Hello, bright blessings and merry meet to all. It's great to see lots of activity here. It's always good to have another source of like-minded people to chat with.

I recently went to Convocation in Troy, Michigan. for my first time with my good friend Sandpiper. What a great experience. So many good workshops and so little time. LOL. I wasn't able to get off of work on Friday, so I didn't arrive until about midnight on Friday. Met up with some friends from www.pagannation.com and went out and had a few drinks and then played in the drum circle until it finally broke up after 1:30 or so. The circle was great. A bunch of good musicians and lots of belly dancers. :-)

Got up the next morning (well, more like late morning) and took an Instant Drumming workshop. There was at least 50 people taking the class. Which was basically a facilitated drum circle. I loved it, I can't get enough drum time in.

I also attended a workshop on Intro to Runic Divination. I had an idea to paint some protective bind runes on my bike in a special glow in the dark paint. They would be invisible during the day, but glow green at night. I had no previous experience with Runes beforehand, though. I quickly ran down to the vendor area and bought a set of hand painted hematite runes and got to the class just in time. Class was great. The person hosting it was Rodney Cox and he was very easy to understand and even stayed for a little while afterwards to answer some of my dumb questions. Thanks Rodney. I have continued to study the runes on my own since then. I am reading Edred Thorson's "Rune Casters Handbook, The Well of Wyrd". I started out just wanting to get an idea of what kinds of symbols to paint on my bike and now I can do amateur reading with them.

Made it to a few more great workshops that day and hung out with my friends at Pagan Nation's suite. At 8 o'clock, Chris Penczak lead a Sorcerer's Initiation Ritual. For lack of better words, it was amazing. I have no idea how long it was, because time was meaningless. The ritual even included several short plays to help illustrate the points of the ritual. It ended with a guided meditation through Chris' words and drum rhythms. When it was over my body from the waste down was vibrating like crazy. Funny thing was, when we went up to thank Chris, I heard Sandpiper tell him the same thing! It was a very moving experience.

The rest of the night was kicked off with One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer. With Sandpiper, AJ Drew and myself. Actually it was like a triple shot of Bourbon, triple shot of Scotch and glasses and even walk them to the room). We actually got it all on film too. I don't have the file so I can't upload it here, but you can see it on pagan nation: http://video.pagannation.com/show_video.cgi/parse/70

After the shots and beer warm up we stalked (ie stumbled) around the hotel videoing other acts of silliness. Some never to be seen in public again. lol And dancing, lots an lots of dancing.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend with the best of company. If you can only do one thing in a year, well go to the AJ Drew's Real Witches Ball in Columbus, Ohio. LOL but if you can do two things then you should also go check out Con, I would highly recommend it. Thank you Sandpiper for inviting to yet another awesome experience. Your the best.

Well that's all for now. Until next time. Merry meet, merry part and merry meet again.