Kentucky Derby Festival

     The weather has been rainy and cool so my husband gave me some time off to do a few fun things this week. On Sunday we watched the NASCAR Talledega race. It was one of the best races we've seen in a while. They set the record for the most lead changes and the most different cars leading. Plus Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson got into it and neither won. An enjoyable afternoon.

     We also attended a Derby Festival event, the Bedraces. This was the first time we attended this event and it was a lot of fun. There were over 80 beds entered. First they partied in the parking lot and then they paraded the beds around the arena. They were all decorated to fit the theme (which had something to do with spring break).

Then they took the beds back outside and trimmed them into racing form. Two beds went head to head in each heat to get the fastest time. One person sat or laid on the bed and steered. Four others pushed. They had to avoid hitting the cones that marked the lanes and had to avoid each other when they crossed lanes in the middle of the race. Best time of the night was 25 seconds. 

Here's some pictures from the 2010 Thunder Over Louisville. The first one is from the west barge which is on the other side of the bridge in front of the wharf.

This one is from the east barge which was right in front of our location near the marina in Louisville's Waterfront Park.

The next pictures are fireworks set off from the bridge. The last one is the waterfall effect which is a crowd favorite.

This firework filled the whole sky and hung there for a long time (in fireworks time anyway). You can get a feel for how big it was by how much shoreline it covered.

This is from the grand finale - Gargantua.

     I am getting very lax in posting to the blog. I promise to do better from now on. There lots to talk about. First I'll finish up with the NCAA tournament. The UK Men's team lost in the Elite 8 so they did not make it to the Final Four. To rub salt in the wound, one of our arch-enimies, Duke, won it all. Ugh! Most of the starting players are all going to the NBA draft (three of them are freshmen) so we'll have to start over next year. C'est le guerre! The UK Women's team lost in the Elite 8 as well but they were playing a higher seeded team. They have most of their players returning next year so it should be fun to watch them again.

    Last week was spring break for my niece and nephew who live in Louisville, too. We took them on a day trip to the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill. It is the best preserved Shaker community. It still has many of the original buildings. Volunteers are there to demonstrate the life the Shakers led here.

One woman showed how they danced when they worshipped. This was the origin of calling them the "shakers" (they called themselves the Society of Believers). People would come from all around to watch the Sunday worships. The Shakers used this as an opportunity to recruit new members (they practiced celebacy so the only way they could grow was by recruiting). The Pleasant Hill community was primarily agricultural so the main goods they sold were seeds. They made furniture and textiles mostly for their own use. The kids seemed to enjoy it very much.

    We have been doing a lot of landscape work this past week. One of the nagging projects we've had on our to-do list is to replace a decorative fence at the end of our sidewalk. Most of the wood rotted out years ago but we never had the time and energy to fix it. Last week we set the new corner post so on Sunday we got out and put all the horizontal slats in place.

That was a job because the existing posts weren't square and we wanted to retain the original illusion that the boards went through the posts. I think it works. My husband painted it this week and put new copper tops on the posts (those were not on the original fence). Meanwhile, I trimmed the bushes, cleaned up the landscaping and pulled all the weeds. I plan to set out some annuals in a few weeks (its still a tad chilly at night). Our front yard looks better now than it has in years.

     This week was the home opener for our AAA professional baseball team, the Louisville Bats. It was a beautiful evening. It had been in the 80's during the day but the humidity was low. They had a fireworks display after the game. Unfortunately we lost. As you can see, they had a good size crowd for the game. Now that we are retired, we plan to attend some afternoon games this year. It'll be interesting to see what kind of turn out they get for those games.

     Speaking of fireworks, today is our annual gigantic air show and fireworks display, Thunder over Louisville. It's the start of the Derby Festival ending with the Kentucky Derby horse race on May 1. The weather today is sunny and a tad cool with the high at 65. It will probably be in the 50's by the time the fireworks start. But its sunny so it should be a good day to sit on the riverfront and enjoy the festivities. I'll be posting some fireworks pictures next time.

    I'm sitting alone in my den watching NCAA basketball. My Kentucky Wildcats have made it to the Elite 8 (men) and the Sweet 16 (women) and are still going. The men play again on Saturday and are the highest seeded team remaining. We watched the UK women play their first two games right here in Louisville at Freedom Hall. They beat Liberty and Michigan State to advance.
    I'm sitting alone because my husband is gone on a buddy trip to Washington D.C. but not to worry, I have a house full of company (on and off). My sister from Wisconsin is staying here for a few days before she returns to work following her shoulder surgery. My youngest sister and her family were here tonight. We played a game called "Things" where everyone has to name a thing that fits a certain category (such as things you should not do at a party or things you can do with chocolate). We were having so much fun, especially at the antics of my 15 year old nephew. He is so funny, it wouldn't surprise me if he became a stand-up comedian. They are coming back tomorrow and my other (and final) sister is coming down from northern Indiana. So on Sunday, the whole gang will be here. My husband returns on Monday and everyone else will be gone by Tuesday. Hmmm, that makes it sound like he is chasing them off...

    But of course March would not be March without the madness of the basketball tournements! Our teams, the University of Kentucky men and women, are playing in the NCAA tournement this weekend. The men's team, which has a number one seeding, has already won their first round game and plays Wake Forest tonight. The women's team plays their first game today here in Louisville. We have tickets to the first round of the women's tournement at Freedom Hall.
    Go Cats!

    For us, March is a month dedicated to the arts. We have been long-time subscribers to both Actor's Theratre of Louisville and the Louisville Orchestra ( http://www.louisvilleorchestra.org/ ). Actor's Theatre ( http://www.actorstheatre.org/ ) is a professional regional theatre that produces plays in the off-broadway mode (that is, plays with a story including serious drama, biographies, comedy, some music). The Kentucky Center for the Arts ( http://www.kentuckycenter.org/ ) is the venue that produces Broadway-style shows (mainly musicals) and concerts. We attend the Kentucky Center shows from time to time but generally prefer the type of plays at Actor's Theatre.
    Actor's signature event is the Humana Festival of New American Plays (sponsored by the Humana Foundation, the charitable arm of the Humana insurance company which is headquartered in Louisville). Every year they select (and sometimes commission) plays that have never been performed yet. As part of our subscription we attend most of the performances.
   We also have a couple of orchestra concerts this month. We attend the Nite Lites series directed by Bob Bernhardt. Tonight's performance is called Wabbits which "features the familiar classics that were featured in cartoons of our youth".
    To add to that this year (and I guess because we are retired and do not have to get up for work the next morning), we also attended the following additional events:
   - a musical at the local dinner-theater venue, Derby Dinner Playhouse ( http://www.derbydinner.com/ )
   - a concert by Vishten at the Ogle Center on the campus of Indiana University Southeast ( http://oglecenter.ius.edu/ ). Vishten performed at the Olympics and is a group from the Canadian martitimes that plays Acadian music with fiddle, guitar, mandolin and lots of stomping feet. Excellent concert!
   - a play at the Bunbury Theratre ( http://www.bunburytheatre.org/ ) which is located in the historic and recently renovated Henry Clay building in downtown Louisville. The main draw of going to this play was the opportunity to see the Henry Clay but we enjoyed the show and the Bunbury Theatre, although small, has a nice facility and a professional presentation.
   So all-in-all this month we will have attended eight plays, three concerts and visited two museums. The month is not over yet!

    Its been a while since I updated this blog - sorry about that. To catch up, first I'll talk about my Wisconsin trip. This was a low-key trip as the intent was to be with my sister to help out after her shoulder surgery. The surgery went fine and it was good that she had much less pain than last year when her other (right) shoulder was done. Our mother stayed with us as well so our days were spent in one of two ways:
- up in the morning, eat breakfast, maybe a game of Scrabble, work on the crossword from the paper, naps in the afternoon (my mother and sister, I watched TV), watch NCIS with my brother-in-law in the evening, eat dinner and watch more TV.
- on days she had doctor appointments and/or therapy, we would go into town and have lunch with someone, do a little shopping and then back home.

    The Olympics were going on while I was up there so I watched a lot of Olympic coverage (which I enjoyed very much). I can now name most of the alpine skiing events. I also managed to win two games of Scrabble out of the many we played. I like to think that they are so much better at Scrabble because they play a lot more but its probably because their vocabulary is much better than mine and I don't have the discipline to concentrate as much as they do.

    The leisurely schedule did allow us time to visit with friends and relatives. We did lunches with my aunts and a high school friend as well as my sister's friends. I went up to Green Bay to my brother's house for a few nights where I was able to see my nieces and nephew play in their school basketball games. One day my two brothers who live up there came out to the house and we played games all day. (My family is B-I-G into playing games!)

    I got a reminder dose of Wisconsin weather. While it didn't snow that much while I was there (they actually got more snow in Louisville while I was gone), there was a lot of snow on the ground and the windy weather made it very cold and seem like it was snowing. My sister lives in the country behind a corn field. Every time we wanted to leave, my brother-in-law had to plow the driveway from the drifting snow. I did manage to get the car stuck in the driveway one day. We had to do the old-fashioned push-as-hard-as-you-can to get the car out. Makes me remember why I moved to the south. I was happy to see that all the snow in Louisville had melted by the time I returned home.