Boalsburg Memorial Day Festival

Good riddance to the cut-off low! Finally, after sitting under a cut-off upper-level low pressure system for about two weeks, with persistently cool, rainy weather (our softball games the last two weeks were rained out/soggy field-ed out, and there were three cold fronts that came through the first half of last week), a ridge built in here in the east and gave us four consecutive days of absolutely gorgeous weather over the long Memorial Day weekend. At long last it feels more like May and less like March or October! I certainly took advantage of the wonderful weather we had around here this weekend, and I have the sunburns to prove it!
Ben & I played four sets of tennis on Saturday morning, with a helicopter occasionally flying around spraying a nerve agent on trees to try to kill off some of the gypsy moths that are plaguing the area this spring. So that was occasionally distracting, but didn’t really affect my losing the first three sets 6-0, only starting to play kinda okay in the third set. But in the fourth set I finally got off the schnide (sp.?) to win a game, and then something really strange happened: I won another game. In the same set. I finally accomplished my first tennis goal of winning more than 1 game in a set from Ben, though it sure took a long time (more than a year) to do it! And it also marked the first time I’ve ever won consecutive service games of mine against Ben, too. So even though I lost the fourth set 6-2, I could walk away glad that I stuck with it and didn’t give up even when it didn’t look like it would be my day, after starting with three love sets. I think I’ll set my next goal at winning four games in a set from Ben, and then have a third goal of winning a set. Maybe I’ll be able to improve enough to do that before we both finish grad school in 2-3 years, haha.
On Sunday morning there was a joint outdoor service at E-Free, combined with Unity Church of Jesus Christ and the CMA Church. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day for an outdoor church service either, as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and just a light breeze. I suppose it did get a little warm on the blacktop parking lot though. It was at the church service where I really got sunburned, though I didn’t really start turning red until the meteo grad cookout at Jeff [Frame] & Vic’s place later in the afternoon. I made sure to stay in the shade almost the entire time there, though. I felt like I’d gotten enough Vitamin D already. 🙂
Yesterday was Memorial Day, and initially I was thinking of doing work like a good slave grad student, but then I thought better of it and decided to have a little fun. So I joined up with Tim, Isaac, Tracy, Ashley and a couple other PSCGers over in neighboring historic Boalsburg for the annual Memorial Day Festival there. What makes the Memorial Day celebrations in Boalsburg unique is that the birthplace of Memorial Day was in tiny Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, way back in October 1864 (though the “official” start is probably considered to be in 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery). This was actually the first time I’d actually stopped in Boalsburg to walk around or anything, and it’s a pretty nice little town. The streets were packed with vendors selling arts, crafts and food, and there were tons of people milling about. There was even a fruit pie contest! I’m pretty sure it’s hard to find something that’s more quintessentially Americana than a fruit pie contest in a small town on Memorial Day! There were live brass bands on a stage in the middle of town too (even Penn State University president Graham Spanier got in the act, playing his whatchamacallit contraption with the Deacons of Dixieland early in the afternoon). After hanging around in the downtown area for awhile, we checked out some of the Civil War re-enactors in a medallion ceremony (later on they had battle re-enactments and demonstrated firing some cannons), before checking out a bunch of classic cars, and then the 28th Division War Memorial Shrine, and the tanks scattered around outside the Pennsylvania Military Museum. It was a fun afternoon, though I was glad to get out of the sun for a few hours before going over to Tracy’s for a cookout in the evening, and then the Hollemans for games. A very enjoyable Memorial Day, to be sure!
And on a completely unrelated note, maybe this is why my dad never really liked Elijah Wood in Lord of the Rings:

I don’t know what’s worse, the “Puppetmaster” dance or the scraggly beard and goatee… So disturbing on so many levels. What were you thinking, Elijah?