I'm still not completely over the fact that school starts in August instead of September for my kids (except for Lucas). Summer just feels so short, and it is short. We got a few things taken care of before Isaac and Naomi started. She got all of her wisdom teeth pulled, which was of course pretty miserable for her the first couple of days. Not all of them had come in yet, or they were coming in at a wrong angle, so out they came. Isaac got a haircut. I don't have a picture from his first day of 7th grade since it was busy and he didn't want me to take one. And we started packing everything up to move Naomi to her dorm. She stayed in the same hall as last year, but with three in her dorm room instead of five. The school hasn't kept up maintenance or security of the dorms as much this year. I think she is hoping to find an apartment her senior year. Speaking of maintenance, our washer and dryer were dying, so we got new ones. I opted for non-electronic ones. I just feel those last longer. Our previous ones had lasted us 20 years and did a great job. Unfortunately we had a leak, so then had to repair that first before they could install them. Thankfully we found a place that could send someone out quickly, and the price was reasonable.
Also in August, my neighbor got baptized in our community pool. It was wonderful to see. I can't remember if the pastor who came was her nephew or cousin, but he gave a good message and then we had California Pizza Kitchen for the party. The whole family was invited, but only I really knew her and only I really wanted to go. I do more and more things solo these days. It's not great but I prefer not to force anyone to do things with me unless it's very important they be there.
Then my friend from my college bible study who is a missionary in Canada came to our area to visit. I lost track of the dates and almost missed her, but thankfully caught her just in time. We visited with another friend from college and we went to our other college friend's church. He is the lead pastor, but he was speaking at a retreat, so we unfortunately missed him.
I've been wanting to see Weird Al Yankovic in concert since I was a little kid. I always liked parodies and used to write a lot of them in school. I was also a weird kid (and maybe a weird adult, too, but I keep it to myself more now😄). Manny has actually seen him perform before at a country fair when he was younger. I was really hoping I would finally be able to make it, and this was the year. I'm not sure what happened, but I thought Manny and I were going to go together, and then it sounded like he didn't want to go, but it sounds now like he did in the end. I might have misunderstood, but I now had an extra ticket, so I invited my friend M, and she said yes let's do this. For months I thought that was the plan, and I confirmed even two weeks before the concert. But right before it, she changed her mind and told me she didn't really want to go unless I really needed her to. One thing I don't like to do is to drag anyone to a show with me who is not interested. I decided to ask Lucas if he wanted to go. He said okay, so that became his first official concert. He's not necessarily a fan, but I used to play Weird Al's songs for the kids, so they know him. At least the audience would be fairly tame, and there would be children, which there were plenty of, so it might feel more safe. My friend commented, "The things we do for our kids." And I had to sheepishly reply that I wanted to go more than he did.
Weird Al did a single-take live entrance like he does in the video "Tacky" (parody of "Happy"), and I captured some of it below. Also just one more video. I have a lot of videos, but you can find better ones on YouTube. I wore a Saga Begins shirt since that's one of my favorite songs of his, a parody of "American Pie" covering Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. He didn't sing the song till the end. His career spans five decades, so he couldn't sing everything, and I got a little concerned it wasn't going to make the cut. Since we had lawn seats and people around us were standing, we also had to stand for most of the show in order to see. In that sense I was glad I hadn't dragged anyone else to watch it, because Lucas can stand patiently for long periods.
