Episode LXVII: The Summer That Was

The summer is over! School just started here in Kansas, and guess what? I’m actually taking a class for once! It is being taught by one of my ‘mentor’ professors, and hopefully I’ll learn a lot. Anyhow, here is a short list of some things that happened during the summer that was:

Rafael and I went this event called Symphony in the Flint Hills. The idea is, each year the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra plays an outdoor concert somewhere in the middle of the Kansas prairie, the exact whereabouts of which are not revealed until you purchase tickets. The day of, you get to drive out to the middle of nowhere, where you park in a prairie, then hike out to a field, where there are day-long festivities, capped off with a Kansas-themed symphony performance. It’s really quite remarkable, watching a top-notch performance, outdoors, in the middle of nowhere, as the sun sets, and cows and horses wander around you. I recommend it.


While my siblings were out here in the Midwest, my mom and dad, being the spontaneous folks they are, decided to fly to Florida, pick up a Pontiac Solstice, and drive it all the way back to California. What a crazy young couple, eh?


Readers of the Ballade with acute memories will remember that last summer I went to a carnival, where I won that horse-racing game, and got a stuffed animal who I named Billy the Boar, and who guards my truck from thieves and criminals. Well, I went back to the carnival again this year, and guess what? I won the horse-racing game again! Which means now Billy has a tag team partner, a cute but ferocious-looking cheetah who is as yet unnamed.


From the outside, of course, the only thing people get to see is their ferocious and menacing rear ends.


I have a roommate! Remember Rafael, my labmate? Well, beginning in August, he became my roommate as well. So far, so good. He (and his mom) have helped the condo look a bit prettier, and so far he has been an excellent roommate (he has even cooked dinner for me a few times already, though I have yet to return the favor). In the picture below you see that we had to remove the camper shell from Trusty Rusty to fit Rafael’s mattress (and even then it wasn’t a great fit).


And finally: one of the professors in the department was having a party at his house, and it included a couple of inflatable pools for the kids. His son was playing around with a squirt gun, squirting me in the back as I sat on the deck. So I dove into the pool, tackled him and splashed water on him. He then proceeded to cry for the next half hour. See? I’m good with kids! I learned him a good lesson!