This is gonna be a long one…

But, that’s what happens when one takes such a long break from blogging. A lot can happen in nearly a week. Especially when one has big weekend plans. ;)

Well, I suppose I ought to start by telling all of you how the Arts Festival went this past weekend. First of all, it was not as beastly hot as the weather man had predicted, though his warnings seemed to have thinned the crowd a bit. But no matter, the right people came. People who wanted to buy my mom’s paintings came. I believe that the total came to one medium-sized painting, five little ones and a verbal contract for the purchase of the big purple sheep. Now, every once in a while my mom does a painting that she really likes and doesn’t particularly want to sell. When that happens, she puts an obscene price on it in the hopes that it will stay around for a few shows or whatever. But so far, every time she does it, someone buys it anyway. It happened before with the bachelor farmers and now it has happened again with the big purple sheep. But here’s the thing: she entered the sheep in the governor’s show and doesn’t know yet if it got in. But the folks who bought it (as a wedding present for their son who envied his brother’s Karen Kinder original, more sheep I believe) don’t need it any time soon. And that was all on Saturday. Sunday was rather slower, but that’s only to be expected.

So that’s the mom side of the weekend, now it’s time to hear the rest of the details. We got to the park to get the paintings up at about 7:30. You have to be plenty early because people start walking the park around 8:30, even though the official start isn’t until 10:00. So, eventually Brandi showed up, in garb, and we wandered. I found this really cool sarong that’s green and black with Celtic patterns of ribbon interlace and stylized horses. It made me think of Rohan. So while I went back to the booth to get my money, Brandi bought it for me. Yay for good friends and early birthday presents! :D Sadly, Brandi didn’t get to buy much else, as her wallet disappeared shortly after lunch. Thus far, no news on either the money or the ID. Other faces behind the booth included Amanda, Corey and Brandon Scott, Andy Reneker and Kari, Kari’s friend, Tucker, Kevin and Al, and Brandi’s little brother Jesse who disowned her and ran off. Did I forget anyone? I don’t think so. I guess I can’t really claim to have spent the entire weekend in the park since we wandered over to the movie theater to catch a matinee of Fantastic 4. It was a blissful 2 hours of darkness and air conditioning. And the movie wasn’t half bad either. ;) On Sunday Dianna and her family came by, which was cool. We made an alien at the BYG sand art booth. Hehe, Elwood shall grace our dorm room this fall. Hmm, I’m beginning to wonder if all these ideas of ours will fit in one room? They aren’t designed with much storage space. But I digress. That afternoon I worked in the community band pizza booth. It was hot but not too bad, really. I got to work with Luke. And this cute guy came and bought pizza from me twice and even asked if we did tips. I remember him from band camp two summers ago, though I never really knew his name and called him only Curly in my head. He has curly hair, you see, and plays the bassoon. More digression, isn’t this fun? So that evening we took down the booth and loaded all the stuff into the minivan again to be brought home. This was when things got really loopy. You see, it was mostly Kevin and Amanda and I fetching various items for my dad to put in the car and heat, lack of actual nutritious food, and exhaustion had made us all, well, loopy. We were a boisterous bunch of Swedish chefs playing with the words “bungee” and “debungee.” If I tried to explain it more clearly you’d still be shaking your head. Anyways, Kevin and I were then invited to the birthday party of Amanda’s brother Chris, which consisted of us having dinner with her parents and Chris and a friend showing up briefly for cake and presents. Unfortunately, the guest of honor couldn’t really enjoy the food, as he had his tongue pierced less than a week before and it was still swollen. One thing I feel I must share with you is a conversation we had while cooking. I don’t remember all of the exact wordings (I was rather loopy, as mentioned earlier), but the most important part is there.
Amanda: Kim, you’ve lost your mind. Wait, hasn’t it been gone a lot longer than that?
Kim: Yes, but I had something in place of a mind. Now that’s gone too. And it left it’s little brother, and he’s making a mess.
Kim quote of the day if I’ve ever had one.

So then I spent a lot of Monday asleep recovering from the weekend. And then there was band rehearsal in the evening. Yes, Christa, we’re still playing a lot of the same songs this year, including Beauty and the Beast. Oh, and we’re playing Rolling Thunder. It’s a psychotic circus march. I played that piece four years ago and it was scary. Now we’re doing it incredibly slow and it’s annoying. It’s amazing what a difference four years will make.

So are you tired of reading yet? I warned you this would be a long one, but did you listen? Noooooooo. You just had to read it anyway, didn’t you? Dork. ;) But, since you’ve already come this far, you might as well go the whole way. Personally, I think there’s some good stuff still coming.

On Wednesday the vice president of Hy-Vee was visiting our store, so we had to make sure our department looked its best. That meant having fruit pizzas out. But Peggy, the older lady who makes our pizzas, had the day off. So Deb asked me to do it. And I really enjoyed making them. And Deb liked them, she really liked them! So now I get to make pizzas when Peggy isn’t there. I like it because it lets me use the creative side of my brain rather than just the machine-like chopping I’m used to. And I’m getting better as I go, which is good. You see, the fruit is arranged in concentric circles, but mine are sometimes more like eccentric circles. They all sold right away, so that’s cool. Anyways, Doug Dell, store manager and guy from church, was showing the VP around and he came to visit us in our prep room. The VP is a short, bald, red-faced man, but he seems very nice. And I liked the fact that the back room was actually clean in honor of his visit.

Today was fairly normal in the salad bar until right near the end of my shift, when a busload of kids showed up. They were a youth choir from Texas on their way to Winnipeg. That’s a really long trip. I’m just glad they didn’t all want the salad bar. Other parts of the store had even more troubles than us. Somehow the floral department lost most of their stock to freezing. Due to construction they do most of their prep in the back room, and there were at least six of them back there today cutting flowers to replace what they lost. And there were painters in the store today. Using very tall roller brushes to paint the walls above the meat counter. It was quite a sight and I wish I could have gotten a picture of it. Of course, even if I had you wouldn’t be able to see it because I don’t have a digital camera, though I’m thinking seriously of getting one. But that’s not for a while yet.

Widening our scope of view, let’s see what my parents are up to. This year is their 25th wedding anniversary. The exact date is August 2. To celebrate, they’re taking the Amtrak out to Glacier Park. It’s something my mom has wanted to do for a very long time now, and they’re really looking forward to it. But since this is my blog, we’re going to focus on how this affects me. ;) With them gone all week and Kevin working nights I’m bound to start feeling rather isolated. This means that I will either be online and blogging more in an attempt to preserve my sanity, or I’ll be out finding other things to do to preserve my sanity. So you’ll either hear from me a lot more or a lot less. Have fun with that. Either way, don’t worry, I never had much sanity to preserve in the first place. ;) And there’s always the mural to work on. Theoretically I’ll be starting on fixing the thing next week. And the new Harry Potter book comes out this weekend, so I’ll be spending much free time reading that. ;)

I know this weekend is Sonshine. And yes, I’ve always wanted to go but never could because it was always scheduled for the same weekend as the Arts Festival. Now it’s finally the weekend after and I still can’t go. Besides having no way to get there and no desire to pay for it, I close Saturday night and there’s the usual band concert Sunday night. So at least I won’t be bored. Besides, if I was free I’d have to choose between that and going out to the Hills with Amanda’s family. So at least life is simple this way.

Let’s see, how about we finish this post with the random fact roundup. It’s hot out. Beegee has no air conditioning and still can’t hold his oil. Baby llamas are cute. Geoffrey’s battery is low. I’m tired. I work tomorrow. I should go to bed. It’s time to be rational for once.

-Kim