And now a word from our guest editor:

A fairly typical Bloomington weekend—

Friday—Garry and I walked home from the Kinsey after work. We’d missed the 5:00 bus and figured we’d beat the next one out to Rockport Road. Susan had her drum lesson downtown, and arrived home shortly after we did. We all checked out the progress of the garden (the tomatoes are looking good, but the zucchini didn’t survive the baking soda-and-water fungicide treatment that we gave it a few night ago).

As the students will be returning in droves in a couple of weeks, we decided to go over to the east side of town for a light supper at Panera, a chain soup, sandwich and bakery establishment that is almost always packed during the school year. After we decided to try the fire-roasted vegetable bisque, it was removed from the menu board, leaving us with less-inspiring soup options (vegetable and chicken noodle). As we headed across the parking lot to do a bit of literary shopping over at Borders, we ran into the Kinsey’s visiting Korean researcher Dongwoo and his wife and daughter. Delightful people—Dongwoo is going to make us a CD of Korean pop music from MP3s.

After making our purchases at Borders (magazines for Susan and baby animal stickers for me—so much for literary), we stopped by the campus Starbucks for a couple of decaf coffee beverages. We made it home just as a thunderstorm was arriving, but luckily it was a very brief one.

Saturday—A beautiful day, especially for August in Indiana. Sunny, but not too hot, and not too muggy. We were up early, as I wanted to check out Rich and Lisa’s yard sale that began at eight. They are moving to Massachusetts this fall. It’s pretty typical that as soon as we make friends, they leave town. Anyway, I found a great 1930s photo album, but otherwise it was pretty much a bust. We’d hoped that Rich might be selling some of his home movie collection, but no such luck. We also found that it’s not much fun looking at other people’s junk when one knows the other people. Luckily I found the photo album, as I didn’t see anything else that I needed to add to our own stack of junk.

At 4:30 we headed south for Orleans, for an evening concert with the Bloomington Community Band. The band’s first gig of the season was in Orleans, so I wasn’t too excited to be going back so soon. It’s a tiny town—its historic district is one block long (and only on one side—the park where the band performs is across the street). It was threatening to rain, but luckily it just sprinkled. The crowd was small and elderly, but appreciative, and the band sounded good. Unfortunately the main street is also the highway, so at times the car noise was a bit loud. Susan’s fellow drummer Brian brought his three children, and after a couple of songs I noticed the son urgently asking his dad for something. Shortly after that Susan gestured to me to come over, and my suspicion was confirmed—I was entrusted with finding a bathroom for the restless group. Luckily I had already gone on such a quest when we first arrived in town, so I was able to escort them to the Shell station one block up the street.

It’s really quite amazing to watch Susan play all the percussion parts. She quite often has several instruments to play within one song, sometimes even two at the same time! This was the first time I had heard their Beatles medley, in which Susan gets groovy with the tambourine.

Sunday—A work day. After fortifying ourselves at the west side Starbucks, we picked up supplies at Lowe’s and commenced on home improvement projects. Susan is making a really cool table from an old wooden door, using the jigsaw her parents just sent to us. I used the rake to clean out the flowerbed next the garage. Hot work.