ain't she a peach?

Let me start off with this: Today has been an excellent day.

Sure, it began (for me) as 57 degrees Fahrenheit at 10 AM, which is definitely not a preferred temperature in my book.
Top that off with a nearly empty refrigerator, as I have yet to go to the grocery store. No milk, no English muffins or bread, no Sweet Thing.
So, I called up my middle brother.
'Want to go to breakfast at IHOP with me?'
He replies, "Sure, but give me fifteen minutes. I was just taking a beer over to my girlfriend. She's all down about having lost her job."
'Okay, that'll work for me.'
Then he says, "Well, if I do that, I won't have time to get any trim this morning."
'You know what? We don't have to do this today, Ronnie. We'll get together for brunch some other time.'
He gratefully agreed and was gone.

Brunch still sounded like a good idea to me.
I checked the Galley menu: Garlic Orange Chili Shrimp Stir Fry. omG! One of my favorites! And Sloppy Joes, too! Yum!
So, off I went to the southside to dine!
And it was soooo good!
I even ran into one of my favorite former students (Hi, Janet!) and a couple others that I like, too. (Shout out to Jonathan and Jasmine and Jacob!)
I even stopped by the Fine Arts building to obtain a ticket for the next Masquers' production, "The Pillowman". A scary tale for a Tuesday evening, but I think I'll be up for it. Plus, with my Faculty ID, it's free!

I paused for a moment to smell the warm roses in the sunlight.

Afterward, I decided to go give blood. It's been 56 days, plus a couple.
Amazingly, the donor center was busy! Very good!
That meant the whole process took a little longer than I had planned, but that's okay. As I told Natasha, after her third apology to me for the wait, 'Hey, I have no problem waiting a little while when y'all have so many willing donors here. That's a very good problem to have!'
After about 90 minutes total, I was completely done and out the door.
Good!
I'll be able to give again just before Christmas.

Next on my checklist: go early vote!
I was a little dismayed when I pulled into the parking lot and saw how many cars were there. Prepared for a wait, I proceeded ahead anyway... and was pleasantly surprised at how few people were actually in line!
Alrighty then!
I performed my civic duty, graciously received my "Georgia peach" sticker, and went off to accomplish the next item on my checklist.
Downtown I headed!
It's time for the 17th Savannah Film Festival! Time to purchase my Savannah Pass, for magical admittance to all of the daytime films, documentaries, and shorts. Oh, yeah!
True, they did raise the price 50% this year. FIFTY PERCENT.
Ouch.
But, I had been gifted the money, so I paid.
I've even already marked some collections to be sure to hit!
And I'll even have a little money to pay for parking on those weekdays downtown.
Good!

Then back to home! Throw the mail in the house! Turn on the porch light!
Zip back downtown to meet the bfe for dinner!
And I surprised him by being a little early - good!
We dined on ceviche (both) and steak tacos (him) and chorizo fajitas on rice - very good!
We ate at a leisurely pace, taking our time, chatting and laughing and soaking up each other's company for the next two hours - best of all!
Then, time came to jet over to the Muse Arts Warehouse for an offering from the Psychotronic Film Society. The Found Footage Festival was celebrating its tenth anniversary of dredging through VHS dreck for highlights and we were there to enjoy the frivolities!
After all, for Christmas of 2012, I had given the bfe two volumes of their work, after seeing the show in 2012. (I had also given two other works of theirs to my nephew, Michael.)
We bought tickets for the raffle and guess what? I won! It's a DVD of the stop-motion animation works of Bruce Bickford, a collaborator with Frank Zappa. I look forward to watching it with the bfe some future evening!

Nick and Joe were quite entertaining tonight as they presented their most recently garnered video clips in Volume 7. Some bad music from a preacher, some crazy facial exercises, Swedish sex instruction for the blind, "how to" do cybersex ... you get the picture? Pretty crazy stuff, captured by viewing hours and hours of bad video.
Then they bounced back to two guys from their first year of the Found Footage Festival. John and Johnny were two salesguys hawking everything from sunglasses and jewelry to ladies' clothing on cable television. Entertaining? You bet!
Then Nick and Joe decided it would be really cool to track these two guys down and reunite them for a trip back through time. Major coolness, right?
So, that's what they did. And John and Johnny, now middle-aged gents, agreed to reprise some of those old sales pitches they'd done for the shopping network. And to allow Nick and Joe to tape the scenes for this latest video. Cool! What good sports they were!
Then Joe told us how the evening progressed from there.
They all went out to hoist a few brews to celebrate the completion of the mission. Then the four guys had a few more beers, as the night wore on.
Then Johnny, being the most ribald of the group, grabbed the ketchup bottle and said, "Hey! Want to see me turn this into some fruit?" At which point he turns his back, then whips back around with the bottle at his crotch and says, "Ain't she a peach?"

I laughed!
I was the only one who did.
Joe said I was the only one who had ever laughed at that story.
Honestly?
I have a middle brother who does stuff like that all the time - and he has done so for almost twenty years.
I guess other folks must lead pretty sheltered lives.

The bfe didn't get up and move, so that's a good thing.
The librarian, sitting to the other side of me, stayed put, too.
Friends.
Today was definitely an excellent day.