6 September 2011

I started a new job this week. It's the first time in three years that I've had a new job and that feels like a long time. My first week went really well, and I'm confident of my ability to succeed in this new job. So that's all happy. It also promises to have less overtime in September, so I'm looking forward to a more relaxed month than I would have had at my old job.

This weekend we went to two different festivals. Arts, Beats & Eats is in downtown Royal Oak, and we'd heard so much about it we figured we'd go since we could ride our bikes down. Saturday it was really, really hot (mid-nineties) but we went anyway. Looking at all the art for sale was really interesting. The kids were kind of half-heartedly interested until we bought them ice cream.

Monday we drove up to the Peach Festival in Romeo. There were two parades (which is why I picked Monday to attend) but a cold front had come through Saturday night and we weren't prepared for how cold it was (low sixties) and so we went home, put on more jackets, and went back to Arts Beats & Eats. The parade we saw in Romeo was extremely cute: the theme was candy, so we saw a Girl Scout troop dressed as M&Ms, a dance school dressed as Gummi Bears, lots of hershey's kiss costumes, and a group of people dressed as Peeps. Also, Po and Master Shifu on a float associated with a local martial arts school. It was a really great parade. The kids were totally into it but it was too cold to stay for the second parade. Next time, we'll bring more coats and stuff.

We got to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy play at Arts Beats & Eats on Monday night, which is a band that Mr. Brown & I fell in love to when we started dating. So that was totally fun, to dance in the back of the parking lot while they were playing. It was a pretty fun show, but way too short in my opinion. More ice cream and fair food for the kids, who thought the show was boring because their parents were dancing with each other and not with them. (We rode our bikes down to Arts, Beats & Eats both days: this is one of my most favorite things about Royal Oak and where we live: biking to interesting places is totally possible and even encouraged. They had special 'bike parking' set up for the festival.) Although we enjoyed the festival, we spent too much money, so I don't know if we'll go again next year or not. Maybe we'll just avoid the food booths next year. With what we spent on food, we could have actually bought a piece of artwork (and there was some lovely stuff for sale) and then we'd still have something to show for the weekend.

Saturday night there was a tremendous storm when the cold front came through. Nut Brown was sleeping in the basement but started crying in fright when the power went off. We tucked them back in together in their upstairs room (air conditioning doesn't work very well upstairs, which is why they were in the basement) and then the power came back on, and went back off, and then something exploded behind our neighbor two doors down, and the power never came back on. It's still off. Luckily some of our neighbors took our freezer food and some friends from church took our fridge stuff (what we didn't eat immediately) and so now the only problem is hot water for showers. We have a gas stove so cooking hasn't been a problem, but I miss most being able to turn on the lights.

It has been an interesting couple of days as Mr. Brown and I have lost our most expedient escape from our troubles: the computer/internet/computer games. So we've had to do less running away from problems and more addressing them. In some ways this is good and in some ways it is exhausting. I think Mr. Brown has done a better job addressing problems, and I have been putting more energy into running away from them in different ways.

Our phone doesn't work either at the moment, so if we don't return your phone calls please don't be mad. We're thinking it may be a while still before the power company gets to us because it was a really localized outage (our neighbors across the street have power) and they're probably working on the 'low-hanging fruit' of power restoration before they get to small fry like us and the six houses on our block affected by that transformer. Boy, it sure was exciting when it exploded. It turned the sky blue and green and orange.

The other interesting thing about this power outage is that our garage door won't open now because there is a door opener on it. So it better not rain at all this week because I can't get my car out of the garage to drive to work. Luckily we park Flash in the driveway during the summer so he was still available to drive us to church and other places.

We did get to know our neighbors a little better: especially our neighbor across the street. She came over to ask how we were, and told me that her husband died two weeks ago. She is very nice, and we are going to be making friends with her more, I think.