At one end of Hidden Villa, a goat was being born. We were at the other end. I thought about walking down to see the spectacle of goat birth, but my sprained ankle makes walking a bit of a chore.
Instead, I hobbled after The Dickens and the boys as they explored around the outside of the visitor's center. The view from the back porch is breathtaking - a grassy field surrounded on three sides by green hills. The farm proper is at the far end of the field and across the parking lot, nestled in the shadows of the oncoming night. Willow was delighted to be back at Hidden Villa as well, emitting her quavery chuckling noise as she looked around. Somewhere up in a looming tree, a raven croaked at me. A skink, disturbed when I lifted its hiding place, shot off into a bush. Inside, a man was giving a talk, with slides, on the subject of astronomy. The loudness of a couple of small girls prevented us from hearing most of it. Jen had contributed a yummy lentil, tomato, and feta salad, and a tupperware container full of brownies to the proceedings. There was also much fruit on hand, as well as tea and (unfortunately) decaf coffee. We spent some time pretending we lived there.
Later, when it got darker and colder, we looked through a telescope at the planets. I got to see Jupiter and the little pinpoints of light that were its moons, Saturn with its perfect rings, and Venus. Nearby, people were playing frisbee in the dark with a glowing red frisbee. We joined them for awhile. The Dickens decided that we needed to take the frisbee home with us.
Then it was time for Jen to get the kids home and for me to go to work. The fun always seems to end too quickly. I'm glad that we all made it to this particular gathering though, because we all had more than a moderate amount of fun. It's good to expose the kids to this kind of thing too.

The night before... Well, Faun Fables stole the show, as they often do. The first band was so boring that I got fidgety. Fishing around in my pockets, I discovered an owl pellet left over from BioSITE. I carefully pulled it apart and, one by one, dropped tiny rodent bones into the liquid wax of the votive candle that served as the centerpiece of our table. The bones weren't the first things to be dropped into the wax either. M. had already snapped the thorns off of the rose some thoughtful employee had graced our table with, and dropped them in the wax. I'm sure whoever cleaned up after the show did a double take. That's the only problem with these sorts of pranks - I never get to stick around and witness the discovery.
We did get to stick around to talk to Rose Mcdowall, who we had met previously in other cities and countries, but due to the loud goth music blasting from the speakers, combined with her scottish accent, we couldn't understand anything she said to us. Waily waily waily.

cds I listened to while still limping: Victims Family "Apocalicious", V/A "The Poor Minstrels of Song II", Iva Bittova "Kolednice", Bonfire Madigan "Plays for Change", Mirror "Eye of the Storm", Strebers "Meningslost Liv(e)", and Sixteen Horsepower "Sackcloth 'n' Ashes