Hoosier Dylan, Ann's birthday, and my future as an Indispensable Member of the Borders Team

Highlights since my last post:

• Ann's birthday on Saturday. It started with Jill and me going to the Bloomington farmers market, where we purchased honey sticks, delicious tomato, basil and goat cheese quiche, and a pot of flowers for our dear roommate --plus we got to hear the musical stylings of "Hoosier Dylan," not to mention a few accordion players and banjo pickers. We also bought Ann a puzzle at Borders--a puzzle of the White Album's cover. Who doesn't need one of those? (Everyone needs one of those. That's why they made a puzzle of a completely white album cover.) My favorite moments of those two events were 1) Jill picking up the flowers that were soon to be Ann's and saying, "Hello, friend!" while practically hugging the plant, and the flower-selling man saying hello back for the flowers, and 2) asking the guy at Borders if he could wrap our present.

Borders guy: Um . . . I guess so. I don't have the best reputation with wrapping, but we can give it a shot . . .

Me: Mostly we just don't want to buy paper. I mean, I can wrap it if you have paper.

Borders guy: Oh, okay. Yeah, you can do that. [rips off paper in a really ineffective way and doesn't think of using scissors until I suggest it, at which point he hands it to me and I stand behind the Borders counter and wrap the present.]

• Additional highlights from Ann's birthday - the Vietnamese bistro followed by a mad dash to the evening session of stake conference and then a branch karaoke party in our apartment, complete with three cakes and a pie. I'm pretty sure our neighbors hated us, except for one who was warned before hand. He came over to karaoke, but after we'd already stopped. (Seriously - who sings karaoke after midnight? Oh yeah. People who get drunk first and don't have church in the morning. Whoops. ) So I guess we have one neighbor who doesn't hate us, and he's the only one who knows us, so we're probably fine. 
• When the song "Man in the Mirror" came up, Mike Dixon definitely launched into a short Dylan impression. Dylan singing Michael Jackson = GREAT IDEA!
• Dark Crystal in the park on Friday night. That movie hasn't really held up well at all, and I can't believe I loved it back in the day. But watching it with a park full of nostalgic people was pretty hilarious. Best line goes to the hero, talking to himself: "But I'm not ready to go alone. (tiny, much too brief pause, then hero switches to a much perkier voice) All right, alone then." 
• The season premieres of Bones and The Office on Thursday night. True, there was some mild trauma because of Tivo conflicts (Ann, we may have to talk about how Vampire Diaries and Weekend Update are both on during Bones so that Jill doesn't cry every Thursday night) but both premieres were pretty enjoyable. Also, remember how I didn't use to watch TV? Dangit. 
• At Stake Conference this morning, they had a guy with a camera so they could project images of the speaker to the back half of the room. This was fine and pretty helpful until we got to the rest hymn, at which point the camera man decided to shoot some footage of the congregation a la General Conference. Buddy, you don't have the setup for that, so it's probably time to give up the dream. I especially enjoyed his attempts to zoom in and out and shoot the entire room from his spot at the back of the chapel. 
• We took another trip to Indy tonight for a regional fireside, where we determined that, all things considered, our branch probably has the best-looking and most normal people. Not that we're biased at all, nor are we feeling prideful about this. Also, there were doughnuts.