Busy, happy day

Today was the Pasturedance.

It was originally intended to be an annual event, a house concert hosted by riverheart and her late husband, and featuring Gaia Consort on an outdoor stage they themselves had helped to build. But the last (and until today the only) one was three years ago, in August 2000. (In August 2001 they'd separated, and last year Bob committed suicide just a couple of weeks before the time the concert would have been held. Needless to say, riverheart wasn't up to organizing anything, never mind an event requiring months of preplanning.)

So.

I woke up around seven this morning, to relieve my bladder and satisfy my craving for caffeine, and heard rain. Yes, this is the greater Seattle region… but it's also August, the dry season. We'd had warm, sunny weather for the past fortnight and a forecast of more of the same.

Nevertheless, the water she fall from the sky.

When you're planning an outdoor concert, the technical term for this is A Bad Thing. As Chris put it, "One rain squall and we lose ten grand of equipment."

Okay, organize Plan B. First, tell everyone on the many invitation lists that the concert was on, just moved indoors. Then, prepare the indoors here at Paradux Hill for a concert as well as doing the lebenty-seven last-minute tasks that needed doing.

I still don't know how we managed it all. Actually, I do: enough friends arrived early enough that riverheart could do all the driving-around tasks while I organized readying the house, clearing the kitchen counters, moving furniture, yadda yadda yadda. Suffice it to say that I didn't get my shower until the band was set up and doing its sound check, which was early afternoon. (Remember above where I said I woke up at seven in the morning? Right; I didn't get cleaned up for nearly seven hours later.)

But wait! there's more!

riverheart and I will be married on January 31, 2004. That's been scheduled for some while, and my very dear friends dakiwiboid and her beloved Whenwolf will officiate. But riverheart practices a different tradition, and moreover we wanted to tangibly express a committment that we feel transcends this mortal life.

So today, under the auspices of riverheart's tradition, we were trothplighted and handfasted by jassad (ably assisted by caeled, skydancer, and two wonderful non-LJ folk, Storm and Rilla). Although the legally binding ceremony won't take place until January next, in the eyes of the Gods we have exchanged vows and rings. We now consider ourselves husband and wife, equal partners for eternity.

And that's the news. It's late, and riverheart and I are off to… well, I trust you can imagine what.