= Getting Started =

The day's activities began promptly at 8:39am, the traditional starting time for the RinkUnion ever since the second. By promptly, of course, I mean, not at all, but mostly we had all gathered by then. Dave and Brunnen-G wouldn't be coming until later, and ThePhan was on a road trip with her family and not expected until late afternoon. daniel78 would be coming, but there was no telling when. As it turned out, he showed up shortly after we got started. Stephen didn't kill him, and, to my knowledge, he didn't kill Stephen.

PenaltyShot and Seth were among the last to arrive, though not late, and Enigma told the story of what had happened the previous night. They were at breakfast, so he thought, so I popped over to the breakfast room. I saw her back-to, but recognized her from her photographs all the same, and said, "Is that you?" and introduced myself. Everybody thought I was crazy to have done that, but I don't know why. It was her. I recognized her. Inexplicably, perhaps -- none of her pictures show the *back* of her head -- but there was no chance I was wrong.

LaZorra filled in for Rivikah, spreading out on a table in the back and putting together monkeyfists with her wide selection of colored ropes, a lighter she bought at Target, and the razor blade I had passed out. Meanwhile, Leen filled in for Leen, tinkering away at her model horse craft throughout the day. In the months before the nationals, she had gone full steam ahead on making tack to show, and now that she's done with that marathon, she's getting into painting models.

The seating, once everyone had arrived, was as follows:

Head of the Room: Sam
First Row: Leen, famous, wintermute, [aisle], TalkingDog, Maryam, Ticia, Don
Second Row: ahmoacah, Stephen, Mia, [aisle], Enigma, Randy
Third Row: LaZorra, daniel78, [aisle], PenaltyShot, Seth, Dave, Brunnen-G

On a side table, Leen and LaZorra set up displays of their saddle and doll work, respectively. Leen had sold most of her recent work in Kentucky, two weeks before, but she still had the red rose saddle with her, which is prominently featured on http://www.equiworkstack.com/. LaZorra brought a Breyer riding doll and a Mr. T doll.

= RinkTokens =

We began with the initial dispensation of RinkTokens, a tradition begun at RinkUnion IV. Basically, I had a jar full of plastic Bingo tokens, each marked by a permanent marker, in the traditional manner of RinkWorks prizes. In past years, I marked each token with the RinkWorks "R", but this year I had to reuse a color -- purple, which was used for RinkUnion V -- so I marked these with my initials, "SS", instead. The idea is, if you do something cool, you get a token. If you make up a good enough reason to get a token, you get a token. For starters, everybody got a token for being present. Then I went through a short list of questions to see who got others: who has the shortest/longest hair? Who travelled the furthest? Who's in chat the most? Etc.

= Giveaways =

Afterwards, we gave out giveaways. famous and wintermute gave out goodie bags (BATMAN bags!) of bouncy balls and Halloween decorations -- flappy bats, glow-in-the-dark skeletons, and so forth. Each one had something different in it. Maryam gave out sheets of HotOrNotBot Live (all Rinkies are 7s). daniel78 passed out business cards for one of his jobs, selling CutCo knives and scissors. Enigma passed out...prehistoric...rock...animal...fossil...rocks. I don't really know what they were, but you know how golems are humanoid creatures made of rock? This was like that, only less humanoid and more centerofastarfishoid.

I gave out some freebies I got from work -- paper bags, pads of paper, pens, and letter openers with the corporate logo on them. The letter openers were the main things, being most akin to the odd things I've given out in the past. Each one had the corporate logo on one side, but the correct branding information was "RinkWorks" and "SS" written in black permanent marker on the back. The letter openers were fancy *safety* letter openers -- white plastic discs with a paper-thin opening, with the razor inside that. There's no chance a finger could get cut by mistake, although the combination of one of those openers and a rolling pin might still be dangerous.

= Stupid Emails =

Following that was the reading of Stupid Emails. This year, I didn't think I had as good a batch, although it was large enough that I didn't bother to include highlights from past years, as I normally do. As it turned out, it was probably the best batch I've ever had, and it included several lines that got repeated over the course of the weekend.

None more so than what ultimately became the RinkUnion's tagline. It came from a chat transcript someone submitted to Computer Stupidities, wherein a guy attempts to play an allegedly ingenious prank on someone by pretending to have hacked into her computer. In the transcript, her lines are in all upper-case, and mostly all she says are things like, "THATS CRAP" and "YOUR CRAP" and "CRAP CRAP CRAP" until the end. I had famous read this one with me. I took the part of the all lower-case prankster, and she took the part of the all upper-case victim, so she had to shout every line. We got toward the end:

me: hey guess what?
her: CRAP CRAP CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
me: I never hacked your computer!
her: THATS CRAP
me: lol I can't believe you actually thought that!
her: THATS CRAP

...and then she couldn't say the next two words, because she was laughing too hard. She tried again and broke up in the same spot. I repeated my line, and she tried again, cracking up once more. By this time, everybody was dying of laughter and hadn't even heard the line that was causing famous to break up so much. The fourth time was the charm:

me: lol I can't believe you actually thought that!
her: THATS CRAP
her: JIGGLE JIGGLE

Hysteria, then:

me: I was guessing the entire time!
her: CRAP JIGGLE

More hysteria. "JIGGLE JIGGLE" became the tagline for RinkUnion VII, virtually without contest: people kept shouting out some form of that throughout the weekend.

= wintermute's Leg =

During a lull in the activities -- I don't remember exactly when, but it was when someone was out tending to something and I didn't want to go on with the official activities -- Enigma filled the time by demonstrating a party trick. wintermute volunteered to be the guinea pig. All he had to do was lie down.

"The rest of you won't see anything weird," Enigma said. "Well, except for me lifting his leg."

wintermute considered unvolunteering.

The idea is, wintermute lies down on the floor, closes his eyes, and relaxes, and that's all he has to do. Enigma takes one shoe and lifts his leg into the air until it won't go any further without discomfort. Wait 60 seconds. By then, the muscles relax some more, and the leg can bend a bit further. Wait 60 more seconds.

At this point, Enigma says, "Tell me when you think your legs are even again," and starts very slowly lowering his leg.

"About there," wintermute says after a while.

"You think your legs are about even right there?" I ask.

"Yeah, about there," he says.

"About there" was with his leg still pointed up about 70 degrees to the horizontal. Enigma continued to lower his leg, it felt to wintermute that his leg was being lowered beneath the floor. Strange stuff. Try it at home.

= Tagline Game =

famous had an extra copy of the movie "Noises Off!" on DVD (it's an absolutely hilarious movie; seek it out if you haven't seen it) and held a quick contest for it. The contest was, list as many RinkUnion taglines as you can remember. Maryam won, with, if I recall correctly, all but one right.

= Memory Game =

Then came the Memory Game, played at every RinkUnion since the first. None of the prior winners were present, so it was anybody's game, except Stephen's, whose memory is notoriously bad, and who scored so low during RinkUnion II and III that I don't even think he got his own answers right.

The prize was a purple wand. Yes, a wand. A bingo wand. See, there's an inconvenience when you use bingo tokens to play bingo. When the game is over, you have to use your hand and manually brush the tokens off the card to prepare for the next game. But when mankind is faced with a logistical dilemma, technology steps in and lends a hand. Enter: the wand. A plastic stick with a strong magnet inside it, so that one wave of the wand, and all the Bingo tokens lift right off the paper and stick to it.

I guess Stephen thought this was a pretty cool prize, so he decided he was going to play for it. "Wait," he said, and then questioned how the magnet worked on plastic bingo chips. Duh, Stephen. Plastic is magnetic. I proved it by demonstration. Stick that wand in the jar of tokens, and they cling to it like bees to honey.

[please help me complete these lists]

Question #1 was, "If you won a billion dollars, what's the first thing you'd buy?"

Leen: a tempurpedic mattress
famous: RinkWorks
wintermute: Hasselblad H2D ("camera" was good enough)
TalkingDog: RinkWorks commune in Idaho
Maryam: hire a maid
Ticia: lots of land
Don: laboratory
ahmoacah: groceries
Stephen: jetpack
Mia: house with an ocean view
Enigma:
Randy: fishing boat
LaZorra: horse trailer
daniel78: Hummer
PenaltyShot:
Seth:
Sam: another horse for Leen (token for me!)
MegaHal: lark's tongues
WhizKid: mildew

Question #2 was, "What's your favorite real or fictional Olympic event?"

Leen: dressage
famous:
wintermute: biathlon (skiing and shooting)
TalkingDog: 30 meter free fall
Maryam: sprint to the kitchen during commercials
Ticia: figure skating
Don: pole vaulting
ahmoacah: rowing
Stephen: nude axe-juggling
Mia: diving
Enigma:
Randy:
LaZorra:
daniel78: WWI-style dogfighting
PenaltyShot: hockey
Seth: synchronized swimming (this answer made PenaltyShot threaten to break up)
Sam: pizza eating
MegaHal:
WhizKid: suicide bombing

Question #3 was, "What would you like to do at RinkUnion VIII, however impractical it may be?"

Leen: go on a trail ride
famous: rent a theater to show Sinbad in
wintermute: have it on the moon
TalkingDog: have it closer to home
Maryam:
Ticia: have it at her house
Don: have a rubber band or laser tag fight
ahmoacah:
Stephen: Darien pinata (not a likeness of Darien; the actual Darien, stuffed with candy)
Mia: four-wheeling
Enigma: ginger ale skydiving
Randy: paintball
LaZorra: kidnap other Rinkies and bring them to it
daniel78: rent machine guns
PenaltyShot: go to Hawaii
Seth:
Sam: direct a movie with Rinkies as the stars
MegaHal: ABC thumb index
WhizKid: electrocute eleven telemarketers

When everyone was done writing down the answers they could remember, we tallied them all up. Stephen, to the astonishment of all, got all but one correct, and actually the one wrong answer was only wrong on a technicality. (He put "have RU8 at TD's house" instead of "have it nearer where TD lives.") So, first prize went to him.

Second prize, a nail brush, went to Maryam. Both prizes naturally had "RinkWorks" and my initials written on them with a black Sharpie.

= Name the Rinkie =

We played a quick game of Name the Rinkie, something I hadn't done at a RinkUnion before. Basically, I had a list of quotes, and people had to guess who said what. Included were such classics of RinkWorks heritage, "Remember my rule," and "Peeps cussed at me in a chat room!"

= Lunch =

We were lacking in vehicle space to cart people to lunch, but, fortunately, there were restaurants within walking distance, just a half mile down the road. Leen (bad back) and famous (pregnant) took a car, but the rest of us braved the warmth of the day and the higher-than-usual elevations. In the shopping plaza down the road, there was a Quizno's (Maryam was less than thrilled) and a Panera. Some of us stopped at the Quizno's, while the rest of us went on to Panera. Those of us at Quizno's, however, mostly reconsidered and moved on to the Panera.

After ordering food and stringing together tables to sit at, we looked around and wondered, "Did anybody stay at Quizno's?" Because it seemed like some people stayed, yet so many of us were present at the Panera. We ultimately figured out that only daniel78 was missing. Still later, we discovered he hadn't realized where the rest of us had gone.

Lunch at Panera was good. The best part for Leen as the Mountain Dewwww.

On our way back, Maryam, being a girl, got lost, and TalkingDog had to go rescue her again.

Ok, not really, but that was the joke when they lingered behind and had to catch up.

= The Afternoon =

Until this point, I was thinking this was one of the better RinkUnions. The morning had gone fantastically, the Stupid Emails in particular. In the afternoon, everything took a nosedive. I mean, it wasn't bad, but two problems kicked in: the woefully inadequate air conditioner stopped being able to keep up with the rising heat outside, and I suspect that that, in turn, accentuated the subtle signs of elevation sickness for those of us who live on the coasts.

So we just kind of sat around, lethargic after the walk and the heat and the elevation. I was indecisive about what to do next. Around then, Dave and Brunnen-G showed up, and I sorted out some logistical details with Brunnen-G concerning the following day. She brought us maps to the place we'd be camping out at, and we talked directions.

Shortly afterward, I read the haikus. Earlier in the day, I had asked people to write a haiku about themselves. Then I'd read them later, and we'd all try to guess who wrote which one. Darien was also represented, by one beginning, "Dave and Stephen suck." WhizKid's haiku: "Ninjas slaughter brooms / Six pixies instigate us / This pinecone shoots Sam."

I had also invited people to draw a caricature. Three came in, one by wintermute of LaZorra's Mr. T doll. Mia drew what was intended to be TalkingDog but wound up being a cat. And somebody drew me, but I can't remember who.

At this point, Dave took Brunnen-G home -- she wasn't feeling well that day and sat the rest of the RinkUnion out, but Leen and I were later pleased to discover she felt a thousand percent better and back to her old self a day or two later.

The afternoon progressed in a similarly desultory fashion. The "get up and do something" portion of the afternoon had some great stuff in it, but fewer people participated than ever before. This was not helped by the fact that LaZorra was coming down with a cold and had to scratch her own performance, and I just felt too blah to perform what I had excitedly prepared the previous week. Watch for us both at future RinkUnions, I guess.

But all was not lost. famous recited some of her poetry, including "I'm Not Pregnant," from last year, and "I'm Pregnant," for this year. daniel78 demonstrated an optical illusion involving a top with black and white spiral lines on it, although most of us were too zonked to crowd in and see it. Randy retold his Computer Stupidities anecdote about a woman who mistook Gateway for Bill Gates' company, and then he sang an unofficial RinkWorks theme song. Enigma played a few tunes on his bowed psaltery, a musical instrument that dates back to medieval times. The one that impressed me most was the round, wherein he played one part with one bow and simultaneously played a second part of the round with the other bow.

= The Psaltery and the Drunk Guys =

I'll stop here for an aside about the psaltery, as there are a couple of interesting anecdotes about it.

The previous night, before we all moved into the conference room to convene, Enigma had scoped out a place in it by himself to practice playing. I walked by at one point, heard the music, and popped in to see it and hear a bit of what he was doing. I was quite impressed, but I had to tend to something, so I skipped out.

Not long afterward, I was walking by the room, and this middle-aged couple was standing outside the meeting room. The woman had just peeked inside, and as I walked by, I overheard her say, in a tone of voice that suggested she had just discovered the world's weirdest possible thing, "There's a guy in there playing the harmonica on the floor."

Harmonica, riiiight. To be fair, where he was sitting was blocked by the tables and chairs, so she couldn't see him, but how one mistakes strings for reeds, I have no idea.

Well, later that evening, as we were returning from dinner, one of the tipsy members of the wedding party that had been camping outside the front door of the hotel all weekend stopped Enigma and asked him about his instrument. It was the coolest thing, they said, and could he come play for them?

Like a good little boy, Enigma asked my permission. I said yes, but only if he ate all his vegetables.

So he went outside to play for them for a while, and they all loved it and even offered him a gig to play for them in Nebraska. They hadn't talked money, so maybe the offer isn't worth much, but they exchanged phone numbers so they could talk about it later. I politely reminded Enigma that, as I got him the job, I was due the customary agent's fee of 10%.

These guys were a funny lot. They said they were from Nebraska and here for a wedding, but for the life of me I don't know when that wedding could have been. For pretty much the entire weekend, they were all camped out in front of the hotel, talking and drinking. They became an interesting point of confusion for some: Enigma, for example, thought these people might be the RinkWorks crew when he first arrived at the hotel. PenaltyShot and Seth thought the same thing. In both cases, the misunderstanding did not last long. These guys were mostly older and substantially more drunk than our crew would be.

Late Friday evening, when I went to fill the cooler with ice, I passed a guy in the hallway with one of those small breadbox-sized coolers. He was looking for the ice machine. "Right down here," I said, pointing to a doorway on the right.

"Right there?" he said, surprised. "Well, heck!" I guess he had passed that doorway a few times and not realized the ice machine was in there.

He wandered toward the doorway, and I stepped aside to let him fill his cooler first. But instead of going inside, he turned toward me and extended his hand, a cheery grin, and a pair of eyes so kind and merry they'd have passed for Santa Claus'.

"How you been?" he asked.

"Uh," I said, and shook his hand.

"Where you from?" he asked.

"New Hampshire," I intoned.

"I'm from Nebraska!" he announced.

"I think I came from further...ha, ha," I joked weakly.

He went inside the little room to fill his cooler, and I booked it out of there. "Wait, come on in!" he said.

"No, I have to go take care of something!" I called back. I walked across the lobby and entered a door -- any door. It turned out to be the pool room. I think there was as much chlorine in the air as in the water. I stood there dumbly for a moment, going through the motions of inspecting the pool and jacuzzi very thoughtfully, oh yes, very thoughtfully indeed. Then I went back to the ice machine and, finding the man gone, filled up my cooler.

= Swords, Scissors, and Pennies =

Back to Saturday. Dave got back from dropping Brunnen-G off at home. Ticia and Don passed out homemade foam swords. These swords were cool -- strips of the hollow foam from those long pool toy things, a hilt lathed out of them, and PVC pipe inserted in the middle for strength. Sealed with duct tape at both ends, and green cloth covers to protect the foam. Leen got the only pink/purple one, because Leen is special.

So as the "get up and do something" phase of the afternoon continued, people beat each other up with foam swords. This led to a truly bizarre situation at one point, where daniel78 was up in front with a demonstration of the sales pitch he uses to sell scissors, and Stephen and Dave in the back, beating the ever-loving jiggle out of each other. One of the best quality moments I spent with anybody at all over the weekend was swift and deceptively trivial: I glanced over at Mia, who was glancing back at me with the exact same expression on her face as I had, and we just cracked up.

It was probably a "you had to be there" moment, but picture it if you can. We're sitting on the side of the room, looking back and forth at each end of it, where two separate activities are continuing without interruption.

daniel78: These scissors will cut...
Stephen: BASH BONK SLAM
Dave: WHACK BOOM POW
daniel78: ...sharpen the blades...
Stephen: BAM BAM UGH
Dave: THWAP THWAP AAUGH
daniel78: *puts all his strength into cutting through a Mountain Dew bottle, gives up, sets it aside, and continues with his presentation*
Stephen: WHOMP THROMP BIFF URK GURGLE
Dave: WHAP SMASH THUD OOF AWWWW
daniel78: ...it'll cut soft metals... *cuts a penny*

Wait, it'll cut a penny? Sweet! As it happened, Stephen owed me exactly $4.475. We'd been wondering how we'd cut a penny in half, and I was afraid we'd have to go 50-50 on a pair of pliers or something. (Hey, it's important to be precise in monetary matters.) So Stephen pulled a penny out of his pocket, traded it with a shinier penny Seth had, and daniel78 cut it for us. I took one of the halves, and then Stephen only owed me $4.47.

daniel78 had said he'd cut 30 pennies with those scissors. I guess ours was number 31.

= Bad Movies =

And then the bad movies began. For the second RinkUnion in a row, I aired Indiana Ben and the Something Something of Abu Dhabi Walla Walla Bing Bang. It's a short home movie parody of Indiana Jones that Grishny, The Scotsman, and a couple of their friends put together back in high school.

And then, the return of Sinbad of the Seven Seas, shown at every RinkUnion to date except last year's, when I aired Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II instead.

At least three people hadn't seen it at all, and Dave and Stephen (at least) hadn't seen it in the four years since RinkUnion III. It's astonishing how enduringly entertaining that movie is, no matter how many times you've seen it.

ThePhan, unfortunately, still hadn't arrived, but I loaned her the DVD so she could see it at home.

= Casa Bonita =

For dinner, we ate at Casa Bonita, made famous by an episode of South Park that illustrates the strangeness of the place reportedly without exaggeration. Brunnen-G had called ahead for us and made a reservation. The place was so packed, though, I don't think calling ahead did much to streamline the process other than to make sure we had some tables together by the time we got through the humongous line. I guess if you go to a unique and nationally famous restaurant on a Saturday night, there's only so much you can do to minimize the crowds, even in a place that can seat a thousand people.

We left the hotel in three vehicles -- the rental Leen and I had, the rental famous and wintermute had, and the legendary Dave's car. Ticia and Don would be following along just behind in a van that family in the area had loaned them, since there own vehicle had a broken transmission. (It broke about 40 miles out from Denver, and the last 45 minutes of the trip was made in 10 minute increments, over the course of three hours. *Somebody's* gotta have vehicle trouble at each RU, apparently.)

Inexplicably, there was more room in the cars than we had initially figured we needed. daniel78, not needing to use his own car after all, hopped in ours.

While standing in line, we figured out why. I think it was Stephen that noticed first. "Where are PenaltyShot and Seth?"

I know they understand, and as it turned out, things worked out after all, but words cannot describe how terrible I felt when I realized we'd left them behind. Whether things are my fault or not, at RinkUnions, everything's my fault. People don't get left behind. It's just not done. But they were. I guess they went up to their rooms and came back down, expecting us to be convened in the lobby until everyone was present, and we weren't there.

Ticia and Don saved the day. They still hadn't left yet, they had extra seating in their vehicle, and PenaltyShot knew what room they were in. By the time they left, they were something like 75 minutes behind us, and as we'd later find out, there was just no way the restaurant was going to be able to hold the table until they got there and through the line.

But see how things worked out? Ticia, Don, PenaltyShot, and Seth all made it to the restaurant, got to hang out with other Rinkies as company, and actually wound up with better seating in the restaurant than the rest of us got. From chaos -- a delayed vehicle, a couple left behind, stupendously long lines, and limited vehicle seating that just happened to work out anyhow all conspired together to a dining situation that wasn't nearly as disastrous as it very almost was.

I still feel like crap about it.

Anyhow, Casa Bonita is a truly surreal dining experience. The inside is a labyrinthine maze of dining tables and performance areas. The first 15 of us, unfortunately, wound up in a room with a stage where a magic show was going on. The magician -- none of us remembered his name, but we called him Jimbo the rest of the weekend -- was hilariously awful. An allegedly vanished handkerchief even fell out of his pocket by mistake at one point. But as I looked around at the other tables, it seemed like everybody was entertained, none more so than Stephen, whose attention was riveted to the day and whose applause seemed astonishly enthusiastic. We later discovered he just felt bad for the guy, which made more sense.

Out in other rooms, more interesting things like cliff-diving was going on. In the center of the place, a couple stories tall, there was a waterfall and a mock-up of the kind of rock formations found in various tropical paradises. A couple of guys were doing various trick dives into the pool. At other times, so I'm told, there are other sketches that take place there, including one involving a guy dressed up in a gorilla suit. You can't hear the dialogue of the skits over the noise of the waterfall and the mariachi band music down the hall, but the diving is cool.

The food, to my eternal amusement, was absolutely terrible. I mean, it was edible, but it was like the food you get at cafeterias and not at all like what you'd expect at such a unique and famous restaurant. It's all Mexican, pretty much. The way it works is, as you're staying in line to get in -- the line, and how it weaves down zigzaggy aisles, reminded me of DisneyWorld -- there are various checkpoints along the way.

At the first checkpoint, you get a menu. Inexplicably, the 15 of us were only given one menu, although everybody else in every other group got one menu per person. At the second checkpoint, you order your food, and the person taking your order jots it all down and then hands you a slip of paper to hand to the person at the next checkpoint down the way. Parties of 15 or more go on a single check, so I got the paper with our orders on it.

At the third checkpoint, you hand the paper over, and a cashier rings it up. But they don't take your money there, so I'm not entirely sure why they have to ring it up.

At the fourth checkpoint, you get your entree. Whole batches of each meal are prepared in advance and sit in front of a woman who hands them out as you come through. You have to tell her what entree you got, so, offhand, I'm not sure how a dishonest person can't come in, pay for the cheapest meal, and get served the most expensive meal. At any rate, although the meals are prepared in advance, they might as well be made to order, for all the difference of freshness it makes: the sheer volume of people coming through the line keeps the food rotating in and out pretty fast.

Checkpoint five is the drinks. Same deal. Say what you ordered, and it's given to you. At checkpoint six, you tell the guy how many people are in your party, and they seat you.

Everything else you might want -- extra food, drink refills, and the free dessert -- comes from your waitress while you're seated. I've never been to a restaurant set up quite like that.

At the end of the meal, I went around and collected money from everybody, then took off and let Dave put the whole bill on his credit card. That was such a sweet deal.

Ok, not really.

= The Phan =

By the time we got back to the hotel, we had been gone to dinner for two and a half hours. In the back of our minds was, wouldn't it stink if The Phan showed up the moment we'd all left and didn't have any idea where we were?

Those fears seemed to be confirmed when we pulled into the hotel parking lot, and immediately a giant Phan Van pulled up next to us. "How long had you been waiting?" I asked. But Phan Mom said they'd only just pulled in. Good timing, eh?

So The Phan parted ways with her parents and seven younger siblings, who left her in the hands of the crazy Internet psychos for the evening. They had to go off and find a campground or something that had room for them and wasn't too expensive. It was late; I didn't envy them the frustrating search ahead of them. But as it turned out, our hotel had a cancellation, and so they were able to secure a room right there. Will a hotel be happy with 10 people crammed into one room? Hey, don't ask, don't tell.

So we got to hang out with The Phan, who, online, is less talkative than she was that evening, but more talkative than she was the following day. The Phan is cool. We like The Phan.

I reminded Stephen of her particular significance to him. Years ago, she posted on this very forum about the only truly great RinkDream in history, the one where she dreamed she was at a singing audition, and various Rinkies got up to sing a song. She quoted four great songs in the original post (three were "I like to flirt...with dirt," by Mia; "I like to tickle dead men's feet," by BG; "Hi ho, wherever we go, I am going to kill you," by Ticia), but one in particular stuck: Stephen, singing, "My life consists of...BIG BUCKS AND A BIG BAD BOTTLE OF BEER." ThePhan said she didn't even remember that dream until just recently reading about it in the Rinkipedia, and even then only barely.

It occurred to me earlier in the week that everyone involved in that dream would be present at the RinkUnion, and I had the idea of pulling Ticia, Mia, BG, and Stephen aside and asking if they'd be interested in performing the whole dream. But with BG not feeling well, and ThePhan showing up later than expected, it just didn't work out. *shrug*

= Dave =

The rest of the evening was nothing more or less than regular old chatting. The room had cooled down a bit, and we weren't so lethargic as in the afternoon. I was pleased to see that. For a while there, I was wondering if this was shaping up to be the worst of the RinkUnions.

Dave had us all in stitches, telling WHAMMO!-type stories. PenaltyShot remarked that the "Dave story" archives were her favorites anyway, but now they were even better now that she could picture his tone and manner in telling them.

Something is lost in text. He told the story of how his mother used to hide when he came home from school and jump out and scare him. This despite, he said, the fact that he used to go into trance-like seizures whenever he got startled or shocked. (Later he confessed that his Mom scaring him and his seizure phase occurred at different times, but so what?) He had us pretty much crying laughing, doing an impression of his mother jumping out from behind a door and himself, subsequently seizing. There's no way to make this sound as funny in print, so I'm not going to try. The story, by the way, reminded me of one of the quiz questions at the end of "How To Be Funny," which asks about jumping out from the bushes to scare your kids when they come home from school. I asked him if this is where that question came from. Dave said he hadn't thought about that before, but clearly that was the basis for that quiz question.

Anyway, I reflected back on when Leen and I used to know Dave back in college. I guess that's 13 or 14 years ago now. The impact that number has on me is impossible to describe. I grew up as a military brat, moving every 2-3 years and marking time in my life by where we've lived. One house ago is a fixed range of time for me. Two houses ago is double that. When I went to college, I moved from northern New Hampshire to southern New Hampshire and never left the area. Everything since then, therefore, is all "one house ago," even though I've technically moved a few times within the area.

It just doesn't seem possible that "13 or 14 years ago" isn't when I was a kid, living at home. It certainly doesn't seem possible that I could know anyone from my present phase of life *that* long ago.

But that's how it is, and I reflected that Dave has changed a lot in all those years, despite also still being the exact same guy. Those of you who were there at the RinkUnion saw him gravitating naturally to the center of attention and working the room like an accomplished performer. Would you believe that 13 years ago, a room full of more than about three other people -- even if they were all his friends -- scared the crap out of him?

But we've all changed. LaZorra wrote in her report that Leen was more extroverted than she imagined, but back in the day, she was as shy and fearful of crowds and the center of attention as Dave was. Today, she still is, except in special situations like the RinkUnion. And I've shed a lot of inhibitions, too, though, again, not so much as you'd think if you've only ever seen me at RinkUnions. Rinkies are a pretty special group. But the point I'm hinting at is that society suggests to kids and teens that adulthood starts somewhere between 18 and 21, and once you're there, you're a full-fledged adult, all done growing up. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, I, and those closest of friends I weathered my 20s with, did more real growing up than we had in our teens. The journey doesn't stop at the threshold.