AG Redux

And I’m not sure why I’m calling it that, since I spent a full half my time in Dallas/Fort Worth away from the AG.

We drove up Tuesday afternoon, in no particular hurry to get there, which meant we had time to drive around in Salado, which I hadn’t done these last thirty-odd years, and stop at a rare book-cum-antique shop, where I found a Fine copy of Welch and Nance’s The Texas Courthouse for thirty dollars, which is quite a good price.  Hidden behind the shop we discovered the Episcopal chapel (S. Joseph’s), which is a perfect delight of frontier pastiche, mixing 1970s California Rustic natural-wood exteriors, 19th century vernacular Gothic pews, a pump harmonium, kerosene lamps, and modern/Orthodox frescoes on the plastered sanctuary walls.  It was also home to a large black-and-white cat that looked as though it owned the place (and probably it did).

I had intended to stop at the Elite Café (“Elvis ate here”) on the Circle in Waco for lunch, but was distressed to arrive and find that after only sixty years, they’d decided to close for renovations and won’t be open again until later this year.  So lunch was sandwiches at Schlotzsky’s.  After we left Waco, L suggested that for variety, we take some secondary roads that paralleled I-35.  At first I resisted, but then remembered there was some nasty road construction around Abbott (Willie Nelson’s birthplace) and more construction scattered up and down the interstate, so I agreed and we took off up FM 308 to Elm Mott, Leroy, Hoen, Birome, Penelope, Malone, Irene, Mertens, and Milford, where we picked up US 77 and ran right up to Waxahachie, which was much more pleasant and relaxing a drive than the interstate would have been.  At Waxahachie we had to get back on I-35 and suffer through the road construction on the south side of Dallas.  In downtown Dallas, I managed to miss the exit for the Dallas North Tollway, the shortest route to the hotel, and ended up driving up Preston Road all the way to Addison, which was interesting, scenic, and educational, since we drove through the middle of the Park Cities, but not quick or soothing to the nerves (Preston Road traffic is never soothing to the nerves).

Once we got to the hotel, we checked in, unloaded all our impedimenta (and traveling with a baby means you have an absolute ton of impedimenta), and picked up our registration packets with their oh-so-handy little badge holders that have zipper pockets for your room key and your meal tickets and another odd-and-end or so, which is nice if you’re going down to the hot tub (and there is always a hot tub at a Mensa gathering—often a clothing-optional one, if it’s late enough at night) and don’t want to lug a bunch of junk around with you.  After that we were legal, so to speak, and went off at once to the hospitality suite, which is where you will eventually see everyone who’s at the Gathering if you wait long enough.  It’s also the place where you go to find your friends whom you haven’t seen “since the last time somebody died,” as Lyle Lovett puts it—or at least since the last Gathering you were both at.  L momentarily embarrassed herself by not recognizing the AG’s co-chair, whom we’ve known for more than ten years, on sight; but in her defense, Carol looked rather different than she had two or three years ago, when we’d last seen each other.  It was Old Home Week for a while (it always is) as more people came in, some of whom had dropped completely out of sight for several years and were only just resurfacing.  (This, incidentally, included us.)  Almost at once T made a new friend from North Texas Mensa, who is just as rabid a Longhorn as T is, and who offered T the use of her second season ticket to all home football games this year.  T, being no fool, accepted with thanks.  Later in the evening, a hundred or so of us went up to the fifth-floor tennis court to watch the City of Addison’s fireworks display, which I thought a very good one.

Wednesday there may have been stuff going on, but we never got out of Hospitality that morning, and in the afternoon Moon and her family invited us over for a get-acquainted pool and grill party at their house in Fort Worth.  As hoped, the two families all liked each other, which will make life a lot easier for Moon and me, not having to work our relationship around family members who don’t get on.  (Been there, done that for us both.)  Coming back, I missed the Tollway exit again, and this time landed on North Central Expressway, the Suicide Alley of Dallas.  Fortunately, traffic was very light because of the holiday, and two or three rounds of improvements have made it a little less of a nightmare to travel.

Thursday afternoon I actually broke down and attended a session, on the Monahans 1998 meteorite.  The session turned out to be somewhat boring, because the man giving the talk, the meteorite’s current owner, isn’t a geologist or rockhound, which meant he stumbled on several questions pitched at him during the question period, nor was he a very engaging speaker.  I was somewhat interested to see the meteorite itself, which he had with him in a display case.  In the evening while T and L went to the literary costume ball, T as Tigger and L as Carmen, I baby-sat M and read Samuel Pepys’s diary for 1667, with his detailed accounts of the Dutch raid on the Medway during the Second Dutch War, and the governmental and parliamentary uproar that followed upon it.

Friday morning I hit “Murder, She Read,” about crime fiction and its fans.  I enjoyed this session a good deal more than I had the previous one, because the speaker could speak, knew her material, was enthusiastic about it, and had a sympathetic audience who also knew a lot of the material.  After the session was over, I spent most of half an hour trying to help her track down a bookstore in Dallas that specializes in crime fiction (now the preferred term over “murder mystery,” because many of today’s books in the genre don’t have a corpse in ’em), but never succeeded.

And Friday afternoon…I disappeared.  I drove over to Fort Worth, picked up Moon, and we went away and spent the rest of the day and the night together, the first extended time we’ve ever had to ourselves.  Friday would have had a hard time getting any better, after that.  (Moon taught me the card game Spite and Malice, and actually won one round, which surprised and tickled her.)

Saturday morning, after I got back to Dallas (and fell into bed, because Friday with C, while delightful, had also been short on sleep time), T went downstairs to take the Mensa admissions test; at 14, she’s finally old enough.  (The tests used aren’t normed for people younger than 14.)  She said she felt she did well on both tests, and we’ll find out in two to three weeks when the national office sends her the letter of notification.  I had intended, in the afternoon, to stick my nose in at the session “The Involuntary Human Gets Dragged Kicking and Screaming Into Consciousness By the Cosmic Badger,” because of its title if nothing else, but the speaker had to cancel at the last minute because of a family emergency.  (Humbug.)  However, I did get to “Fidelity:  What Is It and What Part Does It Play In Our Relationships,” which L and D, Moon’s husband, also went to.  I missed part of it because I was holding M, who got fussy right at the beginning and right at the end, and I had to take her out.  Some intriguing comments were made, but I suppose it was a little much to hope that a full-bore Discussion would break out, with so many relative strangers in one room.  Afterward, L suggested strongly to the moderator that polyamory would be a very good session topic at the next AG, given that there were a number of known polys in the room, and that ethical questions surrounding polyamory and poly-fidelity frequently come up for discussion (or argument, or combat) in the community.

D stayed at the AG for the Saturday banquet and dance as L’s partner, while M and I went back to Fort Worth and spent the evening with Moon and her kids, watching movies.  M had a stomach-ache from eating too much, and would not go to sleep; Moon finally coaxed her to go down when I was at my wits’ end.  Coping with M pretty much spoiled most of our watching Being There, but we were at least able to watch The Blues Brothers, which Moon had never seen before, without interruptions.  (I’d forgotten just how many musicians had cameos and walk-ons in that movie.)

M and I drove back to Dallas in time for the Sunday brunch, where we sat with national SIGs Officer Cat Sterrett, who was very complimentary to us about T’s participation in the group working to form a national Mensa teen SIG.  T is the youngest of the “founders,” and from all reports, the core group favorably impressed the Powers That Be with how they organized themselves so quickly and efficiently, and found resource and backing people to help them get the SIG going over the next several months.  This is going to be interesting to watch, to see whether they can do all they’re intending.

We had loaded the car before brunch, so we were able to leave Dallas before noon, earlier than I had hoped to be gone.  We took the same route back, including the detour, that we’d used driving up; the only vexation came when M decided to tune up only thirty miles from home, meaning we had an unexpected stop in Round Rock so L could nurse her.  It also meant having to sit on T, who was in a foul mood from having stayed up all night Saturday and utterly wiped out as a result.  Her manners leave her completely when she’s too short of sleep.

The same place as before is lumpy.  Fnord.