Birthday Home Improvement...

Celebrated my beloved's 35th b-day this weekend by tearing the house apart for some long-pending improvements (ie: stuff we've been dragging our feet on).

Alex's folks came down on Saturday and aided in painting our bedroom and installing a new set of blinds for the living/dining rooms. I spent most of my time being Mr. Mom - looking after Greer while controled chaos erupted in various sectors of the house. While it ended up taking a little longer that expected, the end result was well worth the effort. We celebrated with a pizza and a quick collapse into anything soft we could sit in.

Not taking much of a breather, Sunday brought in my folks for brunch - followed by a recess to a farm out on Sauvie Island, where Greer was able to check out the livestock and hitch a ride with Uncle Chris on a tractor-drawn train that hauled kids around.

With Greer sufficiently tired, we ambled home for a celebratory BBQ and some family downtime - that included screening 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and 'Tarantula' (two films I found for Alex's b-day).

All in all...the grandparents got some quality Greer time - and Alex saw a couple birthday wishes fulfilled.....now we just have to finish cleaning up!

Back in blog...

After a month offline, I'm hoping to have fixed what was wrong with my blog. I could have done it sooner, but it's not been a major concern as of late. That...and Hurricane Katrina pretty much stole my thunder...

Rita's next up....and Texas is evacuating. God sure does hate Republicans.

Animal House Part III - Inconvenience at Bumbershoot

Oy...that was a weekend!

Although I haven't mentioned in recently, I found myself returning (yet again) to the Animal House Celebration over Labor Day weekend. As he did last year, my pal Mark came along for the ride, spending the evening prior over at the casa - in preperation for the event. Since the contests were being held during the afternoon/evening toga party, we were able to start out from Portland at a reasonable hour - partying and listening to great tunes on the way to Cottage Grove.

Upon arrival for the 1pm parade, we found the usual assortment of floats and such - with the latest addition being a complete and beautiful replica of the Deathmobile - which I got numerous shots with.

Ended up riding on the Bunny float with a pair of lovely Playboy bunnies - bringing up the rear. The best seat in the house - from my standpoint. Let the mayor be Grand Marshal - I get the Bunnies!

The toga party saw about 1.100 people - probably another break-even year - if anything. Got most of my beer covered and saw plenty of familiar faces - including a family whose son had won the toga contest last year (a camo toga) who is now being sent to Afghanistan. His folks got a picture - and sent him my best wishes. Also met a lady who came all the way out from Vermot to be at the event.....she got a photo as well. Heh.

All in all - a good time....and Mark and I had brunch at the Dexter Lake Club - which appears to have been purchased by a gaggle of gay men from around the U.S. - each of them living in a huge mobile home parked strangely outside of the Club. Weird how things go....

The screening up in Seattle was a kick as well. After driving up to Olympia, Alex and I buzzed up to Bumbershoot (and it's $28 entry fee) to catch the film I worked on last month. As it turned out, 'Inconvenience' looked the most professional of the bunch, and my performance was funny enough. I even managed to help decide the next year's film contest topic....this year it was "are you kidding me?" - and my suggestion for 2006 (which they chose) was "is this legal". So....it remains to be seen whether I'll come back to see what happened...who knows.

500 some odd miles later.....it was a helluva weekend.