Have you tried the new Coke, yet? C2? I love it. I gave it a try a week or two ago, after carefully disecting the nutritional information to gather that lower carbs did, indeed, mean lower calories (because sometimes it doesn't). In this case, less than half of the calories. And all of the wonderful Cokie goodness. The sharp acidic bite as it burns away your stomach lining. The hissing of the bubbles as they hit the ice. The gentle rumblings of the first wonderful burp. Good stuff. To me, it has all of the good points of the real thing without the bad. There are some weird points, though. Like the complete lack of aftertaste. I and my coworkers seem to agree that it has a definate artifical flavor. (But is Coke all that natural to begin with?) And, fer sum reason, I like C2 better from the bottle while I prefer the real deal over ice in a glass.

Anyway, I like it and you should buy some so they'll make it available in eight packs.

(We now return to our regularly scheduled rant.)

How much do I love my new work schedule/location? A bunch. It is not even 7:30 pm and I've already finished all my wifely duties, watched an episode of "Oprah", read a magazine, and caught up on (most of) my journals. It's so cool.

I have the most stupid looking farmer's tan from our weekend activities. In our attempt to get the most milage possible out of the Hubband's cowboy gear investment, I had bought tickets to a concert at a place called "Stage Coach Stop". The headliner was a singer I really like, so I was pretty excited about going. Seeing as this was also supposed to be a western "theme park" as well, we thought we'd take (drag) the Boy along, too. At $18.00 a piece. Which seemed reasonable at the time.

My first mistake was directional. I thought the location was east of Ann Arbor (which is SW of home) and it turned out to be west of Ann Arbor. While it was a nice day for a 2-hour drive, I don't usually plan events that far from home on a Sunday. But we got there and while I was immediately overwhelmed by the tackiness of the place (think 1950's B-Movie carnival meets the episode where the Brady Bunch gets trapped in the Grand Canyon), I tried to play it optimistic. (The Boy was already whining.)

So, I could make a long story longer by going into detail about the "gunfight" (Disney this was not. Apparently, Corey could not be found and he owed the "Miner" $10 so he could make change and they couldn't start the show without him...) or the dismal petting "zoo" (three tired goats, four ducks, a chicken and a llama) but I'll cut to the chase.

The tickets and brochure said the concert would start at 2PM. We got there at 1:30 to see the line had already formed going up the sharp incline to the top of the hill. (Everything at this place was, miraculously, up hill.) I stood in the unmoving line for about 15 minutes, noticing that all of the other patrons were balancing their packs of Marlboros on top of pillows and blankets. Hmmmmm. I quickly got tired of being in line and went to find my family. Later, we trudged up the hill again to find the "theatre". The seats of which were railroad ties, wedged into the side of a hill.

Uh-huh.

I am a big girl. Not just a big girl, but a tall girl. I don't "crouch" or "squat" a lot, but that's the position I was in when sitting. In the sun. The afternoon sun. Wearing boots and a hat and lots and lots of black. And, it seems, a three quarter length sleeve by the relief it left on my arm. Hubband is itchey to walk around even if we're paying for premo seats, so I was not surprised that he didn't want to sit long. And Boy was more than happy to walk around with him so I sat alone most of the time.

So here's the thing, the ticket said the show would start at 2pm. I'm thinking headliner by 3:30, right? Nope. First we had to meet every single person associated with the radio sponser. All of them, including "Joe the Monkey Boy" (don't ask). Then we had to meet the owners. Then we had to sit through tune up. Then a band that had gotten together just for this show played for an hour. Then we met more radio station people. Then we met the judges for the Kareoke contest winners who were having their championship round here today...all SEVEN of them!!!! And the headliner would be out in a couple of hours????

We left. I could barely move. I was dehydrated. I was burned to a crisp on my left side and only medium-well on my right. I was sick to my stomach and the Hubband was hammered (seems beer was available, go figure). It was time to go. I figured if we waited through the concert it would be 8:00 by the time we got out of the parking lot and the bumper to bumper traffic on the two-lane road. I was not up for getting home at 10pm on a Sunday. Call it money down the drain and I'm gone.

Hubband felt so bad that I had suffered through all of this for him that he let me take whatever route I wanted to get home. So I drove through a bunch of cornfields and their surrounding villages and even managed to get on highway D-32, straight into Hell, MI. Where we had never been and will not likely be again as it consists of one biker bar, one Halloween/Ice Cream Store, and one really gross deli/party store. It was a beautiful day, though, and a pretty drive including the sight of a fawn and a wild turkey staking each other out in one farmer's field.

I would gladly suffer the first part of the day to relive the latter again.