It's Happening NOW!!!

(Those of you who have been here will get that title reference)

Well, it's officially Pennsic for another year. Troll opened today at noon, and the parking lot party will be ramping up about now. I opted out of going tonight. I thought about it a lot, and decided - meh. I knew, for starters, that I wouldn't get out there till midnight-ish. It's 10:30 and Greg just finished packing the truck about half an hour ago ...


... and only left a few minutes ago. It's an hour drive. And he had to make a couple store stops.

Then, the parking lot party is, to me, kind of boring. The first couple years it was incredibly exciting ... I simply could not wait to get on site, and would be there Friday evening without fail, stay up all night, even just to roam around in a big field lit by football-stadium-wattage floodlights, watch the sun come up over Pennsic, then go deal with the horror of trying to set up camp in the blazing hot sun and 180 degree temperatures with no sleep - and a hangover. Not even remotely fun.

The excitement waned, and though I still wanted to be there Friday night, I began to want to get some sleep around midnight or so (this was back when I used to be able to get there by 7:30 or 8:00). But with my truck packed to the rafters, there was no place to sleep except sitting up in the driver's seat. Not restful. Some people do set up tents for the parking lot party, but I could never justify the work.

Last year I couldn't go because I had no one to watch Tyler for the weekend.

This year when I considered going, I had decided to rethink my tent position, and take one of my smallest ones and my sleeping bag. But by this evening I'd cycled right on down to preferring to stay snugly at home, sleep in my own bed, kick back with a little Irish Cream, wake up refreshed tomorrow, and just bypass the whole parking lot party / setup Saturday thing entirely.

I will be going out Sunday - in part because I would like to go out for a bit this weekend, and in part because I need to get my tent out there so it can be fit into the overall scheme of the camp layout as early as possible. Plus I prefer to take as much of my other stuff as possible the first weekend, and get it all set up in my tent, so that when I come back to stay Thursday or Friday, I have little to do except show up and just start relaxing.

Sigh. Only another week. It'll be one very, very looooonnnggg week.