Happy Saturnalia!

Our Latin club held its second annual Saturnalia party on Friday night. A bit early, according to Wikipedia, but the Romans were known for their practicality, and it was practical to have the party when our club leader was in town! 

Travis went as Dionysus/Bacchus, god of wine and some other stuff, and Katie as Zeus/Jupiter. Travis's dolphin is from the story where Dionysus is kidnapped by sailors. The sailors plan to sell him into slavery, but instead he takes over the ship and the sailors all jump overboard, where they are turned into dolphins. Apparently he was feeling unusually kindly that day.

Here Zeus is chatting with some of the goddesses.

 And here are Dionysus, a couple of Romans, and a barbarian.

A game involving balloons...

and one with toilet paper.

And this one, which required stacking cup skills. And here we've been wasting our time practicing declining pronouns!

Travis was quite good at this one. Pantyhose are pulled over the contestant's head, with an orange in one of the toes, turning the contestant into an elephant (the connection being Hannibal. and yes, we do know he was Carthaginian, not Roman.). The elephant then does his/her best to flatten all the Solo cups. It actually reminded me more of the attack of the oliphaunts in Lord of the Rings, but I'm sure Hannibal would have been pleased to have Travis on his team, as an oliphaunt or an elephant.

And this game had one person rolling dice, trying for doubles, while another person struggled into a Julius Caesar costume. If Caesar made it into costume and stabbed himself/herself, while crying "Et tu, Brute?" before the dice roller got doubles, he/she "won" and was out (this last bit was due to the disposition of the first person "up," who said that she would feel she had won if she was allowed to leave the game. Not one of mine, obviously.).

Finally, the gift exchange, in which popular gifts could be "stolen." Travis was pleased to end up with the turkey jerky and Rabbid he brought, but the gift Katie brought, the Popper Pig, was the favorite.

If you'd seen it in action, foam balls shooting at high speed from its snout, you would wonder how you'd managed so long without one of these!

So, that was fun.

And I didn't get any pictures of the Christmas Recipe Exchange party at the library on Thursday, but Katie and some of the other young library volunteers helped put it on, and Travis and I got to attend (we didn't prepare food or bring recipes, but she brought enough to cover for us!). It was really nice, and I met some friendly people and learned that the library does have a book discussion club after all! They are reading Life of Pi for January, which hasn't been high on my list, but which I'm happy to read if it means I can join a book group! I still haven't found any activities for Travis, but he is feeling cheerful because his most recent game, involving racing llamas, showed up, briefly, in a PewdiePie video.