Human Lottery

Bad Galoot: What's worse than standing in the express lane because someone decided to play all there lottery tickets during the busiest time of the day?

Worse Galoot: Standing in the express lane behind the lottery ticket buying person while she talks about how this happens every time she thinks the store isn't busy.

Worst Galoot: When you buy lottery tickets in an express lane, it ceases to be an express lane.

La"Gar" Day Weekend

"Why don't you tell me about your weekend while we ride around on my hog?"

This lovely weekend is drawing to a close and I'm pretty certain we've lived it as fully as our bodies would allow:

SATURDAY started out with a bit of a sleep-in. I woke up on the couch. PGirl stayed up late on BlogTV, co-hosting with her brother. I woke up from time to time, wondering who she was talking to. It was all explained in due time. We ate a late breakfast. I mowed the lawn. My fantasy football draft was in the early afternoon. By 4:30 it was over. Impulsively, we decided to paint our bedroom. PGirl got the paint, and I moved some furniture out of the room. We painted until midnight-ish. I fell asleep on the couch again, this time with my son sitting on me.

SUNDAY saw us up earlier. After whipping together an egg and turkey sausage casserole and throwing it in the oven, I took the boy and the dog to the local grocery and picked up some newspapers and bagels. We cleaned up a bit in the house, did some laundry and headed out for some groceries and a back-to-school outfit for each of the kiddoes. Dinner was had at Wendy's (ice-cream floats abounded). We dropped the groceries off back home, turned around and headed out for Midway Park. This is a lot like small amusement parks I used to go to when I was a kid, and a lot of the visitors looked like they hadn't changed much since the late seventies. Several of the rides were free between 7 and 9pm. This extension of goodwill by the operators brought a load of folks out of the woodwork. It looked like a fleet of Greyhound busses had dropped their passengers off for some Appalachian Gothic company picnic. There was a lot of secondhand smoke, and more than a few wheelchaired folks with withered legs, criss-crossed to hold cigarette packs and plastic bottles of soda. As dusk approached, we headed to my father-in-law's place by the lake for fireworks, jello-shots, beer and toasted marshmallows.

MONDAY brought along me awakening in my bed. I made buckwheat pancakes with maple bacon and cleaned up the kitchen afterward. By early afternoon, I'd done a bit of laundry and caught the end of "Mask". I'd seen this movie as a young teen and had read the movie adaptation. What had once seemed like a pretty good, coming-of-age movie now shone in a different light. I don't know how much of it was based on Rocky Dennis' real life, but the fact that the only girl in the movie who could love him was blind came off almost as darkly humorous as some of "Tropic Thunder"'s more gratutitous bits of comedy. We took a mid-afternoon bike ride to Bergman Park, where I found a pretty serviceable trail through the woods. I soon wished my knobby tires were still on the bike, but I managed to find my way back to the family without going over the handlebars. We came home, grilled and are about to embark on an excursion into "Bath Night". Wish us luck.