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Today I went to the Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race!

This was something Austin and I discovered last summer, and which I rather enjoyed last year. I almost missed it, and feel very grateful that Thrantar pinged me the other week to be like "you planning to go?" and very sad that he couldn't actually get the time off work to join me. But I dragged Tuesday and Alexander with me onto the train¹ and then we found a Lucretia and Evan and Daniel (F.) and slightly later an Anna.

Because of my train timing mishap, I very virtuously (sigh) sat at the table for our spare hour at home² and did a bunch of the necessary grading for this weekend, which I honestly do not actually expect myself to get done because I have a _Tuesday_ in town and I love her dearly and want to spend all my free time snuggling kem instead of doing boring work things.

This was an extremely annoying hour, because it actually worked, I finished grading all the MiniQuizzen and Lesson Synthesis assignments, so 2/4 things that needed grading. Then on the train I graded the front page of all the homeworks. I had more time but I did not have more grading brain, and this is an important lesson for me to note, that there is a finite amount of mass grading I can handle before I just get _sad_ about the state of everything. If the children are doing poorly, it is my fault and depressing! I do not like that!

ANYways, after I did some grading and a little knitting, we were in Lowell! Timing was tight enough that we didn't bother heading to the opening ceremonies, and instead the three of us sauntered directly to the mudpit, along the race route. We'd gotten about halfway there when we started to be passed by sculptures and began our initial discussion of what seemed most good. I was extremely fond of the theming of Laika and Godzilla, and pleased to see the return of Moose, who I recall enjoying last year.

We made the mudpit in plenty of time, and sat down across-ish from the announcer and ASL interpreter --not close enough to watch him well all the time (and photographers and stuff would pass in front of him sometimes) but a good thing to try and look at occasionally and see if I can Learn Stuff as I do. Last year I had not as carefully tracked the competitors, so this year I made a point of getting photos of every sculpture team as they squelched their way through. I haven't had a chance to really look through and see which photos turned out best, but we all fell very in love with Treadward the Mud Skipper, who managed to get through by sheer force of will, with about seven seconds remaining on the clock.

There were fifteen teams headed through the mud, and it was delightful to see them charge through and/or fall apart. We sauntered off the stands and met up with the Pinewoods gremlins, and collectively sauntered off to the water to see the next significant part of the race. I'm glad we didn't try to take the shuttles --the lines were VERY long and it was probably supremely crowded-- but I did very much miss having bikes like my crew did last year. It is simply the superior way to see the show, even if it's much more of a pain in the ass to bring on the commuter rail.

The weather was extremely splendid, and we spent a lot of time dawdling as we walked along the extremely pretty merrimack river and contemplated going rock-hopping. Somehow, none of the gremlin votes won, and we stayed safe and dry at street level. But we made it to the end of the river a bit before the first sculptures did, and had a jolly time sitting in the grass and sharing out ice cream and other snacks.

I didn't shout myself hoarse, but I did demand that Jandro help me tie my MD flag mask around my arm as a patch when I saw a sculpture that had missed the mud, and was themed after the B'more skyline. What a delight it was, to get that taste of childhood home! (there were lots of these, honestly, Baltimore also has a kinetic sculpture race and I want very badly to go down some year and see. Probably not this one, though, I'm told it's typically first Saturday in May, and this year that means May Day.)

After, we sauntered back to the finish line, well after most of the competitors. But that was good, it meant we could do a slow dawdle up and down the line of sculptures and examine them closely. I wound up mostly with Lucretia for this, other people were watching the band, which was nice and all, but scullllptures!

We did make it back in time for some jolly good funky dancing though! And after, when the crowd had made it into the little cool bookshop, a guy specifically signaled me out to be like "you were bustin' a groove out there you looked great!" which felt very nice. I do so like dancing!

Sticking around for the award ceremony turned out to be...fine I guess? It was late and everyone was wilty, and maybe next year it is just correct to get the earlier train. Useful data! But we found a Tasty Dumpling restaurant, which both lived up to its name and was _swamped_. We felt so bad for the poor woman who seemed to be running things and really was RUNNING them --she didn't seem to get off her feet at any point, and seemed to be actively upset when she told us we'd have to wait a half hour for our food. It was okay though, it was nice to sit together and tell bad jokes and talk about school and other lovely things.

And once we had dumplings, we walked back to the train station and ate them in a little copse of trees just outside. The food from Tasty Dumpling absolutely lived up to its name, and also the dumplings are HUGE. I was very satisfied! And we finished eating in just the right amount of time to go get our train (read: I was Extremely Stressed trying to powerwalk to the station and Tuesday was walking at a completely normal pace and struggled not at all with getting there on time). Home again home again meant more knitting and goofy conversation, and now I am writing words while Tuesday snoozes against my arm a little. It's very nice!

Tomorrow will be a MUCH quieter day, whatever winds up happening. Probably I will do more grading while Tues does some Mystery Hunt work, but also we will snuggle and watch and/or play things and maybe even ~kiss~ a little. I might make it to demo team, but I also might not, we'll see³. Hopefully I will continue to live happily ever after or whatever. I hope you do too!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: er, the slightly later train than originally planned, since some dumbass doesn't actually remember that the mbta has different schedules for weekdays and Saturdays, so if you're looking up an event that's happening on the latter, you can't do it on the former.

2: Seriously, I did not bother to double check the train timing until like, a few minutes before we were due to leave, at which point I learned we had to get a train a full hour later than expected, deeply embarrassing

3: I am not actually performing in the next demo team event, for Stupid Reasons About Sticking To My Principles, which is. Annoying, given that I was excited to actually decide to do it this season and then find out I can't. But it does mean I'm rather less serious about getting to every practice.