The Thing Of It Is (aka Things I Forgot to Include/Mention)e

Since returning from a lovely pizza dinner with the Wilsons and Karli Purscell (another lovely couchsurfing person I almost stayed with), I have realized that there are a few things I meant to mention or include in prior postings, but that somehow slipped my mind. These images, memories, anecdotes, whatever, have no rhyme or reason to them. I'm basically just going to vomit them now (don't worry: there aren't that many. It won't be too messy I promise).


1) The Precious Moments Chapel
This is something that exists. I swear. I looked it up online to verify its existence (pictures to follow). For those of you unfamiliar with Precious Moments, they are a collection of saccharine-sweet, pastel infused, kewpie doll-eyed angel children images with heightened religious overtones. Think Hello Kitty but pious. They're the kinds of things you might find embroidered on an antimacassar or in frosted porcelain in someone's grandmother's house (not mine: my grandma stuck a Star of David candy cane topper on our Christmas tree).


I heard about this from one of my Mothers Brewery compadres, we'll call him Matt the Mustache (because his name is Matt and he sports a most excellent handlebar mustache). When I asked my new friends if there were any unmissable landmarks that I should check out on my way to Beatrice, Matt the Mustache said unequivocally the Precious Moments Chapel in Carthage, Missouri. He himself had never been there, but had had a girlfriend who was dead set on getting married there. We will d know if said girlfriend desired such a wedding as some kind of kitschy ironic protest or if she was serious, but it didn't matter to Mustache Matt: to him it was a sign that they would not last.


However, the memory of the existence of such a place is burned into his brain, so much so that he suggested I go. And I would have too, except that it was quite a bit out of my way, and I had a long drive to make. Sigh. I guess I'll have to wait for my own Precious Moment. For now, you and I will just have to satisfy ourselves with these images I found on Google:

Are you scared yet?

Yes, those are famous Renaissance paintings recreated as Precious Moments, uh, moments.

Yes, that is a Precious Moments memorial to those lost in the Oklahoma City bombing. ..too soon?

2) The Great Fairbury Circus Mural
I don't know how I forgot to include this in my posting for yesterday. Blame it on computer/brain fatigue. Anyway, before leaving Fairbury yesterday, we visited the giant circus mural painted on the side of the local Rexall.

And thanks to the lovely Nancy Wilson, I have some of the only pictures of myself out and about, adventuring and goofing around (outside of the "Anything Goes" self-portrait series of course).

This is not me voguing, this is me trying to keep my hair from flying all over the place. It was windier than it looks.

Here I am pretending to feed the elephant, thanks to Nancy's expert direction.

And in case you didn't get it the first time...(she was a very hungry elephant)

3) Man's Cake
This is how Kent referred to his birthday cake, a delicious chocolate zucchini bundt cake dusted with powdered sugar. "This is a man's cake," he said, with satisfaction. "Dense, moist, substantial." I liked this expression (and the cake) so much, I filed it away in my brain, and meant to make mention of it, but completely forgot to retrieve it for the blog. So, here you go, my gift to you. Man Cake.


4) Lesson Learned in My Travels Around the Midwest: Not Every Farm Boy is a Seth or a Reuben
This is something probably not many of you will get, and I'm not going to explain it. Only those who have seen the film "Cold Comfort Farm" will understand. Which basically means my mom, and possibly the period piece-ophile, Beau Sedlak (he seems like the kind of fella that would have seen this arcane bit of cinematic humor). The rest of you will just have to see it to understand. And those of you who have, can feel smug in the pleasure of this inside joke.


Ok, that's about it, I think for my random bits of forgotten anecdotage. Til my next memory blitz!