Bought tickets to Redwings Roots festival today. It made me happy because I liked thinking about last year, one of the nicest memories for me this summer, and because it reminds me that at some point it will be beautiful and hot and summery. I had never been to a music festival before, and hadn't known that I would like it so much, which is a nice surprise at my age. It combined a lot of things I like: camping, live music, stupid hippie outfits, and good food and beer. 

Jay and I were the only part of our group that could get off early and the whole point is to try to show up a early as possible to get a good spot. We had tickets for Chimney Ridge, which was way up at the top of the park, far away from the actual music grounds and the "natural chimney" formation that the park gets its name from. It was definitely a haul to get down to everything, especially at night, but it was also nice because we could basically set up our little camp anywhere in the vast woods and fields. Part of festival stuff is to make your spot look cool and interesting with the idea that people come and stop by, hang out for a beer or to play some music, and it reminded me a bit of larping. At least, I had a ton of rugs and tapestries and candles and shit for it. 

We found this flat spot in the middle of a field with a small copse of trees and started setting up. It was incredibly hot and full sun, and we had to leave the truck running at the loading area, then carry all of our group's stuff out down the hill into the field and go back for more. (Ha, this also reminded me of larping in a less fond, nostalgic way.) We got everything set up, and I stepped into my tent to set up sleeping stuff... and noticed a yellow jacket flying around inside. And then another one. And then another one. I looked out and sure enough, we had set up right in the middle of a huge nest of them. (I was still getting used to my curse at this point; later, more violent yellow jacket encounters would be less of a surprise.) 

SO. Then it was scurry on out of there, wait for them to settle, and very, very carefully move every single item we had just set up over across the dry creekbed to another little copse of trees in the meadow. Our second site was actually much nicer in hindsight, but at the moment, I think we were a little dismayed. 

Anyway, everything after that was an absolute blast, though. It was really fun getting to go anywhere all around the park over the weekend, checking out the caves within the rock formations, listening to the bands and Jay play, and hanging out in the beer garden eating huge Jack Browns burgers. Because it was so hot and it was over a mile or so to walk to and from camp to the festival to the food trucks, plus dancing all night, plus never holding still, I felt like I was starving the whole weekend but in a fun, dirty, very alive way. 

Anyway, I'm making my weird three sister soup tonight and drinking a martini. I had a fun release surprise today at work - another week full of training that they somehow expect me to turn around a release the size of my whole team's month effort in a week. I feel kind of mas o menos about it though, to be honest. I'm not going to do that thing where I'm in 8 hours of training all day and then work into the night on this release. Not my job to work nights because nobody at this company knows what a process is. 

But for all that, I'm in a pretty good mood. I want to play with my story and think about happy things, good memories, and maybe good things to come. It's been good keeping up with this blog a little more, even if I was a mess last week and probably more candid than I needed to be, even in this untrod little corner of the internet.