Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Admit One

On the car radio this morning The River is heavily promoting the Green River Festival, touting tickets available through the festival website .

The website says that, although online ticketing is now over in order to ensure that tickets get to purchasers before the festival comes and goes, pre-festival tickets can still be purchased at three stores in the area.

We had other errands to do downtown waiting until something else came up, and it had stopped raining, so we loaded into the car with the camper in tow, as one of the errands involved getting some guy to realign the propane spout and regulator on the camper grill, and the guy on the phone had just said oh, bring the camper like it was no big deal.

I like errands. I spent ten minutes marvelling at the vast breadth of possibilities and the resultant implied array of possible carpentry needs in the nail and screw aisle (no dirty jokes, please) while Darcie shopped for yogurt with the baby, bought the last two day-old ham and cheese croissants in the Greenfield Coop, found a tiny watch battery for my suddenly-defunct carbiner watch in a jewelry store and semi-secretly checked out a few birthday presents for Darcie (August 9th, when I'm in Bangladesh, so the present better be GOOD if you know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink, checked out a minor car accident on the way back to meet darcie and Willow in cafe Kokos, where I sat in a rocking chair and drank a cold latte quickly while the baby got impatient.

And then, finally, there we are at the World's Eye bookstore. Darcie's in the back with Willow looking at the board books (well, Willow's really just pulling 'em off the shelves without opening them, but everyone's happy). I go up to the counter:

Me: Do you still have tickets for the Green River Festival?
Woman At Counter: It costs $30 for Friday night and all day Saturday, or $40 for just Saturday.
Me: Okay, I need...wait, what?
Woman: Most people just buy the two-day one. You could give away the Friday ticket.
Me: *stunned* Um, okay. Two.

The day you realize that the world doesn't need to make sense is the day you are free to enjoy the universe. Today was especially enjoyable -- pressureless but vaguely deliberate, timeless yet somehow a day where those few nagging things all get accomplished at once. Saturday promises to be exquisite. And, although I wasn't planning on it, I might go Friday night anyway -- after all, even though it's a Zydeco eve, an odd teaser for the fullday/nextday Folk and AltRock line-up (Patty Griffin! They Might Be Giants! Slaid Cleaves!), it is, weirdly, more than free. Anyone up for a concert? They're so eager for an audience, they're paying people to come.

posted by boyhowdy | 8:18 PM |

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