So, the internal fear of going to the reunion and not remembering a single soul was completely unfounded.  Tonight we had a little get-together at a local park, and it was delightful.  It was crazy to see people who I haven’t laid eyes on in two decades.  Everybody looked great, as they should, and it was fun discovering memories that have been forgotten for so long.  Class of ‘88 rocks!

We gathered for a group photo on  the float that we’ll be riding tomorrow in the hot, hot, hot weather.  I’ve already warned people that’ll I’ll be complaining loudly when I start to sweat like a pig.  Nobody seemed to be surprised.  Huh.

Lloyd is under strict instructions to whistle and yell ‘Hubba hubba’ as the float passes by. 

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We made it!  Thirteen hours door-to-door.  I will never. do. that. again.  There is a reason that we have jobs - so we can afford a hotel room and take two days.    It wasn’t all bad - Lloyd played songs on his iPhone, we read books, ate a ton of junk from the cooler, and best of all - we’re at my parents’ house!We took the scenic route from I-70 over to Eckert, where my folks live.  It goes over Grand Mesa, and it cracks me up how this crazy highway (Highway 65, I believe) hugs the side of the mountain….. with NO RAILING.    I guess if you know about this road you know that you have to pay attention.   

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We’re leaving for a few days to attend my *sigh* twenty-year high school reunion.   The house is clean enough that we could die without shame, the stuff is almost packed up, and I’ve been working on attending to the cats’ needs.  Leaving cats when you go out of town is so easy -  just a pile of food and some clean litter.  Of course, being paranoid me, I’ve set up extra litter boxes to ensure they don’t devalue the floors.

Regarding water, I’ve got some of those plastic waterers for Pfennig, but Cricket always gets a nasty face infection when she drinks from those.  Tonight I rigged up an all-glass model for her.  I’m sure it will sell millions!

That’s right - a board with a hole cut out of it. The mat is there to catch all the water I spilled when testing it out. I’ll be sure it’s full before we leave. (The bottle, not the mat.)

Everybody pray for us!  We’re going to try driving the whole way in one shot.  I haven’t done that since college.

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Summer’s over.

For those of you unfamiliar with my sorrow, Brad’s departure means that the fun of summer is over and the gut-wrenching panic of school starting again sets in.  I told Brad I wouldn’t make a movie this year, but you can see last year’s here.  Luckily, I have my 20th high school reunion coming up this weekend to keep my mind off of schools stuff for a little longer.  More on that tomorrow.

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The Pesters and the Gebhardts came over for dinner… or to be specific - for an experiment.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had some other food around (the fixin’s for BLT’s, but some sad, unripe tomatoes diminished their glory), but the real reason to have some guinea pigs guests around is to have them try homemade funnel cakes!

So many things went wrong during this experiment.  First, I made up a batch from Alton Brown, which required a cup of eggs.  Seriously, a cup of eggs and a cup of flour. After mixing it up I went looking for other, more reasonable recipes that had less than a cup of eggs.  Also, I read several reviews of Alton’s that said, “Way too eggy’.  I dumped that batter and made one up from the Amish.  You can’t beat an Amish recipe.

It was pretty bland so I added more sugar and some vanilla. For pouring the first few I tried to use an actual funnel, but the opening was too narrow and the final result looked more like a nest of sickly earthworms rather than a robust county-fair-style funnel cake.  In the end, just pouring it out from a drinking glass worked the best.

I was particularily delighted with the little test glob of batter to see if the oil was hot enough. He’s adorable, don’t you think?

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On Saturday I fulfilled my duties as a Seward County Delegate to the Nebraska State Republican Convention. So if anything goes wrong in the world in the next 4 years you can pretty much blame me. I road to the convention with Mark Kolterman. He’s the new chairman of the Seward County Republican Party, and he told me that the day after the county convention he received phone calls from the Omaha World Harold and the Nebraska Republican Party chairman asking if it was true that Ron Paul supporters had taken over the Seward County convention. He assured them that that had not happened, but that two of the four Seward county delegates were Ron Paul supporters. Mark’s thoughts on the Ron Paul supporters were echoed multiple times at the state convention: We will need everyone we can get to elect John McCain in November. In a move that I think surprised all of the Ron Paul supporters in attendance, one of the first orders of business was to seat those delegates who had been elected in “irregular” county conventions. These delegates were almost entirely Ron Paul supporters and it was an impressive display of inclusiveness.

All in all there were 54 Ron Paul supporters out of about 340 total delegates. We were only loosely organized; about two weeks prior to the convention we formed a Nebraska chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus. We had buttons to identify each other and a handful of candidates that we wanted to send to the National Convention. It was fun. “Back room” deals were made with other blocks of voters to send delegates to the national convention. We are sending one of the nine congressional district delegates (this was unexpected as it was quite unlikely) and a few at large delegates and alternates. In fact, all of our delegates were elected. We should have had more ready to send, but we were all new at this.

We were not at all ready to offer resolutions or changes to the state party platform, and the amendments that were offered were soundly defeated (although on one a division of the house was called for. That was exciting). One of the amendments what was offered by the delegation from one of Nebraska’s Western counties we an eleven point amendment. Some of them were poorly worded and no one was in the mood to debate them all separately, so, although I heard several (non-liberty caucus) people say they agreed with most of the amendment, it went down in flames.

There were tons of speeches from all of our (many) Nebraska Republicans in office and one very vicious speech by the Chairman of the National Republican Party. The speeches were very similar and were along the lines of, “We’ve been acting like democrats, we have to get back to our roots, we’ll all have to work hard to elect John McCain, because his Republican ideas are the only way to protect our great country.” But it took several hours the way they said it. Interestingly, Nebraska (republican) senator Chuck Hagel was a Persona non grata at the convention. He was not mentioned once and was often referenced in mysterious terms: “She was working in his office and it was suggested that she lay low for awhile, so she’s not at the convention.”

There were lots of other things that I found interesting, but this post is already too long.

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The Gebhardts are in town!  They rolled into Seward around 6, and we had some snacks and drinks to welcome our Utah friends.  For some reason, everyone was gathered on one side of the table like they were on t.v.  It was weird enough to take a picture.  From left to right: Tim, Beth, Brad, Lloyd, Charles, Deborah and Harold.  The little girls (Tara, Macy and Bethany) were upstairs trying to pull Pfennig out from under the bed, so they’re not in this episode.

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