Capricornucopia X: Behind the Goat

I am declaring tonight a complete success.

Contrary to all past experience, we had our play finished Thursday night, and by the time Friday night rolled around everything was printed and highlighted and we were ready to go. It only took ten years for us to get this far, but we are now a well-oiled machine!

There were technical difficulties, of course, and the usual last-minute flurry of trying to assign all the parts. This year we modelled our play a little after This is Spinal Tap and the "Behind the Music" stuff from MTV. We tried to set up a multimedia thing, but we only succeeded halfway, because the projector only half-worked and the speaker wouldn't play our music/sound effects. Alas.

It was still really awesome. We even had le_maistre_e make a surprise guest appearance via Skype, playing herself, our resident expert Capricornucologist. It was a big hit with everyone.

This year we held the event in the afternoon so that people with kids could attend, and it was a whirlwind of teensies running all over the place. I had drawing/colouring supplies on hand which met with unanimous approval, but it certainly added a whole new level of energy to the event! One cannot expect teensies to be quiet and perfectly still the whole time, and they weren't, but on the whole we had relatively few incidents. Bean was mostly well-behaved, though he (and a few of the others) did a fair bit of rolling around on the floor and on the benches. Right at the very end he pulled a bit of an Exorcist because he didn't want to put on his boots, so it took both pdaughter and me to hold him down and get him dressed and he flailed and shrieked and generally carried on like he was possessed, but that was the worst of it. For the most part he played very nicely with the other kids and had a good time (I hope!). Certainly he was happy to see all his friends again, adults included.

And, of course, pdaughter finally got to see one of our events! So yay!

There was about a half hour's worth of dismay when I couldn't find my cell phone, which would have been a major hassle for me. I have a lot of important information on there, and I'm going back to Ottawa tomorrow, which would have added multiple levels of inconvenience to my situation. Luckily it turned out that it had fallen in the car at some point (I don't remember bringing it with me, but I clearly must have, since that's where it was. Then again, I don't care if it teleported itself, so long as I got it back.), and I was very happy to recover it.

As usual I was too busy running around in circles to truly get to socialise with any of the guests, but it was great to see everyone again, and it served to reinforce my conviction that I have to figure out a way to see my friends more.

In parting, here is a picture of me and the Capricornucopia boys. Can you believe that in 10 years we have never managed a group photo? Shameful.