uh huh. interesting…

what did i do? oh, thanks for asking. well, i went to the demolition derby!

it was crazy fun. in fact, it was way more fun than it should have been.

the initial crash was disconcerting, but after that, it was just hysterical.
and inspiring to all the little girl derby fans in the crowd (the girl sitting in front of me was super into it):

a young woman came from behind and won the derby! yay!

the demolition derby was actually part of the cummington fair. so, tom, me and some friends spent the evening having a grand ol’ time wandering around before and after the derby.

the fair was pretty nice, and there was lots to be seen. totally worth an evening out. (sorry, jeffy and eileen, apparently we took you to completely the wrong fair! next time we’ll time it a week sooner and go to this one instead.)

but there was something slightly…off…about the whole thing. there were lots of ride and game knock-offs. for example, instead of whack-a-mole, there was:

instead of the scrambler, there was:

and instead of skee ball, there was:

the examples were everywhere!

another thing that was everywhere - super tasty carnival food.
among many other things, bill partook of jack’s buns:

snicker, snicker

as it turns out, you only need some cars being crushed, a cool summer evening, good friends and fried dough to have a fabulous friday night. who knew?

the picture says it all. we went with friends tonight to see suzanne vega at the iron horse.

what more can i say?

oh yeah:

dear suzanne vega,
you are awesome.
sincerely,
me

tonight was an important night:

the pioneer valley’s western mass destruction took on the garden state roller girls. how could we not go?

the girls were awesome:

funny, athletic, tough, competitive:

it ended up being a very close game. the last few minutes were gripping! and even though i was wearing this shirt:

i was cheering just as loud as everyone else when the western mass team won the bout.

the boys played too. our local dirty dozen took on the new york shock exchange:

they were great fun to watch, too. though, oddly, the guys seemed to be less hard-hitting, and less awesome on their skates than the girls. oh, and ny kicked the western ma team’s butts.

roller derby is a really fun sport. we are pretty sure tom should be a roller derby ref. we just have to figure out what his name will be. “bunson honeyspew”? “mr. whiskers”? “atom tom”? add your suggestions in the comments!

i just opened iphoto and realized that there is a bunch of stuff i never got around to posting. here is some of it:

jon and laurie came to visit. among other things, we threw a picnic (sadly, no pics), picked strawberries:

(i have a picture of laurie from many, many years ago picking strawberries, that i seem to remember looks just like this one. i should dig it out.)

went to the bookmill:

and rested:

a week or so later, we took a co-worker’s extra tickets to see james taylor off her hands. or, at least, we think we saw james taylor…from our seats it could very well have just been a big-screen broadcast of a recorded james taylor concert:

either way, we found out just how awesome it is to hang out at tanglewood.

***we will now take a moment for a doggie intermission***

***feel free to get some snacks before the next portion of the catching-up begins***

ok, what else does iphoto say we have done?

we visited with good friends, and their amazing twin girls, who were staying in a nearby town. (again, sadly, no pics.)

tom’s parents came for a visit. among other things, we took a boat ride on the Connecticut river:

and went to a bunch of flea markets. we came home with many goodies including, a salt grinder that looks like a bunny, though i don’t think that’s intentional:

and two display heads:

don’t the heads look like they would fit perfectly into a dr. who episode?

finally, these amazing flowers are growing in our garden:


we rescued these from the community garden compost pile at the end of last season. at the time, they were only a root and stem and we weren’t sure if they were even going to grow, let alone what they would look like. they seem to be pretty happy to be in our plot now.

phew! that was a lot of stuff. thanks for hanging in there. now i think i am back up to date!