Long day over, with entertaining discussions at Newbery-hopefuls book group meeting. We all liked all 3 books for a change.

This weekend was a blast! Very busy though. I took a vacation day on Friday so that I could attend the annual literacy conference of OCIRA (Ohio Council of the International Reading Association), where we presented the 2008 Buckeye Children's Book Awards to three authors. I'm on the BCBA Council, as a representative from the OLC (Ohio Library Council--are you keeping up with all of these acronyms? :-) and I'd never been to the reading teachers' conference before. It was held at Youngstown State University, about 45 minutes away. First major hurdle: getting there! I'd mapquested the directions (or maybe it was yahoo maps or google maps, because I use all three indiscriminately), and was following them merrily along. I noticed when I got off the freeway that I was in my mom's old neighborhood, in fact it was also my old neighborhood from when I was a preschooler, when we lived a few streets down from my grandmother. So I took a quick detour just to drive by my grandma's old house--hadn't been there in a long long time, since before my grandmother passed away, in 1991 I think it was. That was a sweet nostalgic moment. But then I continued to follow the mapquest directions, and they took me to some residential street! Not a college campus at all. Oh dear! Luckily I had a state map with me, which had a decent blowup of Youngstown, because I might have lived there as a kid but I sure didn't know my way around the rest of the city. I was over 15 minutes out of my way! Totally off! I have never been so furious at an online map site before. I know they can be off, but usually by one or two streets. This sent me to an entirely different address in a different part of town, but said on the directions that it was the Kilcawley Center at YSU. Go figure!! Thank heavens I had actually left an hour early, having planned to walk around campus a little. Sheesh. So I got there just in time to hear the keynote address by Cynthia Lord, author of the Newbery Honor-winning, Schneider family award-winning, and now, Buckeye Children's Book Award-winning novel, Rules.


Her talk was wonderful, and so touching, many of us were wiping away tears. She talked about how to write a book about something close to your heart--in this case, raising her son with autism and how it affects his sister--and how that is different from writing entirely made-up fiction. If you haven't read her book, please do, it is funny and heartwarming and just a great story. And she talked about winning the Newbery Honor, and how as exciting as that was, winning the Buckeye award made her cry, because it is an honor bestowed by children (the books are nominated as well as voted on by kids all across Ohio). She was just wonderful to meet and to hear speak.

That was the only thing I did at the first day of the conference; I drove home right after. I stopped briefly in Newton Falls to drop off a book with my friend Chrissy at her library and have a quick visit, and that turned out to be an expensive little detour because in my hurry to get back to the horses I passed a car a little too fast and got a speeding ticket. Ouch! I was NOT meant to be in a car that day, methinks...). On Saturday I got up earlier than the usual oh-dark-thirty (4am this time) to be able to feed horses and still get back to YSU in time to help at the conference registration table. This time I knew right where I was going! I did some gofering and prize-stickering for the staff, and then I hosted authors/illustrators Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash for their breakout session and to lunch and to see their Buckeye award acceptance speech. They gave a funny talk with a slide show all about their home/office, which is a cool brownstone in Brooklyn, how they created Bow Wow Bugs a Bug, the wordless picture book that won the award, and a "few words about wordless books." This being a literacy conference, they were quite well prepared, and had a funny "Top Ten Uses for Wordless Books" list as well as a more serious list of ways to use wordless books in the classroom and why visual literacy is so important for reading development.

Here I am with Mark and Megan, wearing my Bow Wow shirt. We had a great time, it was cool to meet them and they were very friendly and have a nifty sense of humor. They were totally up for clowning around with the decor, taking turns in photos like this:


We had some tense moments with technology screwups for their presentation, entailing a lot of running around for the right projector cords and things with YSU staff, but it worked out fine, and I was glad to be of help. Their Buckeye "acceptance speech" was a wordless slide show with animations, and it was adorable! And hilarious! Bow Wow the dog wakes up as the doorbell rings, learns he has won an award. Then he takes off running through the streets, flies in an airplane, runs across the deserts and past the Eiffel Tower and around the world (which is hilarious because he "lives" in NYC), then at the podium he catches a bone thrown to him!

Then he runs back home, where he falls asleep dreaming of Ohio--which changes shape into a heart. Awwww. So cute.


I also got to hear keynote (non-awards) presentations by:

Diane DeGroat, who writes and illustrates the "Gilbert the opossum" series of pictures books--Roses are Pink, Your Feet Stink! etc, very cute!--as well as illustrating hundreds of other books over the years. She gave a very funny slide show of her life story, with animations and views of her studio, etc. Her website is full of fun stuff. She's had a long varied career in book illustration and does great work. And the other guest of honor that day was

Bruce Langton, another children's book illustrator (I first saw his work in B Is For Buckeyes, a state history alphabet book, and he's done several in the series, like H is For Hoosier or something like that) who started out as a commercial artist and a fantastic wildlife artist. Check out his website to see the phenomenal wildlife art, so realistic and beautiful. Wowsers. Wolves, elephants, lions, just gorgeous. He talked about how he entered "duck stamp" competitions over and over again, trying to win one to get recognition. Man, can he ever paint a pretty duck! :-)

It was a wonderful day. But, it didn't end there! I said goodbye to Mark and Megan after getting my book autographed (they did a really nice color pencil illustration in it, instead of the usual black Sharpie, boy did I feel privileged!), and raced home to put on my vampirella costume and go to the Warped Corps Halloween party. This is our annual shindig of food and merriment. I don't have a photo of me in costume, but this is what it looked like last year when I wore it to a vampire author visit:

(I didn't paint my face white at this party.)

We had some cool characters show up at our party:

This is Karen and Charlie as Storm and Gambit. Even their dog Velvet got into the act:

We play a lot of silly scifi games at our parties, and the main event is the Crossword Puzzle game, created and hosted by the devious Charlie.

There are over a hundred words to figure out; we divide into two teams and it's a team effort to try to figure out what words are meant by the obscure clever punny clues Charlie comes up with. Teams earn points for every letter in a word when it's guessed. We like to say you have to figure out Charlie's brain in order to figure out the clues. And it helps if you know a lot of scifi shows and comics. (For example: "What happens when a rock pile meets a black bear?" Four letters. Even with "second letter E, last letter S" it took us a while to come up with BENS. For Ben Grimm "The Thing" and Gentle Ben. That is just an easier example!) It's a lot of fun to play, and amazingly enough, this year's version ended in a tie! First time ever that we can think of. So that was a long day, til well past midnight.


Just to wrap up the weekend, on Sunday morning after horses I went back to bed for four hours--partying is exhausting! ;-) then did a ton of walking around neighborhoods in Kent, doing a "lit drop" with a friend all afternoon. We handed out literature and notepads for our friend Becky Doherty who is running for Portage County municipal judge. It was a beautiful fall day, sunny, warm, perfect for walking. And we happened to be in the neighborhood of other friends of mine, so we had a lovely break at their house, met their cat, etc. Great timing, as they had just returned from a bike ride. We ended the day with dinner at our new local Jimmy John's--has any of you ever eaten at this 'gourmet sandwich' shop? They have franchises all over the place, I'm learning, but this was our first time to eat there. I'd never heard of them before. Well, let me tell you, I will happily eat there again, any time! Delicious! And they have this cool low-carb item called an "unwich," which is any of their sandwiches wrapped in giant iceberg lettuce leaves instead of a bun. Clever idea, not only for dieters but for celiacs (gluten allergic folks). Mmm mmm good. Ciao for now!

On the bright side, detour led me right past my grandma's old house. Hadn't been there in years. Nostalgic moment.

Yesterday I learned the hard way not to trust Mapquest. Got sent 15 minutes out of my way to opposite side of Youngstown for conference.

I am heartily fed up with stranger whose bank acct number is 1 digit away from mine. Stop accidentally using MY account number already!!

A fun book I recently read--goes along with my new favorite tv show, "Castle." Great little mystery, fast-paced cops-on-the-street action, witty banter, hot sex, not at all like the usual YA books I'm always reading. This one is for grownups! :-D

Thanks to michygeary of the Castle LJ Community for the art.

I am not looking forward to first snow of the season tonight. I have trouble w/ seasonal transitions. Luckily we get Indian Summer nxt wk.

Just found this really cool video on the main page of the MS150 website: and it was made by one of my teammates! I had no idea. It's really great, it's part slideshow and part video, with a nifty song as the soundtrack. If you want an idea of what the ride is like, this rider's-eye view comes pretty close. (Ignore the occasional candid shot of me looking like a total doofus; I wasn't awake yet and EVERYONE was snapping photos so you kind of got used to ignoring them unless they called out your name.) Enjoy!

Oh how I wish I'd known about this sooner, I so would have tried to drive down there for it! But this is cool news anyway, I had no idea there was a Secretariat movie in the making. Neato!

Disney's Secretariat filmmakers offer "70's Happening" at Churchill Downs

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Well, this weekend has turned out very well, despite a change of plans. I was looking forward to hosting my friend Pat for the weekend, from Kentucky. She planned to drive up and spend the night here so we could hang out, and go to see Neil Gaiman together on Sunday. But right in the middle of putting finishing touches on my apt cleaning/furniture rearranging/massive dusting work, I got a phone call from her that she wasn't going to be able to come after all. She tried, and got halfway here, but she hadn't been able to rent a car with cruise control (really busy time in her town this weekend, nearly all the cars rented out!), and so she was having serious back problems. We both agreed that was not a good thing, and I didn't want her to be miserable while she was here and have an even more painful drive home. So, no company after all. But now I have a sparkling apt for when my sister comes to visit later this month. I may just go live in a motel for a week to make sure it stays clean. :-)

Oh--side note on all that cleaning, I had to postpone some of it because for the second time in a week, a squirrel died on our transformer and the power went out! This time we even saw the swan dive of the poor departed thing--my neighbor glanced up and saw it fall off! The electrical company worker who came out to fix it said it's quite common this time of year with young squirrels--I think they're teenage squirrels, born in the spring and out on their own now, reckless, daring, totally ignoring mama squirrel's advice to never ever run on those big gray things on poles...The power guy couldn't put up an animal guard because he couldn't get his truck in to the right spot, but we are supposed to have a crew coming soon to do that--"and I'll have them replace the whole transformer too, it's antiquated," he said. Gee! THAT inspires confidence! Maybe it wasn't entirely the rodent's fault!

So, on Sunday I went with to see Neil Gaiman. Wow. What a great guy! I'd seen him once before at San Diego Comic Con, but he was only talking about his movies at the time, Stardust and Coraline, and anyway that was with 6,000 complete strangers. Not exactly up close and personal. This time, it was a really nice event. The Cleveland Public Library brought him in as part of their Writers and Readers Series of lectures (later this year they'll have Kareem Abdul Jabbar--interesting choice of author). He gave a very nice talk, first reading aloud from his newest children's book, Odd and the Frost Giants (hilarious! he did different voices for the Norse gods trapped in animals' bodies and it was so cool), then taking questions ("And I'll be giving the answers," he said). He told us about his next project, a nonfiction book on China and The Journey West by some monk, or something like that, I'm afraid I didn't get it stuck in my head properly (but you can read all about it on Neil's blog and twitter feed and so forth, the man is all over the internet) but it sounds really neat. He's been several times to China. He also talked about how he's going to buy pie for everyone on the staff at HarperCollins because his book The Graveyard Book (have you read it yet? Very cool! You need to right now!) has been on the bestseller lists for 53 straight weeks. He got some questions from kids, which was very cute--"what's your favorite color?" and you know, he said he's never been asked that before. Sure sounded like he really meant it. He said green--and that if he's not stopped he tends to paint walls in rooms apple green, which makes him happy but makes other people wonder "are they meant to be that way?" Talked about weird things people do at signings, like asking him to sign body parts (someone here asked if he remembered signing the bottom of a girl's foot in Portland), or having him sign their arm then running out to a tattoo parlor and getting the autograph tattooed on! Authors who inspired him were C.S. Lewis, Tolkien (funny story about winning a writing prize as a kid and asking for Return of the King as his book prize--because he had read the first two over and over again but his library didn't have a copy of the third one and he was dying to find out if it ended well!), Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny. Talked about doing audiobooks--he is quite an acomplished narrator. He loves telling stories in all forms, and the "second best thing about parenting" has been that he got to read stories aloud to his kids every night. When the last one got too old for it, he had to turn to audiobook narrating to satifsy the urge. He said he had a bit of a cold and was a little hoarse, but he sounded great to us. He ended with a reading from The Graveyard Book and then we lined up for autographs. I hadn't even expected him to sign, since I knew there would be a lot of people in attendance, and nothing was mentioned on the library's website about signing. But I had brought my Graveyard Book just in case.

Well, library staff were totally blown away by the response; about 50 or more people were there by 11am, and he wasn't speaking until 2pm. By the midafternoon apparently over 1,000 people came, but many had to be turned away because there just wasn't room. The auditorium seats 615 people, and then they filled up an "overflow room" with another couple hundred, and had his speech piped in there. I was so glad I'd known to come early, even though we were later than I'd planned and got nearly the last seats in the main auditorium. When he first came up to the mic to talk to us he said he had just been in to see the folks in the overflow room, to show he was really there, and hoped to have their questions brought in. So about halfway through, he was notified by a staffer and he looked up to see a few people at the door. He addressed himself to the overflow folks: "I am meeting with your representatives now!" and took a few questions from them. It was funny, and reminded me of the first couple of seasons of The Ellen Show where she had the Riffraff Room full of overflow crowds.

Unfortunately this huge response meant they didn't handle the autographing part quite as well as I would have hoped. The lady in charge asked by a show of hands "who was here before 11am?" and then said that those with their hands up would get to be first in line. It was totally on the honor system--now you know that twice as many people were in that part of the line as had actually come early. Neil requested that people with kids form a separate line, and that was great, they got to meet him first too which I totally applaud. But the rest of us were told they'd call us by section; guess what? we looked around and hardly anyone had stayed in their seats! Everyone piled out to queue up in the hall. It would have been so much better if they had had numbers to hand out at the door as we arrived, to give us some kind of order for the line. So Dianah (hklbry) and I were nearly at the end of the line because we hadn't jumped into right away. Di didn't need his autograph, she already had one, but she was a saint for keeping me company. We tweeted our status and talked to total strangers, it was rather like a sci fi con by the end of the THREE AND A HALF HOURS we waited. After the first 45 minutes of no movement, with me beginning to dread ever getting back in to even take a closeup photo of him never mind the autograph, the line suddenly began moving very quickly, and we wondered what was up--well, they were having everyone come in and sit down, and handing us a numbered post-it note at the door. (Finally, some organization!). Then my friend Rollie from CPL would call out numbers in batches of ten. I was 308. Oh my. I saw a couple of friends there; Julie wore this really nifty outfit she'd made for a horror movie premiere, and I thought she fit in perfectly well to the Gaiman world. What do you think? :-)



We gradually trickled down to see him. It was cool to see the variety of folks there to see him, and from farflung places. Several from the Carolinas, Pittsburgh, one guy from Atlanta (the library director had asked where out of towners were from, and upon hearing Atlanta he called the guy down to the stage and gave him a front row chair all by himself!) One Case Western Reserve Univ. student was announced as needing a ride back to campus if anyone was willing: and he got a volunteer. There was a busload of students from Oberlin College there, and after so long their bus had to leave, but several wanted to stay to get an autograph if anyone was willing to give them a ride back. (Another announcement made, but I don't think they got any takers. They did line up for a nice group photo with Neil, and we saw him asking all of them their names. Very friendly guy.)

OK, you know I eventually got there, here's the photographic evidence above and below.



Sweet sweet guy, I am so glad I was able to be there. He's at the Toledo Library today, but not doing signings, his hand is very sore! (He'd mentioned at one point sometimes needing to grab frozen veggies to ice his hand, and sure enough, Dianah saw some under his table!) Thank you thank you Mr. Gaiman for your patience yesterday, you made a lot of people happy.

Just checking to see if this function is functioning again.

I had a good day today visiting our middle school, booktalking a bunch of great teen books to 7th and 8th graders of varying degrees of enthusiasm and attentiveness. :-) This was the first of my new monthly visits to the school. Hoping to become a more regular presence there than my previous annual visits in spring for summer booktalks. It was gratifying to be greeted by several students during the course of the day, "Hey I know you!" or "You came here last year!" so at least I'm a semi-familiar face.

Last weekend my niece had her sixth birthday party: so cute! She's lost her first tooth, that is quite the big milestone.




I uploaded a bunch of photos from a trip I took last year to Breyerfest--I'd forgotten that I never uploaded the rest of them, nor blogged about the other cool things I saw and did on the trip. Argh argh, too many photos, not enough time. The Gypsy/circus stunt riders were amazing:

They did all kinds of riding tricks on horses that galloped around the ring, like moving themselves from one side of the horse to the other, from in the saddle, all the way under the horse and back up again in a circle--as the horse never faltered. It was incredibly exciting to watch. So were the demonstrations of various breeds at the Horse Park, such as this Friesian:

Click on the photo for more photos of gypsy riders upside down and all over the place.

And as I walked around the horse park I came across a lone Great Blue Heron, who was enjoying the pond life. I am just fascinated by these birds, and I always love a chance to get a close up of one.




That's it for now--looking forward to a visit by an out-of-state friend this weekend, and getting to see author Neil Gaiman in person! Woo-hoo!

Time for another weekend report: this one involves balloons and yet another parade! It was the annual Ravenna Balloon AFair weekend, and I had a nice time photographing balloons as they launched from literally my front yard (very large field on the farm). We had gorgeous sunny skies and 80 degrees on Saturday, with overflowing crowds coming to see the launch. Sunday, however, was a different story. After waiting as long as they dared, they cancelled the launch, because we had a lot of sinister clouds overhead and there was a storm nearby headed our way. It was a shame. There was still the whole carnival thing to have fun with, though, for the crowd.
Something new this year for me, was getting to see the balloon afair parade from the inside, so to speak: I walked in it with others who are supporting our friend Becky in her judicial quest. We handed out candy--no literature drops allowed in this parade, because we had a booth set up for later--and had to make do with humans and a cool car, no adorable dogs this time.

These cute pugs-in-balloons were part of the "Pugs in Paradise" unit in the parade. The parade theme was "Paradise in the Sky", and so there were a lot of floats with puffy clouds and heaven or tropical paradise or similar designs. My favorite, after the cute pugs and the very nice storybook float done by the local library, was this:

which used the movie "UP" as its theme. Here is a better view of the characters on the front of the float:

I mean, I thought this float was head and shoulders above all the others in terms of execution and quality. Very nice. It was sponsored by a group that helps disabled folks live independently, so it was a very appropriate theme too. (And one guy walking with them kept reminding us loudly, "It was MY idea! It's from the movie UP!" He was so sweet.)
In between walking the parade route (twice, because of course, again I didn't plan for return transportation) and seeing the evening balloon launch, I also entertained some kids at the fair downtown for an hour; I had been asked to perform my balloon animal-twisting skills again. That's fun, but also stressful being a street performer, when you can conceivably have hundreds of kids swarming around you. I prefer small parties to the neverending stream of passersby. You hardly get a break. And unfortunately, my balloons were old, so they popped very frequently, before I could finish making the item. Talk about frustrating! These poor kids probably thought balloon twisting was quite hazardous, since they popped 4 out of 5 times. I was disgusted with myself. I didn't have much advance notice of the job, but I could still have gone out and bought new balloons. I had no idea they'd gotten that bad, they looked fine at first glance. Anyway, it was a quick hour for some quick cash. Now Becky wants me to make balloons at one of her events! Oh dear, I am regressing into my college days when I was a Party Animal. I guess it's nice to know that skills I learned back then are still handy, but I hadn't ever intended to really use them again, just the occasional balloon for my niece and her friends. We shall see.
I'll close with some more balloon images; not much to say about them, they speak for themselves.



Funny thing about this balloon, it wasn't part of the Afair. It came gliding overhead while our balloons were still all inflating. It was like the Scout Balloon, sent over from an enemy camp to spy out our numbers and position...

Ta for now!

Over the weekend I set a new personal record for Number of Festivals Attended in One Weekend. On Friday night, my parents and I went to the German Family Society's Oktoberfest, in Brimfield.

The place was very crowded, it's a popular event despite Brimfield being a small town, and you could hardly get close to the main tent where the youth dancers and the "ceremonial keg tapping" were. We had some fantastic food, after standing in line for a good ten minutes--schnitzel, wurst, sauerkraut, kartoffelsalat and beer of course--and even more fantastic desserts: apfel strudel, my favorite! (It was hard to choose among the many tortes and pastries.) It was actually a bit chilly outside, so we came inside for dessert and to listen to the dance band.

I love the little lady on the right, playing her giant harmonica or whatever it is! I even danced a couple of polkas/waltzes with my dad, who was very nice to overlook the many times I stomped on his feet or went left instead of right. I wish they held this more than once a year, because it is a nice time.

The next day, I spent outside in the sunshine at a horse show in Wadsworth, cheering on my friend Sandy (also known as Goldie's Godmother) as she rode Blaze the Appaloosa in several classes.

Here they are going over a jump in the jumping class. She did fantastically well, taking 2 blue ribbons and a couple of other places, and getting a Champion ribbon too!

One of the fun things about horse shows is always the dogs who show up to have fun, and I met a really sweet German Shepherd mix named Annie:

I also talked about good books for 6th graders with Annie's owner, who was looking for new series to read with her daughter. A librarian's work is never done! (grin)

Then on Saturday evening, after taking care of our horses, I stopped by downtown Kent to soak in the Celtic sounds of their first-ever Irish Festival, which was held to raise money in benefit for the Kent Stage, which presents live acoustic music in a restored former movie theater. Now there's some music I really like, even more than German oompah music.

I really enjoyed this group; I'd seen them before at a St. Patrick's Day event but darned if I can remember their name, and I never got around to asking. [Edited: I think they are "Celtic Clan".] Really great singers, plus fiddles and a flute and occasional drums. And the flutist also danced! The cutest dancers were the little kids from the audience who ran around on stage during their performance. There were also trained Irish dancers from a local academy, in their gorgeous sparkly colorful dresses:

It was a shame that the sun was setting as they danced, because the light was dimming and my camera was using a slower and slower shutter speed, so I got some blurs in my action shots. I am always amazed at how the heck they can do this kind of dancing without moving their arms, and to be in perfect sync with each other (sometimes not, they're still learning) and with such stamina! I get tired just watching them! (grin) The other entertainment I saw was a bagpiper, which you'd think would be Scottish but apparently there are a lot of Irish bagpipers--this particular guy is in the Cleveland Police Force's Pipes and Drums group. And finally, after some delay, the main event I had been looking forward to: the Co-Ed Kilted Relay Race! haha! Well, what a disappointment that turned out to be. First, no kilted people showed up, just 4 teams of college kids in jeans. Second, it was the world's shortest relay race, just carry a full cup of water on a tray across the stage area, a whole 30 feet or so. Big whoop. And third, just as they started the race, my darn camera froze up! So I didn't even have a chance to take some interesting photos of the 30 seconds of silliness. Sigh. But despite that it was a nicely attended concert, and I hope they do it again next year; I'd have liked to hear the other musicians I missed. I also ate some Irish food while there, but I was kind of disappointed in that too. A Kent sandwich shop had what they called "corned beef sausages" with "cabbage", but they were too spicy for me and didn't taste like corned beef at all. The cabbage was practically the same sauerkraut I had eaten at the German festival! Not being an expert on Irish food, maybe it's supposed to taste like that, but I have had better corned beef and cabbage.

And finally, on Sunday I walked in a parade! At the Mantua Potato Festival. (All of these places, by the way, for those not familiar with them, are fairly close to where I live; the horse show was the furthest drive, only 45 minutes. If I really want to do a Festival Foray someday I could cover the state, Ohio has so many of them!)

A group of us walked in front of this great '56 Ford Thunderbird, passing out candy, stickers and notepads for our friend Becky Doherty (in the back of the car) who is campaigning for county judge. We had lots of help:

from our pals Fred, Barney and Clyde (not sure which two are pictured here), who walked or rode along with us. So cute!! They are parade veterans; their owners kind of rent them out for things like this. Whenever they seemed to get a little tired, they'd ride, or we'd get out their purple ball toys for them to chase as they walked. It was quite amusing! We also handed out dog biscuits to dogs along the parade route--Becky is very animal-friendly.

I didn't get to see the whole parade, of course, because I was in it, so before it started I walked around the lineup lot taking pictures of parade units I found interesting or unique. This stagecoach was one of them. There were several "queens", not just the Potato Festival Queen but a Homecoming Court girl in a gown, and "Miss Grapette" from some wine festival. The local sand and gravel company had a (literally) huge presence in the parade:

They had lifters and loaders and even cement trucks. The local haunted house was represented, as was the local giant corn maze (I so want to take Mira to this!), and here are The Floral Hat Ladies as I've dubbed them:

I had a great time, although by the end of the parade and my walk back to McDonald's to meet a friend, I was pretty tired and my ankle was throbbing. But it was great exercise. The original plan was to pick up my friend and together visit the festival food booths, see what was going on, potatowise, but my friend had slipped and fallen on the wet floor at McD's right before I arrived, so we opted to just rest ourselves and chat instead. Plenty of time next year for Potato Festivalling. :-)

A little late, but I did intend to blog about my third and final visit to the Portage County Randolph Fair this summer. (Remember my teaser? "How I Nearly Scared Myself to Death!" That part's coming up next.) This last day I went with my niece Mira, my friends Chrissy and Rick, and their daughter Katie. It was such fun to see the fair with little kids! Although it was a chilly day with a lot of threatening clouds, we never did get any rain on us. Mira was a really good sport, considering that she had already been to another county fair only the day before (I didn't know that until we'd nearly arrived, or I would have asked her if she wanted to do something else instead.).

Mira and Katie got along really well on their first meeting, and soon were holding hands and dancing and sharing cotton candy just like sisters or cousins. So sweet! We had fun looking at all of the animals, like the silly goats


and the cow costume class, which was totally hilarious! There was a CheerCow with her football player:

And Moo-ley Cyrus showed up leading her alter ego, Hannah MOOntana:

There were many costumes just as silly or cuter. (My favorite was the Ice Cream Truck)


But the big event for the girls, besides getting some fun food, was to ride some rides, of course. Now, you may have noticed in my previous posts about the Fair that I did not mention any rides whatsoever, other than my nighttime photos of the lights. There's a reason for that. I do not 'do' rides. I get nauseous just looking at them when they're spinning and dropping and shooting around. Mira loved the bungee bouncy trampoline (my heart was in my throat every time she flew up above my head, grinning her head off) and the spinning dragons (her verdict: "it didn't go fast enough"). She also tackled the giant slide on a burlap sack, which was almost too tall and scary to deter her, but not quite. However, I'm a good auntie and I wanted to make sure Mira had a great time, so after postponing the inevitable for as long as possible--"Mira, do you want to go fishing in this game?" (she did, and they both won princess jewelry, ooh ahh!)--I had to go on a "real" ride with her, the kind you can't go on alone even if you're tall enough. I picked one with the minimal amount of ups and downs and craziness, this spinny thing:


Oh. My. Word. I honestly haven't felt that terrified in years, probably since the last time I was stupid enough to think I could handle one of these things. All it did was go around and slightly up a hill, and then do it backwards, too. Oh dear. Centrifugal force is NOT my friend. I actually had a sore arm the next day, because I held onto that safety bar so hard that I pulled a muscle! I kid you not! I didn't scream, though, and not on purpose; for some reason when I'm terrified apparently I clamp my jaws shut and go nearly comatose. I think there was probably a mental litany of "pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasebeover" going on, too. I don't know what's worse, throwing up on a ride or nearly passing out! Anyway, the kid loved it of course and she was so sweet and protective of me the whole time, because I had tried to warn her that I'm not really good with these things, and wasn't sure how I'd feel. She kept saying "Oh don't worry, this isn't that fast, you'll only get a little dizzy." Sigh. I was never a rides person, but I'm glad she is so fearless.
So, that's about it for the day's highlights. It was a ton of fun to hang out with Chrissy and Rick, as I don't get to see them that often. And of course I adore Katie. There are more photos in the Flickr photoset--which cow costume would you have voted for?

I saw a wild FOX yesterday morning! On our driveway! I happened to glance out the window and saw something trotting along by the fenceline of the small paddocks, and thought it was a stray cat. Went straight to my camera to use my zoom lens, which I often grab as a poor man's set of binoculars, and was astounded to see what at first glance I took to be a tiny coyote. I had coyotes on the brain, you see, because two nights before I had caught a glimpse of a coyote standing by the side of the road as my parents and I drove home through Kent (next door town) from an event. I might have been mistaken about that coyote; it could have been a dog. But there was no mistaking this lovely young Reynard.

He hunkered down in a storm drain depression for a minute or two, and I thought maybe he was trying to stalk the Canada geese who were flocked in the grass near him. But they weren't alarmed in any way, so if they knew he was there they weren't worried about any danger (he's probably the same size or smaller than a goose!), and he didn't appear to be doing any serious hunting. I think he must have been lost or just out for a stroll. Weird, though, in broad daylight like that. But I didn't care because it was just too amazing, a really neat moment. I do wish I had a better telephoto lens; I was about 150 yards away on my porch, shooting this, and then had to seriously crop it to enlarge it. But I was happy to get any recognizable image at all. You know me and my dreams of being a wildlife photographer...

Hoo boy. Just got back from seeing the sci-fi action flick "District 9." Whew! My inner sf geek was thinking "kewl concept!" while my regular moviegoing self was totally disgusted. I need to watch something light and fluffy now to scrub my eyes clean and settle my stomach. It was an okay movie, but 1. the constant shaky cam had me feeling nauseous, 2. the gore had me cringing (must we have so many bloodsplatters on camera lenses? MUST WE??), and 3. the nearly nonstop battle scenes/explosions/carnage in the second half really began to feel like videogame overkill. I did not expect a lot of what transpired, plotwise; this is one instance where the trailer really does not spoil much at all for you. A friend watching with us thought the film was predictable; I only thought that about a couple of points, in general it kept me on the edge of my seat (when I wasn't covering my eyes). I thought it was supposed to be a take on human/alien interaction and interspecies communication and stuff like that, and it was, but it was much more black and white than I'd expected, and it was WAY more violent. AMAZING special effects, of course (WETA did them, the Lord of the Rings masters), the aliens were so realistic. And the lead actor, someone I'd never heard of (the film was shot in South Africa and used little-known SA actors), was really good, for what he had to do. Overall I'd say it's a 4 out of 5 but it's hard for me to overlook the violence and gore. I definitely expect this to show up at a future CWRU Sci Fi Movie Marathon. Some audience participation would have helped me through it better! (For those who don't know Marathon, audience members crack wise and yell funny quips at the screen during cheesy movies, like Mystery Science Theater 3000. This isn't a poor quality film like those, but a little levity would have helped me, as it is VERY DARK in tone.) Just a forewarning if you are thinking of seeing it.

The second day I spent at our county fair dawned gray and rainy, unfortunately. But that didn't stop me from checking out the draft horse classes( read more )
That was the Big and Heavy portion of the day (unless you count what I ate in the course of my visit: a corn dog--only the second one in my life, and, um, now I remember why I don't eat them, ick--, plenty of fries, chopped steak sandwich, and I even tried a rabbit sandwich! :-( I didn't get very far with it because it made me nauseous thinking of the poor bunny. But it tasted like chicken anyway.). I happened upon a Costume Class for small animals, which was nearly too cute for words!( read more )

I also walked around the various barns, visiting adorable rabbits and unusual birds and very relaxed pigs and cute alpacas (photos of which are in the Flickr photo set), and then visited the 4-H horse barns, where many of "my" horses were stabled all week. (It made for a quick job for me at home, only feeding 15 instead of 20 every day.) The 4-H kids decorate their barns according to a theme, and it was fun checking those out--several had an online theme, like "Fairbook: it keeps us connected" rather than Facebook.

This is Cody in his stall, which is decorated with some of the horse health posters made by his rider and other kids. Poor Cody really didn't like the small stall, and later in the evening I happened to be there when there was a flurry of activity around his stall. Turns out he had gotten himself "cast," stuck, really, when he lay down and tried to roll over and found his legs stuck in the wrong position for getting himself back to his feet. (He's done it at our barn too.) Poor guy, it was awful to watch him thrashing around, and a guy had to jump in there with him and put a rope around one leg, pulling it into the right position for the horse or trying to get him to roll back over on his own. They can really panic if it goes on too long, or give up and stop trying, which he seemed to do for awhile, only using his front legs. But they got him up and he's fine. Always a traumatic event for everyone.

And now for the Small and Speedy part of the program! ( read more )

All in all it was a great day at the fair. One more Fair blog entry to go (when I get all of the photos uploaded): Aunt Christina at the Fair, or How I Nearly Scared Myself To Death.

This is Fair Week here in Portage County, and for the first time ever (having lived here over 20 years now--ack!!) I took the whole week off and went several times to the fair. It's also called the Randolph Fair, because the fairgrounds are in lovely Randolph Ohio (very small rural community). I haven't been to very many fairs, not since I was a kid anyway, and this has been a lot of fun. The first day I went to see one of "my" horses, one of the boarders that I feed in our barn, compete in Driving Classes. Actually he doesn't currently stay with us, but he has been here a few times, and his driver has another horse with us right now. So this is Apatchee, being driven by Lisa. She is an excellent horsewoman, and of the six classes that day I believe she won first place in at least 4 of them, and probably placed in the others. Way to go Lisa! I had seen horses pulling carts before, of course, but it was an education for me to see the other things they had them do. One class is called "Gambler's Choice," and it's an obstacle course where the driver gets to choose which obstacles and in which order to complete them. They're each worth points, and the more times they do them the higher the points they earn. But they have a time limit, and if they don't do it right they don't get any points, so they need to know their horse's best abilities and be quick and clever about choosing. It was really interesting.

Here Apatchee is being backed into a space between poles. This was really tricky for some teams, but not our Lisa.

And here Lisa takes Apatchee over the "bridge" with no problems. Then there was "Double Jeopardy," in which two competitors take turns driving the same horse through the course, and you have to go through all of the obstacles, can't skip any. The fun one is stopping at the mailbox to "pick up the mail"! And in another, "Ride and Drive," after driving around for certain laps, they stop and unhitch their horse, saddle him, change their own outfit and mount up to ride the horse around. Again with a time limit, I believe. Complicated stuff!

I spent 2 hours watching the horse driving, then went home to feed our nags, I mean horses :-) and went back to the fair (good thing I bought a "season pass" for the week) to meet my friend

hklbry  for the Demolition Derby! Woo hoo! I had never seen one in person before, and was thinking I might get bored after a while, or find it too loud and lowbrow. Well, lemme tell ya, it was a hoot! I had no idea it would be so darned entertaining. The cars looked like matchbox cars scooting around, and it was fascinating to see how they continued to drive as they got more and more smashed up. There were wheels falling off, fenders falling off, occasional flames shooting up from exhaust pipes--

but they have a great safety team and they stop the action whenever there's a problem like fire, or a gas leak. There are firefighters right there. Several times drivers had to hop out of their cars for safety issues. However, something I found rather disturbing was that when a car was finally "out"--could not be restarted within the minute time limit, and the driver had pulled down his tiny pink flag that signaled he was done--the driver still had to stay in the car for the rest of the match! Those flags were to indicate "do not hit me, I am dead" but a lot of times those cars got hit anyway by cars whose drivers either couldn't steer or couldn't stop or I don't know what. Gotta be a little scary for the "out" drivers, as well as frustrating. It was just crazy, seeing these guys go at each other. Sometimes they drove in circles, not able to steer properly. They did a lot of their driving backwards, which I didn't expect. There was a tractor bout first, but it was pretty boring; three small tractors just pushed each other around in the mud til they got so mucked up that their gears no longer worked. Yawn. Then the "mini" cars came out, which I thought was an odd name since they clearly weren't Mini Coopers or hatchbacks. But the very last group, after the Trucks, were the Large Cars--hoo boy! NOW I knew what Mini meant, because these were the big ol' gas guzzlers, with pre-smashed trunks for better battering rams, and holes cut out of their hoods so that if the hood flew up they could still see. They were also the LOUDEST. Their drivers seemed to be the most vicious; they really went after each other. I liked the minis best. They were more like movie stunt cars; the big guys were tanks, and there wasn't as much room for fancy maneuvers. The other fun aspect was the decoration and the names of the cars. They had goofy paintjobs and names of girlfriends or sponsors or "HIT HARD OR GO HOME" slogans on them. Some even lit up with plastic neon lights. Best Target: the purple Barneymobile.

Doesn't it look like it will stop at any moment? Check out the stuffed barneys! And the "donut" tire. It was truly amazing how long some of these cars (and drivers!) lasted, when they were seemingly just a rolling ball of compacted metal. One heat lasted a tremendously long time because the final two cars who could move were so dangnabbit persistent; they went around and around, and just when you thought one car took a hit from which it couldn't recover, oh no, it would start up and roll slowly over to bash in the other guy some more. A couple of times a car went up several feet in the air on impact! Or got stuck on the concrete barrier that fenced the track.

This guy sat here for a long time, spinning his wheel, a foot off the ground, trying to get unstuck. It was quite comical. Smoke billowed and coolant sprayed forth, yet they still kept coming... It was like a cartoon come to life. Anyway, I could go on but ya kinda had to be there. Good oldfashioned redneck fun! And this has completed my "Derby Trifecta" for the summer: I went to three new Derbies that I'd never witnessed before, Soap Box, Roller Derby and Demolition. Yee-ha! Now if I can get down to the Kentucky Derby some year, that would be a dream come true. Might have to settle for the Ohio Derby horse race this fall.

At the end of Demo Derby we walked around the midway, enjoying the lights on the rides and eating some ice cream for dessert.

Cute motorcycle ride for kids, where the bikes do "wheelies".


My "Fair Food Tally" for the day: I had a balanced meal of steak, potatoes and vegetables! No really! I had Steak on a Stick (surprisingly NOT breaded, a big kebab), Ribbon Fries

(this photo is from the Kent Heritage Festival, where they called them Butterfly Fries--only this time we got one loaded with sour cream, bacon and cheese), and Fried Veggies (big bucket o'fried zucchini, cauliflower, onions, peppers, etc). Haha! Burp! Plus an elephant ear, naturally.

Stay tuned for "Big and Heavy vs Small and Speedy" on Day Two.

 

So this is a little late, but better late than never. I wanted to blog about my ride in the MS150 Pedal to the Point on August 15th. I raised, with the addition of a check I just received (thank you Sue R!), $1,235 for multiple sclerosis research. I am very proud of that; it is my highest ever total in donations in the four years since I started riding with Patti's Paladins. (The photo above is me next to Patti Substelny, our team Champion and my friend. She's our number one cheerleader and a fantastic cook!) Due to my six-week recovery from a sprained/bruised ankle this summer, I didn't get in very much riding training, so I was really out of shape for the ride. Therefore I kept it short and sweet to avoid stressing myself out, and rode only the first leg of the ride, for a total of 33.33 miles.

The day began at 6am as they always do, early enough for our team to gather and pick up shirts or our nifty new team rainjackets from our team captains, Rick and Rebecca, and to take our team photo. By 7am we were off!


The view from within the mass of bikers waiting at the start. The bright yellow jersey on the right is Chad, one of our team members, wearing our Paladins "knight on a tricycle" logo. My blue jersey has this on the back too.

We had perfect weather, sunny and I think it went up to 85 that day so a little hot but not too bad. As usual, because I didn't have a ride buddy, I rode the whole thing pretty much by myself. My team members are way faster than me; there's a reason I have a turtle mascot as my bike bell! But I had a secret weapon this time to stave off boredom: I wore one earpiece and listened to an audiobook on Playaway (preloaded digital MP3 player, available at a library near you :-) Yes, I admit it, I cheated a little--I am just not good at solitary long distance riding, my brain drives me crazy. Sometimes on these rides I can hook up with someone from somewhere who rides at my speed, and we have a little conversation before they move on to pass me, but frankly, even if I'd had a ride partner, I couldn't talk much at all because I was conserving my energy and would have only huffed and puffed more if I tried to talk. But with a book I could keep my mind occupied just enough to be less aware of my aches and pains and still be plenty focused on the roads and my surroundings. (I know better than to cut off my sense of hearing while riding.) It's the same thing I do in the barn when I feed the horses, if there's no good NPR show on at the time. So I cruised along quite nicely and my ankle didn't give me any trouble. (My quadriceps did, but that's another story :-) Seen along the way:


A luxury vehicle: a tandem bike with seatbacks!



I thought these helmet covers were very funny and clever. I saw several of them, so I assume that the Cleveland Clinic sponsors a team in the ride. They kind of gave me the creeps, too, thinking about an exposed brain...ewww...

I met up with my sister-in-law Mel at the lunch stop--


here is the army of volunteers making sandwiches nonstop for the over 1,000 riders. They probably are there every year, but this is the first time I've noticed them! They make a variety of sandwiches and are very much appreciated.
After lunch, Mel and I said goodbye to team members continuing on the ride, and hopped a bus back to the start. Then, home to a shower and a long nap. I actually slept for four or five hours that afternoon, I really was bushed just from that (relatively) short ride. This was the shortest I've ever ridden on the MS150 and I still feel a little guilty about not riding more, even though I know I would have regretted the pain and recovery later. But I gave it my best effort and figured there was no sense in killing myself when I wasn't well prepared for it.

Our team's total right now is over $32,000, which is fantastically awesome! At one point we were the third-highest team in fundraising, I'm not sure where we stand now. We have a team dinner coming up in October at Patti's house, where we'll swap stories and pictures and plan for next year's ride. And I intend to keep doing it, barring any injuries. I want to extend a really heartfelt THANK YOU to all of my friends and acquaintances who donated money on my behalf for this cause; and to my coworkers and barn visitors who kept buying candy bars from me all summer long! You really helped me make a difference.