Ah....summer in Sandpoint

What a weekend it was. It started off pretty fun, except for the fact that we scared the pants off our kids by taking them to see Wall-E, the latest Pixar movie. Mark and I enjoyed it, but the kids watched it through their fingertips for the most part. It was a fun family night anyway, Brady and I ate two bags of popcorn together, the kids sat on our laps, and Kaylee farted on me through most of the movie. Oh the joys of togetherness.

If you haven't seen the movie yet, word of caution: it has a social message and is not all that kid friendly. So I was enveloped in two forms of guilt: one for scaring my children and one for living in a world of complete and total gluttony. But I'm over it now. I watched the Olympics on Saturday afternoon and I don't feel so bad. Table tennis is an official sport of the Olympics. So if anyone should be ashamed of themselves, its the Olympic Committee.

I mean COME ON! How is it possible to medal in a sport that is easily played with large cups of beer on the corners? If you can drink WHILE PLAYING, it is NOT a sport. I did hear that badminton is also an olympic sport and while you can drink while playing, I do think it has a little more street cred as a difficult game to play while intoxicated. It is much more competitive than two people slapping a tiny ball across a net on a VERY small table.

And did anyone else watch the coverage of the gold medal match? It was two women from China (thankfully the USA had the decency to either lose early on or better yet not enter anyone into the sport) and the even stopped and showed things back to us in SLOW MOTION. As if it wasn't stupid enough watching these women sweat over a game best played in a college rec room, but then they replayed everything as slowly as possible so we wouldn't miss just how ridiculous this "sport" is. But the good thing was it was easy to see even these women, while Chinese, did struggle at times to keep a straight face.

So back to my original "Summer in Sandpoint" title. The reason I was able to watch the Olympics Saturday is because it was freakin' cold here this weekend. Fall has arrived folks. Guess I am going to have to double up on the happy pills to get through the next eight or nine months of crappy weather. Yee-haw!

And speaking of yee-haw, it warmed up enough Saturday afternoon to head to the "Bonner County Fair". The word fair conjured up images of flashy rides, elephant ears, creepy carnies and trailer homes on display in the exhibit area. Well, in Bonner County, our flashy rides are giant inflatable bouncy toys that kids pay $2 for five minutes of jumping and screaming. We do have the elephant ears, thank goodness. And the trailer homes are in the neighborhood across the street, but they aren't new and certainly shouldn't be on display.

And we do have carnies here, but they are our residents lining up in full force to watch the demolition derby, the most disgusting game that reinforces the fact that we are a culture of excess. Why on earth would a normal person want to watch a bunch of junker cars smash into each other for hours on end while consuming a minimum of 5 gallons of gas per lap around the track? I dunno, but I'll have to ask Mark since he was all fired up to line up with the rest of north Idaho's finest citizens and watch the derby.

However the other obstacle to watching the derby with small children (besides the obvious support for wasting a natural resource) was the noise pollution. So very loud and our children have a difficult enough time hearing us as it is. Last thing we need to do is damage their ear drums any further. See a previous post for a full discussion on listening issues with children. I think I solved the mystery.

In any event, life in north Idaho is, if anything, an adventure. I wonder if I lived anywhere else whether or not I would have so many things to make fun of?