September 2, but in the earllllly AM

So, Joel is here. We're in the middle of some pretty carefully planned and packed days. We're seeing anyone and everyone in St. Louis on a whirlwind tour along with every festival, since it is after all, Labor Day. There are many festivals this weekend. Muddy Blues Festival, Japanese Festival at our Botanical Gardens, Bosnian Festival, Greek Festival and the Fair and Air Show. We're hitting just two of them, but they were great. We had sushi, a sumo demonstration, ikebana - flower arranging, bonsai, a speaker named Liza Dalby - author of this book about geisha, and karate and other martial arts demonstrations. There were tons of people all at this festival and then we hopped from there to the Greek Festival for marinated kabobs, a greek appetizer plate and a baklava sundae. There is much more to tell about the dancing and music and running into festival goers all over ... OH! And the highlight had to have been the weather. 85 for the high with no humidity and cloudless skies. It was amazing. After both festivals, we headed over to my sister's place for a BBQ and drinks and watching the Cardinal's game. It was a great night, we just got in. Tomorrow is packed and yesterday was nice too. We went to the gym to work out together and play raquetball! and to St. Louis Bread Co - known to everyone else as Panera - for dinner and then to The Melting Pot for dessert. A somewhat ritzy to-do place in West County (High society area) where we had the flaming turtle dessert. A bowl of chocolate fondue with caramel and pecans mixed in and then an assortment of things to dip in as it sits in the warmer on the table. Cheesecake, brownies, pound cake, bananas, strawberries and marshmallows. It was pretty tasty, I'm not going to lie. And yes, still on the weight loss challenge - and that it is, a challenge. I hope the next few weeks go better than these first few.

No word on any jobs... I'm working on reviewing my resume though with career services at my old resume to at least make it more appealing. I can't say as though I thought it was dynamite before, but that is the goal to change it a little bit now. Spent 7:30-5:30 on Thursday working in one of my token days of work per week. Between the three of us, we cut 16 lawns and cut up and carted off a tree that came down in a power outage last weekend. A power outage that left us without it for 24 hrs - not that long compared to most times it goes out - but without a refrigerator that blew a circuitboard when the power surged.

So much more to write, but must sleep, tired...