MEME: Ice cream quiz

First seen on bronx_baroness:

I can appreciate the "calming influence" thing but I'm not a huge fan of vanilla unless it's drizzled with a hot fudge topping!

My weekend so far

Today, I got up at 7 am and then hung out in my office for a while --I am way too used to getting up early these days! I encouraged amg04 to get up about 8:30 or 9 so that we could make it to the Strip district between 9 and 10 am. Made it there to go shopping and eat sushi for breakfast at about 9:50 am! Well, maybe brunch. We ate sushi, shopped for various food stuffs and made it home a little before noon. About 1 pm, amg04, the Klingon and I headed out for the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival. We got discounted tickets thanks to showing one of the local supermarket chain's frequent shopper cards and wandered around. It looked much like the old festival. Some old faces, vendors, and performers were there but there were many new acts. We took in a show by Puke and Snot which was polished and somewhat good but not side-splittingly funny. We watched the middle session of the joust which was barely passable. It's not very good when a small child makes a critical remark about the quality of acting. I was in search of fried veggies which were not to be found and while I got fish and chips (over-cooked fish but okay fries --no malt vinegar to be seen, though), the Klingon found his old friend Temujin who has told stories at this festival since we can remember and who used to come into the copy establishment where the Klingon worked when he was in college. We sat through one round of his stories and I contributed to his hat with the mouse deer stylistically printed on it. Under the current ownership, Temujin and the other local storyteller we know, Alan Irvine, don't have much billing on the program and are forced to use stages as they have a free time slot. This must really cut into their earnings as people who have come to see them can't really find where they are unless by accident, as we did. After listening to Temujin's delightful fable of The Man with the Tree Growing from his Head, we stayed for the next act. This was called Cast In Bronze. This act consisted of a the first and only transportable carillon. It consists of 35 bronze bells and weighs four tons. The man who plays it was trained in France and combines it with other instruments. It is supported solely by live performances and music sales. It was the highlight of the festival for me. We wandered around a bit more and amg04 had a bread bowl with broccoli cheese soup, while the Klingon enjoyed beef stew in a bread bowl. After one more trip down into the valley to purchase honey sticks and cinnamon almonds, we headed home. If you are planning to go to the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival, don't miss the Cast in Bronze performance and please, look for Temujin and Alan Irvine and support them as local artists.