It's Almost Over...Now What? Fun Time!

Yes, it's that time again...election season is winding down. What? you didn't notice it WAS election season? Welcome back to the Western Hemisphere. The World Series is history, the local Fox affiliate has settled it's snit with the cable company so all is right with the world. It's time for some fun! The weekend is coming (after a very long work week...and it's only Wednesday)so I'm planning to have a great time. Here's my agenda: feel free to tag along if you want to see what REAL fun is all about!
Friday night: date night in the Love Shack. Yes, that's right: stay home with my sweetie, make some popcorn and watch a Netflix movie. This week's selection? "The Mickey Mantle Story" or something like that. Anyway, I can't go wrong with the choice, but given his death from liver problems due to drinking, I may have to drink fruit juice instead of my one weekly light (NOT "lite"...I would NEVER!) beer. Topping the night off with a blog entry for Patty's entertainment, and it's off to bed...a full day!

Saturday: Up early for once. Big day. Off to work at the Horizon League Conference Cross Country meet from about 9-1 or so. Rumor has it there is free food, and I'd do just about anything for that! I'll take my honey to lunch...maybe at Panera Bread which just opened. Church at 4, edit Hannah's paper at 5:30 and get to the tipoff of the UWGB men's basketball season by 6:30 to see many of my students and former students play...have a couple of dogs and nachos...and call it an evening unless Saturday Night Live has more great political satire. This close to the election, they're sure to.

Sunday: Sleep late, coffee and the paper around 9:30 with a casual breakfast. Off to have lunch with my sweetie before going to announce a soccer match at school, check on the Packers, get groceries,and get ready to head back to school by 6. I'll be so tired that I will have to get back to work to rest.

If that doesn't sound like fun to you, here are some alternatives though some of them require a bit of travel. Heck, it'll be a nice weekend for it.

1. Head to the Milwaukee Public Museum to see the rare Titan arum flower open. Commonly called the "corpse flower" because it smells like, well, a dead body when it opens. Folks will be coming from miles around. Don't want to miss that!

2. While you're in the area, stop in Greendale to see Lynn Rietzke and her motorized bike shop. For a mere $475 she will custom build, paint and motorize a bicycle for you. It will go 35 m.p.h. and get 125 m.p.g. (I can almost see me riding to work through the Cofrin Arboretum trails on something likethat. Hitting a deer would be a real treat. Besides, isn't the point of a bicycle to get some exercise??

3. As long as you've gone that far, head on down to Burtonville, Illinois to see the 650-lb replica of Elvis' casket, complete with a dancing, singing Elvis impersonator! The Endsley Funeral Home there devised the stunt as a promotion for their 80th anniversary by saying, "We wanted to put the 'fun' back in 'funeral'." Seriously, was there EVER any fun in funerals?

4. OR...without leaving home, you can stave off a heart attack! It requires very little caloric output, just a simple, repetitive motion...I'm talking about setting your clock back one hour on Sunday. I am not making this up, a team of Swedish researchers had nothing better to do than study heart attack statistics for 20 years in order to discover that the number of heart attack deaths declined EVERY Monday following the setting-back-of-the-clocks ritual. Amazing, and I've been trying to eat healthy in my "golden" years when I could have simply been messing about with my clocks...because if doing it twice a year is beneficial from a research standpoint, wouldn't doing it EVERY day be more helpful?

Anyway, that's a chock full weekend if ever I heard of one. I hope yours is as exciting as mine will be!