Dons in the sand, and finished reading the Eye of Argon, and took group pictures, and then went back to the hotel. And apparently Issachar left while I was in the shower to wash off all the sand, so that was number two I didn't get to say goodbye to. :-( Selah and her brother left soon after, but I did get to say goodbye to them. Hurrah!

We went to a place called Not Just Salads for dinner, after rejecting The Village for being too expensive. I had the BEST CHICKEN SALAD WRAP EVER. It had cranberries and walnuts in it and tasted absolutely wonderful. And then we went out for ICE CEAM which was also wonderful, so much so that I couldn't finish mine. And Sam and gremlinn and wintermute and ahmoacah played Scrabble back in the hotel room, using only RinkWorks-related words. There is an annotated picture of the finished game on wintermute's Flickr account, which I'm sure he'll link to soon.

And then, sadly, it was time for me to say goodbye to almost everyone. I didn't leave that night, but I was getting up so early in the morning that no one else was going to be awake. I woke up around 4 in the morning, at which point Monkeyman had very kindly offered to drive me back to the airport. We should have known it wouldn't happen without getting lost, but we got there in time and had breakfast in the airport cafe, and then I had to get to my gate.

I am full of warm happy fuzzies, and I can't wait for next year, assuming I can make it. This year has only insured that I will try doubly hard to be able to come for RUVII.