Fun day. Played with horses. Woke Chaz up and had a strange conversation. Went to pick her up but couldn’t find her. We ran to the opening day of Farmer’s Market and saw some really cool stuff. No time to buy. Because we had to go up to the university and be famous for a couple of hours.
It was a GREAT book festival. I didn’t realize what we were headed into – thinking it was just one of those childrens’ books conventions for grown-ups. But this really was a festival. They had the men of the Tabernacle Choir singing, and blue grass bands, and NY Times best selling authors (which were not me – WHY didn’t I write fantasy back in the day????) people in character suits (Tigger, Madeleine, Winnie Ther Poo) and all kinds of booths and balloon benders and TONS of books to buy about all kinds of things.
There were tents for hand crafting and quilting and gardening and genealogy and everything you can think of as far as books are concerned. There was even a very weird altered-book contest for the arteestic souls: you take a book, and basically destroy it in the process of making it into an artistic statement. My fave was this gorgeous tiny book about grasses that had been turned into a tiny grow box with the finest blades of book-page grass growing up out of it.
We started the morning in the crafting tent and got to make a couple of felted wool ornaments – which was very cool. Then we adjourned to the Book Store Terrace where I was stuck on a panel with five NY Times Best Selling Authors, all of whom I know and want to punch. No. Not really. Two of them were dear friends of ours, and another is considering a manuscript for us at her publishing house.
In such august company, I felt like a humble rabbit. For about five minutes. Humility never did keep me from dominating a question and answer period.
Then we trundled off to sit in the arbor benches where rafts of other authors were already sitting at tables, signing books. Chaz was my assistant, and she was WONDERFUL. And if you look carefully at the coupon her phone is holding in place, you will know that we ate a FREE quarter pound of BYU fudge (which is goooooood) in honor of our being famous.
A very nice lady who did not buy our book took this picture. Gotta get something else in print, obviously.
This is what we stared at the entire time, a big tent full of people listening to Brandon Mull talk about HIS books. For an hour. Yeah – not lookin’ at US, now, are they?
Now we are home and waiting for these people:
to come home from a 100 mile bike race through the west desert.
“Go west, young man!”
Because I had to download the last two from my phone, I’m going to show you the rest of the shots that have been sitting in the thing.
Pink snow time came weeks later than usual.
And a lot of it ended up in puddles.
This is what I found, driving up to the pasture the other day. I’d left Hickory and Jetta on the driveway during the afternoon, hoping they’d weed for me. Here is my colt, greeting me very cheerfully.
Here is how I found Jetta. Nose to the pasture gate. Patiently waiting for it to open. Probably all day.
This is not behind our house. But it is the same river, further upstream. It doesn’t look like this at the house because there’s no drop or rip-raff behind us to foam it up. But this water, this power, this urgency you see is almost exactly what we’ve been seeing out of our back windows now for months. Except it’s even deeper by the time it gets to us.
This is where the river almost meets a path that’s usually about four feet higher than the water level.
Wanna take a little swim?
Two weeks or so from now, we’ll know how much snow there really was in them thar mountains. Hope I don’t wake up some day with my feet wet.
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