photos available!!! Relay for Life, Stefapalooza!
thursday night i caught the train home. mom made one of my favorite dinners (maple sausages with fried potatoes and peppers). friday i had lunch with g&g, met with an investment planner and sat outside and read all afternoon. that night mom and i went to the augustana track to walk in the relay for life with my g&g. my grandpa had cancer just before i came along. it was a cool experience – there were luminaries for each survivor and for others as remembrances.
afterwards, mom and dad and i watched the olympic opening cermonies. i almost had to hit mute once my (least) favorite singer started up, but i liked the big map of the world thing. i have to take issue though with the design of the olympic cauldron, which looks like it should’ve been designed for the amsterdam games. it looks like a 100 foot tall joint, i kid you not.
saturday mom and i ran some errands then she and dad drove me to stefapalooza in morris. stef’s birthday party was…awesome.
her parents have a big swath of land, all meticulously mown. there a nice area where the tent city sprung up, a swingset and, since no country home would be complete without it, a big gas tank. jon had never seen a gas tank in someone’s yard. i guess this is normal to me?
oh the food. was. endless. pork chops ON A STICK (why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?), brats, hot dogs, hamburgers, lambburgers, homemade guacamole, 3 kegs, bourbon slush, a mini trailer of assorted drinks, grilled corn, sgmt’s pasta salad, baked beans, caprese, a rice casserole, 10 different desserts and birthday cake with ice cream. INSANE. andrew and mike had their own tent set up with huge speakers for their turntables. they spun a great set that must’ve gone on for like 3 hours. there were hay bales to sit on, a roaring bonfire, volleyball, football, frisbee, softball, beanbag toss and horseshoes. we did a crazy dance around the bonfire and then around midnight or something like that (i lost all concept of time) trevor got lynn and i to help him make baked apples.
here is how trevor makes a baked apple:
- grab assistants who are relatively sober and can use a knife and follow simple instructions (ok, i screwed up a few times but only because i was getting paper towels when trevor explained the part about the brown sugar)
- cut the core out of a green apple, leaving an apple cup
- squash a big marshmallow into the apple cup
- squash a tablespoon of butter on top of the marshamallow
- sprinkle a lot of cinnamon onto the butter
- press baking raisins (the difference is, they’re juicier) into the butter
- smother the raisins with brown sugar
- rub a tablespoon of butter all over the skin of the apple
- wrap the apple up in aluminum foil
- repeat something like 20 times
- put the apple packages into the embers of a huge bonfire
- after 10 minutes or so, stumble about in a drunken haze attempting to spear the apples on the end of a long hotdog-roasting fork.
- nearly fall into the fire several times, but manage to rescue all apples
- burn self while trying to open an apple
- enjoy!
the temperature dropped very quickly and i was glad that eric and i had my big air mattress so we would be off of the cold ground in his huge canvas tent, which looked like it belonged on the front lines of a war on on an archaeological dig. there was a big sing-along around the fire and caps using the beanbag toss game. eventually i couldn’t force myself awake any longer and went to brave the cold of the tent which was far far away from the fire.
it was a long cold night but the morning was greeted with a huge bowl of biscuits and gravy that stef’s dad made. it was so good. SO GOOD. after breakfast we sort of laid around and listened to music. sadly, the john deere tractor pi�ata had been forgotton during the previous night’s insanity and no one felt like trying to whack the shit out of a papier m�ch� tractor after only a few hours of sleep on the cold hard ground.
the drive home was uneventful and later last night eric brought over some thai food and taught me how to play cribbage. i have more appreciation for proper shelter and a soft bed.
sadly the office is freezing as usual and my allergies have been pretty bad so i’m all doped on benadryl (don’t even think of offering me some claritin or whatever ‘miracle’ cure you people think you have that supposedly won’t make me drowsy. i’ve tried many things. they ALL make me drowsy and none of them do a better job on my allergies than plain old benadryl.) and barely functioning as a non-vegetable.
pics of stefapalooza coming soon are here.