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F

riday, I went to the New York State Fair with Mary, Terry, Randy, and Chris. It's becoming an annual event. Randy comes for a visit (he lives in Houston with his wife and kids) over Labor Day Weekend and we all go to the fair. I love going to the fair with those guys, especially Terry, because he gets all excited like a little kid. He has a checklist of things that he needs to do. We were thinking that we should make State Fair T-shirts with a checklist on them, and then we could change some of the items around every year, and charge vendors to make visiting their booths part of the checklist. I'm just putting this down here so no one steals my idea.

Anyway, the checklist. This year's checklist involved seeing a cow pee, getting a massage, seeing the butter sculpture, buying a 25-cent glass of milk, seeing a sheep's balls (inside joke), buying a $5 jacket, and finding the Ku Klux Lamb. I have to explain that last one. People who show lambs often put these canvas coats and hoods on the lambs after they've been groomed to prevent them from getting dirty. And darned if it doesn't like like a KKK hood. So you can check out the pictures Terry posted to see how many items we crossed off the checklist.

All week here it has been unseasonably cool (like in the 70s during the day), which I totally dig. So on fair day, I wore a T-shirt and jean capris, figuring I'd be fine. And oh my God, was it hot. It was like 87 degrees and super humid plus there were like a million people there and it was awful. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and sweaty and gross and just wanted to get home. I had parked my car at Mary's house, and on the ride home, I was so tired that I felt like I was going to fall asleep at the wheel. It was like 3 PM. I finally got home and let the dog out (literally -- that's not a euphemism) and then collapsed into bed with the fan blowing right on me. I woke up all confused at about 6:30 and I was still really tired but now I also had a splitting headache and felt like I was going to throw up. Jim was home by then so he brought me some aspirin and water and I rested until about 8 PM. I felt bad because I had planned on going to Terry's show that night to hang out with them some more, but I just felt like crap. Later, I found out that they all felt pretty sick too. Randy even had chills. But they all still went to the show, so I am clearly a bigger baby than them. Anyway, I think I had either heat exhaustion or heat stroke. It totally sucked.

Saturday, I didn't do much of anything. I got some lingering freelance work done and tried to teach Baxter the "Speak" command. Exciting, I know.

Sunday, Mary and Terry had a picnic for all of their friends, and you can see photos here. It was a lot of fun. Now that everyone is all married and some of them have kids, we don't get together as much, so it's extra nice when we can all gather. Some people played badminton for a while, at least until Fritz (Mary's dog) got a hold of the shuttlecock (hee!) and chewed it up. Not that I blame Fritz. It was quite a challenge for him to grab it out of the air and then it was very exciting when everyone yelled and chased him around. So then we switched to volleyball. I played for a short time, but we kept hitting the ball over the fence and then play would have to stop while someone retrieved it and I got sick of standing around waiting. So someone else took my place and then they played for quite some time while the rest of us sat on the sidelines and watched and laughed when people fell down and gabbed and ate good food. Then I had to show Randy how to upload something to the supergush website and it took so long that by the time we came back to the party, everyone was gone! So Jim and I packed up our things and went home.

Today, Jim went fishing with his brother and he had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6 AM. And when I say ungodly, I think that means that even God himself (or herself) is still sleeping at that hour and if the alarm went off, God would hit the snooze. So then he came home and we went over to Jim's parents and ate food and played Hearts and I won a game! That was exciting because I never win, hardly. And then we came home and I did my Real World recap and then we watched Black Hawk Down which was pretty good but kind of depressing, which was about what I expected.

This week is my last week of "vacation" until school starts up again. I put that word in quotes because while I haven't been teaching, I have been writing recaps and other articles. Wednesday, I'm going to visit Molly at her new house in Buffalo, and staying overnight and then Thursday on my way back home, I'm stopping off at my aunt's house for a family picnic. I have another family wedding on Saturday, so my aunt is having a picnic on Thursday night while everyone is in town for the wedding. And as luck would have it, I'll be passing through at just the right time! And then Saturday is the wedding and then Monday I have my pre-semester meeting and then Wednesday, classes start! And summer is over.

I had a list of fifteen things that I wanted to do in my three week break. I actually did five of them. Does that make me a failure?