The picture above was chosen for one very good reason: I don't really have too many other pictures to choose from. Hopefully, with my wife's help, I'll finally get around to downloading all the pictures that have remained trapped on my digital camera for the past few months, and I'll have something more recent to put in here. Until then, well, you can appreciate a little art. At least it goes with the theme of the blog!

Yesterday, Ida and I joined Mom & Dave at the Arts Festival here in town. We first participated in the Golden Fork competition, which is basically where you taste food from places from all over town and vote for the one you liked the best. I found it pretty funny that most of the 'restaurants' in attendance weren't really places you could go hang out at. Seriously, there was a golf course booth, a country club booth, and even American State Bank! Ironically, though, I liked the country club's offering the best (Chicken Cordon Bleu, yummy), although I was out-voted 2-1 by Mom & Ida, who I believe both went for Stella's. Good restaurant, I'll admit, but I still liked the CCB better.

On a site note, there was another restaurant that had a sign I should have noticed. It said "Welcome to New Orleans". Yep, I missed that, and thus didn't realize that I was choosing the most spicy dish available at the competition. Woooo! Feel the burn!

Afterwards, we headed into the Arts Festival and walked around. It was interesting that Ida & I actually knew two of the people running booths at the Festival. One works with me at the hospital, and one was my teacher in college. Picture this: a computer programming teacher known for her designer artwork. You've gotta love it. We had a good time walking around and admiring the art, then headed out. We did make one more stop, checking out the starving artists at the local Holiday Inn, but opted not to buy any paintings there. By then, I was pretty tired, considering that I had worked the graveyard shift the night before. Suffice to say, I slept pretty good in the late afternoon/evening hours.

And now, of course, here I sit, working another graveyard shift. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that this might change in the future, but all I can say right now is that I'm in a bidding war... but no bids have been cast yet. Confusing? Sorry, that's all I've got.

Not much else going on here in my little world. Ida's doing good, the dog's doing good (although she's a hyper little devil), and the house is still standing, despite all the tornado warnings we've had recently. I'm definitely hoping this trend continues. See ya'll around.

Peace,
Andy "Ace/Speed" Rasa

"The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it." - Louis I Kahn