The Almighty Weekend!

Or rather, my weekend.

Usually my Monday posts are somewhat on the strange side, so I thought that for today I would give this blog a reality check.

No, not the Bill O'Reilly version (yes, I know that some of you don't like Bill. That's okay. I'm a Republican, so I like listening to people who actually know how to accept blame when things go wrong), but my version of reality, which at times can scare people.

Anyways, I thought I would bloviate on what I did this weekend. Ready? No, you don't have to fasten your safety belt if you don't want to. Just think of this post as an old-fashioned car that didn't have seat belts. Hit a bump, bounce all over the car. So, are you ready? No, you can't back out. Ready?

Friday

When I'd pulled into the driveway at five o'clock, shutting off the engine was a capper to an extremely stressful week, as layoff notices were given out the day before and the day of. So it was my intent to enjoy the weekend as much as humanly possible. I officially kicked off the weekend by going to the restaurant that is featured both in my avatar and the front page for supper. Got a cheeseburger with ketchup and small order of hand cut fries for the wife and a PBR (pickles, bacon and ranch) dog with locally grown potato salad.

After eating supper, I goofed around on the computer for about an hour or so, then attempted to watch something on the boob tube. No, not boobs, which would've been more interesting than what was on (trust me gang, when your viewing has dwindled down to RFD-TV, you know nothing ain't on). So I went outside to relax and enjoy the summer evening.

Well sir, my evening consisted of the following: watching a beautiful sunset, listening to a concert from The Extravaganza drift in, listening to the dull roar of the traffic drift in, and finally, listening to the symphony that is the mountain warm up then let loose. Oh yeah, listening to the interior of my brain empty itself out. Yes, it does happen and you do enjoy it when it happens to you.

Saturday

Saturday started off like any other normal Saturday, in that I walked to the center to perform my morning errands. It was sunny, it was breezy, but most importantly, it wasn't humid. Which was a very good thing, since my goal that day was to visit the Extravaganza.

I decided to do this thing sans camera, simply because I have two cameras on deck that need to be developed and I didn't want to deal with a third just yet. So after yet again walking to the center and having an expense lunch at Subway and after having an unfortunate detour some three hundred yards from the entrance (I'll elaborate on this in the Sunday section), I walked into the park.

I immediately started wandering through the rides, the petting zoo, and the vendor booths. As I made my way through the third lane of booths, a large canvas display briefly caught my eye as I walked by a particular booth. I stopped about fifteen feet past, gave it another hard look, then went back to check out the vendor. Turns out that the vendor was one that I haven't seen in my years of going to the Extravaganza.

An author.

So when I stopped by this table, Estevan Vega started talking up his latest book called "Arson". He explained how it was a paranormal story about a kid who has the ability to make and use fire. We got to chatting a little bit more and I asked the inevitable question about YA, to which he answered that he started writing the book as adult fiction, but he then decide he wanted to connect with readers of his own age (he was 17 when he first started this book), so it became something of a YA book that straddled the line of adult fiction. In spite of my feelings about YA, I decided to take a chance on supporting a local author (he is from East Haddam and the book uses that town as its main setting), and purchased a copy of "Arson", which is volume 1 of an upcoming series. BTW, this is Estevan's third published book and he is currently attends college.

I spent another twenty minutes or so wandering around the rest of the vendors before deciding to head home. Even though it was yet again a cloudless sunny day, the temps were thankfully in the hi 80's/lo 90's for the day (If you remember last year, I bitched about the temps being in the lo triple digits), so the walk home was leisurely if not completely comfortable. The rest of the afternoon was spent vegging out in the front yard, vegging out on the computer and basically doing no writing (boo).

Sunday

Sunday was spent recovering from about seven miles worth of hard walking and a nasty tumble that I took in front of the library. What happened was that my foot caught the edge of the sidewalk, I turned my ankle, then fell down. Fortunately enough, I was able to roll myself out of serious harm, so I came to stop sitting on my butt. After briefly checking for scratches on my knees, I stood up and hoped that no one saw me. Why? Falling on town or state property is not what its cracked up to be. 'Nuff said.

Anyways, I checked my insulin pen to make sure it wasn't broken and ditto for the phone. I checked the rest of my body and save for a sore shoulder when I jammed it against the sidewalk, I continued on my merry way.

Everything came home Sunday morning. I woke up with two sore legs, two very sore feet (aggravated a possible broken/severely bruised toe from a couple of weeks ago), one very sore hip (landed hard on the insulin pen) and a very sore left shoulder (note, concrete does not give). I spent most of the day walking around like a severely plastered immature adult that you see on reality t.v., recovering from the excessive amount of liquid vitamin D, did my laundry (yay), did my grocery shopping (yay) and basically made an attempt at writing. I also stopped feeding the birds, simply because I'm in the process of mentally reconfiguring where I want the bird feeders and what I want for bird feeders.

Overall, my weekend was a goody for me. I decompressed, forgot about the real world for a while and focused on me.

And how was your weekend?