Craig Berry

Wow, it's been quite a while since my last post.  LJ seems to be a cyclical thing with me; I'll post and read very actively for a month or two, then take a few weeks off.  I should gather stats on my posting and see if it matches one of the biorhythm curves or something. :)

For the last two weeks, I actually have a good excuse for not having posted: I haven't had five spare minutes the whole time.  The weekend before last,

belladonna93  and I flew to Las Vegas for a mini-vacation to celebrate her birthday.  We had a wonderful time; the highlights were a lovely dinner at Postrio in the Venetian, and a visit to the Bodies exhibition in the Luxor.  I recommend the latter very highly to all of my friends who are at least slightly morbid and not excessively squeamish...which is pretty much the same as saying "all my friends" without further qualification.

The only disappointment of the trip was finding that, as z111  had warned me, the Luxor has embarked on a campaign of systematic de-Egyptian-ification.  Many of the things I remember from my last visit several years ago -- gift shops stocked with interesting pseudo-artifacts, an exhibit of actual Egyptian relics, cheesy but fun Egyptian naming and decor -- are gone or much reduced.  Apparently management has concluded that middle America doesn't want to stay at a middle-eastern themed hotel.  That makes me so sad, frustrated, and disgusted I had to force myself to stop thinking about it in order to enjoy my stay there.

On Sunday afternoon belladonna93  flew home, and I changed gears from vacation to episcopal mode.  First, on Sunday evening I attended a Gnostic Mass at AHBH Camp, where I supervise several members of the clergy.  Celebrating Mass in a cramped living-room temple made me nostalgic for the olden times; watching the officiants having to move the font back and forth to make room for ritual activities quickly tempered that nostalgia.  The Mass was rightly performed with joy and beauty; my thanks and congratulations to the Mass team and the whole AHBH crew for what they're accomplishing in Las Vegas!

On Monday Sister C. and I discussed preparations for the wedding, and visited the site where the ceremony was to occur.  I'd kept the whole day free, but it turned out only a couple of hours were needed for preparations and nothing else emerged to fill my remaining time during the day, so I spent a few relaxing hours reading.  Ah, luxury.  Then it was out to a Nepalese dinner with a few of the AHBH members on the way to the airport, and back to Los Angeles.

There followed a crammed week of long days at work, fully booked evenings, and (around the edges of those) trying to prepare for a double-whammy Memorial Day weekend.  On Friday evening, I flew back up to Vegas to perform C and J's wedding.  The ceremony was held in a beautiful outdoor location on Saturday morning, and despite a few minor glitches -- most notably the truly mysterious disappearance of my EGC crown, which seems to have evaporated into the ether on the way to the wedding -- everything went beautifully.  z111  and I officiated as Priest and Priestess in a modified version of sabazius_x  and Helena's wedding ceremony, done stand-alone rather than as part of a Mass.  The funniest moment was when the very young and very terrified ringbearer came up the aisle, got within about ten feet of his intended position, then panicked and ran past us and out into the very large expanse of grass behind us.  He stopped about 50 feet away.  It took us a minute or two to coax him back into place.

Following a really pleasant reception and a quick tapas stop with z111 , it was back to the airport for an afternoon flight to LA, where I was due to join the Kaaba Colloquium already in progress.  I took a taxi from LAX to the conference hotel, arriving exactly in time to join the team for the Saturday debrief dinner.  We spent a couple of hours at that, then drove over to Star Sapphire Lodge for the reception, which I barely remember because I was hitting the wall hard by that point.  To say that I slept well that evening is a considerable understatement.

Before I knew it, my alarm was beeping Sunday morning, and it was time to get up and prepare for my four Kaaba presentations -- three of them before lunch.  Whee.  Fortunately, coffee reached my synapses in the nick of time, and all of my presentations went well.  As usual, "The Creepy Guy" was the big hit.  It's not necessarily the title I'd prefer to have associated with my name, but that's show biz.

Then it was another debrief dinner, then back over to SSL for a lovely Mass, followed by another definitve hitting of the wall, and a trip back to the hotel and my bed that I made largely in my sleep, so far as I can tell.  Monday was much more relaxed -- no public speaking!  No ritual lines to do from memory! -- but still intense, as the Kaaba team spent the whole day discussing the outcome of our "Kaaba 3.0" dual-tracking approach and made plans for future Kaaba topics and locations.

You know you're leading a busy life when you go to bed on the Monday of Memorial Day weekend thinking "Oh thank God, I can go to work tomorrow and relax a little."