"Extra flamey."

I have a feeling one of Colleen's comments, regarding Clare's party, was directed at me. Accordingly, I feel moved to scribble. Last night our internet went again, which was not of the good. The party never actually had a name, but considering later events and the general theme of the party names, I vote it posthumously named the New Moon Rising Party.

As said before, I finished work at the Crosby Herald on Friday, and the first of the two relevant newspapers has been published. I have several articles published, one with my byline, so I took home the paper and will shortly start cutting bits out of it. However, I wasn't expecting to finish at one o'clock in the afternoon. It didn't bother me much, though; I rang the kids, told them to hurry themselves the hell up, and went down to the station. At which point I felt guilty about shouting at them, and bought them a Kinder egg each.

Soft, me. Anyway. Because of my unexpected earliness (you can say lateness, but you can't say earliness?) I managed to persuade Colleen to wait for me at Conway Park. It was about a quarter past two when Nupur, Joshua and I ambled out into the sunlight and Enid, Colleen and Clare came running towards us. The first thing I heard was "Iona has legs?!" (huh?) but conversation soon segued into Colleen's latest fixation, the mechanics of vampire sex.

See - and I don't know why I'm writing this - the problem is the lack of blood, as blood is required for purposes of, ah - engorgement. Which causes a problem. Personally, I don't really want to know, and only paused to carp a bit about the mechanics of human/vampire sex. While we were talking about it, we caught a bus to Pensby and probably scared everyone else on it. It made me giggle.

At Clare's, we retreated into the garden and lay there in the sunlight. It was very hot, and I was lying sprawled out over the greenery when Enid asked, "Iona, are you aware you have a gryphon on your arse?"

"I do?"

Specifically, it was a patch stuck on that rather cute patchwork-type skirt I got from Grin that time, and it did indeed have a gryphon on it. Once this fact had been duly pointed out to all, conversation returned to its former topic, which had been arguing over who got to watch what. Emily wanted Stargate (New Order) and Atlantis (Rising). Clare wanted Starsky and Hutch. I wanted Buffy (Passion) and so did Colleen (Buffy versus Dracula). Nupur wanted Pirates of the Caribbean. Lots of confusion there.

When Emily wandered in, she said, "Iona, you have a patch on your bum."

And I thought they loved me for my mind.

Thankfully, Hannah didn't say anything gryphon- or arse- related when she appeared some time later. Her interview was cancelled, and she seemed blue, as she put it. We did some questionnaires for Clare's psychology coursework, and went back inside some time after that.

We watched Buffy versus Dracula first. I thought it was amusing. "I'm standing right here!" Fun stuff.

And after that, we ended up watching ( Stargate Atlantis )

After we'd finished watching it, we decided to watch something that would make Hannah happy. "Any Buffy episode ever," I said, and she smiled.

"New Moon Rising."

Which is the first one with Willow and Tara as WillowandTara. Everyone, even Em the non-Buffy-fan, got sentimental at the end. They're so sweet and romantic and ahh.

Somewhere around here began the saga of the pizza, which we ordered and then failed to arrive. And something about the Colleen Show, which the world will learn more about at some point this week. Enid, love, I need that one black-and-white picture, if it's at all possible. Thanking you kindly.

The kids didn't sleep through events this time, so they got treated to much insanity and.. well, singing. We did watch Starsky and Hutch (and Em didn't find it slashy, something I find amazing in the extreme) and then came the singing. I expressed displeasure at the fact that we'd been drinking slowly for an hour and a half and no-one had yet burst into song.

So there was singing. Generally Once More With Feeling. Most of the songs, in fact, although I think we probably did I'll Never Tell the best. Hannah and I discovered that although we both love Standing/Under Your Spell, one of us knows Tara's part and the other knows Giles's part. This is sad, I know. And it shouldn't be difficult to guess who sang what. But we sang it with enthusiasm taking the place of tunefulness, and I think we did quite well for people who were drunk.

Actually, it was Colleen and Clare who were really drunk. Em and I were drinking Malibu neat out of a mineral water bottle (don't ask) and I reached the point where I had to think about what I was saying. I'm pretty sure I may have said something like, "I'm doing the thingy-thing thing," followed by, "I'm sorry, that was a metasyntactic variable."

Em attempted to tip a mug of water over my head at that point. She failed. Hannah laughed and went to sleep. So did I, but I vaguely remember talking to Emily even after I was asleep. It amused me, at any rate.

Morning came and went, and then we woke up. Hannah and I wandered down to bus-stop with the kids in tow, and because of my family attempting to do the family-day-out thing, I didn't get home until quite late and then couldn't sleep. Hence sleep-deprivation and general crankiness.

The kids went home yesterday. More on that later, as I'm tired now and have been writing this for about an hour on and off.