bigmacbear | Corn Hill Fest, day 1 of 2

View down our street.

Today was the first day of the 36th annual Corn Hill Arts Festival. More pictures here.

As in past years, Gary (

gmjambear) had to park his car several blocks away at the Nordon lot, as there is no parking on our street from 7 AM Friday to 7 AM Monday. We got off to a late start today. Gary had been up late and consequently needed to sleep in, and thankfully the house is well insulated and the drone of my box fan tended to drown out the crowd noises, so I slept in as well.

I had volunteered to help out from 1 to 3 with the command post, but when I arrived a few minutes early, there were plenty of people helping out there. So I had a chat with a nearby friend and former member of the RGMC, Ed, and he mentioned that the lady whose booth was across the street from his home was stuck staffing the booth by herself because her brother had dropped a truck onto himself earlier in the day (it had fallen off a jack) and had been rushed to the hospital. I offered to watch her booth in case she needed a break and she informed me her brother had just called her and would be fine.

So I returned to the command post and was dispatched to the home of one of the volunteers to await the arrival of a credit-card machine via UPS. When I got there the volunteer who was waiting there was visibly relieved to be relieved ;-), and moments later I met the homeowner, Bob, and his partner Jesse. Not having met me, they were very careful in later conversation about their other home in Toronto (Jesse lives there most of the time and they visit each other wherever and whenever possible). I think I broke the ice by interrupting Bob's brief orientation to Toronto for someone unfamiliar with the city with, "Well, I've heard there aren't too many churches on Queen Street..." which Bob chimed in with me on "... but there sure are a lot of queens on Church Street!" We all chatted briefly until it was time for Bob and Jesse to work the T-shirt booth. After a brief phone conversation with Bonnie, the festival co-chair, I ended up sitting on Bob's porch until 3 and the delivery never came. The other festival co-chair, Jennifer, is an attorney so woe is sure to come unto UPS!

On the way back to the T-shirt booth I ran into a fellow Chorine and composer, Dennis, right in front of our house. We chatted with Bob back at the T-shirt booth to let him know the UPS guy hadn't shown up, and then stopped in front of the house to chat with the vendors there. Ken and Gabriel have had their respective booths here for perhaps six years of the eleven I've been here, but the couple next to Gabriel, Bob and Ginny, are new this year. I told Gabriel about the trouble the association was having with the credit card machine not arriving, and he and Ken got to chatting with us about the troubles they've had with credit-card issues.

Next we stopped in to the house for a drink. Gary was ready to go so the three of us went down to the gazebo to hear Jon Seiger and the All-Stars, the band RGMC performed with last March. During a break we chatted with Jon briefly, then went to tour the festival. I picked up Festival T-shirts for myself and Gary and we looked at some of the chain-saw art one exhibitor has had here for a while, including bears, eagles, pigs, and so on. I think I would like a small bear for the front porch or entryway. We'll be back tomorrow.

While we stopped to chat with a neighbor 'round the corner, Scott, whose dog Jack (a big Black Lab) has been known to play with our Brandy whenever they see each other, some friends from Chorus met up with us. We ran into several other folks we knew and finished the day with an early dinner of gyros and curly fries in the food court (the ballfield behind the neighborhood school, with vendor booths and big tents to sit under and eat).

As we arrived at home, Brandy was a bad girl for a moment. She went outside to pee and suddenly ran into the street to challenge a big German Shepherd that happened to be passing by. Seeing as she's a 12-year-old Cairn Terrier I think she is better off picking on dogs her own size. As far as I could tell the Shepherd couldn't care less.

This evening has been a quiet one. We'll probably just relax at home and save the serious shopping for tomorrow. Because I need to leave early to sing at church (at probably our most sparsely-attended service of the year) and because of the hassle of getting to cars and whatnot, we won't be attending the Pride Picnic this year, the same as last year.

Right now I'm feeling just a little zapped from the walking and the sun, but it's not a bad feeling.

Corn Hill Fest, day 1 of 2

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