Picture Sunday

Hello, end of weekenders. And how did everyone like the extra hour of sleep? Welcome to another round of Picture Sunday.

Well, I did it again. I survived another year of Oktoberfest. Kind of.

Odd weekend, this one. I have, as you all know, and I'm so sorry for still having it, I have been fighting the crud for over 2 weeks now. Thursday when I went for my yearly (which is not yearly, but that's another blog done months ago) "women's checkup," my doctor was amazed at what she heard through her stethoscope. She said I sounded like I was in the throes of pneumonia, and prescribed me a five dose wonderdrug, which I began Friday.

And it made me worse, at least on that first day. I sat at my desk like a zombie most of Friday, left work earlier than I normally do on Oktoberfest Fridays, came home, put on the dirndl, walked around crying, took off the dirndl, cried some more, put it back on, loaded up the car in a driving freezing rainstorm, came inside, cried some more, and unloaded the car and took off my dirndl again. It may have been my last weekend of mayhem with the Sauerkraut Band, but I just couldn't do it. I had a fever and knew that even if I did stay conscious long enough to get up the mountain I'd be no use to anyone once I got there.

So I took an extremely hot bath and slept a good portion of Friday evening.

And it helped a little. It at least built up my resistance enough to hit the road on Saturday, which was good, because only Death Himself would have kept me off the mountain on the last night.

I got there early, made merry with my friends, gave out my closing night gifts, drank four large shots of Jagermeister in a very short span of time (which helped the cough, actually), and it seemed I no more blinked than we were playing the last song and saying our goodbyes. It was an odd season. Not the most fun, but maybe the fastest. After hanging around and helping (well, a little, I never help enough at these things) the guys tear down all the lights and wiring, I hit the road home.

When I was looking at the pictures I took of last night, a large number of which are not suitable for public consumption, I realized that over the weeks of Oktoberfest I'd taken a lot of pictures that not only had I not printed here, but that I hadn't really even looked at that good myself. So I'm going to print a few final 2006 Oktoberfest photos.

All the women love Jude. They don't call him The Corruptor for nothing.



This is from the night our new German friend Daniel played with us. (Hucklebugsters heard that story.) He was kind enough to pose with Sherman.



Now, here's a good picture. It's a box of chickens! My fiancee's in there somewhere.



Oh, yeah - there he is, facing the camera. We'll be married one day, you know, in a land where a woman is free to marry the rubber chicken she loves.

This also came from the night Daniel visited us, that was last Friday. Folks, not only is this the closest thing to an actual picture of the entire Sauerkraut Band as you're ever going to get (we're notorious for never being all in one place for a camera), but I'll swear there's someone in this picture I cannot recognize.



Yep, that dude back row center. He has to be one of us because he's wearing the hat and shirt, but I'll be damned if I can figure him out.

Now, two major omissions from the above picture, Russell and Sara Beth, because they were inside entertaining the crowd. And we can't leave them out. First, Russell and I during the tear down, with the sign the Sauerkraut Band "borrowed" from Fallfest.



And finally, me and my buddy Sara Beth, also from the tear down. Boy, doesn't the combination of Jager and a hat flatten your hair right to your head?



And so it's over. And you're free from Oktoberfest pics for another year. And the German Club didn't know what they had in us. I mean, really, they had no idea, seeing as how they kicked us out and all.

That done, now it's back to real life. Like the recipe du jour.

I hope you'll be kind this week, because the original idea for the recipe du jour failed. And it failed big, taking a good portion of my kitchen and a tupperware bowl with it. It wasn't pretty. So I rethought the matter and decided I'd go upscale on you. From the "Bistro Cooking" file at cardland, please say hello to Cahfee-Cahfee.



Cahfee-Cahfee is for the young professional on the move, who likes a cup of coffee after his meal but simply doesn't have the time. It's a nice piece of coffee-encrusted mahi-mahi, pan fried. It is served with a special side dish. Mashed French Fries, the dish for the person who can never make the decision, "Mashed potatoes or fries?" Everyone's happy. And probably up late, as Cahfee-Cahfee is never decaf.

Happy week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* I have a large piece of rubber hanging from the bottom of podmobile2, and have since Thursday. Maybe now that Oktoberfest is over and I have my life back, I can go see what it is and how to get it fixed.