I stayed at the America’s Best Value Inn on Hallum and Folsom.  Mornings, you will find me at Rocco’s around the corner.  I ate at different places for lunch and dinner.

Saturday I picked up my brother, Mark, and we went to the Northern California Renaissance Faire.  This is always a good time.  I get my hair braided by Brenda the Braider.  (About $60)

Sunday is Folsom Fair and this year Madoc Pope took my reins.

Photo by Jon Bauer, my Pony Speckles

Animal Cavalcade 2017

Photos by Handyman 2017

Photo by Prettyballs

Photo by Tom Hilton

Photography by Trainer Pollux

I was at Folsom Fair with two of my best friends, Tony Bark and Trainer Pollux.  Tony Bark is a new Leather titleholder, Inland Empire Ambassador, so he was up on the Main stage being presented!

Afterwards, Speckles and I gave Tony and Trainer Pollux a cart ride back to the hotel.  We took apart the carts, had a snack and headed back to the maddening crowd.

Ingredients:

• 1 (1 1/2 pound) beef tri tip roast, trimmed
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon dried marjoram

• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 1/3 cup red wine or a tad more as needed, and you need to pour yourself a glass of course.
• 1 tablespoon olive oil, or as needed

Add all dry ingredients on the list to a bowl and mix them

• Prep

  10 m

• Cook

  35 m

• Ready In

  8 h 50 minutes or more if you marinate overnight

1. Rub roast all over with thyme, basil, marjoram, mustard, salt, and black pepper. Place meat in a glass baking dish, seal the dish securely with saran wrap, and refrigerate, 8 hours to overnight. uncover the dish, carefully drizzle the red wine into the herbs covering all the meat, turn it over and repeat so that the meat is fully covered 4 hours before cooking.  Reseal the dish securely with saran wrap and place back into the refrigerator.
2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). 
3. Take the meat out of the refrigerator, uncover, drizzle both sides with olive oil sparsely. Place meat in the oven.
4. Roast in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and continue roasting meat until hot and slightly pink in the center, 20 to 25 minutes more. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the center should read 140 degrees F (60 degrees C). Let rest for 5 to 10 minutes before thinly slicing against the grain.

BAM!

Sometimes I get stuck in the mundane and schedule of daily life.  I notice I feel dull, opressed by an unknown thing, and I am constantly thinking about bills.

This is not my life.

So, I grab one of my favorite stories on vcr or dvd and start playing it or I grab a favorite book.  I revisit my friends in their story.  I remember back to how I used to watch tv as a child.  

Somehow when I was a child even if I had been read a story 100 times, when it was read to me, it was interesting, I wanted to know how my friends were, how their story went and how it turned out.  I was attentive, listening, focused.  It was as if the story might change if I didn’t visit them regularly.  Their story might go stepping off in another direction.  I had to make sure.  It was the same for my favorite tv shows.  It never mattered if it was a rerun. (We didn’t have pre-recorded things to play on demand.)

At that time I was excited to wake up, greet the day, experience my new adventure.   A new day was never boring or something I found mundane.

That is my life.  Excited.  Life is a wonder.  You never know what will happen next.  

You play hard.  I play hard. I engage in everything I do with passion.  I’m fully in.  Creating a make-believe in this state is totally real at the time.  I was really looking for the Indians (cowboys) or the Navy (pirates), they were truly coming to get me and I had to escape, survive, catch them, out fox them, etc.

Creating my real life isn’t any different, not when I am engaged, not when I am in this moment with the universe.

I feel light, happy in this state.

That is amusing because Peter and Tink always tell you, you need a happy thought to fly.