Art Fest Underwater

I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one up right now. I've been sitting here at Travelodge doing homework all night, and the phone hasn't rang at all all night. Finally I get up to open up the gate to the dumpster for the garbagemen, and what happens? The phone starts ringing.
You guys are all missing one hell of a sunrise today. The clouds are still a little low overhead, so the red part of the sky is really vivid.
Karissa and I made this weekend an "Artfest" weekend. On saturday, we went with her mom & Kayla (that's whose dog it is on Karissa's blog, by the way) around 3pm. I had a blast talking to a bunch of the vendors. One guy drew train stations with inks ad colored pencils. I think he was a little slow, but I respected the fact that he never took any serious art schooling and still maintained such accuracy in architectural reconstruction. I got to ask a chick about how she makes her ceramic bowls, which weren't in the best shape, but pretty uniquely different from what I'm used to. One guy had a watercolors, mostly nature scenes, but he had a lot of lighthouses, too. I eventually bought a watercolor print from him of a lighthouse for our bathroom.
This one lady was selling various types of pasta and made us smell them all. Karissa almost bought some, but they ran out of the kind she wanted. My favorite artist was this kid from Green Bay who worked with oil paints, and produced some really fucked up stuff. His shading was awesome, and he liked doing stuff that made you think you were in some weird backwoods carnival, or seeing the struggle of a fish in a dark lake. One painting he had was of an astronomer, and he described it as a sort of passageway or rite of passage. I was blown away, because I could actually see it. Beyond a doorway hung a rickety bridge which led to a platform on which stood a telescope. The bridge was the liminal phase, a suspension between life and death, in which one is physically but not socially dead, and identity is lost. The other side (the telescope) represents the postliminal, in which social death is recognized, enlightenment and be seen, and the transformation is complete. Okay, shut up, I still understood it, so there. I realized that he started on a singular idea, and let his imagination go into some weird spots. I hope he was able to sell some of those paintings.
By about 4pm, we were getting pretty soaked (even Isabella got a little wet, but she didn't seem to mind), so we hid out in the Meadowbrook furniture store, then braved the rain to go to Mike's, where we had some Gatorbites which tasted off, and I got more of my Chicken Alfredo pizza. Afterword, I was elected to go get the van for the girls, so I got a nice shower in by the time wewere done.
Sunday, I left a German Chocolate cake on the back porch for Karissa. Later that morning, we went back to the Art fest, where I bought my lighthouse print, we wandered a bit more, and ate some really good food. We had deep-fried cheese curds, Karissa finally got her gyro, I had an Elk burger (if it can be ground, I'll try it in a burger), then we got some mini donut (the kind they make right there). I still can't believe how impressive some of the art was.
Our basement is a little flooded right now, but hopefully we can get most of the water out with a shopvac. The computer and my guitars, along with Karissa's princess stuff is still safe.