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I helped Randy and Kelly move today and I was glad to do so.  I did 38 trips up and down the steps of their old apartment and my Fitbit counted every one of them.  Today I was firing on all cylinders even to the point where I did a really good job of backing up father’s truck with a trailer attached.  I picked up box after box of life lived and moved it either from an apartment to a truck or trailer and then from said truck or trailer into a house.  The recipe for moving is simply doing that until you’re done.  I was a satisfied kind of exhausted at the end of the day and Randy had bought me a keto cheesesteak which is simply a pile of meat and cheese in a bowl.

There was a slight nag to the notion that I was helping someone move on with their life.  Randy and Kelly were going from apartment to house and had called in their collective families to do it.  My amazing back-up was enabled by Randy’s sister’s husband and that is a network of relationships alien to me.  I try not to inconvenience others and would feel like I were calling in favors when I next move.  I feel I’ll do most of the work with either a flatbed or a book of matches.

 

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I saw The Dark Knight Rises today with someone that I had seen a bunch of movies with. We had never sat through a movie we both enjoyed together and this was no exception. She doesn’t bring out the worst in me so much as is good at bringing out the critical in me. That’s wonderful when there’s a shared object of resentment. I think it’s the last movie we’ll see in each other’s company at least for a good long while. Another chapter closed.

Kelly asked to borrow my carpet shampooer to work out some…stains in the carpet of her new place. I was glad to have her over and I showed her how it worked. I then unloaded a few pounds of superfluous carbohydrates on her including blueberries, prunes, and raisins. She’s a good friend.

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Randy and Kelly Booz invited me out to the St. Michael’s Fair in Tullytown. It was a fair with a wide assortment of fried food and my standard prayer that there were yet to be any STDs that had gone airborne. Should aerosolized syphilis someday be discovered I’m confident I have met its patient zero.

Randy and Kelly were there with their sidekicks Chris and Jess and with Caleb as special guest. The night was hot and I consumed neither rides nor food, but I did take advantage of the soft lighting that comes from omnipresent bulbs.

From 2012-07-05 St. Michael's Fair

Fairs and I have a long history of getting along. The last I attended was on Thanksgivinga few years ago and fairs were the first place I had seen rock candy, those combination umbrella hats, a biplane, and rubber band guns. This fair had no such charm. I would be elsewhere soon.

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Departing proved easy and we rolled out before noon.  The drive back was very long and at one point we got stuck in traffic on an on-ramp.  I recommended we drive back down the on-ramp.  Kelly was uncomfortable with this, so I did it.  Shortly thereafter, several other vehicles followed.  Trendsetter.

I also learned that Randy was dickbot from the TWiT Network show “Frame Rate”.  This means nothing to almost all of you but once I found this out, I very quickly made rapid fire sequence of calls telling friends that I knew dickbot.

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Building the momentum to leave the hotel room took a bit after the long previous day. Suzie and I got rolling and arrived at Boondock Farms around 7am.

Zombification started with check in. Here is us in our original state:

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

Suzie

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

Next we had protheses glued to our faces:

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

Me

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

Next blood effects were added:

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

Finally we received gore which was a mixture of red food coloring and KY Jelly:

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

All done:

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

Zombie MySpace shot:

From 2012-06-23 Run For Your Lives Zombification

Runners went through alternating bouts of obstacles and zombies. Zombies were of two types, chasers and shamblers. Suzie and I were shamblers along with a nice family and we attacked runners for three hours collecting a good number of flags. At the end of the shift, we received some tokens of thanks, got lunch and then returned so Randy and Kelly could run.

The race itself was tightly run and professionally organized. The bands were unremarkable and the vendor area had things that I will call not too unreasonably priced. I hope to do another in the future.

Some notes:

  • I played cornhole for the first time here.  I appear to be ok at it.
  • The make-up did not come off easily and I bruised my face removing it at a truck stop bathroom.
  • Everyone at the Steak and Shake where we got lunch was incredibly polite about us being dressed as zombies and Kelly looking like a domestic abuse victim.