Dear Friends,

09/05/2006

 
I want to apologize for taking my sweet time in updating you on the rest of my Sweetheart experience.  I am absolutely exhausted after such a crazy week, and I couldn't bring myself to collect my thoughts before today.

So, I'm sure a number or you are anxious to know what happened on Sunday, but you are just going to have to wait for me to go through the play-by-play.  I believe I left off on Saturday afternoon after the parade.  By the way, I know I must have been tired from teh race because I forgot to mention the funniest part of the whole parade experience.  I was riding along trying to ignore the muscle cramps in my hip flexors from lifting my leg to show my goofy shoes, when a couple approached out moving vehicle.  The man had the digital camera locked and loaded (as Utah would say) while the woman thrust their tiny infant into my arms.  I didn't realize what was going on until I noticed that the whole family was decked out in Michigan gear, including the baby.  They loved my costume so much that they threw caution to the wind and handed their first born to a complete stranger while frantically snapping photos.  Yeah, it was that good.  The best part was that the driver of mycorvette didn't know that I had this baby in my arms and started driving off.  This was by far the most bizarre experience I had all week, and it made the fact that my host family leaves their house unlocked 24/7 seem a little less of a big deal than I orginally thought.  Apparently the city of Hoopeston is a very trusting community.
 

Greetings from Cornjerker territory,

09/02/2006

 
My apologies for not sending an update yesterday.  It was a long day, and I couldn't muster up the energy.  It started with an early breakfast (have you noticed a pattern yet?) sponsored by the Lion's Club, and then we went straight to a local elementary school.  The kids were great and really funny.  I have to be honest though, they are terrible at geography.  Every kid who volunteered to point out one of our states on a map got it wrong.  I bet if I asked them what time of year you harvest corn they'd get it right.  Okay, in all fairness, we only visited kindergarten through second grade, so I guess I can cut them some slack.

Later we headed to the civic center (barn) to rehearse the opening number.  The choreographer is a bit of a perfectionist, so we spent a lot of time making everyone's cane hit the ground at the same time.  By the way, the theme of the show is "Puttin' on the Ritz," and every time the music comes on, all I can think about is that Ritz cracker commercial from the mid 90s.  Anyway, here's the irony of the situation:  we spent two hours working on this number, and then during the show we couldn't hear the music start and missed about 25 seconds fo the minute-long production.  Needless to say, canes were flying and not one hit at the right time.  The good news is, we looked smashing in our top hats, bow ties, and cummerbunds.